Tangled Memories. Marta Perry

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      “Welcome to Savannah. Your home-if Baxter Manning isn’t making the biggest mistake of his life in believing you.”

      Corrie stiffened at the flash of steel under Lucas’s lazy drawl.

      “If Mr. Manning wants to invite me here, I can’t see that it’s any of your concern.”

      “Anything that affects the family concerns me. Especially a con artist trying to convince an old man she’s his long-lost granddaughter.”

      “I’ve told the lawyers and Mr. Manning. Now I’ll tell you. I don’t want anything from him.”

      “No secret dreams of being the missing heiress, coming into all that lovely money?” He smiled slowly, his eyes intent on her face, as if he tried to see beneath the surface. “Then we have to make sure you enjoy your time here, don’t we?”

      MARTA PERRY

      has written everything from Sunday school curriculum to travel articles to magazine stories in twenty years of writing, but she feels she’s found her home in the stories she writes for Love Inspired.

      Marta lives in rural Pennsylvania, but she and her husband spend part of each year at their second home in South Carolina. When she’s not writing, she’s probably visiting her children and her beautiful grandchildren, traveling or relaxing with a good book.

      Marta Perry

      Tangled Memories

      You know me inside and out,

       You know every bone in my body; You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit, how I was sculpted from nothing into something.

      —Psalms 139:15

      This story is dedicated to my grandson,

       Bjoern Jacob Wulff, with much love from Grammy.

      And, as always, to Brian.

      CONTENTS

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      CHAPTER NINE

      CHAPTER TEN

      CHAPTER ELEVEN

      CHAPTER TWELVE

      CHAPTER THIRTEEN

      CHAPTER FOURTEEN

      CHAPTER FIFTEEN

      CHAPTER SIXTEEN

      CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

      QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

      ONE

      For twenty-nine years, Corrie Grant had thought she’d never know who her father was. Now she knew, and no one would believe her.

      No one, at this point, was represented by a pair of smooth, silver-haired attorneys with Southern drawls as thick as molasses. They looked about as expensive as this hotel suite, where she sank to the ankles in plush carpeting. The denim skirt and three-year-old sweater she usually wore for her monthly shopping trip had definitely not been right for this meeting. She hadn’t known Cheyenne, Wyoming boasted a hotel suite like this.

      She slid well-worn loafers under her chair and straightened her back. You’re as good as anyone, her great-aunt’s voice echoed in her mind, its independent Wyoming attitude strong. Don’t you let anyone intimidate you.

      “I’ve already told you everything I know about my parents.” Her words stopped one of the lawyers—Courtland or Broadbent, she didn’t know which—in mid-question. “I came here to meet Baxter Manning.” Her grandfather. She tried out the phrase in her mind, not quite ready to say it aloud yet. “Where is he?”

      “Now, Ms. Grant, surely you understand that we have to ascertain the validity of your claim before involving Mr. Manning, don’t you?”

      Courtland or Broadbent had the smooth Southern courtesy down pat. He’d just managed to imply that she was a fraud without actually saying it.

      She gripped the tapestry chair arms, resisting the impulse to surge to her feet. “I’m not making any claims. I don’t expect anything from Mr. Manning. I just want to know if it’s true that his son was my father.”

      Twenty-nine years. That was how long Aunt Ella had known about her mother’s marriage and kept it from her. Corrie could only marvel that she hadn’t pressed for answers earlier. She’d simply accepted what Aunt Ella said—that her mother had come home to Ulee, Wyoming, pregnant, at eighteen. That she’d died in an accident when Corrie was six months old. That her mother had loved her.

      Pain clutched her heart. Was that any more true than the rest of the fairy tale?

      The attorneys exchanged glances. “You must realize,” one of them began.

      She shot to her feet. “Never mind what I must realize.” Coming on top of the struggle to stretch her teaching salary and the meager income from Last Chance Café to pay Aunt Ella’s hospital bills and funeral expenses, she didn’t think she could handle any further runaround. “I’m done here. If Mr. Manning is interested in talking to me, he knows where to reach me. I’ll be on my way.”

      She was halfway to the door when the voice stopped her.

      “Come back here, young woman.”

      She turned, pulse accelerating. The man who’d come out of the suite’s bedroom was older than either of the lawyers—in his seventies, at least. Slight and white-haired, his pallid skin declared his fragility, but he stood as straight as a man half his age.

      “Mr. Manning.” It had to be.

      He lifted silvery eyebrows. “Aren’t you going to call me ‘Grandfather’?”

      “No.”

      He let out a short laugh. “Fair enough, as I have no intention of letting you.” He extended his hand to one of the attorneys without looking. The man gave him the copies she’d brought of her mother’s marriage certificate and her own birth certificate.

      “The birth certificate doesn’t name a father.” He zeroed in on the blank line, his gaze inimical.

      She’d learned, over the years, to brace herself for that reaction whenever she had to produce a birth certificate. You’re a child of God, Aunt Ella would say. Let that be enough for you.

      Not exactly what a crying eight-year-old had wanted to hear, but typical of the tough Christian woman who’d raised her. Ella Grant had taken what life dished out without complaint, even when that meant bringing up an orphaned great-niece with little money and no help.

      “According to my great-aunt, when I was born after my father died, my mother was afraid her husband’s family would try to take me away. Later, she decided that they had a right to know.” She kept her gaze steady on the man who might be her grandfather. “You had a right to know. She left for Savannah to talk to you about me when I was six months old. She died in an accident on the trip.”

      An accident—that was what Aunt Ella had always said. It was what Corrie had always believed, until she’d been sorting through Aunt Ella’s papers after her stroke. She’d found the marriage license and a scribbled postcard, knocking down her belief in who she was like a child’s tower of blocks.

      He made a dismissive gesture with the papers. “Grace Grant never returned to Savannah after my son died.” His voice grated on the words. With grief? She couldn’t be sure. “If you are her daughter, that still doesn’t guarantee my son was your father.”