CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Eli sat at the kitchen table in Cross Creek’s main house, completely and utterly poleaxed. Scarlett and Emerson had left a little while ago, and despite several hundred variations of “What the hell is going on?” from both of Eli’s brothers, their old man had simply sat at one of the four compass points of the farmhouse table, his hands wrapped around a mug of coffee that had gone otherwise untouched.
Eli had a sister. His father had been with another woman. Gotten her pregnant. Kept his daughter hidden from Eli and his brothers for twenty-three years.
How were they supposed to process this?
And more importantly, how the fuck were they supposed to recover as a family?
Finally, their old man spoke. “I have a lot to tell you boys, and most of it won’t be easy to hear. I reckon you’ll be angry. Hurt, even.” He paused for a slow breath. “All I ask is that you hear me out till I’ve said my piece.”
“Pop, seriously.” Owen took the lead, which under the circumstances wasn’t surprising. “What do you have to tell us that’s so urgent?”
“You three have a sister. That’s who was at the door a little while ago, and she may be stayin’ for a bit. Her name is Marley Rallston. She grew up in Chicago with her mother.”
Paralyzing silence ricocheted through the kitchen, and damn, Eli didn’t find the words any easier to process the second time around.
“A sister,” Hunter said slowly, as if their father had been speaking some long-dead language like Latin or ancient Sanskrit. “And she’s in this house. Right now. Upstairs.”
“Yes.”
Owen’s eyes flew wide, his shoulders smacking the ladder back of his chair as realization dropped his jaw. “Rallston. As in, Lorraine Rallston.”
“What?” Hunter asked. “That can’t be right. Miss Lorraine left Millhaven twenty-four years ago, just after Mom died. She . . .” The rest stopped short on a sharp breath out as his expression hardened with anger. “Oh my God. You had an affair with Miss Lorraine?”
“No.” Their father’s voice cracked across the table like thunder. “Let me make one thing real clear. I loved your mother. I love her still.” He lowered his chin. “But I wouldn’t wish watchin’ a loved one slip away on my worst enemy.”
The words sent twin pangs of sadness and confusion through Eli’s gut, and neither played nicely with the betrayal already filling the space. Christ, they had a sister, and she’d clearly been conceived not long after their mother had died.
How could there be a good explanation for this?
“Why don’t you start from the beginning,” Eli said, and his old man gave up a small nod before sending his gaze around the table.
“You all know your momma got sick in a blink. We were blindsided. Me, Miss Lorraine. Everyone. The docs back then didn’t know the sorts of things we know now, but even then, your mother knew. She knew she wouldn’t live.”
He stopped for a shaky inhale, and sweet Jesus, Eli wasn’t going to make it through this.
As rattled as his father seemed, he continued. “One night, toward the end, she got real lucid. Peaceful, even.”
“I remember that,” Owen said, prompting a spear of jealousy through Eli’s chest. “She wore that pretty white nightgown with the blue flowers on it, and we all ate ice cream in her hospital room. She even sang Eli to sleep.”
Sadness lined their old man’s face despite his faraway smile. “That was the night. After Addie Hitchcock took you boys home and put you to bed, your mother sat me and Lorraine down. She made us promise we wouldn’t fret after she was gone. She said . . .” His voice tripped, and he cleared his throat before starting again. “She said she didn’t want either of our hearts to go to waste. Told us we’d need to be there for each other. And then she was gone, and I was alone raisin’ the three of you, and . . .”
“You were lonely,” Hunter said. “I remember you sitting down here by the fireplace at night, in the dark. You tried to hide it from us, but you were lonely.”
“I was a lot of things,” he agreed quietly, dropping his gaze to where he’d folded his hands over the table in front of him. “And I missed your mother so much. I didn’t intend for anything to happen with Lorraine, but it did.”
At that, Eli’s pulse tripped, and his brothers looked equally unhappy. The tension in the room thickened further as their old man added, “When she told me she was pregnant, I wanted to do right by her. I asked her to marry me so we could raise the baby together.”
