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“Are you ready to meet your baby?” the doctor asked in a reassuring tone, then simultaneously winced and chuckled as another crack of thunder reverberated around them. “Because a child born on a night like this is bound to be special.”
Esme swallowed around the emotion clogging her throat, then nodded. “I’m ready,” she whispered.
Chapter One
“You aren’t alone,” Bea reassured Esme three months later as they sat at the small kitchen table in Esme’s postage-stamp-size kitchen.
However, she didn’t mind the diminutive proportions of her house in one of the older neighborhoods of Chatelaine. There was plenty of room for her and baby Chase, and owning her own home meant the world to her. It was more than she could have imagined in the lonely, shocking months after her husband’s death at the beginning of the previous year and the subsequent revelation he’d been cheating on her since the start of their relationship.
She and Seth had married at the courthouse two days after a doctor confirmed the results of the half dozen home pregnancy tests Esme had taken. But within weeks of the wedding, Seth turned distant, traveling almost constantly for his company and leaving her alone in a cramped apartment near the elementary school in Houston, where she taught first grade.
Then she’d discovered he’d been cheating on her since the start of their relationship. And although the betrayal hurt, she’d been determined to try to make the marriage work for the sake of the baby. She’d been scared but not heartbroken and Seth had agreed to go to counseling, but showed no signs of changing his behavior. And Esme had started to wonder if she’d be relegated to the same fate as her mother in an unhappy marriage and if staying the course was truly worth it.
When Seth was killed in a boating accident on the open water near Galveston the day before they were scheduled for their first appointment with the counselor, Esme felt heartbroken for her unborn child, who’d never know his father, but her heart had remained numb. She’d weathered another shock a few weeks later when she’d received a check as the beneficiary of Seth’s modest life insurance policy.
He hadn’t been the knight in shining armor she’d longed for as a girl, but she would always be grateful for how he’d taken care of her and their child.
“I don’t know anything about Seth’s family,” she told Bea, as if her sister, who knew her better than anyone in the world, didn’t understand where her trepidation about this moment originated. “He barely spoke about them, and it was never anything good. For all I know, they could be horrible people.” She drew a finger along the edge of the envelope from the DNA testing company, 411 Me. “Remind me why I wanted to do this in the first place?”
“Because Freya gifted it to you, and you’re curious.” Bea squeezed Esme’s trembling hand. “I’m curious as well. For all either of us know, Chase could be related to someone famous.”
“Or infamous,” Esme muttered and took a small sip of the wine her sister had brought over. “Why do you think Freya did it? Why has she done any of this?” The questions had been pinging around Esme’s brain the past two weeks as she waited for the results of the DNA test her late great-uncle’s widow, Freya Fortune, had encouraged her to take.
But to be fair, she tended to question every aspect of her life in the middle of the night as she blearily fed Chase, whose understanding of the difference between day and night had been wonky in recent weeks.
So it was difficult to know whether her uncertainty about Freya Fortune and the significant role she now played in the lives of Esme, her siblings and their cousins was justified or simply the workings of her tired and muddled mind.
Bea ran a hand through her flaming red hair. She was eight years older than Esme, and while their faces and eyes were the same shape, Esme had dark hair and green eyes in contrast to Bea’s radiant red locks and blue eyes. Of course, Esme was also sporting some new-mom bags under her eyes, thanks to Chase.
“I like to think of Freya as a fairy godmother,” Bea said with a smile. “Or our fairy step-great aunt.” She drummed her fingers on Esme’s table. “I’d always wanted to own a restaurant, but I never would have gotten a chance to open the Cowgirl Café without Freya’s generosity. Neither Edgar nor Elias Fortune have the best reputation in Chatelaine—”
“That’s putting it mildly,” Esme said with a laugh.
Edgar and Elias had run the Fortune silver mine in town. But after overhearing a conversation between their estranged brothers, Wendell and Walter, they’d mistakenly believed their mine might also produce gold. The story Esme had heard after moving to Chatelaine was that the potential of wealth beyond their wildest dreams prompted the brothers to overwork their miners. Their greed led to the unsafe conditions that resulted in a tragic collapse of the mine that killed fifty men, including the foreman, who Edgar and Elias blamed instead of taking responsibility themselves.
She didn’t want to believe her grandfather and great uncle had used their wealth to avoid being held accountable, but the brothers had left Chatelaine in disgrace shortly after the accident. They’d resurfaced hours away in Cave Creek, staying long enough for each of them to start a family before disappearing again.
Bea traced a finger along the rim of her wine glass. “If Great-Uncle Elias truly had a change of heart at the end of his life the way Freya claims, her financial support will go a long way in changing what people around here think about our branch of the Fortune family tree. I hope by her sharing what’s left of his money with us, we can repair some of the damage our grandfather and great-uncle caused and hopefully make a positive impact on this community.”
Esme sighed. “You always make me feel better, sis. Although you’re doing much more good for this town with your plan to open a restaurant than I am with the money Freya has given me.”
They’d each received a letter from Freya Fortune at the end of last summer explaining that she was their great-uncle’s widow and extending an invitation to come to Chatelaine and learn more about their past in the town.
“Look at this little cutie,” Bea commanded as she held Esme’s phone aloft. The screensaver was a carousel of photos featuring baby Chase. One from the day Esme had brought him home from the hospital bundled in a blue blanket with a knit cap covering his wispy dark hair to several more recent photos documenting him sleeping and his first smile.
“There’s nothing more important than devoting yourself to being a mother. You’ll return to teaching refreshed and renewed next school year, Es. And the elementary school community will love you just like your former students. Chatelaine is both of our homes now. Asa’s, too. He’s bound and determined Chase will learn to ride a horse before he even walks.”
Esme grinned at the thought of her older brother finally owning the dude ranch he was working to purchase just outside of town.
“Still...” She tipped her wine glass in her sister’s direction, then took another drink. “Don’t you think it’s strange Freya is taking such an interest in us?”
Bea wrinkled her nose. “Maybe, but I prefer to imagine thanking her with an amazing meal once I open my restaurant. And I’m certain that you’re overthinking it right now as an excuse to avoid opening this report.” She picked it up and handed the envelope to Esme. “Let’s go, girl. I hope to find out my nephew is secretly related to George Clooney.”
At Esme’s raised brow, Bea clarified, “George circa hotter before he was huge but he had great hair and the best broody stare.”
Esme knew her sister was joking to ease the tension, and as always with the two of them, it worked. She slid one finger under the seal, tore it open and then pulled out the small stack of papers detailing her son’s genetic family tree.
As part of the package, she’d also had an opportunity for her own testing, so she started with her results, which were exactly what she’d expected. There were plenty of skeletons in the Fortune closet, but most of those had seen the light of day years earlier—at least the ones that involved Esme’s relatives.
