Loe raamatut: «His Family»

Chapter One

Campbell Abbott put an arm around China Grant’s shoulders and walked her away from the fairground picnic table and into the trees. She was sobbing and he didn’t know what to do. He wasn’t good with women. Well, he was, but not when they were crying.

“I was so sure!” she said in a fractured voice.

He squeezed her shoulders. “I know. I’m sorry.”

She sobbed, sniffed, then speculated, “I don’t suppose DNA tests are ever wrong?”

“I’m certain that’s possible,” he replied, “but I’m also certain they were particularly careful with this case. Everyone on Long Island is aware that the Abbotts’ little girl was kidnapped as a toddler. The possibility that you might be her, returned after twenty-five years, had everyone hoping the test would be positive.”

“Except you.” It surprised him that she spoke without rancor. In the month since she’d turned up at Shepherd’s Knoll looking for her family, he’d done his best to make things difficult for her. In the beginning he’d simply doubted her claims, certain any enterprising young woman could buy a toddler’s blue corduroy rompers at a used-clothing store and claim she was an Abbott Mills heiress because she had an outfit similar to what the child was wearing when she’d been taken. As he’d told his older brothers repeatedly, Abbott Mills had made thousands, possibly millions, of those corduroy rompers.

Campbell had wanted her to submit to a DNA test then and there. If she was Abigail, he was her full sibling and therefore would be a match.

But Chloe, his mother, had been in Paris at the time, caring for a sick aunt, and Killian, his oldest half brother, hadn’t wanted to upset her further. He’d suggested they wait until Chloe returned home.

Sawyer, his other half brother, had agreed. Accustomed to being outvoted by them most of his life, Campbell had accepted his fate when Killian further suggested that China stay on to help Campbell manage the Abbott estate until Chloe came home. Killian was CEO of Abbott Mills, and Sawyer headed the Abbott Mills Foundation.

Killian and Sawyer were the products of their father’s first marriage to a Texas oil heiress. Campbell and the missing Abigail were born to his second wife, Chloe, a former designer for Abbott Mills.

When Chloe had come back from Paris two weeks ago, the test had been taken immediately. While everyone had been preparing for the hospital fund-raiser that had just taken place that afternoon and evening, China had been at the house alone when the results had arrived by courier. So she’d brought the sealed envelope with her and opened it just moments ago, when the family had been all together at the picnic table after the fund-raiser.

They’d all expected a very different result. That China couldn’t be related to the Abbotts had been an unhappy surprise. His mother was heartbroken, his siblings saddened, the other women in their family upset. Even Campbell felt…well, ambivalent about it.

The late-July evening was warm and redolent of fair-ground food and salt water. He could even smell the ripening apples at Shepherd’s Knoll. For reasons he couldn’t explain, his senses were sharpened tonight.

China took several steps away from him and he was able to study her without the suspicion and confusion that usually permeated his thoughts when it had seemed she was his sister. He noted the trim body in the short denim skirt and yellow T-shirt, the cloud of dark hair.

She turned to him, her dark eyes shiny with tears, the soft line of her mouth uncertain. “I’m sure this validates all your suspicions that I’m just a moneygrubbing opportunist.”

He’d once believed that. He couldn’t imagine that Abby would turn up after all this time and relieve the anguish that was at the heart of all their lives.

He’d been only five when she was taken, but he bore as much pain and guilt as everyone in the family did. He remembered clearly that his fourteen-month-old sister had toddled into his room that afternoon, fascinated by the fleet of large yellow trucks that were his pride and joy. He’d occasionally let her play with them, but that particular day he’d been banned from a football game Killian and Sawyer were playing in the backyard with their friends. They’d said he was too small and might be hurt.

Feelings injured, he’d passed on his annoyance to Abby, wresting one of his trucks from her and inadvertently bruising her arm when he yanked it away. His mother had come and carried her out of his room. His last memory of her was of her weeping face over his mother’s shoulder. The image of it had haunted him for years.

He wondered now if that had been partially responsible for his animosity toward China—a sort of transference of guilt.