“What?” Hunter blurted, sitting ramrod straight in his chair, and Eli exhaled in shock so deep, his hands started to shake. Given Marley’s spitting-mad attitude and the accusations that had accompanied it at the front door—not to mention how deeply his father had still been grieving at the time and how much a new wife and baby would have impacted their family—it was the last thing Eli had expected him to say.
He asked, “Then how did she end up leaving Millhaven?”
“Lorraine knew I didn’t love her. That I could never love her the way she wanted. The way she deserved. So she decided to leave town.”
Owen’s brows rose along with the color on his cheeks. “Just like that? She was pregnant with your baby,” he said, but their father shook his head.
“Not everything is cut-and-dried, Owen. I reckon her decision was far from easy, just like it was hard for me to let her go. It was her choice, though, and in the end, I respected that. We spoke from time to time, and I sent her money for Marley every month, from the day the girl was born until she turned eighteen. But on one thing, Lorraine was clear. She didn’t want Marley to know about me, so she gave me a made-up name and told Marley I’d died just before she was born.”
“And what about us?” Hunter asked, his arms knotting over his chest and his features hardening in a rare show of anger. “You weren’t ever going to tell us we have a sister?”
“I wanted to. I did.” Although his father’s voice was barely more than a whisper, emotion wrapped over every word. “At first, you were too young. And then as you got older . . . so much time had passed. Marley didn’t know, and Lorraine had made a life for them, so I just kept the secret.”
Eli closed his eyes and let the irony swamp him. He knew what it was like to keep secrets—big ones—from his family. But for Chrissake, he couldn’t even remember his own mother. He’d lived with the guilt of it his entire life.
Now he had not only a sister he didn’t know, but a family he didn’t recognize.
Owen shook his head, as if he’d been processing everything on a delay and it was just now sinking in. “It’s been twenty-four years, Pop. I get not telling us when we were younger, but we’re a family. You raised us as a family. We deserved to know we have a sister before she showed up on our doorstep as an adult.”
“Speaking of which,” Hunter said. “She did show up. What made Lorraine finally decide to tell her about you after all this time?”
A shadow flickered through the emotions already churning in their old man’s stare at the same time Eli’s gut dropped toward the kitchen tiles. “Lorraine passed a few months ago. I didn’t know until today, but it seems she told Marley the truth just before she died. Lorraine had Marley make the same promise your momma asked of her all those years ago.”
“To come find you so she wouldn’t be alone,” Eli said, a chill rushing down his spine.
“I’d guess that was the gist of it. Marley is . . . angry, though. I have a feeling this is going to get a whole lot worse before it gets any better.”
“You can’t really blame her for being upset,” Hunter allowed. “I’m freaking upset, and I’m not gonna lie, Pop. I’m pretty angry, too. Owen’s right. We’re a family. We deserved to know about Marley.”
Their father pushed back from the table, just slightly. “You did, and for that I owe all three of you an apology. I never meant to keep secrets from you. I wanted to honor Lorraine’s wishes, but I was wrong not to tell you the truth.”
His voice broke over the last word, startling the hell out of Eli. Tears formed in his old man’s eyes, their presence slicing to the bone.
In his twenty-eight years, Eli had never, ever seen the man cry.
“Having a sister is a lot to process, Pop. For all of us,” Owen said quietly, and Eli had to admit, it wasn’t inaccurate. Marley’s existence was a familial triple-whammy. “It’s just gonna take some time to adjust and figure this out.”
“I understand.”
“But we’ll do it,” Hunter added, nodding across the table at their father. “Things might be pear-shaped right now, but we are a family. Mad or not, upset or not, we’ll get through. Somehow.”
Owen looked at the hallway, his doubt scrawled over his face. “In the meantime, Marley’s upstairs. What are you going to say to her when she comes down?”
The dread in Eli’s gut reached critical mass as their father shook his head in defeat, his work-hardened face wet with tears.
“I don’t know, son. I really don’t know.”
Scarlett bolted upright on the couch cushions at the turn and click of Eli’s front doorknob. A handful of scrawled research notes fluttered to the floor, and dammit, she must have fallen asleep somewhere between Salvador and Recife.
