Read Matchmakers Box Set: Matchmakers, Encore, Finding Hope Online

Authors: Bernadette Marie

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Matchmakers Box Set: Matchmakers, Encore, Finding Hope (7 page)

BOOK: Matchmakers Box Set: Matchmakers, Encore, Finding Hope
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“I wasn’t very nice to you,” Carissa softly said, and Sophia stopped moving. “I’m very sorry for the way I treated you.”

“Carissa, there are no apologies needed. You do not know me.”

“There’s no reason I should have acted like that to you either,” she continued as Sophia stood to meet her at eye level. “My father has been miserable since you left.”

“Now, I don’t believe…”

“Well, you should. I was a little girl with dreams of finally meeting my father and making him and my mother fall in love. I wanted that storybook family.” She stored her bow in the case. “I didn’t know they never loved each other, and that it wasn’t going to happen.”

“Carissa, you don’t have to share this with me.”

“I want to,” she countered quickly. “My father never stopped loving you. I hated you for it.”

Carissa slid her cello into its case.

“I wanted a mother who would take me to Girl Scouts and ballet. I wanted a mother who would teach me to cook, and we could have tea parties and matching dresses. What I got was a cocaine addict who got knocked up by some airline pilot.” As the words flew from her lips, Sophia gasped and then her eyes widened. “You left him for no reason.”

“Oh, Carissa, I had my reasons.”

“I know. I heard them.” Sophia’s eyes narrowed on her. “I heard you argue with Dad last night. I was on the porch,” she admitted with a quiver in her voice.

“I see. And you think my reasons were wrong?”

“I know they were.” Carissa carried the instrument case to the corner of the room and set it there before returning to the stand full of music. “My father didn’t know about me.”

“I find that hard to believe. I saw the way he looked at you.”

“It’s true. I don’t know anything about their relationship, but I do know that they didn’t love each other and that my mother only used him for drug money. She told him she had a baby and that I died at birth.”

“Oh, Carissa.” Sophia sat down in her chair again, clutching her cello case.

“I’d come to the house that day to find him. My mom crashed the car on our way there. We were only a mile away. I think she was so nervous. I’d found out who he was and where he was, and I made her take me to meet him. Actually, I had a few choice words for him.” She laughed a nervous laugh.

Carissa sat in the chair across from Sophia. Her palms began to sweat, and she rubbed her hands on the knees of her jeans.

“She took too many pills. She passed out. He ran back with me, and by the time we got to her, the ambulance and police were there. He was blindsided. But he wrapped his arms around me and never let go.”

Tears stung Carissa’s eyes. “He loved me, and I could see that. He loved me from the moment you opened the door and found me standing on your front porch. He didn’t know I existed, but he understood who I was.”

Carissa stood and carried the music stand to the corner of the room where her cello stood. She looked out the window over the lawn where she’d seen the rawness of Sophia’s pain. “They wouldn’t let him take me home with him. They had no proof that I was his daughter, and my mother was unconscious. The police were going to take me away.” She stopped there. Anything else would make Sophia only think less of her.

“When he finally returned home, you had gone. And I was glad.” Carissa let out a sigh. “I didn’t even know who you were, but you were in my way. You were in the way of my fairy-tale life. When Dad finally realized you were gone, and not just ignoring his calls, we were too much into his life for him to turn us away. Mom needed help, and he needed me. I was happy with that.”

“I went to the hospital,” Sophia said softly. “They called her his wife, and a kind of pain I’d never known shifted through me. Then I saw him with you on his lap. He was stroking your hair. I think you’d fallen asleep. He kissed you, and I decided I had to go.”

Carissa sat on the edge of the large oak desk in the center of the room and looked at Sophia. She hurt for her. “He was miserable. He was mad at my mom for lying. He was mad at you for leaving. I could tell I brought him joy, and that was all I wanted,” she admitted. “When you released the house to him, we found a house for us. Just him and me. We picked it out. Mom came with us, but really, it was our house. Mine and Dad’s. She wasn’t there much, and by the time I was ten, she left us.”

“Ten? Your mother has been gone that long?” Sophia’s eyes were damp, and she barely knew Carissa. Her mother had never cried for her.