“No, of course it doesn’t,” he said. “I’d come to the point where I was convinced you knew what you were talking about. The evidence was there.”

Her face crumpled and she turned away, leaning a shoulder against the slender gray trunk of a birch tree. “Instead, it appears you were right. Abbott Mills must have made a million of those rompers.”

Curiously, even after the convincing proof of a scientific test, he still felt connected to her. He walked around the tree and offered her his handkerchief. “There’s still the matter of the newspaper clippings. Why would those have been saved, if they weren’t somehow related to you?”

China had been adopted by a California couple through their doctor, who’d also found them a second child. The girls had been raised together, and when their widowed father died just a few months before, they’d been cleaning out the house for sale and found boxes with their names on them in the attic.

“I don’t understand,” she said, dabbing at her eyes, then her nose. She sniffed and tossed her head back. “I thought I had the truth, but I was wrong. I should go home.”

“You realize you’re welcome to stay as long as you like.”

“Thank you, but now that we all know I’m not Abigail, there’s little point in my being here. It was all right when we weren’t sure, but now that we are…”

“Who’s going to look after the estate?” he asked, sure his mother would be upset if she left. The entire family had grown attached to China. “I’m supposed to report to work at Flamingo Gables in a week. The family’s getting used to counting on you.”

He saw her draw a breath and straighten away from the tree. She was firming her resolve. “I have my own business in California. My own…my own…life, such as it is.”

She looked suddenly bereft, and he was surprised to find that he couldn’t stand it. He had a way to shake her out of it. “Shopping,” he said. “It’s not as though you provide food or shelter for the needy. You go shopping for the rich. They can do without you for a while.”

She bristled with indignation. “I’ve told you repeatedly that I work for the busy, not the rich, and aiding them to save money on things they require may even help them give to food banks and shelters for the needy!”

“Sure. My point is, you shouldn’t make a decision without thinking it through.”

“I’m going home,” she said firmly, and started back through the trees the way they’d come.

He’d been wondering how to bring up a detail to all this that apparently hadn’t occurred to her. As she hurried away from him, he felt certain it was time to just say it. “What about your sister?” he asked, following her.

“What about her?”

“Have you ever considered that she could be connected to us?”

“What?” She stopped in her tracks, holding back the tensile branch of a vine maple to frown at him. “What are you talking about?”

“Haven’t you thought that…maybe…your box is really hers?”

She appeared shocked by that suggestion, then her eyes lost focus as she thought it over.

“You said your boxes were the same,” he prodded.

“Yes,” she said.

“Exactly the same?”

“Exactly.” She still didn’t seem to see his point. “But my name was on mine, and her name…”

“Yes, but what if somewhere along the line, the lids got switched?” Her eyes widened as she considered that possibility. “And what’s in her box is really yours, and what’s in the box with your name on it is really hers?”

Her brow furrowed as she came to see that as a possibility.

“It could have happened any number of ways,” he went on, subtly reeling her in. “Did you ever move when you were growing up?”

“Twice,” she replied. “Friends of my father’s helped us.”

“Could have happened then. The boxes fell over, and the lids got mixed up. Or maybe one of your parents adding something to the boxes inadvertently did it.”

She stared into his eyes with a sort of horrified awe. “That’s…grasping at straws.”

“Is it?” He held the branch for her when her fingers grew lax and a branch was about to scratch her face. “You were convinced by the old clippings that they must have been intended for you. But since the test proved that wrong, then the other possibility doesn’t seem that far off, does it?” He let that sink in for a minute. “If the clippings weren’t for you, then who else is there?”

CHINA WOULD HAVE liked to push him onto the fragrant grass. Since the day she’d first set eyes on him, he’d stood determinedly in her way. He didn’t believe she was his little sister returned; didn’t believe she wanted no money, just family; blocked at every turn her attempts to be friends with him. Even now, when all she wanted to do was leave, he put up another roadblock.

She didn’t want to stay another minute, was embarrassed and disappointed that she’d turned everyone’s life upside down quite needlessly, as it turned out. But what if he was right? What if, somehow, the lids of the boxes had gotten mixed up and her adopted sister, Janet, was their flesh-and-blood sister?

