Julia was nervous as she drove the rental car south from the San Jose airport toward
Cambria. She wasn't sure why, since she wasn't one of the principal parties in this
situation and was only coming along to give her brother moral support. Still, there was no
denying that she felt an unpleasant ache in her belly at the thought of how all this might
go. Drew, in the passenger seat, was silent, his face grim.
"We should be happy," Julia observed as they made their way down Highway 101
past Salinas, acres of farmland stretching out into the distance. "You're inheriting a
fortune. I mean, everybody dreams about that happening, but it never does. Except for this
time, it did. It actually did. And look at us. We're acting like we're heading off to have
surgery without anesthesia."
"You're rambling, Jules," Drew said.
"I know. I know it. But I'm nervous, and usually, I'd deal with that by eating a bunch
of junk food, but I'm driving, and I don't have any junk food."
Shut up, Julia, she chastised herself. Just shut the hell up.
If she were being honest with herself, she'd have to admit that she wasn't just
nervous for Drew's sake. That was part of it, of course. But this situation was layered
with multiple reasons to be nervous.
It didn't escape her notice, for example, that she would be meeting the family of a
man she was intensely attracted to. Usually, that happened after you were dating the
person for a while, probably after you'd slept together, sometimes after you had agreed to
get married. But Julia and Colin had done none of those things. They hadn't slept
together, they weren't dating, and they certainly weren't engaged. Added to that, they
were almost related in a tangential, convoluted way.
Meeting his family was throwing off the natural order of things. It was crossing
some sort of finish line before the race even began, putting the cart before the proverbial
horse. She would feel pressure for them to like her, but how could they like her when she
—through Drew—represented a threat to their family fortune? That was how they would
see her, anyway, almost certainly. As a threat. And that didn't bode well for them
accepting her as Colin's potential girlfriend or lover … or something.
Plus, what if they did accept her as one or more of those things, and then she decided
she didn't want to be that? That she didn't even want to pursue this thing with Colin,
whatever it turned out to be?
But if she hadn't decided to come, if she'd just left Drew on his own to deal with the
complexities of his newly discovered family, then she might never see Colin again, and
that wasn't an appealing thought.
It was all so complicated.
Those were the thoughts running through her head when Drew said, "We should
have gotten a hotel. Staying at their house? With them?" He shook his head. "It's weird,
Jules. It just … it feels weird."
"They were very insistent on the phone," she said. Julia had been the one to broker
the terms of the visit, and when she'd spoken to Sandra Delaney, the matter of their
accommodations had seemed non-negotiable. Also, there was the fact that Drew was
broke. He hadn't received any part of his inheritance yet, and until he did, he couldn't
afford a hotel, even one of the cheap, older motels situated away from the beach, on
Cambria's Main Street.
"I don't give a damn what they were insistent about," Drew grumbled.
"I got the idea that it would hurt their feelings if we don't stay with them. And you
don't want to start this whole thing with hurt feelings." She glanced sideways at him as
she drove. "Besides yours, I mean."
He scowled. "My feelings are just fine."
"Sure," she said.
He was quiet after that for a long time.
Eventually, Julia maneuvered the rental car down through Paso Robles, onto Route
46 with its breathtaking vistas of green hills and majestic vineyards, and up Highway 1
past the town of Cambria.
"I think this is the turnoff," Drew said.
She drove along a winding road that went through the hills until they arrived at a big
farmhouse that looked like it had been built in the 1950s. The rambling two-story house
had white siding, a wrap-around porch, a roof that came to a sharp peak with dormer
windows emerging on either side and dark brown shutters framing the windows. The
building was exactly what Julia had imagined, from the time of her childhood, whenever
someone said the word farmhouse. Off in the distance, down a wide dirt road, stood a
hulking red barn, and beyond that, countless acres of pasture.
"Well, I guess this is it," Drew said, in the same tone he might have used if he were
bidding Julia goodbye on his way to a long prison stretch.
"They're your family," Julia said. "And they didn't reject you; they just didn't know
about you. Try to remember that."
Inside, the house wasn't what Julia had expected. Knowing that the family was
shockingly rich, she'd expected a certain … grandeur. Instead, she found old, worn
furniture that had probably been purchased thirty years before; wood floors that were
slightly uneven and bore the marks of innumerable feet; a large stone fireplace with a fire
burning merrily within; and, when Sandra ushered them into the kitchen, old linoleum
floors and countertops that were slightly cracked at the corners.
That kitchen was where Sandra had brought them shortly after opening the front
door. "You must be Drew," she'd said, looking him over with her hands on her hips.
