Family Skeletons (3 page)

“Sorry,” she told Jonathan, and formally extended
her hand. The least she could do was meet him halfway. “You and I got off on
the wrong foot, and we’re still dancing around on it. Truce?”

It occurred to her then that telling him her legal
name at this late stage might put them right back on the wrong foot again.
Well, too bad.

He took her hand. “Truce. Who’s Ryan?”

“We share an apartment.” As she withdrew her hand
she realized she’d invited company without first running it by the co-owner.
Oops
.
“He, uh, hung up before I could tell him about you. And I didn’t even think
about telling you about him.”

“I won’t worry about it if you don’t.” He tilted his
head. “Have you had breakfast? Or, more to the point, do you know how to cook?”

She got the point but didn’t respond to it.

“Cook,” he repeated carefully. “Do you know how to
cook?”

“Apparently you don’t.”

“I can handle a coffee maker and a toaster, but
that’s about it.” He looked hopeful.

Another one who liked to eat but didn’t know how to
operate a kitchen. Odd, but she felt almost grateful. The familiar role of
being the cook in a party of two made her feel at home.

“Would you like some breakfast, Jonathan?”

He lost the stuffy look when he smiled, she noted,
and she got the sudden urge to make him smile more often.

Chapter Three

“Thank you.” Jonathan dotted his mouth with the
paper napkin, folded it neatly and replaced it at the side of his plate. He had
excellent table manners. “You’re a good cook.”

Sunny placed her elbows on the table and rolled her
cup between her hands. She knew good manners when she saw them but wasn’t a
stickler about using them. “You’re welcome. But scrambling a couple eggs and
frying up a pan of hash browns isn’t exactly a culinary feat.”

“If the food is edible, you know what you’re doing.
The kitchen defeats me.” He looked pained. “I tried to make French toast once.
Did you know that the bottles of chili powder and cinnamon are very similar in
size and color?”

She paused with her coffee cup halfway to her mouth.
“You didn’t.”

“I did.”

She got the giggles. She could see it, smell it, and
taste it. “Okay. I’m the chef. You’ll get no argument.”

“Good.” He stood and picked up her plate to carry to
the sink with his. “If you’ll do the cooking, I’ll clean the bathroom.”

That also struck Sunny as funny, but she wasn’t sure
why.

“But,” he added as he rinsed plates, “that means
you’d be preparing three meals a day. And I’d only clean the bathroom once.”

You’re going to clean the bathroom every
day?

“So I’ll also do the sweeping and dusting,” he went
on in that studious way of his. “I noticed there was no vacuum cleaner.”

“I’ve junked three vacuums. Not a one of them
worked.” She had a hunch their bathroom was going to be just as pristine as any
bathroom found in the most elegant of hotels.

“Does that sound fair?” he asked, turning back
around. “Is it a deal?”

“Uh, sure.”

“Do you want help washing the dishes?”

“No, thanks. Your deal’s a fair one. I’ll manage.”

Jonathan, you are going to make an
excellent husband for someone some day.
As she watched him exit the kitchen and
walk down the hall, she noted the straight back, precise posture and measured
stride.
Once she gets past that starched-shirt exterior, of course
.

After they’d finished their chores, they walked
through the house while she filled him in on what she’d accomplished so far.
“After the divorce, Franklin wouldn’t allow, uh...”

At her hesitation, he said, “If you mean Laurel’s
mother, I think her name is Roberta.”

“Uh. Yeah. She hadn’t been in the house since then
and had no idea what might be here, and she didn’t want strangers pawing
through everything. So I got appointed.” Well, here was her chance to
re-introduce herself. “Which is only fitting,” she added as she opened the
utility room’s door that led outside. “Because—”

Sunny jerked as a flurry of color, which she quickly
realized was the calico cat she’d been trying to tame, scampered around the
side of the house. The cat must have been sunning itself on the outside stoop,
and the opening of the door had startled the kitten as much as the cat had
startled Sunny.

“Your cat?” Jonathan asked. “I saw it a number of
times yesterday.”

“No, it’s wild. I can’t get it to come to me.”

A black SUV with a dented fender loomed next to the
shed. The vehicle was so big she wondered how she’d missed it, and then she realized
that since it was directly in back of the house the porch would’ve hidden it as
she’d driven up.

With a nod of his head Jonathan indicated the
dumpster sitting off to the side. “That one is empty, but I venture to guess
you’ve filled a couple of them already.”

