Page 61 of SEAL'S Baby Surprise
“What!” Richard and Kandis chorus. Richard bolts up off his seat and starts for me. I think he might have attacked me, but Kandis grabs him by his belt loops, and holds him back.
Chills run down my spine. How can this be? “She’s been living with me since late spring. I found her on the beach, wearing some kind of fancy dress and talking nonsense.”
“Where’s Lee?” Julia wants to know. “I want to see.”
I turn the album so Julia can see. My little girl frowns at the picture. “I didn’t know she had a baby. Why is she holding a baby?”
“She’s holding my baby,” Kandis explains. “that’s Charlie when he was just little.”
“But why did you make her so scared she runned away?” Julia asks. “Cause Lee’s scared lots of times, specially if Daddy is in town or out on his paddle-board. Sometimes, it’s so bad she hides in her bed, and sometimes she holds onto Ark and cries.”
Richard’s face is screwed up in an expression that is somewhere between grief and rage. I glance at him with worry. I had loved Richard better than my estranged brother.
He’d been my roomie for three years, and we’d embraced the college experience together – with both good and bad results.
We’d drifted apart, taking different paths as adults, and we’d not always been amicable. I am aware that only Kandy’s hold on his belt loops is keeping him from cutting loose on me.
“I knew I should have followed up on that pearl. I knew it! She was that close all this time?”
“Why didn’t you tell me, Judy-Rudy?” I ask.
“Cause she didn’t want me to,” Julia says.
“Did she tell you that?” I ask.
Julia shakes her head. “She didn’t have to. I just knew. She wanted you to think she was brave and strong. Most days, she is. But sometimes, she wears her wig, and a scarf, and those big sunglasses you got for her, and even that funny muumuu because she says it makes her look like a gra’ma.”
I look up at Richard and take the chance that he won’t kill me for asking. “It’s a fair question. Why is she so scared? You could be an ass when we were in college, but I never thought you’d be mean to your sister.”
“I’m not,” Richard protests, going on the defensive. “I mean, I wouldn’t. It’s that asshat she was going to marry; I’ll lay money on it. He’s been wailing and howling about how she’s gone; she’s been kidnapped. If she’s running scared, I bet it’s from him.”
“Where is she now?” Kandis asks. “Why didn’t she come with you?”
“She wasn’t feeling well, and wanted to stay home,” I say.
“She knew we were coming here,” Julia said. “I’m pretty sure of it.”
“There’s one way to find out all that,” I say grimly. “Let’s go ask her.”
“Absolutely,” Richard says. “We can take the wagon and bring her back here. If that asshole is threatening her, I can keep her safe.”
I refrain from saying that Ark and I have kept her safe for the last three months, and that I had kept her from drowning herself.
I would have felt vindicated by pointing it out, but if history was any indication, it would just catapult Richard into doing something stupid and possibly dangerous.
“Can I stay and play with the baby?” Julia asks. “I like Charlie.”
I’m torn for a minute. I want to go check on Lee, but I don’t want to leave my daughter. At the same time, if there is something going on between Richard and his sister, I don’t want Julia in the crossfire. Richard isn’t exactly safe company at the moment.
“She’ll be fine here with me,” Kandis says. “Richard hasn’t gone on any child killing sprees since I’ve met him. If he looks like he’s planning one, the kids and I can go to my grandparents’ house.”
I give the joke the nervous chuckle it deserves, and say, “All right, Julia. But you mind, you hear?”
“Every good thing she tells me,” Julia says. “And I bet she says mostly good things.”
It’s the same thing Julia says when she goes to visit the Turners, so I relax a little.
“All right,” I say. “All right. Let’s go ask her.”
