CHAPTER 88
Emma
We host a short celebration back at our house, giving everyone a chance to ooh and ahh over the restaurant news, the Paris honeymoon plans, and the ring. I can’t get used to it—every time it catches the light, it takes me a second to remember where I am and who I am.
I’m Emma Clark, ex-housekeeper. I live at Yosemite Ranch. I am going to marry Finn MacLaine and be the best mother I can be to Jasmine. And some day, I’ll have a bunch of my own babies.
In honor of my engagement, I refuse to cook. Declan and Summer pick up pizza from town.
When Jasmine is asleep, Finn asks me to join him in his office. He holds up a large manilla envelope.
“This arrived today,” he tells me.
“What is it?”
“I think it’s the answer to all of Aunt Phyllis’s questions.”
“You’re being awfully mysterious,” I tell him. “You’re making me nervous. What were the questions?”
He cups my cheek and kisses me lightly on the lips. “Let’s talk about it with Phyllis. Something tells me we need to have this conversation with her. You might be angry at the questions, but you can take it out on me.”
“Whoa. Now that’s really mysterious. You’re beginning to scare me.”
“Let’s take a walk to see Aunt Phyllis.”
Finn sets the alarm on his watch that monitors Jasmine’s bedroom door, and we take a walk to his dad’s place.
Outside, the sun has gone down, but the dry heat saps the fluids from my body, and by the time we arrive, I’m dehydrated and dying for a lemonade or an iced tea.
Phyllis offers us both when we enter. We follow her to the kitchen where Jamie is sitting, already sipping iced tea and eating his daily allowance of two sugar-free cookies.
“To what do I owe this honor?” Phyllis asks, pouring me a tall glass of lemonade.
Finn hands her the envelope. “This arrived today. I haven’t opened it.”
She frowns. “What is it?”
“Finn says it’s answers,” I say.
She looks at him questioningly.
“No, I haven’t told Emma what the questions are. I’m worried she’s going to be mad at me.”
I squeeze his hand. “I could never be mad at you. I love you.”
“Let me translate.” Jamie points a cookie in Finn’s direction. “That means that since Emma loves you, she’s allowed to get as mad as a bag of rattlers and you’re just gonna have to suck it up.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
Phyllis rips open the envelope. She studies it for a moment and then stares straight at me, her eyes flooding with tears.
“So, what’s this about?” I ask.
“I wanted to know who your parents are. Were.” Phyllis leans a hand on the table to steady herself. “If you want to know, I can tell you.”
I’ve said for years that I don’t want to know who my parents are. It doesn’t matter. They abandoned me. They didn’t want me. They don’t deserve for me to want to know who they are.
But now I’m nervous. And curious. I look to Finn, and he nods.
I know it’s up to me. So I close my eyes a moment and decide there’s nothing to be afraid of anymore.
No point I need to make, to myself for anyone else.
I am wanted. I am loved. And whatever that envelope holds, I don’t have to face it alone.
“I want to know.”
“It’s exactly what I thought,” Phyllis says and continues to stare at me with pinpoint focus.
“Oh shit,” Finn breathes. “That’s why I had a wicked case of déjà vu when I looked at Cindy in your family photos.”
I don’t know what he’s talking about, but Phyllis nods at him.
I throw up my hands. “What is going on? Who’s Cindy?”
“You’re my granddaughter,” Phyllis says.
“What on earth?” Jamie stands up so fast that he drops his cookie.
I half fall onto a kitchen chair and steady myself with my hands planted on the table. “Are you joking?”
Phyllis shakes her head.
Everyone gives me a moment to collect myself. She makes me sit down and eat a piece of coffee cake and wash it down with lemonade. When my heart stops pounding in my chest, she tells me the short-story version of her wayward daughter, Cindy, and her boyfriend, Clay.
She tells me that she and her daughter had been estranged for years, and she didn’t find out about the deadly car accident that took my parents’ lives until weeks had passed. There was never mention of a baby.
“I didn’t know a thing about you, that you even existed.” She slides a document my way so that I can read it. My eyes immediately find my mother’s date of death—it’s my birthday.
I’m crying.
I look up in shock, my eyes going from face to face around the table. Jamie’s crying. Phyllis is crying. Finn’s doing his best not to.
Phyllis grabs both my hands in hers. “If I’d known, if I’d had any idea…
” She shakes her head. “I’m so terribly, terribly sorry.
I just didn’t know. But as soon as you got here, I kept looking at you, and I swore to myself that I was looking at her, and the more I got to know you… ” She looks to Finn. “Now we know.”
I drop the paper from my hand.
“I’m so sorry, Emma.”
“You’re my family?” I stare at Phyllis, my vision swimming with tears. “I have a family?”
“Yes. And when you’re ready, you can meet my son, who’s your uncle, and your nieces and nephews.”
“I have all kinds of family!”
I jump up at the exact time Phyllis does, and we fall into each other’s arms, clutching at each other as we both cry tears of joy.
I have family. Real, blood family. And a huge extended family.
I have a home.
And I’m loved.