Lost and Found Family by Jennifer Ryan

Sarah had loved making Luke outrageously happy this morning. The love and appreciation she’d seen in his eyes when she gave him the horses stuck in her mind and heart. She wanted to make him feel and look at her that way every day.

But how was she really going to make that happen? It seemed so easy to talk about and wish for it, but the reality for Sarah was a lot harder.

She needed time to think, plan, and figure out a way to run her businesses in Silicon Valley and be with Luke in Carmel. She also wanted to make sure the boys were really okay with her relationship with Luke and the possibility they would move to the ranch permanently.

While Luke made it clear he wanted them to be a family, he’d never mentioned marriage.

Did she want to get married again?

Yes. Being Luke’s wife, having a real partnership and love, would make her really happy.

Luke talked about more children and a life together like he could already see it all.

She’d always wanted a big family. The need grew out of her loneliness as a child. She’d wished she’d had a sibling. Someone to share everything with. Someone who understood her like no other.

She loved her father, but their relationship was more a friendship since he’d found her when she was nearly an adult in age, though she’d had a lot of heartache and had to grow up faster than most kids. Abby was more like a sister than just her assistant. And Tim was like an uncle, Randy a cousin. Her team at Spencer Software felt like a family.

But she wanted more with Luke. She wanted that deep connection and a lifetime of memories from a bond that would never break.

Still, she’d been disappointed before, and allowing herself to believe in Luke’s vision for them was hard to do without doubts creeping in.

Luke drove them down the drive to Margaret’s house. The boys sat between them, buckled together on the bench seat, wishing they could stay at Luke’s instead, to go riding and play and hang out with the man they’d become close to, too.

They stopped outside Margaret’s home. A sense of déjà vu came over Sarah when she spotted Margaret sitting on the porch, waiting like a sentry for the enemy to arrive, and spoiling for a fight, just like the first day she’d arrived.

Luke reached across the boys and laid his hand on her shoulder. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Tell her that.She didn’t say anything because of the boys.

She slipped out of the truck and held the door for the boys to climb down. “I want you two to go upstairs and put away your things. You can watch TV for an hour, then we’ll do homework and have lunch.”

“Okay,” Jack said, heading toward the house, Nick right behind him.

“Hold it,” she called to them. “Thank Luke for taking care of you while Mommy rested.”

They ran back and threw their arms around Luke’s legs. “Thank you,” they said in unison.

Sarah’s heart melted.

Luke put a hand on both boys’ heads and gave their hair a ruffle. “You’re welcome.” He released the boys and hooked his arm around her shoulders just as Bridget pulled into the driveway.

The boys raced up the porch steps, said hello to their grandmother, and went in ahead of everyone.

Luke greeted Bridget as she met them on the walkway up to the porch. “Hey, Bridge. Sophia at school?”

“Yep.” Bridget eyed Sarah. “You look fine to me. Kudos on the dramatic performance to get attention. You got Luke to swoop in and play your white knight.”

Luke looked at Bridget like he was seeing her for the first time. “What the hell, Bridget.”

She rolled her eyes. “Why does sex make men stupid?”

Luke gave her an incredulous look. “What is the matter with you?”

Sarah knew. Bridget’s divorce and her ex-husband’s new girlfriend had turned Bridget bitter and resentful of couples. But it didn’t make it easier to take her snide comments and rudeness.

Luke didn’t appear happy about being called stupid.

Bridget walked past them and up the steps to greet her mom.

Sarah and Luke followed, only to have Margaret greet them with her own brand of snark. “Nice of you to bring my grandsons back where they belong.”

Sarah didn’t want to fight. “Don’t start, Margaret. It was one night.”

“Oh, it’s more than that. It’s your campaign to reel Luke in and ruin him.”

Luke took a step closer to Margaret. “So you both take me for a fool?”

Margaret gave him a sad, condescending frown. “I love you like a son. I don’t want her to hurt you, too. I thought you’d see through her lies and manipulations, but apparently even you have fallen for her . . . charms.”

“She’s never lied to me. She hasn’t manipulated me. I simply took the time to get to know her. You should do the same, instead of believing what Sean told you and what you’ve assumed.”

Margaret waved that off. “My son died unhappy. Because of her insatiable need for money, he was working late again, and he was probably so tired he didn’t see the accident coming.”

“That is not what happened.” Sarah shook her head and sighed. “You really have no idea who Sean turned out to be.”

“How would I? You kept him away from us. You couldn’t be bothered to visit. You didn’t want to bring the boys, it was too much trouble to travel even a couple hours with them.”

