It Takes a Family. Victoria Pade

went on.

      “I think that was the Lea you all met. And knew while she was here. While she was pregnant. The clean and sober Lea. The Lea I always hoped would prevail. The trouble was, that just never seemed to happen. She couldn’t stay off the drugs and when she was doing them…” Karis shrugged helplessly. “Well, she wasn’t that same person.”

      Karis could see in the expressions of her half siblings that there still wasn’t much sympathy for her sister, so she gave up trying to elicit any and forged ahead.

      “Abe—the man Lea left Luke for—” Karis gave Luke an apologetic glance over her shoulder before focusing on everyone else again. “Abe had his own drug problems, but when they got back to Denver they both swore they were staying clean. For Amy’s sake. I believed them and, from everything I saw, they actually were sober until about a month before the explosion. I’d gotten Lea a job and she had been coming to work every day, not doing anything that alarmed me.” Although Karis knew now that she’d been naive. “But that month before, Abe lost his job,” she said. “And that must have been when things started to break down again.”

      Karis didn’t want to get into much about how the general breakdown had affected her own situation, so she cut to the chase.

      “Like I said, Lea had done something that affected a lot of people and Dad went looking for her. I say looking for her because when he went to where she and Abe had been living, he found out they’d been evicted a week earlier—which I didn’t know, either, but it made sense because Lea had asked if Amy could stay with me for a few days right around the same time. Luckily Amy was still with me when Dad found Lea and Abe.”

      Karis hadn’t realized it, but she’d been hugging Amy and apparently her grip on the baby was too tight, because Amy began to squirm.

      Karis loosened her hold and kissed the crown of Amy’s head as compensation.

      Then she went on. “Dad found Lea and Abe living in a mobile home out in the middle of nowhere. Lea, Abe and another man. But they weren’t only living in the trailer, they were also making methamphetamine there, to use themselves and to sell on the street. When Dad showed up, the other man went outside rather than be in the middle of a family fight. He could hear and see what was going on inside, though, and according to him, Dad and Lea argued and then Abe got into it, too. It became physical—”

      Amy was getting antsy and Karis took a cracker from a sandwich bag she had in her pocket and gave it to the baby.

      She took a deep breath and continued. “I don’t know anything about the setup of a meth lab, but apparently it’s volatile and dangerous. In the struggle between Dad and Abe, something happened that caused the explosion. The man outside was thrown and hurt, but he lived to tell what happened. Dad, Lea and Abe were all killed.”

      Another moment’s silence fell and Karis let her final statement stand alone.

      Then, as if he were doing an interrogation, Cam said, “And you say this all happened six weeks ago?”

      “Yes.”

      “But you’re just now getting around to letting us know?” Cam said.

      “There were so many complications and problems that I was left with,” Karis said, still not wanting to get into everything at the moment. “I’m sorry, but I didn’t think you should be told over the telephone by someone you’d never even met. I thought you all deserved to hear it in person, but this is the first I could get away.”

      “Was there a funeral?” Mara asked quietly but also with a note of insult that there might have been and they hadn’t been invited.

      “No,” Karis was quick to tell her. “This isn’t pretty and I’m sorry to have to say it, but the explosion caused an inferno in the trailer. There were no remains—”

      “That’s a little convenient,” Cam said under his breath.

      Obviously he thought she was trying to pull something.

      But before Karis could respond, Luke said, “I called the Denver police for verification. She’s telling the truth about the explosion and about the aftermath. Because the trailer was far from any fire station—or anything else for that matter—by the time the explosion and fire were called in and firefighters arrived, there was nothing but ash and the injured man to tell the story. Forensics sifted through the rubble and found enough in the way of gold tooth fillings, some other dental work, and a few bone fragments, to confirm that your father and Lea were killed.”

      “So there wasn’t anything to bury,” Neily concluded with a grimace.

      “And I couldn’t arrange a memorial service,” Karis said. “There just wasn’t…a way,” she finished, faltering to keep from saying there hadn’t been money for any kind of service, along with the fact that she’d been left in such a predicament that she hadn’t been able to do anything but try to dig out of it.

      Then, again thinking of their feelings, she said, “Of course, if you want to have something—”

      “Is that why you’re here?” Cam asked, cutting her off. “So we’ll do something or give you the money to do something?”

      He definitely thought she had an angle.

      “No,” Karis said. “I only meant that if it would make you all feel better to have some sort of service—”

      “It’s tough to mourn somebody you didn’t know,” another of the triplets—Taylor—said.

      Karis nodded again. “I didn’t really think you’d want to have any kind of memorial or anything. I just thought you all should know what had happened.”

      “That’s the only thing you came for?” Cam asked. “Just to tell us?”

      Karis didn’t want to lie to them and then, in a day or two, let them know that wasn’t the only thing she’d come for, that she also owned their house and needed to use it to get herself the rest of the way out of the trouble Lea had left her in. But she also knew this was not the time to get into the other reason she’d come to Northbridge. So rather than give a direct answer, she decided it was best to get in and get out. She’d gotten in, told them the first half of what she’d come to tell them, and now it was time to get out before she actually did say anything more.

      “I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news,” she said, letting no answer be her answer as she pulled Amy’s hood up and rezipped the baby’s coat. “And after what Lea did here, I don’t blame you for being suspicious. But now that you know what happened, I’ll leave you to…digest it, I guess. Again, I’m sorry,” she added as she stood.

      She was going to have that be the end of it. Then it struck her that she didn’t want to leave them thinking what they—particularly Cam—seemed to think of her.

      She paused and said, “I know you all probably won’t believe this, but Lea and I were always different. Very different. Not that I didn’t love her, because I did. Even when I hated what she was doing, I still loved her and the person she was when she wasn’t on drugs. But among people who knew us both, no one would ever put me in the same category as my sister, and I’d really appreciate it if you could find a way to separate us in your minds, too. To maybe reserve judgment a little.”

      No one said anything and Karis decided her exit was going to be just as awkward as the rest of the visit, and nothing would change that. She turned to go.

      As she did, a cheery Amy swiveled in her arms to look over her shoulder and call, “Bye-see-ya-guys.”

      A small ripple of involuntary laughter came in response.

      Even Karis couldn’t help smiling.

      But since none of the other Pratts said anything to halt their retreat, Karis took Amy back into the entryway and out the front door.

      Bolstered more than he could know by the fact that Luke Walker had come with her.

      Chapter