Stand-In Mum. Marie Ferrarella

after all this time, he sorely missed her. Missed the bond they’d once shared.

      Spoken like a man who really doesn’t care, Marta thought. If she’d had a sister, she would have done whatever she could to keep her in her life. “Maybe she’s too proud to ask, did you ever think of that?”

      He had, but he couldn’t quite get himself to believe that of Junie. “Pride’s for other people, not for family.” His sister knew he wasn’t the type to rub her nose in a mistake, no matter how great. All he wanted was her happiness.

      Ike wondered if she’d found it with Roy.

      Marta shrugged, looking away. Family. The single word still shimmered like a mystery, the solution just out of reach. “I wouldn’t know about that.”

      Ike knew a little about her. About the foster homes. Sydney had told him. “There’s family and then there’s family.”

      She slanted a look at him. “Meaning?”

      There was something in her eyes, something he doubted she was even aware of, that made him want to gather her into his arms and tell her things were going to be all right—even though he had no idea what those things might be.

      “There’s the family you’re born into, and the one you make for yourself.”

      She wasn’t sure she was following him. “You mean marriage?”

      If that’s what he meant, she thought it a rather strange reference, given what Sydney had told her about Ike. She would have thought the institution of marriage to be so far from his thoughts that he couldn’t reach it by plane.

      Ike acknowledged her response, but he’d been thinking along different lines. “Or just friends. Like you are with Sydney. She said you two were closer than most sisters.”

      The observation made Marta smile. “Yes, I suppose we are.”

      Was it her imagination, or was he sitting closer to her now than he had been a moment before? She glanced down at her own seat and realized that, somehow, she had been the one to move, not him. How had that happened? She pressed her back into the cushions of the sofa, determined to remain exactly where she was and not move an inch closer.

      “And yet you tried to talk her out of coming here.” Watching her, Ike tried to hide his amusement. Did she think he was going to pounce on her?

      “I did.”

      He heard the defensiveness in her voice. Obviously she thought he was going to tell her she was wrong. Though he loved the town he’d been born in, Ike was more than capable of looking at the situation from her point of view. “I would have done the same thing in your place.” He saw the surprise that came into her eyes. He rather liked the fact that he wasn’t living up—or down—to her expectations. “Not an easy thing—pulling up stakes and moving to somewhere you’ve only read about. Takes a lot of guts.”

      Leaning forward, he picked up the framed photograph on the coffee table, studying it for a moment. It was taken the day Sydney and Shayne were married. He remembered that it was a quick, impromptu ceremony. There’d hardly been enough time to find an appropriate dress for Sydney. She made a beautiful bride. And she made Shayne happier than Ike had ever remembered seeing his friend.

      “Hell of a woman, Sydney.”

      He’d get no argument from her on that. Marta dearly loved Sydney. That was why she was surprised that part of her was almost envious of the admiration she heard in Ike’s voice. It was an old feeling, rising up from the past. A feeling that had once made her want to say, “Me, too. Notice me, too.” A feeling she’d carried with her through all the different foster homes she’d lived in over the years. A feeling that she’d harbored as she’d secretly watched the foster mother or father she’d been assigned to talk to their son or daughter.