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“I said, I was scared.”
“So am I,” she admitted, tapping the wooden spoon on the edge of the saucepan. She believed her son, but wished he’d come clean earlier, that he’d trusted her enough to confide in her. The timer chimed, reminding her to check the coals she’d lit in the barbecue.
“Mommy?” Christina’s voice filtered through the doorway just as the little girl, dragging her blanket behind her, toddled into the kitchen.
“Well, look who woke up.” With a smile, Tiffany picked up her daughter and placed a kiss on her crown. “Are you still a sleepyhead?”
“No!” Christina snorted out the word and rested her head on her mother’s shoulder.
“Yeah, right,” Stephen muttered under his breath as he plucked another grape from the cluster in the bowl and tossed it into the air before catching it in his mouth. “Grumpy Gus.”
“I’m not a Grumpy Gus!” Christina grouched.
“Shh! Of course you’re not, sweetheart.” Tiffany sent her son a look that would cut through steel. “Your brother was only teasing you.”
“He’s a big…big…dumbhead.”
“Oh, wow, like that’s a problem,” Stephen mocked. “A dumbhead, Chrissie? Is that what I am?”
“Enough!” Tiffany said. “Come on, sweetie, you can have some grapes while I put the chicken on the grill.”
“I hate grapes.”
Tiffany set Christina into a chair at the table, and Stephen, on the other side, had the audacity to cross his eyes.
“Lookie what he’s doing. I hate you, too, dumbhead.”
“Christina, don’t call your brother any bad names, and you, Stephen, should know better than to bother her when she’s still sleepy. You weren’t all that sunny-side up when you used to wake up from your nap.”
“Make him take one now!” Christina said in the bossy tone she’d adopted since turning three.
“I’m too old for naps.”
“But not to set the table,” Tiffany said as Stephen, grumbling under his breath about “women’s work,” got to his feet and searched in a drawer for place mats.
“So how come we’re not going to the wedding?” he asked as he slid three woven mats on to the top of the table, then reached into a cupboard for glasses. She heard the sound of footsteps on the back porch and turned to see J.D. through the screen door. Instantly she tensed. Living in the same house with him was sure to be torture.
“The wedding?” she repeated.
“You know. Grandpa’s.” He scowled as he said the word, as if it tasted foul.
She opened the door, and J.D. strode in. “Wedding? What’re you talking about? Your grandparents have been married for over fifty years.”
“He’s not talking about the Santinis,” Tiffany said, wishing she could drop the subject, but J.D. was going to find out sooner or later. In a town the size of Bittersweet, gossip spread like a windswept wildfire. “My father’s getting married on Sunday.”
“Your father?” He scowled slightly, his eyes narrowing. “But I thought—Well, I always had the impression that he was either dead or out of the picture.”
“He seems to be back in. Big-time.” She pulled a pan of chicken from the refrigerator and carried it outside, then forked the meat on to the grill. The chicken sizzled on the hot rack. “Stephen, bring out the pan of sauce on the stove—and the wooden spoon.”
J.D. came through the door with the items in question. “Tell me about your father.”
She hesitated, took the pan from his outstretched hand and began drizzling barbecue sauce over the chicken. She didn’t really want to discuss the wedding with her brother-in-law, but she had no choice. “It’s a long story, but it seems my biological father is really John Cawthorne. I found out years ago, but it was easier to keep up the lie my mother had started when I was a little kid—that my dad was dead.”
“Easier?”
“Than thinking he just didn’t give a damn,” she said in a voice barely audible because her kids were still arguing at the table on the other side of the screen door.
“Cawthorne?” he repeated as if the name was vaguely familiar.
