A Year of You (3 page)

There were a few things about this Mattie that were vaguely familiar. The tilt of her wide blue-gray eyes, the way she crinkled her brow in her sleep. He’d spent most of the flight staring at her, trying to find any resemblance. There was something in her laugh that sounded vaguely like Emeline.

McKendrick had sent him to Atlanta to watch this newcomer. McKendrick had killer instincts. West had long ago learned not to doubt his judgment calls. If McKendrick thought something was up, then something was up.

He put his suitcase and her grungy duffel bag into the bed of the truck.
“It’ll fall out!” the woman exclaimed, pointing at the gaping hole.
“Nah.” He reached down and tugged the sheet of plywood back over the hole. He used a big chunk of concrete and a bag of potting soil as an anchor. “See?”


The woman laughed and made a helpless gesture with her hands. “If you say so.” She reached for the passenger door.
She pulled  hard and glanced up. “Is it locked?”

“Nah, there’s a trick.” He gripped it, put his foot up on the side of the truck and leaned back hard.

The door opened with a loud, rusty
clunk
.
“You need a new truck,” she commented as she climbed upside, slightly disconcerted by the lack of a running board to use as a step.


West patted the faded, bubbling blue paint on the truck bed. “This one was my dad’s. He died a few years back. Can’t bring myself to get rid of it. You have to give that seatbelt a great big yank. It sticks.”


She did and the whole thing popped out of the metal wall and smacked into her temple. She yelped and clasped her hand to the side of her head, still hanging on to the seatbelt.


“Oh, crap, are you all right? Let me see?”
West leaned over and tried to pull her hand away from her head.

“I’m fine; it just startled me.” She moved her hand. “I’m all right, really.”


He bit back his chuckle, but he couldn’t hide his grin. “The A/C doesn’t work.”


“Can’t say I’m surprised,” she quipped, pulling her shoulder-length, dark blonde hair into a ponytail. Nothing like the Mckendrick’s, so far. Every single one of them were white-blonde.

Her eyes, though. They were hauntingly familiar. Emeline’s eyes were nearly the same color, beneath her baby-blue contact lenses. Maybe the shape of her lips echoed Karen’s as well.

He rolled his window down. “That one doesn’t work.”

She raised an eyebrow. “How’d I guess?”

He navigated the horrendous parking lots and pulled out on to a busy highway. To her left was a huge structure she recognized as the Daytona Speedway.

“Ever been to the races?” he asked, hoping to get her to start talking. He didn’t know much about her story, other than she didn’t remember much before her sixth birthday. She’d grown up in Atlanta.

“Me? No. Not my thing. But it’s big up in Atlanta. Everybody’s a NASCAR fan. I don’t care too much for it.” She reached up and fiddled with her necklace. It was a tiny silver baby pacifier with a sparkly pink crystal nipple.

“NASCAR too good for you?” he joked. She rolled her eyes. “All right then, what
do
you care for?”

She thought about it for a moment. “Music, books, reading, movies. Nothing real exciting.”

“Sports?”

“What’re those?” she said with a smile. West drove over the Seabreeze Bridge. Mattie craned her neck, trying to see out the window to see down at the river. “Wow. It’s beautiful.”

“The Halifax River. When we were kids, my dad would take us out on his boat.”


“We?” she asked, turning curious eyes on him. “You knew me?”


“Yeah. I’m a year older than you. We were inseparable, until—” He cut off abruptly, not wanting to remember, not wanting to dredge up the memories of those awful days after she vanished. He didn’t want to recall the nightmares that plagued his sleep until his teenage years. The night Elaine vanished, he swore he saw something out his bedroom window. Of course, it had just been a dream. Even now, though, as an adult, he had trouble convincing himself that he hadn’t seen a man carrying away a little girl in a white nightgown. For the longest time he’d been convinced it was Elaine. The older he got the more he doubted himself and his own instincts. Ruth Ellen asked him over and over again to look for Elaine, but it was like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

Looking at this stranger out of the corner of his eye, he felt a faint flutter of hope, like the final spasms of a dying butterfly.

“Until?” Mattie prompted.

“Until it happened. You disappeared.” He shrugged. Hopefully she’d take the hint and let the subject drop. She fiddled with her necklace through her shirt but kept her mouth shut.

