Page 38 of Love Walked In

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Mari

“Sold out,” I sighed happily at my screen.

“Well done,” Leo said approvingly over my shoulder, where we were both at the register, looking at my laptop on Saturday morning. “So that’s it? We’re all set?”

I checked the back end of the ticketing website to make sure all the little boxes next to the listings for each event had 0 s in them.

“The audience is, yep.” Two weeks from now, Catriona’s gallery downstairs would be full of people listening to what our authors had to say, and ready to hear Leo’s plea to help keep the store open, to preserve the last hundred years of history and give Ross & Co.

a shot at the future. The air would be full of conversation and the smell of brewing coffee, and fingers crossed, by the end of the day, the registers would be full of pounds.

I looked out the window at the shorter shadows on the sidewalks and walls.

The spring equinox was tomorrow, adding to the sense of possibility in the air.

I’d noticed buds on the branches of the trees of the park, and a few days ago I’d woken up not to Leo’s phone alarm going off, but to the sunrise slipping in the window of the Airbnb.

It felt like the store was waking up from a long winter sleep, too.

Graham had taken the time to dust all the shelves, and Catriona had built tables full of bright-colored paperbacks.

“Tables by color?” I’d asked when I’d seen the rainbows.

She’d shrugged. “You can’t deny that it’s pretty. Figured you might want it for socials, too.”

Best of all, there was a small but steady flow of undergraduates coming through the doors. Their higher voices and smiling enthusiasm felt like rays of sunshine, and they all left with a book or two.

“Marvelous,” Leo said now. He glanced from side to side to check we were alone, then pressed his mouth right on the sweet spot where my shoulder and neck met. “So clever and talented.”

Before I met Leo, I would have sworn I didn’t have a praise kink, but there was a first time for everything. “Flattery will get you everywhere,” I purred back, and felt his smile against my skin.

I’d told myself for years that I didn’t like being touched outside of sex.

But was that just because hugs had been few and far between when I was a kid, and nonexistent after my mom died?

When Leo put his arms around me, it was a door opening, a teakettle boiling, a soft wool blanket unfolding.

I wanted his touch because it felt like safety. Felt like coming home.

But he couldn’t be my safety. He couldn’t be my home, because home was six thousand miles away and all of this was temporary. “We still have a lot to do. And not much time.”

A little sigh. “I know,” Leo said, straightening up and moving out of arm’s reach. “What’s on the list for today?”

We were sitting in the fiction section, comparing notes on which journalists we’d try to persuade to come along, hoping against hope the festival would end up in print at the last minute, when I noticed Graham was hovering in the doorway, looking at his phone.

“What’s up, Blondie?” I called.

His shrug was more of a jerk, like someone had attached strings to his shoulders. “Er, the usual. Politicians spouting rubbish while the world burns, nothing new there.”

His eyes were darting around, and his tongue flicked out of his mouth like his lips were dry.

I stood up and sidled over to him. Since when was he nervous, ever? Even when Catriona was getting under his skin, he willfully relaxed, became even more cavalier. He didn’t do tense, as far as I could tell.

Until now.

I reached up and tapped him gently on the forehead. Instead of laughing like he should, he just looked bewildered. “Why are you poking me?”

My fingertip found his chest. “I think you’ve been body snatched. Who are you, and what have you done with Graham?”

“I’m fine. Nothing’s wrong. Stop.” He tried to grab my finger, but I was too fast. “Bloody.” He failed again. “ Poking .”

“I’ll stop when you stop acting weird.”

He grabbed my pointer finger. “I’m not . Stoppit .”

“Graham,” Catriona said from the doorway.

I tugged, and he gave me my hand back. “Yeah?” he answered.

Her ginger eyebrows were raised. “Your dad’s here.”

“OhthankChrist,” he exhaled. “Come meet him.”

My hands found my hips. “Why?” I said, trying for humor. “Is he why you’ve been so ridiculously jumpy?”

He flailed at me. “Why are you being impossible ?”

I imitated his waving arms. “Why are you being weird ?”

“What’s all this, then?” a calm voice said, like we were unruly students being called to order.

Graham stopped cold. Turned around.

A fifty-something man with graying mouse-brown hair hovered in the doorway, hands in the pockets of his black peacoat. The soft plaid scarf he wore matched his eyes, cornflower blue like Graham’s.

“Mari,” Graham exhaled, “this is Jamie. My dad.”

“Hi.” That was the only word my brain could produce, because the rest of it was frantically flipping through my memories like an infinite deck of cards, trying to work out where I’d seen this man before.

This short, stocky man who was staring at me, his mouth a little agape, like I was floating in midair, and who didn’t respond to my greeting.

Graham rubbed the back of his neck. “We… we have something we need to talk to you about.”

My stomach suddenly felt like it was clinging to Half Dome, nothing but thousands of feet of air between me and the ground.