“Hey.” Her grogginess did an instant disappearing act as she took in Eli’s rumpled flannel, dead-serious expression, and bloodshot eyes, and good Lord, he looked like hell. “What’s the matter? Is everything okay with your father?”
“No.”
Rather than following up, the tread of his boots called out a path to the tiny kitchen connected to his living space. A soft glass-on-glass clink said he was pouring a nice, stiff drink, and the healthy slosh of liquid that followed told Scarlett said drink was big enough to do the backstroke in.
“Okay.” She stood, her heart thudding beneath her sleep-creased T-shirt. She needed to tell him about Rafael’s news, but at the same time . . . “Do you want to talk about it?”
“I’ve just spent all night talking, so not really. No.” Eli took a long swallow of what turned out to be Jim Beam, wincing. “I apologize,” he said, replacing the half-empty glass on the Formica. “That was shitty. It’s just . . . do you remember when the doorbell rang, earlier at the main house?”
Scarlett nodded. “Of course.”
“That was my sister.”
She replayed the words in her head, once. Twice. But yeah, those four words couldn’t possibly go together. “I’m sorry. Did you say—”
“My sister,” Eli repeated, throwing back the last of the bourbon in his glass. “So yeah. It’s been a helluva night.”
He spent the next fifteen minutes filling her in on the events of the evening, from Marley’s arrival at the front door to the back-and-forth between her and his father to the heart-wrenching conversation that had followed between Tobias and his sons. Scarlett tried to keep her questions to a minimum, she really did. But given the holy-shit factor of so much hidden truth coming to light, the task was pretty much a monster, especially when he got to the part where Marley had finally come out of the upstairs bedroom to join them for dinner.
“So what did she say?” Scarlett asked, her shoulders still high and tight from the shock of it all.
“Not a damn thing.”
Scarlett’s lips parted, although for a second, no sound followed. “Nothing at all?”
“Nothing with more than a syllable,” Eli amended. “She came down for supper right at five and muttered a hello to me and Owen and Hunter when we introduced ourselves, but she refused to even look at my old man, much less speak to him.”
“Wow.” A defensive ripple moved up Scarlett’s spine. “That’s a little cold, don’t you think?”
Eli laughed without humor as he turned to pace over the linoleum. “Of course I do, but I’m his son. Marley only knows one side of things, and she won’t even think about listening to anything he has to say. She’s pissed and she’s hurting and the one thing she doesn’t want is the only thing she’s got left. I don’t think she’s letting go of that any time soon. The whole meal was just intense.”
“So how did you leave everything?”
“I wasn’t kidding about my old man bein’ the only thing she’s got left,” Eli said, lifting one dark-blond brow. “If I had to wager, I’d say every last thing that girl owns is in her car—which by the look of it is one head gasket away from the scrap heap in the sky. Hunter got her to agree to stay at Cross Creek for the time being, but I can assure you she did it out of necessity.”
Scarlett’s heart ached at the look on Eli’s face. She closed the space between them, stopping him midpace to slip her arms around him and pull him in close. “I’m so sorry things are tough for your family right now, Eli. I don’t know what else to say.”
He let out a breath, his body going lax against hers. “It’s just as well. I can talk about it till I’m purple, but that won’t change anything. At least, not tonight. Look, I’m exhausted, so—”
“Rafael called me tonight.”
Ah, shit. She’d totally jumped the gun. As usual. “I’m sorry,” she added, biting her lip as she pulled back to look at him. “But he called with some great news.”
Eli blinked. “Rafael. Crap, with everything that went on tonight, I totally forgot about Brazil.”
“Well, Brazil hasn’t forgotten about you,” Scarlett said over a small smile. “Rafael got a call from a man named Matteo Garza, who owns and operates one of the biggest travel publications in South America. They want us to cover the whole festival in a series of articles. All of it. Me and you.”
“All of it,” he repeated, taking a full step back to pin her with a stare. “But the festival lasts for a month.”
She let her arms, now suddenly empty, drop. “I know it might sound like a long time, but—”
“A long time? It’s a fucking eternity. I can’t be gone for a month right now.”
