The Third Daughter's Wish

Gabe stepped forward so she couldn’t close her door. “Have you found him already, Josie?”

She lifted her chin.

Which meant yes. She’d located her father.

“How? Through an Internet search?”

“Yep. It took some doing, but I found him, and he’s not that far away,” she said, sounding pleased with herself.

Damn.

“When are you going?” Gabe asked. “You said he’s nearby. I’ll go with you.”

She sighed as she leaned backward to fish her truck key from a front pocket. “You think my old man’s going to attack me?”

He rolled his eyes. “No, but you might appreciate having someone to talk to about it all. I could offer another perspective. Play that big-brother role.”

She put the key in the slot, then met his gaze. “You’re intense about this, Gabe. Why?”

If he told her his suspicions, he’d risk revealing secrets she might never learn for herself. Secrets best left hidden.

“You take on too much alone sometimes.” He softened his voice to lessen the blow of his next words. “Shades of your mother.”

“Don’t worry. I’m a big girl. And you’re not really my brother. Goodbye.” She started her truck.

“Call me when you’re going, Josie,” he said over the engine noise.

She shook her head, her expression incredulous, then closed the truck door between them. She zipped out of Mary’s lot and onto the street. She’d be home in two minutes.

On his sensibly slower way home, Gabe vowed to keep a close eye on Josie. They were not only friends, they were also business colleagues currently working on separate contracts within the same housing development.

He knew what she was doing a lot of the time.

Perhaps he could show up unexpectedly at her place on a regular basis and make sure she didn’t meet her father on her own.

If she did it at all.

Chapter Two

Josie’s truck tires spun up a cloud of dust as she traveled a lonely road in the middle of Kansas. When she approached a rise thick with spindly red cedars and yellowing cottonwoods, she spotted a mailbox tilted hopefully out toward the road. Slowing quickly, she read the boxy black numbers adhered to its side. “Nine fifty-four,” she murmured, then glanced into her passenger seat to check her printout. The numbers matched. This had to be the house.

After turning into the drive, she weaved the truck through a succession of dry potholes, then parked behind a dingy white van and yanked her keys from the ignition.

Abruptly, the bold curiosity that had kept her foot heavy on the pedal from her house to this one failed. She opened the bottled soda she’d bought at a highway service station, tipped it high against her lips and winced as the soda went down. It was too warm to quench thirst. Too sugary to satisfy. Josie craved the bitter snap of a cold beer. Just one, for courage.

But she was driving and it was early—she’d had to sneak out at the crack of dawn to avoid Gabe, who’d been wanting to hang out more than usual lately. Besides, she never drank alone, thanks to a nagging worry that her taste for brew meant she was on her way to alcoholism. Like her father.

Josie had her mom to thank for most of that worry. But Ella Blume wasn’t around anymore, to check Josie’s refrigerator for beer bottles or her life for stray men. Despite Ella’s clean, simple living, she’d died of ovarian cancer when she was barely into her fifties.

Her mother hadn’t been wrong about everything, of course, but she hadn’t been right about a lot. All men were not worthless. The outside world was not an evil place. Josie hoped her mother had been wrong about her father, too.

How could a man be completely uninterested in his own children? Would the knowledge that he had grandchildren draw him closer to the family? Would he be concerned about Lilly’s well-being?

Josie had a thousand questions. He’d answer some of them, she was certain. After recapping the soft-drink bottle, Josie set it in her cup holder and eyed the shabby two-story a dozen yards ahead.

For some reason, she’d always envisioned her father in a sprawling ranch. This smallish house had the flat, no-nonsense lines of the Prairie-style architecture prevalent in the Midwest over a century ago.

If someone spent a little time out here with a paintbrush and hammer, the structure could be gorgeous. The patchwork yard of cracking mud and weedy, dormant grass could also use some TLC. Josie’s theory about her father’s destination after his departure was also wrecked. Apparently, he hadn’t fled small-town life to seek fortune in some distant metropolis. Woodbine was little more than a scattering of homes. Tiny even when compared with Augusta’s population of eight-thousand.

Josie wondered if her father had left Kansas and returned, or if he’d always been here—just ninety miles north of home on highway seventy-seven. Close enough to pop by once or twice in twenty-seven years to say, “Hi, I’m your dad. How are you?”

As soon as she stepped down from her truck, the sound of barking dogs caught her attention. Stuffing her key into her jeans pocket, she swiveled to peruse the end of the drive. Five or six big dogs stood enclosed in a row of chain-link pens beneath the cedars. They must have been hidden from the road.

She hadn’t pictured her dad as a dog owner. Her mother hadn’t allowed pets.

Perhaps the man had always wanted a dog. Maybe it was one of several things that had caused such a furious schism between husband and wife. Josie didn’t know. Callie was the only one who remembered their father, but her memories were sketchy. A trip to a carnival, where their father had lifted her onto a white carousel horse. Coins emptied from his pockets and scattered on the back porch step while he taught her to count the pennies.

A man who cared for dogs now would be curious about that little girl he’d loved then, wouldn’t he? He’d wonder about all three of his little girls. Even the one he’d never seen.

The pain in that thought struck. Josie couldn’t decide if she was here for Lilly’s sake or her own. She hesitated, motionless for a moment while she tried to decide whether to approach the house or forget it.

A breeze soothed her neck and hands, diverting her attention long enough to calm her fears. After removing her sweater, she folded it over her arm.

The worst that could happen was that her father would be the drunken fool that Ella had described. If he was, Josie would ask about any seizure disorders and go away. She hadn’t driven all this way to chicken out. Not without resolving a single question.

“Here goes nothing,” she muttered, and strode up the drive.

The square, concrete porch was inviting enough. Clay pots of orange chrysanthemums flanked the metal storm door, and the wooden angel plaque hanging next to it proclaimed visitors welcome in gold stenciled lettering.

Before Josie had located the doorbell, a movement in the front window caught her eye. She paused with her hand outstretched and resisted another urge to run. She had probably been seen by now, anyway.

She pressed the button, then dropped her hand and waited for someone to greet her. A single bark sounded, louder and closer than the others, but the door remained closed.

Could someone be spying on her through the window? Could he be watching her?

Stepping backward, she peered through a sagging set of miniblinds and caught a glimpse of a large, black nose and a wagging tail.

Her watcher was a dog. Just another dog, thank heaven. Man, she was flustered. Idly, she puzzled over why this pooch merited indoor status, when the ones out at the road were surely as lovable. And then it hit her that her father could have other children. Kids he valued more dearly, for some reason, than Josie and her sisters.

Why on earth hadn’t she contacted him before making this trip?

She was impetuous, that was why. Gabe told her that often enough. But if she didn’t think well on her feet, she wouldn’t survive as an interior designer. Clients changed their minds all the time.

That was what she told Gabe in response to his lectures. The man drove her insane sometimes. Lord help her if he ever learned she had a thing for him. Clearly she was confusing her feelings—craving the attention of a strong man.

But Gabe was her good friend, and not boyfriend material for Josie. He couldn’t find out about her crush. That was all there was to it.

And she’d never tell him that her mother would have agreed with him about her impulsiveness. Ella had always encouraged Josie to follow her sisters’ examples, and think long and hard before she acted.