The McKendricks lived in one of the biggest, fanciest houses along the river. Two stories tall and designed like a Mediterranean villa, it graced the covers of countless local and architectural magazines. West did the landscaping and lawn maintenance himself, so he thought it was absolutely perfect. It was the greenest in the neighborhood.

West hated the hous. It was too perfect. Not even a blade of grass dared to wave in an opposite direction. Every flower seemed symmetrical. The pine needles and oak leaves from the ancient towering trees didn’t even dare fall on the lawn. Mr. McKendrick insisted on it, and paid extra to make sure not a single leaf stayed on the ground.

West pulled up to the gate and punched his code into the keypad. A second later the heavy black iron gate rolled open.

“Oh my gosh, wow,” Mattie breathed. She looked a little pale. Her fingers went back to the necklace.

“Home sweet home, Mattie,” West said, gauging her reaction carefully. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but he would prove this woman wasn’t Elaine McKendrick.

He wasn’t going to lose Elaine all over again. They had only been children, but she had been his best friend. She haunted his dreams, still, and this woman wasn’t going to sully those memories.

***


A tall, willowy woman emerged from the courtyard gate, gazing inquisitively toward the truck. The way the ornate architecture framed her and the brilliant blossoms of the plants growing in front of it suggested it was all done specifically to frame the woman. Mattie squelched the urge to roll her eyes when the woman posed dramatically.

West gestured to the door. “You have to sort of push against the door real hard to get it open.” He hopped out his side and hurried to the waiting woman, who gracefully turned away from a kiss and only half-assed the hug.
Hmm
. That must be Emeline. Mattie got the definite vibe, even from a distance, that the relationship wasn’t exactly what West thought it was.

Mattie threw her weight against the door. It didn’t even budge, but it felt like she’d knocked her shoulder out of joint.

She pulled the lever and braced her foot on the door. “One, two, three,” she counted to herself, shoving all her weight into her leg.

The door flew open, and she flew out, tumbling to the brick-tiled driveway. She skinned her palms, scrubbed her knees hard against the bricks, and whacked the back of her head on the bottom of the door. She stopped the door with her hand before it could swing back and smack her in the face.

“You all right?” West called when she finally popped up.


“Just peachy.”

I can do this. Just got to fool them for a little while
. She smoothed her clothes and headed for the angelically beautiful woman hanging on West’s arm. She hoped they wouldn’t dally long here. She needed to get to the assisted living facility to see Ruth Ellen.

“You’re Elaine?” the woman asked.


Mattie smiled. “So they tell me. Please, call me Mattie.”


“Mattie. Sounds like some old woman’s name.”


Momentarily set back by the weakly disguised insult, Mattie shrugged. “My name’s Matilyn.”

“Madeline. Not so bad.”


“No, Matilyn, with a ‘T.’ You must be Emeline.”
The ornate wrought iron, glass, and wood doors across the courtyard opened. A tall, imposing man with white-blonde hair slicked back strode across the courtyard.
How in the world was she going to pass as a member of this family? She looked nothing like them.

She and Emeline might share some genes, but Mattie’s were obviously deeply recessive.
The man emerged from the courtyard and stopped. His cool blue eyes flicked up and down Mattie.

“Elaine.” He sounded breathless. She didn’t miss the glance he cast at West. For the first time she wondered if it had been a set up. She tensed, wondering if West had seen her with K. Mr. McKendrick didn’t seem the slightest bit surprised to see her arrive with the other man.

She was pretty sure it hadn’t been a coincidence.

McKendrick held his hand out to her. Showtime, she thought taking it. McKendrick held her at arms’ length, looking her up and down once more.

“I would never have recognized you,” he said. “You’re absolutely...pretty.”

Being around these people is going to kill my self-esteem. What little bit I have left, anyway.

“Come in.” McKendrick led her through the fabulous courtyard, then into the house. The house looked more like something out of a home-and-garden magazine than a lived-in home.

“You have a beautiful home.”


“Yes, I do. I’ve worked hard for it.”
Odd statement.

“It’s lovely.”
Another woman—another spitting image of Mr. McKendrick—glided into the foyer.

“This is your Aunt Justine. Do you remember her?”


“I really don’t remember anything from my childhood.”


