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A knock on my car window caused me to let out a small scream, and my hand flew to my chest.
My finger tapped the automatic window button. “Dad, you scared me!”
He grinned in response. “I saw you sitting out here in your car and couldn’t for the life of me figure out what you were doing. Some form of vehicle meditation, I suspect.”
Laughing, I shook my head. “No, I was just taking a moment.”
His brow rose, and he jerked his head toward the house. “Your mother and I will be waiting while you work up the courage to tell us whatever it is you’re about to tell us.”
Before I could respond to the fact he’d just read my mind, he turned and headed back into the two-story log home I’d lived in since I was five.
Gilbert and Laura Howse were not my biological parents. They adopted me after their best friends—and my parents—Robert and Carol Lancing, passed away in a plane accident. My father was a pilot, and he and my mother had been coming back from a convention for heart surgeons in Dallas, Texas, on their private plane. All I was ever told was that the plane wreck had been caused by a storm that had moved down from Canada. They were only forty miles from the airport when they crashed.
I’d tried so hard over the years to remember them, even the core memories that I knew must have been there, but I couldn’t. I saw their faces in my mind, but I had no memories to hold on to. Nothing. Even stranger, I remembered nothing before coming to live with Gilbert and Laura. It bothered me to this day not to have a memory of my real mother or father. One single memory. My father teaching me to ride a bike. Or my mother holding me and singing to me. But there was nothing there.
With another deep breath, I opened the door to my Honda Civic and made my way down the sidewalk to the house. It was a modest place, nothing like the place my biological mother and father had owned. The house was huge, or at least it had seemed that way to me when I was younger. But it was home, and I loved growing up here.
I smiled when I saw the fall wreath on the door. My mother loved to decorate for the seasons and holidays. Come November 1, the house would look like Father Christmas had thrown up inside. Don’t even get me started on poor Tom the Turkey and how that holiday was just passed over by nearly everyone. Thanksgiving was one day a year, my mother would say. Christmas was an entire season.
Before I could say anything, my father called out, “We’re in the kitchen.”
Attempting to look natural and not nervous at all, I made my way through the house. The exposed log beams carried over into the interior of the home. Wide-plank floors added to the rustic feel, as well as the leather furniture. My mother wasn’t one for knickknacks, but she did have a few prized paintings she’d sprinkled throughout the house.
The kitchen was my favorite room. It was large and airy, with black distressed cabinets that didn’t compete with the wood ceilings and exposed beams. A large island sat in the middle, covered by a cream-colored granite that had streaks of brown the same color as the wood floors. A large, eight-burner stove sat against one wall, with a stainless-steel hood. The refrigerator appeared to be commercial-grade, but it was a trick of the eye. It was actually a full-size fridge on the right, and a full-size freezer on the left. They’d put them together and framed it in, making it look like one massive unit.
My mother loved this kitchen, and she needed it to be this big. She had her own catering business, while my father was a CPA. That was how they’d met my biological parents. Dad was a CPA for Robert. They quickly became the best of friends, and it wasn’t long after that Carol went into business with my mother, and they started the catering company.
“Okay, Kipton, just come out with it,” my mother said as she peered at me over a piece of paper she’d been reading.
“What do you mean?” I asked as I slid onto the stool on the other side of the island.
My parents looked at each other and clearly communicated something I wasn’t supposed to understand.
Finally, Mom looked back at me. “The last time you came walking into the kitchen with that look on your face, it was to tell us you’d signed up to compete for Miss Montana.”
I smiled because it was true. The last time I was this nervous, I had signed up to be in the pageant, when I’d never been in any other pageant in my life. But it offered a scholarship for college, and we’d needed the money to get me through the last few semesters of school. My parents and I had done everything we could to get me through school since money had been tight. I worked as much as I could to help pay for things and it not get in the way of studying.
“I’ve been approached to do a job. It’s only for a few months. A few weeks in November, and then through December and January, but it pays really, really well.”
Dad raised his brow. “Please tell me it’s not stripping.”
My mother and I both shouted at the same time.
“Dad!”
“Gilbert!”
“Why would you think I would be a stripper?” I asked my father.
He shrugged. “I know you’re worried about finances, and that was the only reason you signed up to do the whole Miss Montana thing. I told you, Kipton, we’ll figure it out.”
I sighed and reached for an apple sitting in a dish in the middle of the island. When my biological parents died, they had left everything to me, but left a college friend of my biological father’s in charge of handling all the money. The house, the cars, nearly everything had been sold and put into investments that Jerry managed until I came of age. He would supply quarterly reports to my parents, and they would receive a check each month per the will to help with the cost of raising me. My father trusted Jerry so much, he let him take over their portfolio as well. The floor fell out from under us five months before I turned eighteen and would have control over what my biological parents had left me. The checks stopped coming. Jerry disappeared with all his clients’ money, including my inheritance and my parents’ savings and retirement. He skipped the country, and there had been no leads at all in finding him or recovering the money he had stolen. All of it was gone.
When my parents hired a lawyer and a private detective to try to find Jerry, their financial situation only grew worse. They took out loans, mortgaged their house, and even sold some family heirlooms to get caught up. Thank God I had gotten another scholarship that paid for most of my college tuition. Plus, my stint as Miss Montana helped. For some reason I had always placed the blame on me about my parents losing nearly everything. I knew it was crazy, but I couldn’t help feeling guilty.
Chewing the apple, I pulled myself from my thoughts. “We’re never going to get anything back from Jerry.”
Both of my parents frowned.
