The Third Daughter's Wish

She started pulling balls from the pockets and returning them to the table. “I liked him fine until I heard about the baby he never sees.”

“Nah. I don’t think so.” Gabe replaced the cue sticks on the wall rack. “You didn’t even get his name.”

Josie snorted. “Who needs a name?”

“Even you need that much, Josie. Seriously.” He held her gaze.

A couple of regulars approached the table and set their beers on its edge, claiming it for the next game, so Gabe walked Josie to the parking lot.

“Sorry if I acted jerky in there,” Gabe said, hoping a simple apology would work in lieu of an explanation.

“Hey, don’t worry about it,” she said. “That big-brother protectiveness has gotten me out of a few jams.”

She always returned their status to platonic, didn’t she? Except for her brothers-in-law, Gabe was the only guy Josie had been around for longer than a few months. She didn’t want the complications. She said that often enough.

So Gabe would ignore the desire. Pray it abated. Maybe find a new girlfriend to distract him.

“We still on for Halloween night, then?” he asked as they approached Josie’s truck.

“You bet.” After opening her driver’s side door, Josie reached inside the cab to grab her favorite sweater and slide into it. Then she leaned against the door frame, facing him. “I’m hunting for costume pieces this weekend. Want to come?”

“Nah. The twins helped with mine. I’m all set.”

She knuckled his shoulder. “Show-off.”

“Hey! I can’t handle artsy on my own.”

“I’ll catch up with you on Halloween night then. Call me if anything changes.” Her tone was affectionate, her expression soft. She’d forgiven his foolish comments.

But Josie didn’t crawl into her truck. She kept leaning against it, staring past Gabe’s head.

Uh-oh. Gabe recognized that expression. And he did know Josie. The explanation for her recent funk should spill out about…

“I think I’m going to contact my father soon.”

…now.

Whoa, this one was a doozy. Josie had never met her dad. He’d left before she was born and she’d never had a clue about why or where he’d gone. The jerk had never even sent a birthday card, and he hadn’t contacted the Blume sisters when their mother died.

The pain of that rejection must be the reason Josie chose the minor-league partners she did.

“Did something happen since last time you girls talked about finding him?” Gabe asked. “Wasn’t that just a week ago?”

She peered at him, her eyes narrowed menacingly. “No. I haven’t told them yet, so don’t you go blabbing.”

Gabe shot a stern look right back at her.

She sighed heavily. “Callie might believe that finding our father won’t make Lilly better, but maybe if we had more information…”

The Lilly Josie was speaking about was her oldest sister Callie’s six-month-old daughter. Lilly had suffered a mild, fever-related seizure at four months of age. Three weeks ago, she’d had a second, more serious, one when she was rocking in her baby swing.

The entire family had been in turmoil as the tiny girl began neurological testing.

But the sisters had discussed the idea of searching for their father. Callie felt confident that the doctors would discover the cause without an investigation of their father’s genetics. She and her husband didn’t have any seizure disorders, nor did any of the siblings, so Callie suspected a physiological problem.

“Didn’t Callie say she thought a father search would just add stress to a tough situation?” Gabe asked.

“Mom forbade us from seeking him out. I told you that.” Josie lifted a shoulder, barely. “My sisters took her more seriously than I did.”

Gabe remembered Josie telling him, many times, that Ella Blume had described her husband as a weak-minded alcoholic who would taint their lives with his failures. She’d warned them to avoid contact.

Until now, they’d always heeded her advice.

Gabe also remembered pieces of gossip that gave him an inkling about why Ella might have chosen to cut off ties to that husband—whether he was actually an alcoholic bum or some sort of blasted royalty.

However, Gabe had never found the crassness or the courage to tell Josie the things he’d heard. For one thing, he’d be repeating old gossip. And he’d discovered for himself that most of the talk about the Blume girls was simply untrue. They were a family, not a clan or a coven. Despite the unlucky circumstances of their childhood, Josie and her sisters had turned out great.

Gabe didn’t want to see Josie hurt, and he feared that hurt was exactly where she was headed if she pursued contact with her father. “Josie, I think you should follow your sisters’ examples and forget this. Your mom warned you that no good would come of trying to connect with your dad.”

“Mother’s dead.”

“Haven’t you always said she was very strong in her advice? Very intelligent?”

“She was also very weird.”

Gabe had surmised that much.

“Don’t worry about it,” Josie said, before Gabe could sputter a response. “I’ll keep my first few meetings with my father a secret from my sisters. At least until I feel certain that he is all right. I’d protect my family with my life, Gabe. You must see that.”

Gabe did. He’d never met any siblings with a stronger bond, and that included his identical twin sisters. “If he’s as bad as your mother claimed, meeting him could hurt you,” he said.

Josie laughed. “He couldn’t be any worse than the man my mother described. If I expect a lazy bum from the outset, I can’t be disappointed, right?”

No. That wasn’t right. If the tales were true, she could be crushed. “Except you’ll have a real image to link with her words. As it is now, you can tell yourself that this spitefulness was just another of her eccentricities.”

“If we learn that he’s an epileptic, we could shorten the time it takes to get answers about Lilly.”

“Callie said—”

“Callie’s scared and tired,” Josie argued. “If I check things out before I tell her, she’ll be fine.” Josie wrapped her arms across her middle. “God, haven’t we talked genetics a million times? You won’t marry and have kids because of the Lou Gehrig’s. I won’t because of my mentally unstable mom. I’d have thought that you, of all people, would understand.”

Ah, but there was the rub. How many times had Gabe wished he could live life normally, ignorant of the knowledge that he could pass on the gene for ALS? Had his dad foreseen his future, would he have chosen not to have kids? Was it better to know or not know?

Impossible questions, surely.

“But Lilly’s already here, and so is whatever’s affecting her,” he said gently. “Proof that there’s a genetic predisposition probably can’t help now.”

Josie shivered. “It’s dang cold out here, Gabe. I’m sorry you don’t like my idea.” She hitched a breath as if she was going to say something else, but then she clamped her lips shut and climbed into her truck cab.