“And you’d be right. That’s the third one. When
Franklin replaced anything, he didn’t throw the old one away. He just put it
somewhere. You’d be amazed.”

“I can help. But I don’t want to, er...”

“Butt in? Give me the impression you don’t trust
me?” She pulled the door closed. “Don’t worry about it. I’m not thin-skinned.”

“All right. Quick to react, but not thin-skinned.”

She darted a look at him. He’d managed to be
straight and direct in getting that aspect of her personality out there, and
she found herself wondering just how stuffy that stuffed-shirt persona was.

With a casual nod, she led the way back into the
kitchen. “Roberta also thought Franklin might have done some doodling and left
some sketches, drawings, whatever, and she didn’t want them overlooked.”

“I understand. Some Franklin Corday originals might
amount to another small fortune.”

“I guess so. But as an artist, he’d fizzled out a
long time ago.” As a man, he’d also fizzled out, but she kept that opinion to
herself. “He didn’t live here anyway. Just used the place as a getaway. He
liked noise and people and bright lights.”

“Gorgeous getaway.”

“Uh-huh. Can’t be beat for location. The house was
designed and built by his grandfather.” She squinted into space. “Who would’ve
been your great-great uncle—three times great? Four?” She shook her head;
pinpointing relationship was mind-boggling. “Anyway, that Corday had a head on
his shoulders. Franklin inherited wealth as well as talent that he turned into
big bucks, but he frittered it away. All he had left was this house and
acreage, only because he wasn’t allowed to fritter that away.”

They ended their tour on the screened back porch. At
the rear of the house, it allowed a view of the road leading in from the
highway as well as the beach on the other side. The fog had lifted, and the
Pacific’s blue expanse was visible, but not the white-capped waves.

They slanted looks at each other. Possibly he was
also wondering where to go from here. She’d bought two folding lawn chairs
during her last visit to Castleton, in order to accommodate Ryan once he got up
here, and they leaned next to the wall. She opened a chair, sat down, and
Jonathan followed suit.

“You know a lot of Corday history,” he said. “How
well do you, uh...”

“Know the Corday women?” she finished for him.

Okay, Sunny, you’re on.

“At times they were as much in the news as
Franklin.” She decided to start with her mother and then introduce herself. “So
you’ve probably heard that Roberta is a veritable recluse. But she’s sharp as a
tack. She lives her life as she wants to and makes no apology for it.”

“Like mother, like daughter,” he murmured,
disapproval in his tone, and then his expression tightened, as if he hadn’t
meant to speak aloud.

She looked at her hands in her lap. “And on what do
you base that opinion?” she asked softly.

He didn’t answer for a long moment. She continued to
examine her fingernails.

“I apologize,” he said. “That opinion is based on
nothing but hearsay, and there is no excuse for gossip. I’m not proud of that
remark.”

“Well, let’s be honest here. Laurel’s made a lot of
mistakes. An annulled marriage before her sixteenth birthday, drug rehab before
she was twenty, and then a real bona fide divorce. And she’d really earned that
one. She’d almost killed the guy.”

“Actually, I wasn’t referring to any of that.” He
still appeared uncomfortable, but once he’d opened his mouth, it appeared he
wanted to clarify his comment. “I was thinking of her relationship with her
father—or lack of one, I should say. When he disappeared, she couldn’t have
been more callous. The sweet little teenager told a reporter to f-blank off
because she didn’t f-blank care. She waited the required seven years, then got
busy initiating procedures to have him declared legally dead. A warm, loving
daughter, she wasn’t.”

Sunny felt years of bitterness rising like acid.
“You have a good relationship with your father?”

He looked surprised at the question, and wary. “Yes.
I do.”

“Were you aware that Franklin had denied parentage?
Laurel was in primary school when her father publicly labeled her
illegitimate—or tried to. Roberta proved to have more mettle than Franklin gave
her credit for. She forced a paternity test, which proved he was indeed the
child’s father, and then she won the judgment concerning this place.”

She shot to her feet. With jerky movements she
collapsed her chair and leaned it against the porch wall. Forcing herself not
to bolt into the house as if she were still the rebellious teenager he’d just
described, she gave him a long, level look and decided it wasn’t necessary to
tell him her given name was Laurel. Another week, maybe two, and she’d be out
of here forever. Until then, she was a friend of the family.