“Your mum’s name was Lisa,” Jamie said softly.

My mother’s name in his mouth was a cold spell that made me shiver a little. “That’s right.” I tried to make eye contact with Graham, but he was squeezing Jamie’s shoulder.

Jamie continued, “And you were born near San Francisco sometime in May just under thirty years ago.”

“May twentieth,” I forced out. “What does that have to do with anything?”

Jamie breathed in and out, once, twice. “I think…”

He trailed off, and I felt like everything I knew was a sheet of paper that was about to get ripped in two. “You think what ?”

A hand rested lightly on my lower back. Leo rubbed gently, a little touch of reassurance that reminded me to breathe.

“I think,” Jamie tried again. But the rest of the words were stuck in his throat, his mouth moving but nothing coming out.

His wide mouth, made for smiling.

His downturned eyes. His nose almost too big for his face.

For our faces.

Because my coloring was my mom’s, but my eyes, my mouth, my nose, were all his.

“You’re my father,” I breathed out, the words a trapdoor into empty space.

“We’d need a DNA test to be completely sure,” Graham said quickly.

“I’m sure,” Jamie said, staring at me, his eyes wide. “I’m sure you’re mine.”

The words were a hard fist in my solar plexus, and now I understood why Jamie had struggled to speak. Why Graham had been so nervous.

Fuck, Graham was my brother. Half brother. In ten sec onds, I’d transformed from an only child, an orphan, to a daughter, an oldest sister with three younger brothers.

The shock made metal in my mouth, and my hand pressed over my lips.

“How?” I finally asked stupidly. “I mean, who are you? Where have you been ?” The last word was a cry.

Jamie’s hands reached out for a second, before he balled them in his pockets. “I didn’t know. Lisa didn’t tell me she’d gotten pregnant, that she’d had you.”

“I suspected when I compared the picture of Tim to you,” Graham said, twisting his fingers. “I did some digging online, found stuff about your mum and your stepdad, and brought it to my dad.”

A ball of hurt and sadness surged up my chest, desolation I hadn’t felt in years.

Of course he hadn’t known anything about me, because he’d left her in the middle of the night.

Left her to have me with another man, left me at the mercy of a so-called family who’d never love me the way I’d desperately wanted.

Needed. “What the fuck am I supposed to do with that?” I snapped at Graham.

“You suspected and you didn’t fucking say anything? ”

I was about to burst into tears, and Jamie didn’t look so great, either.

Leo’s hand was on my shoulder, bringing me back to earth. “This isn’t the right place for this,” he said to Graham sternly.

Graham’s face fell. “I’m sorry, mate, of course not.”

“What do you want to do, darling?” Leo asked me gently.

“Darling?” Jamie asked.

A hysterical laugh shot out of my mouth. The audacity of him, feeling the urge to be fatherly when he’d only known I existed for two whole minutes. “I think we need to talk,” I forced out, in the understatement of the century.

“Angelo’s, the Sicilian caff on Marchmont Street,” Leo said firmly to Jamie. “You go ahead. We’ll need a moment.”

“Of course, I’ll see you there,” he said.

Graham looked between us uncertainly. “Should I go with you, Dad?”

“No, stay here.” Jamie had that quiet authority in his voice again. “You did the right thing, but this next bit has to be between Mari and me.”

The moment Jamie walked out the door, Leo took my hand and led me to the break room.

“That’s my father,” I said when he’d shut the door, tasting the strange words in my mouth.

“That’s the man who thinks he’s your father,” Leo corrected.

“But he looks like me,” I said flatly.

Leo nodded. “He does.”

“And he knows my mom’s name. When I was born.”

“He does.”

I bent over in half. “ Fuck. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe any of it.” The thing I had shoved in an iron box in the back of my brain, wrapped in chains, and locked with a dozen padlocks, the longing and the wishing and the hoping, had burst out and grabbed me so tight I could barely breathe.

A soft hand landed on my back, then wrapped around my waist. “Come here, come here,” Leo said, and I went so easily.

He tucked me into his long body, and I inhaled the spicy scent of him and felt my nerves slow down their frantic sprint.

Comfort wasn’t something I’d ever looked for from my partners.

Pleasure, of course. Escape. But all of a sudden I felt like those feelings were candy, empty calories, and what Leo was offering was a lot more substantial.

Nourishing. And right now, I wanted that. I wanted that so badly.

He kissed my jaw and forehead, letting loose some of the tension there.

“Come on, darling,” he coaxed softly, his touch on my shoulders and arms grounding me.

“You should go hear what he has to say. I can be right there with you, if you want. And if you need to leave, you can just tell me and I’ll get you out of there. ”

“Yes, please,” I said softly. I wanted him beside me right now, I told myself, ignoring the lonely part of me that cried out that I wanted him there for a lot longer than that.