"And you're Julia. I'm Sandra—Colin's my son. Well, one of them, anyway. Come on in
and get something hot to drink." Then she'd turned and walked toward the kitchen
without waiting to see whether they would follow.
Sandra Delaney wasn't what Julia had expected, either. She was short and trim, with
a wiry build that spoke of years of hard work. She looked to be somewhere between fifty-five
and sixty, with hair that had been brown but was now turning to gray. Her hair was
in a ponytail, and she was wearing a San Francisco 49ers jersey and faded jeans. Her feet
were encased in a pair of fuzzy, pink slippers.
"I've got some coffee on," Sandra said. "If you want tea, I guess I can make some,
but you'll have to wait while the water boils."
Julia couldn't quite tell whether the woman was no-nonsense by nature, or if she was
irritated by their presence. She decided there was no benefit in assuming the latter, so she
went with the former.
Once they were settled in the kitchen, Sandra peered at Drew, standing
awkwardly beside the big farm table at the center of the room, and slowly shook her head. "I can see it, right near the eyes. And around the chin, too. Well, I guess you
really are Redmond's boy."
"I'm Andrew McCray's boy, ma'am." Drew's face looked pinched and angry,
though his voice was amiable enough.
"By God, I guess you are," Sandra agreed. "Seems like Redmond didn't do a
damned thing for you. Sent some checks that your mother was too proud or too scared to
take. Like a boy gives two shits from a rat's ass about the money. A boy needs a father,
not a damned check. It's a good thing Andrew McCray was there for you when Redmond
wasn't." She nodded crisply, her speech concluded. "Enough of that business. What do
you take in your coffee? Seems to be a real man takes it black, but there's no accounting
for how you were raised."
Julia couldn't help being charmed by Sandra. The woman was blunt, hard, and in
what appeared to be perpetual ill humor. But beneath that was honesty and intelligence that Julia had to admire. She could see that Drew was being won over, too.
He'd started defensive and ready for a fight when he'd come into the room, but Julia
could see him gradually relaxing, his shoulders coming down a little at a time from the
tense, the defensive posture they'd assumed somewhere up around his ears.
She talked a little about Redmond and about the ranch and how they lived here.
In turn, Drew talked some about himself, his and Julia's childhoods, his parents.
He didn't touch on his financial difficulties—it probably seemed prudent not to—
and Sandra didn't ask, though she'd almost certainly heard about some of it from Colin.
It seemed to Julia that not asking about it was a kindness that came from some innate
understanding of where Drew was emotionally at that moment. It made Julia love Sandra,
just a little.
They'd been talking for about twenty minutes and were into the second cup of coffee
when a large, thick man who looked to be in his early sixties came into the kitchen. The
man had thin gray hair that showed the pink scalp beneath, and he was wearing faded
jeans and a plaid flannel shirt that probably had been through hundreds of wash cycles.
His mouth was tight, and his brow showed a vertical line down the center that indicated
either intense concentration or deep discomfort.
"Well, hello there," the man said, as though he were greeting the dentist who was
about to perform his root canal.
"Get on in here, Orin. Don't just stand in the doorway," Sandra scolded him. Then,
to Julia and Drew: "This here's my husband, Orin. He's Redmond's brother. And he
ought to have more damned social skills." Sandra glared at her husband, who came into
the room sheepishly.
"Pleased to meet you." He offered his hand first to Drew, and then to Julia, nodding
as though some unnamed question had been answered.
Drew shook the man's hand but didn't say anything, so Julia stepped in, thinking
that Orin wasn't the only one who lacked social skills.
"This all must be a shock to you," she said. "I know it has been for Drew."
"Well, that's fair to say." Orin scratched the back of his head with one meaty hand.
"I'd have to say I was as close to Redmond as anybody in the world, and he never gave
me any idea about any of this. Not any idea." Orin's eyes grew red and moist, and for the
first time since they'd arrived, it occurred to Julia that the events of the past several days
weren't just about Drew. They were also about a family who had lost someone they
loved, someone who was an irreplaceable part of their world.
"I'm sorry for your loss," Julia said. She should have said it earlier, as soon as they'd
arrived, and she felt foolish now because she hadn't.
Drew had been silent since Orin had come into the room, but Julia could see him
studying the older man, probably looking for a resemblance to his own face, his own
stature, his own way of being in the world.
When he did finally say something, it wasn't a nicety or a pro forma politeness. It
was a simple, blunt question.
"What kind of man doesn't claim his son?" he asked.
It was the kind of question that might have started a fight, might have ignited a spark
that would burn this tender new relationship to the ground. Instead, Orin scratched at his
head again, and when he spoke, his voice was gruff and thick.
"Well, I don't know, son. I don't rightly know...