She snorted and shook her head. “He wouldn’t marry her. All he would give her was a home and money. He didn’t want her. He wanted you.”

Carissa stood and paced the room, walking by the piano in the corner and running her fingers along the polished wood.

“Mandy didn’t love him, and she hated me. She wanted drugs, and he’d started to refuse to help her. She finally realized it would be better to dump us both, and she left. I haven’t seen her since, and I don’t care. I have my dad, and that’s all I need.”

“Carissa, I had no idea.” Sophia looked like she might be zoning in for a hug, but Carissa wasn’t ready.

“I know. I thought you should.” She threw her hair over her shoulder. “We watched you on television all the time. I saw the admiration in his eyes when he’d watch you play. That’s why I chose the cello. I wanted him to look at me like that.”

“He does.”

“I know that now. Give him another chance, Sophia. In all the years I’ve been with him, he’s never been serious about anyone else. He never met a woman he didn’t compare to you. He’s been totally focused on me.”
And you.
“This is my last year before I go to college. I don’t want him to waste any more time on only me. I want him to be happy.”

“Carissa, your father and I are two very different people.”

“Who once loved each other enough to want to spend the rest of their lives together. You could have that again.”

A smile crept over Sophia’s lips. She stood and gathered Carissa’s hands in her own. “You and those two old women make quite a team. But I can’t promise anything.”

 

CHAPTER FIVE

 

Sophia’s head buzzed as she navigated the Kansas City streets. She hadn’t anticipated bonding with Carissa. For her to come forward with apologies and pleas for Sophia to fall in love with her father again—it was too much. Sophia wasn’t sure it was possible.

Who was she kidding? There hadn’t been a day in ten years that she hadn’t thought about the man. She’d Googled his name a half dozen times to see if anything came up. She’d had one hit—a write-up in the newspaper about how he’d helped a sick patient on a flight he was deadheading. Otherwise, he’d quietly been living his life and raising a daughter on his own after Mandy left. Sophia could feel tears stinging her eyes again. She’d done what she’d done, and she’d live with that the rest of her life. She’d done him a service, she decided. Yes, she’d gotten out of his way. He’d been free to raise his daughter without
her
selfish needs.

Of course, she’d done her own things, forged her own path. She’d made a name for herself. Who would she have been in Kansas City? A cellist in the symphony. Sophia Burkhalter was Pablo DiAngelo’s cellist, and he was the world’s most recognizable tenor voice. He sang to
her
music.

The first tear broke free and then another.

But she could have been Mrs. David Kendal. The girl beside her could have been her daughter. She could have molded and shaped her. She could have had others, adopted them with the man willing to do that with her. Instead, she had taken the coward’s path and run.

Her throat felt like it was closing off. She turned into the parking lot of the catering company and stopped the car with a jolt.

 

Carissa watched Sophia. She hadn’t said a word on the drive. Maybe when Carissa confessed so much to her at the house, it had been too much.

She only wanted the best for her father. Even if she’d never admitted it to herself, she’d always known the best was Sophia.

There had been fights. She remembered them. Mandy thought David should marry her. He knocked her up, and he should do his part. He’d mutter, “I am,” and walk away.

Carissa had never seen her father look at her mother the way he looked at Sophia. One glance at him and anyone would know David Kendal loved the woman who sat weeping beside her. Carissa knew it, and so did the women who had put them in each other’s path before—and again now.

“Sophia, are you all right?” She rested a hand on Sophia’s arm.

Sophia nodded. “I’m fine. I’m a little emotional, I guess.” She wiped at her eyes and pulled at the pearls that constricted her neck.

“Why don’t you take those off?” Seeing Sophia’s apprehension, she turned her hand over and pulled up her long sleeve. She watched as Sophia’s eyes widened at the scar that ran across her wrist.

“Long sleeves, bracelets, or a bandana, that’s how I hide mine.” She waited for the reaction. It was always the same.

“Carissa, you didn’t…”

“Nope, but it was the first thing you thought.” She ran her fingers over the raised scar on her wrist. “You thought I tried to slit my wrists. You couldn’t imagine what would make me do something so horrible.” She looked up at Sophia who, with sad eyes, only nodded. “My mother slit her wrists. She only made a big mess in the bathroom, but she got her point across. Dad took care of her. People think I’m her. I’m not.” Her voice somehow stayed solid.

