A Ready-Made Family. Carrie Alexander

pinched between her eyes. “I won’t let you starve.” She looked at Jake’s cash on the table and thought of the food he’d placed just so in the almost bare cupboards. At the store, she’d counted out her remaining coins to pay for the animal crackers. There was still her credit card, but they could be tracked through that. She didn’t want to use it unless she had no other choice.

      One look at Kristen’s welling eyes said that point may have been reached. Lia’s head drooped. She put a hand on the floor to steady herself. Running away from home in the Grudge with less than four hundred dollars in cash had been a foolish decision but necessary. Absolutely necessary.

      Except where did they go now?

      “Help yourselves,” Jake said from the hallway.

      Lia pulled herself together and stood on shaky legs. Weak from hunger, she told herself. Not just weak.

      To Jake, she said, “I’m sorry. You know children. Or maybe you don’t. They get weepy when they’re hungry and I—” She let out a choked-off laugh. She was feeling kind of weepy and hopeless herself.

      Even though he spoke easily, Jake’s grip tightened on the towel he’d draped around his shoulders. “No problem. I’ll get dressed and we’ll make dinner.”

      Lia opened her mouth but didn’t speak. She was in no position to refuse. “You’re being very kind, considering how we barged in on you.” Their eyes met and she cringed inside, reading his expression as pity. She didn’t want pity. She wanted respect. Independence.

      But first, dinner. “Thank you.”

      After a nudge, Kristen and Sam chimed in. “Thank you, Mr. Robbin.”

      He brushed off the gratitude in his abrupt way. So much like Rose. “All of you—call me Jake,” he said before disappearing into one of the bedrooms.

      “I NOTICE YOUR MOTHER isn’t here,” Lia commented in the careful tones of a guest bent on making polite conversation. “I know Rose has been caring for her for the past few years.”

      Jake rolled a beer bottle between his palms. He was sprawled in one of the Adirondack chairs they kept around for the cottage guests—when they had any. The grill smoked nearby as the charcoal cooled. He’d given Lia a choice of hamburgers or fresh-caught fish. She’d chosen the fish, to her offspring’s displeasure. They’d been polite about eating at least some of it and had filled up on corn on the cob and the biscuits Lia had produced after scouting his kitchen for flour and baking powder.

      Jake met her inquiring eyes. “Maxine…uh, my mother is in the hospital.”

      “I’m sorry to hear that. Nothing too serious, I hope.”

      “She got overwrought and her emphysema worsened.”

      “Too much wedding excitement?”

      “In a way. More a case of the wedding demanding too much of my sister’s attention. If you knew our mother, you’d understand.” While no one in their household had ruled the roost but Black Jack, his mother had become passive-aggressive to get her way. Particularly with Rose.

      Jake glanced at Lia. “Or do you know? I forget that Rose might’ve confided in you about the history of our family.”

      “She told me some of it. But not everything. Not even close.”

      “That sounds like Rose.”

      After a minute of silence, Lia cleared her throat. “Will your mother be home soon?”

      “Not right away. She’s being moved to a care facility. They want to monitor her for a while longer. Of course, she’s putting up a fuss, but making her stay was the only way for the newlyweds to get a honeymoon. If she was here, she’d have insisted that Rose stick around to look after her.” Jake was bemused by his loose tongue. After the goings-on of the wedding, he’d been looking forward to solitude. But having Lia and her kids around wasn’t so bad. “I was never much good at that sort of thing—caretaking. No patience.”

      “You were great with Howie.”

      “I’ve worked at staying calm under pressure.”

      “In the Army, huh.” She did a marching-in-place gesture that made him smile. “All that discipline.”

      He nodded.

      “Well,” Lia said after a minute, searching for another topic when he would have been fine to sit with her in silence, “family illness hasn’t been an issue for me. My parents are young yet, in their midfifties.” She looked down and picked at a fingernail. “We’re not close.”

      “How come?” he asked after a beat. Talking like this made him slightly uncomfortable. He didn’t believe in revealing your feelings to passing strangers—or even lingering strangers. Hell, he didn’t even talk to his own brother. He’d tried to stay in touch with Gary after the prison sentence, but there was too much anger and resentment there. Jake and Lia had found ways to straighten themselves out. Gary was a casualty.

      “They didn’t approve of me marrying so young.” Lia laughed a little to cover the obvious pain. “Not that they would have approved of me having a baby out of wedlock, either.”

      “I thought that in these cases, once the grandchild arrives, the grandparents come around.”

      “You’d think so.” She sighed. “I mean, yes, they have made an effort with their grandkids. We visit back and forth a few times a year. But they never quite let me forget what a disappointment I’ve been, including the divorce.”

      There was another, longer silence. “Rose—a newlywed,” Lia said suddenly with a fond smile. He could tell she was deliberately lightening the mood. “Incredible.”

      “Evan seems like a good guy.”

      “He’d better be.”

      Jake liked Lia’s fierce loyalty. He’d felt that way about his battalion. Good guys, most of them, and excellent soldiers. With his mother and sister, the family ties were tangled up in turmoil and guilt. He hadn’t been able to protect them the way he’d have liked to. But then, that way would have likely resulted in his own prison sentence. Back when they’d needed him the most, the only solutions he’d known involved hot temper and flying fists.

      Black Jack’s legacy. Like father, like son.

      Jake slapped a mosquito that had landed on his arm. He wiped away the bloody smear and lifted the beer, tipping it toward Lia. “You’re sure you don’t want one?”

      “Not tonight. I’m too tired. A beer would put me right to sleep.” She looked at the sun slipping past the tops of the looming evergreens. “We should be going before it gets dark,” she said, but didn’t move.

      “Where to?”

      “Um…” Her lids lowered. “I met a woman at the grocery store. Claire. She gave me her card, said we could get a room at her bed-and-breakfast.”

      “Free?”

      “Well, no, I don’t suppose so.” Lia’s face crumpled. She looked miserable whenever the question of money came up. He assumed she had very little, maybe none given that she’d balked over the price of tomato juice, but apparently pride wouldn’t let her admit it.

      He could understand that. Pride—and hurt pride—had caused him a lot of grief back in the day.

      “You might as well stay here,” he said. His voice came out raspy and gruff, making the offer less than inviting even though he didn’t mean it that way.

      Lia gazed across the property, taking in the small cottages hidden among the trees. Birds twittered in the gap before she spoke again. “I don’t want to disrupt your business.”

      He snorted. “What business?”

      “There are no guests?”

      “We’ve got a few