He stared back, expression impassive.

“They got a raw deal,” she said, hearing both defense
and defiance in her voice. The defense part bothered her because there was no
reason for it. “Both of them. If you want to look for a villain in this piece,
look at him. That was a man without a heart or conscience.”

“His body was never found.”

She narrowed her eyes. He didn’t seem insensitive,
nor was he challenging her, but neither was he backing down. Then, suddenly,
she felt tension easing out of her, and she even managed what was probably a
weak smile. “I don’t scare you, do I?”

Though he smiled back, his expression clearly was an
uncomfortable one. “I’m not simply curious, Sunny. When my name showed up in
that will, I became a part of this.”

“Okay,” she said grudgingly after a short moment. “I
guess I can see that. But I can’t tell you anything more. His body was never
found. Period. The consensus was, and still is, that the ocean got him. He’d
been seen here, or at least in town, then just not seen again. Anywhere. End of
story, beginning of...what? The seven-year mystery?”

His head turned away. She watched his profile as he
stared at the million-dollar view, and then she followed his gaze. She disliked
looking at the sea through netting. It protected them from bugs but distorted
the view.

“I’ve got one more question,” he said, and her chin
wanted to drag on the floor.

“Where’s the nearest beach access? I’ve been here
two days, it’s my first trip to the coast, and I have yet to walk the beach.”

Feeling as if a weight had lifted from her, she
broke into a laugh. “Well, that’s easily remedied. There is a trail down the
cliff, and I’m just the person to introduce you to the art of wading.”

“Waiting?” His brow was wrinkling. “For what would
we be waiting?”

“Wading,” she enunciated carefully. “That’s what you
do when you take your shoes and socks off and get your feet wet.”

His self-conscious laugh made him look five years
younger than she’d previously guessed he was. She hadn’t noted his birth date
when she’d looked at his driver’s license, but she doubted he’d hit thirty yet,
either.

Then she added a frown to the look she gave him.
“But you look more like a night on the town than a day at the beach. Do you
have jeans? Shorts? Tennies?”

“I’ll find something.”

In her old jeans and gray sweatshirt she was already
dressed for the beach, so she waited on the front porch for him. When he joined
her, his new attire of khaki shorts, deck shoes and a sporty brown polo shirt
was less formal, but just as stylish as his previous garb. Apparently the man
didn’t know how to be sloppy.

Sunny led the way to the cliff. At the bluff’s edge
she stopped, hugged her arms against the chill, rubbed her hands up and down
the sleeves of her sweatshirt, and let the breeze tug at her hair. She could
watch the surf break and swirl all day and not tire of it. One of the mysteries
of nature was how the ocean’s constant motion carried such a distinct calming
effect. Waves built, rolled, crashed, and spilled lazily. The wind carried
drops of spray that spattered her face. The color of the water ranged from
white to blue to green to sandy brown, depending on where and when the wave
struck and how the sun hit it.

“There’s more sand here today than yesterday,”
Jonathan said.

She looked up with a smile. “That’s one way of
putting it. Tide’s out.”

He grimaced, then gave her a sheepish grin. “I don’t
believe I said that.” His gaze traveled from right to left. “So where is this
path?”

“There.” She pointed. They’d passed the slightly
marked trail to view the ocean from the bluff’s edge, and they stood on the
south corner of the horseshoe-shaped cove. “But I wouldn’t exactly call it a
path.”

His eyebrows drew together. “I wouldn’t either. I
still can’t see it.”

As she walked back to the scant path, she realized
that to him it probably looked more like an indentation in the cliff than a
trail. But it was a way to get down. She stopped at the top of it.

“Here,” she said.

“Oh.” He came to stand beside her, and he looked
down at the sandy cove with a disappointed expression. “You were kidding. I
thought there really was a way down.”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake. It is a way down, and it’s not
that bad. Here, I’ll show you.”

He grabbed her arm. “Sunny, you can’t be serious.
You’ll break your neck.”

“Okay,” she said, and caught her bottom lip between
her teeth while she surveyed the meager trail with an exacting eye. “I admit
you’ve kind of got to slide down on your rump in a couple places.” She pointed.
“Like right there, and then again there, just before you reach the bottom. And
that last little run there is exactly that. A run. You take a step, and then
another, and then you start running, and when it flattens out at the bottom
you’ll be able to stop.”