“Convenient,” Emeline whispered from behind her. Mattie flashed a glance over her shoulder. Her ‘sister’ stared back with icy blue eyes filled with suspicion.


“Emeline,” McKendrick chided without the slightest hint of conviction.


The younger woman hung on West’s arm. “Sorry, daddy.”


Justine glided forward. She took Mattie’s hand in both of hers. “My dear, it’s an absolute miracle to have you home again. We’re so happy you’ve come home at last.”

“Thank you. I’m glad to be here.”


The older woman hugged her. The embrace was tight, but it felt cold.

Instinct tugged at Mattie’s heart, urging her to get out as quick as possible. She didn’t like the way Justine and Mr. McKendrick kept glancing at one another. It set off alarms in her head. What did she expect, though? Ruth Ellen said half a dozen women had claimed to be Elaine over the years. It was only natural that they doubt her until proven otherwise.

The aloof family ushered her deeper into the cool, too-perfect-to-live-in home. Each room was as impersonal as the last. Justine prattled on and on about how much the family had missed her, how much money had been spent on private investigators.

“We had long ago given up hope,” she said. “Then Ruth Ellen told us she’d found you.”

The little entourage stopped in a small round room with just a few luxuriously padded benches. The room had a hushed, reverent atmosphere, like a chapel in a hospital.

Mr. McKendrick stepped forward and pulled a curtain away from a painted portrait on the wall.

A tiny girl with white-blonde hair gazed down at her from the canvas. The room gave her the creeps. Mattie rubbed at the chillbumps on her arms. A dozen gold-framed photos of the same little girl littered the narrow, curved table beneath the portrait. Mattie released the breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding.

This was the real Elaine. Light-haired, blue-eyed, already tall and thin. At three years old, she already had the haughty look Emeline wore engrained on her sweet little face. It struck her, then, the uncanny resemblance of the girl in the photo to herself as a child.

Justine picked up a small framed photo and pressed it into her hands. “You are so utterly different than we could ever have imagined.”

Mattie nodded, completely speechless. The urge to run screamed incessantly in her head. James McKendrick’s face was unreadable, ever-shifting emotions racing across his chiseled patrician features.

“I have this,” Mattie said. Her voice stuck in her throat.

These people, there were family. Granted, they thought she was someone else, but, still, they were blood. She reached into her backpack and pulled out the photo album. Ruth Ellen had given it to her half-full, and she’d added a few other pictures of herself at various ages, including a couple of herself at the same ages as Elaine. Even K couldn’t tell the difference in the two children.

McKendrick took it. His hands shook as he flipped the pages. Justine looked over his arm. “That was at the old house.”

“The farm.”

“The beach, that year.”

Justine swallowed hard. Tear filled her eyes, but Mattie couldn’t detect anything other than fear in her face. “Where did you get these photos?”

“My adoptive mother had them. I found them after she died.”

Abruptly, he reached out and touched her cheek, stroked her hair. “You do favor Karen.”

“She was my mother,” Mattie said with a timid shrug. McKendrick gripped her chin and turned her face up. He squinted at her.

“Your eyes. You have her eyes.”

Karen’s or Elaine’s?
Mattie allowed the man to turn her face this way and that. She struggled to suppress the terror that came with that type of touch. K used it to make her submit.

“Six other women have tried to claim my daughter’s money,” he said as he released her. “All of them, I’ve turned away at the door. My mother-in-law orchestrated your visit, so it’s only out of respect for the last wish of a dying woman that I’m following through with this.”

Mattie tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and held her chin high. “I know who I am, Mr. McKendrick. I’m Ruth Ellen’s granddaughter.”

McKendrick pressed his thin lips together and nodded. “You look enough like Karen to fool anyone at a glance.” He looked toward West, then held up the photo album. “These…I’m not entirely sure they’re real. The only way I’m going to believe you’re my daughter is with the results of a blood test.”

“I understand.” Mattie took the photo album and tucked it back into her bag. “I’m willing to go to whatever means you deem necessary to prove that I’m part of this family.”

***

In the sacred room, West knew without a doubt the woman wasn’t Elaine. The scared-rabbit look in her eyes gave her away. A true daughter would be joyous, ecstatic. Discovering her family possessed the wealth of the McKendricks would have a paraplegic spontaneously healing.