The incredulous look on his face mixed with something darker, prompting a hard bubble of unease to rise in her chest. “We planned for this, Eli. Maybe not for this long right off the bat, but you can’t be serious about not taking this job.”
He froze into place on the two-by-two patch of linoleum between the kitchen and the living space. “Of course I’m serious! How could I possibly go to Brazil for an entire month right now when I need to be here, with my family?”
Scarlett paused, trying like hell to smooth the emotion from her voice. “I know a lot went on with your father tonight. But this trip isn’t forever, and it is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Taking this assignment could write your ticket. It could make your entire career start happening, right now.” God, how could he not see how huge this was?
“It’s not that easy,” Eli bit out, his tone icing over and turning desperate all at once. “This is my family. My father.”
“Your father who believes in you,” she reminded him. “Your father who told you just today to be who you are and to take this leap.” She gentled her voice despite the rock-solid seriousness in her words. “Please, Eli. This is everything you’ve wanted for the last ten years.”
“I . . .” Eli broke off. “I can’t leave, Scarlett. I can’t.”
She tried, only half-successfully, to drag a breath past the tangled knot in her throat. “But I told Rafael yes.”
Eli’s chin whipped up, his eyes going perfectly round before narrowing over her. “You . . . what?”
“I told him yes.”
“For both of us,” Eli confirmed, the expression lining his face suddenly unreadable. “You said yes for both of us.”
Scarlett nodded. “We’re a team, so yes. I didn’t know about Marley when he called,” she started, but Eli cut her off with a single lift of his hand.
“And if you had? Would that have made your answer any different?”
The question stopped Scarlett cold, turning her palms slick. She loved Eli. Loved the family for whom he so desperately cared. But she’d never in her life been anything other than balls-out honest, and what’s more, she owed him so much more than to lie.
“No. It wouldn’t. There isn’t going to be another opportunity like this one, ever. I’d have said yes either way.”
“Right. Of course you would’ve.”
The words, the cold, callous tone that clung to them, hit her point-blank, stunning her into momentary silence. Finally, she managed a choked, “I’m sorry?”
A sound crossed his lips in a bitter approximation of a snort. “The thing is, you’re really not, though. You’re never sorry for anything. You live your life out of a suitcase, one big adventure after the next. I mean, you’ve said it yourself. You belong everywhere. Things like family don’t matter to you. So really, why the hell wouldn’t you say yes when the next assignment comes calling? Your job is the only thing that’s important to you.”
Scarlett’s chest hitched at an unnatural pace, her lungs burning for air that wouldn’t come. “Is that what you think? That I have no idea how to make those deeper connections like you do? That after all this time together, I don’t care about you or your family or your farm at all?”
She paused, and for a brief, beautiful second, she saw the no flickering in his stare. Brash instinct moved her forward, and she reached out to take his hand.
“Please, Eli,” Scarlett whispered, tears pricking behind her mutinous eyelids. But just like she belonged behind her camera, he belonged writing stories. They were a team.
They belonged together.
Her fingers tightened over his. “Don’t lose this chance to be who you are. I know you feel indebted to your family, but we can figure—”
“No.” His expression slammed shut, and he pulled his hand from hers.
“Eli—”
“No,” he said, the word slicing to the bone despite being far from a yell. But no, this was far, far worse. “You don’t know the first thing about how I feel, Scarlett. In fact, you don’t know anything about me. Look, this writing thing was a fun idea in theory, but in practice, it’s not going to work out.”
Her heartbeat ricocheted off her ribs. “You mean you’re giving up on it.”
“I’m being realistic,” he corrected, his arms forming an impenetrable knot over his chest. “Thinking I could leave the farm, that I could be a travel journalist—it was all just a pipe dream. I don’t belong out there.” Eli looked out the window, where the sky and the stars sprawled endlessly, and oh God. He wasn’t just saying that. He meant it.
“I think you do,” Scarlett whispered, because the brazen truth was all she had left.
But it wasn’t enough. “No, you do. So go on and go to Brazil, Scarlett. I belong here. And you don’t.”
With that, he turned and walked away.