The Truth about Family. Kimberly Meter Van
The flesh on her arms suddenly puckered and popped as a chill raced down her spine. Granite Hills, Michigan, hadn’t been her home for a long time. San Francisco was her home now. “That’s not necessary,” she said, rubbing the skin on her arms. There was no way she was going back there. Especially not now. “I’m sorry, it’s just not—” Possible. If she went back to Granite Hills the memories would destroy what little hold she had on her sanity. “I have deadlines.”
“Right. I understand,” he said, but his tone told her he didn’t understand at all. He probably had two loving parents who hadn’t left him to fend for himself at the age of six so they could drink themselves into a blind stupor. And most certainly, probably hadn’t beaten him so badly that he’d lost consciousness. Bitterness flooded her mouth along with the bad memories, but she held her tongue. No. He probably didn’t understand at all. “Is there anything else?”
“No, I suppose not,” he answered slowly, seeming reluctant to let her go, as if he could sense she was holding it together by a thread. Erin swallowed, wishing for a fleeting moment someone, perhaps even Officer Barrett, was here with her. She remained quiet, not quite trusting her voice any longer. The silence stretched and Erin was grateful when, after offering his condolences, he said goodbye.
Another memory popped into her mind, unwelcome and very recent.
“Please come home for Christmas, love. It’s been so long since we’ve seen you,” Caroline had pleaded, pulling at Erin’s conscience. “I’ll make all your favorite dishes…candied yams, mincemeat pie, fresh cranberry sauce…you name it. The sky’s the limit, if you’ll just come home, at least for a visit.”
Caroline’s insistence had coaxed a small smile, but Erin had shaken her head as she rolled a pencil back and forth on the surface of her desk. “I can’t, I’m shooting a holiday spread for the magazine. I’ll be booked before and after Christmas.”
That much had been true but Erin could have scheduled a few days in Granite Hills if she’d wanted to. Even Harvey Wallace had family. He would have granted her at least a weekend.
“Are you going to invite Charlie?” she asked after Caroline refused to let the subject go even after she’d politely declined the offer. There was a telltale pause on the other end. “Well?” Erin prompted, yet already knowing the answer. “Because you know if he shows up, I leave, and frankly, that’s a waste of airfare.”
Caroline let out a sigh. “Erin Mallory, why must you be so hard-headed? He’s your father for goodness sakes! And he deserves a second chance. He’s changed, really he has, and if you’d talk to him you’d see that,” she said, her tone openly disappointed. When Erin remained stubbornly quiet, Caroline changed tactics. “Erin, I know things were bad, Lord, how I know, but people change. Why won’t you give him a chance to show you he’s not the man you remember.”
Because men like Charlie didn’t deserve second chances. Men like Charlie were the human equivalent of a black cloud of doom hanging over a person’s head. He destroyed everything he touched. He was probably the reason Erin’s mother killed herself before Erin was even out of diapers. Of course, she didn’t know that for certain because Caroline refused to talk about it but Erin wasn’t stupid or blind. It hadn’t taken long for her to piece together that pathetic puzzle.
Erin had ended the conversation with an empty promise to call again but they’d both known she probably wouldn’t. As it turned out, Erin had spent Christmas Day in the same place she’d spent it last year—in her apartment alone. She didn’t even have a cat, unlike her Aunt Caroline, who thought it was unnatural to live without the company of a good animal or two.
Staring at the far wall, half-lost in memories, she sniffed back the tears that seemed to flow no matter how hard she tried to hold them back and bit her lip to keep from wailing. Why did bad things happen to good people? How could fate be so cruel a second time around? Hadn’t her family suffered enough? She closed her eyes but the action was useless. The dialogue in her head continued to rant with the single-minded purpose of a spoiled child. It just wasn’t fair.
Caroline was all she had. No mother, no father to speak of…no other family. She was alone. Cradling her head in her arms she sobbed until the tears had soaked the silky softness of her cashmere turtleneck. Finally, the sobs racking her body slowed to a trickle and she lifted her head with a watery hiccup. Arrangements…she had to make arrangements. What did that entail?
She dragged a fresh notebook from her desk and attempted to start a list, though her fingers felt stiff and useless. Where did she start? It was damn near overwhelming. Caroline had mentioned something about a living trust during one of their conversations, but truthfully, Erin hadn’t been interested in pursuing the details. Somehow it had seemed morbid talking about arrangements for the estate when her aunt was still alive.
“Oh, God.” Her eyes widened in alarm as she remembered Butterscotch, Caroline’s dog of thirteen years, midway through her list. “What am I going to do with the dog?”
She dropped the pen and ground her knuckles into her eyes, trying to stop the tears from flowing. Focus, damn it. You can fall apart later, she promised herself, sniffing back another wave of moisture that was gathering like an ocean swell after a big storm.
She supposed she’d have to call someone to go over to the house and pick her up, but who? Erin had long since lost contact with the people she’d once known in Granite Hills. Someone was bound to realize Butterscotch was alone at the house, right?
Perhaps. Then again, perhaps not.
Visions of a half-frozen dog waiting pitifully for her master to come home made her shudder, the very thought weighing like a two-ton bulldozer on her conscience. After all Caroline had done for her, she couldn’t possibly let her aunt’s favored companion die forgotten like day-old trash. But what was she supposed to do if she couldn’t get hold of anyone?
Her gaze returned to the assignment folder and she contemplated telling Harvey that she wasn’t going to do it. He’d no doubt spit bullets but there was nothing he could do if she chose to take time off under these circumstances. Of course, if she did that she could probably kiss off any chance of landing the senior photographic editor job. She drew a deep breath and leaned back to stare at the ceiling, her grief-numbed brain reminding her sharply to get her priorities straight. The promotion was the least of her worries.
Yet, she realized with a groan, time off with nothing but her grief to occupy her mind would probably drive her crazy. Photography had always been her form of therapy. Losing herself in the process of capturing a sliver in time enabled her to stay sane when the moment proved too much to handle. It was what had kept her on track those first few years after leaving Granite Hills; what had kept her from self-medicating with drugs or alcohol. Closing her eyes as another wave of anguish rolled over her, she knew with resigned certainty that she wasn’t going to pull out of the assignment, no matter the circumstance or her personal feelings on the subject matter. Once again, she would cling to her photography like a life raft in the hopes that she wouldn’t drown.
A fat tear slid down her cheek and she wiped it away, almost absently, her mind already attempting to work in some sort of productive direction. She glanced at the folder on her desk.
Hometown America—the fantasy of small-town life.
Granite Hills—the reality of what small-town life was all about.
Quaint pictures of cobbled streets and gabled churches didn’t always tell the story straight. Most of the time, the pretty picture was simply that—a nice illusion. Which was why she hated these types of spreads. She preferred urban settings—gritty and real.
But, as she soon realized, most people weren’t like her. They wanted the fairy tale, which was why American Photographic was going to give it to them in full Technicolor.
“Happy-sappy sells magazines,” Harvey had snapped when she’d tried to talk him out of a similar spread last year.
And that’s what mattered.
Ironically,