She met Campbell Abbott’s dark gaze. He stood there like the locked gate he’d been since she’d arrived—an inch or two shorter than his brothers, but broader in the shoulders, and more inclined to seriousness than they were. He’d prevented her from ever feeling completely welcome, and now he wanted to prevent her from leaving!

She turned away, headed for the parking lot. “I’ll call her and tell her to get in touch with you,” she shouted back at him.

He caught her arm at the edge of the parking lot and turned her to him. “You can’t do that,” he said with surprising gentleness. “You can’t just take off on Mom. We all have to talk this out. Come to a solution. And if your sister is our sister, you can’t expect to be able to stay out of it.”

She could expect to, but of course it wouldn’t happen.

Janet was prettier, smarter, loved by everyone for her unfailing good humor and quick wit. China had never resented her for it, only envied her. China was basically shy, but inclined to speak her mind if the situation warranted. The courage she’d required to present herself to the Abbotts as possibly their daughter/sister returned had been huge.

Her grief that she wasn’t theirs was softened somewhat now by the suggestion that Janet might be Abigail. China and Janet had squabbled as children but come to appreciate each other as they grew older. Though Janet had the brains and the boys, China had the domestic skills that kept their home going after their mother died.

They now loved and respected each other, and the last time they’d been together, before each had set off to solve the mystery of her cardboard box, they’d vowed that whatever came of their searches, they would be sisters forever.

“China.” Campbell spoke quietly as his family hurried toward them en masse. “You can’t leave them yet. Please.”

There was something to be said for having reality thrust upon you. It seemed to alter time. Just fifteen minutes ago, she’d been sure she was Abigail Abbott and the report she was about to open would prove it.

Now it seemed as though that moment had been aeons ago. She was not an Abbott. She was still China Grant, the same woman she’d always been. The heady excitement of discovery had been doused, but there was something comforting about familiarity.

Chloe threw her arms around her and held her closely. “You must not leave,” she said, her voice tight with emotion. “We’re all agreed. You may not be my daughter, but you’ve become an important part of the family.”

Chloe leaned back to look into China’s eyes, her own sweet and pleading. China opened her mouth to reply, but Chloe interrupted. “Yes, I know you have a life of your own. A small business you must keep track of. But we need you, too. Killian tells me you’ve done a wonderful job helping run the estate, and if Campbell chooses to leave us to conquer new horizons, then you must stay and help us until we find someone to replace him, oui?”

China would have loved nothing more than to make a little niche for herself with the warm and wild Abbotts, but it didn’t seem fair to the real Abigail. Especially if that was Janet. But maybe she did have to stay long enough to help them determine if indeed she was.

“I’ll stay until I can find my sister, Janet, for you,” she said.

When that met with a confused expression from the rest of the family now pressed around them, Campbell explained his theory about the boxes.

Killian and Sawyer, both with the fair good looks of their father’s first wife, frowned at each other, then at Campbell. “You really think this possible?” Killian asked.

Campbell made a noncommittal gesture. “Seems that way to me. How else would you explain that China has everything in that box that would relate her to us, but she isn’t Abby? Yet she has a sister the same age, adopted at about the same time, who’s gone off on her own quest with a box identical except for the contents?”

Sawyer raised an eyebrow. “He might have a point,” he said to Killian. “You don’t think he’s smarter than us, after all, do you?”

“Never happened,” Killian grinned. “Well, how do we find your sister, China?”

China tried to remember the town in Canada’s north mentioned on the birth certificate in Janet’s box. That was where Janet had intended to begin her search. “Somewhere in the Northwest Territories. I can’t remember the town, but she’s staying at an inn there—I have the name and number written down in my book at the house. I’ll call tonight.”

China was suddenly flanked by Cordie, Killian’s pregnant wife, and Sophie, who was engaged to marry Sawyer. They led her toward the Abbotts’ limousine, with Sophie’s daughters—Gracie, 10, and Emma, 5—dancing along ahead of them. Sophie’s seven-year-old son, Eddie, hung back with the men. “You have to stay for the wedding,” Sophie said. “We’re thinking about Labor Day.”

