of meeting these people, her father, alone seemed wise before, but now she wished he was next to her. Telling her she could do this. That everything would be okay.
The two-story Federal-style house sat an acre back from the road on a manicured lawn of lush green grass under a canopy of soaring oak trees. Meticulously maintained window boxes of geraniums in vibrant shades of red, pink, and orange popped against white shutters, and an American flag lifted and waved in the soft breeze from its anchor on a porch column. The only thing missing was a white picket fence, and it could have been a spread in a magazine.
All of the other things she was feeling—fear, regret, longing—were replaced with something that was becoming as familiar as it was unwelcome. Resentment. This house was straight out of her mother’s dreams. Quiet. Statuesque. Safe. But she’d had to work two jobs just to save enough for the down payment on their tiny house in Nashville.
This was the kind of home that required money and job security and a support network. The things her mother never had.
This was a family home, the kind that boasted stability, prosperity, security. This was the kind of house where a mom never had to worry about how to feed her child, where you could get a puppy because you could afford it, where medications were never rationed, where birthday parties had clowns and big cakes and bouquets of balloons.
Alexis parked behind a shiny BMW sedan and a Range Rover SUV. A black Mercedes was parked in the garage alongside a bright red Lexus.
She quickly texted Candi that she was here. Candi responded to wait on the porch. Which was an odd request, but maybe because Elliott was sick they were trying to be quiet or something.
Didn’t matter. Alexis just wanted to get this over with and go home. It wasn’t until she climbed the porch steps that the sense of stomach-plummeting fear gripped her again. She was about to meet her father.
Her father.
The front door opened, and Candi stepped out, pulling the door behind her. She swallowed nervously. “Hey.”
“Hi.” Alexis looked beyond Candi’s shoulder to the door. “Is something wrong?”
Candi did the nervous swallow again. “No. I just, I wanted to greet you by myself before we go in.”
“Oh.”
“Everyone is here. Mom and Dad; my brother, Cayden; and his wife and their kids.” Candi bit her lip. “Our brother, I mean. I keep messing that up.”
“It’s okay.” She gestured toward the front door. “Should we . . . ?”
Candi opened the door and waited for Alexis to walk in. The sound of muted laughter from somewhere in the back of the house greeted them as Alexis did a slow turn in an entryway that was bigger than her kitchen. The foyer stretched at least fourteen feet to the ceiling and boasted a massive crystal chandelier.
Candi pointed down a long hallway that ended in a kitchen. “They’re in the sunroom.”
Alexis followed Candi down the wide hallway lined with built-in bookshelves and bracketed on each end with elaborately molded archways. It led into a chef’s kitchen with an eight-foot island down the middle and a view of a sloping backyard and in-ground pool.
Off to the side, partitioned from the kitchen by a wall of windows, was the sunroom.
Alexis stopped short, her hip colliding painfully with the edge of the island.
There were six of them. An elegantly dressed woman sat on one end of a couch gazing lovingly down at an infant and a toddler playing on the floor. A youngish man sat next to her. He had hair like Candi’s and a big smile. On the floor, a woman fussed with the baby’s clothes. And watching them all from a leather recliner, a proud glint in his eye, was Elliott.
His hair was grayer than not, and his skin had a dull, weathered look. Alexis would’ve thought it was from too much time in the sun, but she knew that particular look. It was the look of illness. But his smile was the same one from the wedding announcement—broad and full of life. He looked like a man who laughed a lot.
Alexis spun around, her chest tight. “I don’t think I can do this.”
But before she could escape, which was entirely her plan, the older woman called out from sunroom.
“Who was at the door, Candi?”
Alexis met Candi’s eyes. A guilty shadow in hers brought a red filter of anger to Alexis’s. “What is she talking about?”
Candi didn’t answer.