“What happened?”

“It was really silly, actually. I fell off my bike going down a steep hill. Don’t ask me how, but my arm caught in the chain. It ripped the hell out of my hand. I didn’t break it, but I don’t know how I didn’t.” She smoothed her thumb over the scar. “If I had a loving mother and a family who attended church together and went on picnics, no one would think more than I’d got hurt riding my bike. But I’m the daughter of a coke addict.”

“That’s not all you are.”

“But you didn’t know that. You didn’t know that until this morning when you took the time to get to know me.”

“I’m so very glad I did. You are so much like your father. I see that now.”

Sophia pulled down the visor and opened the mirror. She studied herself for a moment.

Slowly, with shaky hands, she unclasped the pearls at her neck. A medal of Saint Nicholas revealed itself as well as her scar.

Carissa smiled as Sophia lowered the pearls.

“It’s not that bad.”

“I’ve never been convinced.”

“Warriors have scars. They’re a sign of courage and bravery. I know they expected you to die in that crash. I know you had to fight for your life, and you were only a little girl. I know you gave up
a lot
just to be here today.”

Carissa turned sideways in her seat to face Sophia.

“After your fight with Dad, I asked Millie and Katie about you. About what you’d been through. You would have married him right away if you could have had children of your own, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry for your losses.”

“Thank you. I’m sorry they’ve affected you. I didn’t know…”

“Sophia, he never forgot you or what the two of you had. He’s so proud of you.” Straightening her shirt, she smiled so she’d look braver than she felt. “We’d better go in. They’re waiting for us.”

Sophia nodded and then looked down at the collection of pearls in her hand. Carissa laid her hand over them.

“Be a warrior.” She pushed up her long sleeves.

Sophia laughed as she dropped the pearls in her purse, and they clinked against each other and pooled on the bottom. “Warrior it is.”

 

They agreed on chicken, a tossed salad, and an Italian bean salad as well as rolls and drinks for the party.

“Thank God they didn’t offer fish. Millie would have insisted on that.” Carissa shuddered.

Sophia laughed and pulled her keys from her purse as they walked toward the car.

“What about decorations?”

“We could go to the party store and pick up a few things. We don’t want it to look like prom, but a few streamers and table decorations would be nice.”

“What about a photographer?” She opened the car door and slid in behind the steering wheel.

“I don’t think anyone thought about it.”

“I went to a wedding once, and they had disposable cameras on the tables. The guests could take pictures of the things going on at the table.”

“I like that.” Carissa buckled her seatbelt as Sophia began to back away from the parking space. “You know, Mr. Benton does most of the photographs for the school newspaper. His sister, Mary Alice, owns the juice bar I work at. We could ask her if she thinks he would be our photographer for the evening. He’s on the guest list anyway.”

“Mary Alice Benton is your boss?” Sophia’s lips turned up in a smile.

“Well, she’s Krantz now.”

“Yes, yes she is. Gosh, I’ve known Robert and Mary Alice Benton since I was six years old. And I think I knew Jeremy Krantz from junior high school.”

It was odd, Carissa thought, that the woman next to her was a stranger. But she’d grown up in the house where Carissa lived. Everyone in her life was in Carissa’s. Even the friends she’d left behind were woven into the fabric of who Carissa was.

“Mr. Krantz helps out with the juice bar once in a while, but usually he’s busy with the fire department. He’s the captain.”

“Really? I remember him being a scrawny little thing.”

“He’s not scrawny anymore. He’s a professional, too. He was one of the people who responded when my mother overdosed.”

“Overdosed?” Her voice rose in pitch, and Carissa knew it was just one more thing she hadn’t known her father had to put up with.

“Yeah, right before she left us. I found her in bed. She wasn’t moving, and her breathing was too slow. I called 911, and the fire department arrived first.” The very thought of what her mother looked like in that bed made her skin go cold. “Jeremy Krantz was the first one through the door. I was ten and had just gotten home from school. Dad was out of town. It was a stunt for attention.” She shook her head and let out a grunt. “She was always trying to get attention. Just like when she slit her wrist. I could do without any more drama like that.”

BOOK: Matchmakers Box Set: Matchmakers, Encore, Finding Hope
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