“Oh, I…” China tried to formulate an excuse, certain she could locate Janet, stay just long enough for the DNA test, then find a graceful way to leave.

“I need you for a bridesmaid.” Sophie, who’d grabbed China’s hand, tightened her grip.

“And you won’t want to leave without seeing my babies.” That was Cordie. Her babies weren’t due for another four months.

China let them talk, smiling cooperatively at all their suggestions of what she must do, privately making plans to be gone within two and a half weeks at the most. Three days to get Janet here from wherever she was and tested, then two weeks for the results of the test.

Daniel, the Abbotts’ chauffeur, opened the door of the long black Lincoln and the women piled inside, along with Daniel’s wife Kezia, the Abbotts’ cook and housekeeper. Killian lifted Tante Bijou out of her wheelchair and into the other side, while Sawyer folded the chair and put it in the trunk.

Chloe, tucked into the facing seat with China, wrapped an arm around her and patted her shoulder. “All will be well,” she promised with the determined smile China had grown used to since Chloe had been home. “Trust me on this.”

“I’ll call Janet right away,” China promised.

“I mean,” Chloe corrected, “that all will be well with you.”

China smiled and nodded politely, knowing Chloe wanted her to feel a part of their family. While she appreciated that, she’d just received irrefutable proof that she wasn’t. It would be hard to explain to anyone how bereft she felt.

It wasn’t as though she’d had an unhappy childhood. The Grants had been loving and kind to her and Janet. She didn’t remember specifically being told she was adopted; it was as though she’d always known. Her father had told her over and over that she and her sister were special because they’d been “chosen.”

Still, she’d felt the need to know where she’d come from. Her mother had always said that she knew nothing about their natural families, only that the doctor through which they’d adopted the girls said China’s mother had been a single woman dying of cancer, and Janet’s mother, also single, had been killed in an automobile accident.

They’d always accepted that, and neither had ever instituted a search for their biological parents for fear of upsetting their adoptive parents. Then they’d discovered the boxes in the attic and realized that what they’d been told wasn’t true.

It suddenly occurred to China that if Campbell’s theory was correct, the truth about her life was somewhere in Janet’s box. Somewhere in northern Canada.

IN HER BEDROOM overlooking the back lawn, part of the apple orchard and the small house where Daniel and Kezia lived, China sat at the antique desk, trying to decipher her sister’s handwriting. She’d received a forwarded letter from Janet just a week ago. It was brief and to the point.

I’m staying at the Little Creek House Hotel near Fort Providence. I’ve finally tracked the godmother’s name on the birth certificate to this town. Very thinly populated. Have learned she went to live with her son, but no one I’ve talked to so far knows where that is. Got my work cut out for me, I guess. Hope you’re having better luck. Love, Jan.

She’d included the telephone number of the hotel.

A cheerful masculine voice answered. “Little Creek.”

“Hello. May I speak to Janet Grant, please?” China asked.

“I’m afraid she’s away for several days,” the man replied. “May I take a message?”

“Away?” China repeated.

“Yes. She’s hired a guide and gone to Jasper’s Camp. It’s several days by foot. I’m afraid there’s no cell phone reception there.” He again offered to take a message.

“Ah…yes. Would you ask her to phone her sister, please?” She gave him her cell-phone number, as well as the number there at Shepherd’s Knoll on the chance Janet had misplaced them.

“Yes, of course. As soon as she returns. Guaranteed to be a few days, at least.”

“Thank you.”

China groaned as she hung up the phone. She had a terrible feeling this was not going to happen quickly. She couldn’t imagine where Jasper’s Camp was, but if Janet had had to hire a guide to go there…

She tried to imagine her beautiful stockbroker sister going anywhere that required three days on foot, and grew worried. She also felt great pangs of guilt. Janet had no idea she was probably tracking down China’s roots, and that her own might very well be right here in Losthampton.

China prepared to go downstairs where she could hear the Abbotts talking over wine and popcorn, and tell them that she really wasn’t sure where Janet was but that she’d left a message.

More waiting. She hoped they would take it better than she was able to, as she wondered who her family were.