06 Blood Relations by Rett MacPherson

Author:Rett MacPherson
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781466888814
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Eighteen

I sat in my favorite booth at Fraulein Krista’s. I’d come early so that I could be there waiting for Stephanie Connelly. For some reason, if I had arrived and she had already been here, I would have felt awkward. Even though it’s my town and my booth, I still would have felt like the outsider. I know, I was just being a jerk. I’d brought some pictures along for her to see. Pictures of Dad growing up, pictures of Grandma and Grandpa Keith, and pictures of me through the years, and my kids. She might not care at all, but if I were in her shoes, I would love it if somebody brought me pictures of my family for me to see.

Just like a scene out of a movie, Stephanie entered the restaurant almost in slow motion. Looking around, her gaze landed on me in the back of the room. She smiled, tucked her hair behind her ear, and walked toward me. I seemed to be in a vacuum as she approached. Suddenly, it was as if there was nobody else in the restaurant and no noise in the universe. I was looking at my sister. My sister. It was just too surreal.

She sat down with a swoosh of Estée Lauder and put a package on the table next to her. “Hi,” she said.

“Hi.”

She noticed my crutches leaning up against the booth. “Did you break your leg?”

“No, just sprained my ankle. But I sprained it really good,” I said.

“How’d you do that?”

I thought it would be best if I didn’t tell her that I broke it while trying to identify a dead body. It might scare her off. “Slipped.”

“Oh,” she said.

We both started talking at the same time, both gushing apologies. “You go first,” I said.

“No, you.”

“I, um, just wanted to apologize for the way I reacted the other day when you came into my office,” I said. “I didn’t know what to do or say. I felt extremely betrayed. And I acted like a jerk. It took a lot of guts for you to come and see me.”

“It’s all right,” she said, and shrugged. “It’s not as if I just blurted it out. I was a little chicken.”

“No, it’s not all right. I shouldn’t have acted that way. I considered nobody or nothing except myself. I mean, you really threw me. I just thought that if my dad had fathered a child, I’d know about it. And there you were, standing in front of me in the flesh, and I didn’t even know about you,” I said. “I guess it was a real blow to my ego.”

“Your ego?” she asked.

“Yeah, I take great pride in knowing everything,” I said, and laughed. “Or at least I think I know everything. Then every now and then, something or somebody comes along and proves me wrong, and it knocks me on my butt. That’s what I get for having an ego in the first place, I suppose. God’s revenge.”

She laughed for a minute.

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