“Not true.”

Bridget waved that off. “Of course you’d blame Sean. He’s not here to defend himself.”

Sarah had enough. “Apparently I’m not allowed to defend myself either.” She glanced up at Luke. “I’ll see you later. I’ve got work to do.”

Margaret stepped in front of her, blocking her from entering the house. “The lawn could use a mowing again. Perhaps you could at least take care of that today.”

She’d had Camille clean the house and had the gardeners come when she and the boys arrived. Since then, she’d kept up with the maintenance, but she’d be damned if she took orders from Margaret. “Why don’t you permanently hire a gardener to take care of the yard? Lord knows, you need one for this big property. You could use a housekeeper, too.” Sarah really couldn’t keep doing everything, or she’d end up passed out from exhaustion again. “Perhaps Bridget could do the work, since she doesn’t have a job right now. I’m sure she’d like to earn a little extra money instead of you just bailing her out all the time.”

Bridget glared at her.

Margaret sucked in a surprised gasp that Sarah had actually fought back for once. “Thanks to Sean, you have the means to have people wait on you and take care of you. You’ve even got Luke going out of his way to please you. Some of us have to take care of ourselves. And it’s not easy when you’re alone. I can’t afford this house, let alone hire someone to help with the yard and housekeeping. And as my condition worsens, the medical bills pile up.” Worry and resentment filled Margaret’s eyes.

Bridget touched her mom’s arm. “Why didn’t you say anything?” At least she had some compassion for the one person who took care of her, even at Margaret’s detriment.

Margaret gave a one-shoulder shrug, unable to say anything about what so obviously devastated her. “It’s gone. Sean needed money to start the business. I’ve helped Bridget here and there. I take care of my family.”

“So do I,” Sarah shot back.

“Right. You took everything of Sean’s, bought a big, new house, put the boys in private school, and probably spend all your money on fancy clothes and cars. Just look at that brand-new SUV.”

Sarah had replaced her older model six months ago and given Camille her old one because she needed something more reliable than her rattle-trap sedan. But Margaret didn’t know that. She didn’t know a lot of things, and that was Sarah’s fault, because she’d kept her mouth shut about Sean, his death, and how he lived.

“I work hard to provide for my children. I try to give them everything I never had growing up. I’ve even made sure that you were taken care of because you’re Jack and Nick’s grandmother, but you don’t appreciate anything I do for you. And I’m tired of it and you constantly blaming me for everything.”

“What have you done for me? Cleaned the house and yard. You want a thank-you? Fine. Thank you.”

“I did it for the boys and because despite your objections, I could see you needed the help. Bridget is so angry and lost in her own pain, she can’t see your failing health, let alone the state of your home.”

Margaret put her hand to her chest. “You haven’t said anything.”

“Because you don’t care to hear anything I have to say. But you are going to listen to me now, because this”—she pointed from herself to Margaret and back—“can’t go on. Not if you want to be a real part of the kids’ lives.”

“I do. I want them to know me. And Sean. I don’t want them to forget him.”

“Then you are going to have to meet me halfway and stop ignoring me and everything I do for you. I don’t deserve it, and you’d know that if you stopped being so stubborn.”

“I know no such thing. Sean would have taken care of me. He would have made sure to keep in touch. He’d have sent pictures of the boys. He wouldn’t have just left me here all alone.” Margaret’s grief came out in full force, her eyes filling with unshed tears.

“You could have all of that, if you’d only open your mail.”

“What?” Confusion clouded Margaret’s eyes.

Of course Sarah had to clean this up, too.

She threw up her hands and paced a few steps back and forth. She glanced at Luke and then to Margaret and Bridget. She had to set things straight, but the thought of having to explain herself, yet again, made her so angry she wanted to punch something. “Come with me. I’ll show you how I take care of family. There’s something you need to see in the library.”

She didn’t wait for them to reply. She walked in the front door and headed straight for the library Margaret clearly never used, except to hide away the things she couldn’t face.

The basket full of large envelopes all with the Spenser Software return address and logo sat on the credenza behind the desk. Sarah had discovered them the first week she’d arrived at Margaret’s when she’d vacuumed the downstairs rooms. It infuriated her to discover that not a single envelope, except the first she’d sent, had been opened.

She slammed the basket down on the desk as Luke, Margaret, and Bridget entered the room. “Shut the door. I don’t want the boys to hear this.”

She waited while Luke shut the door and Margaret and Bridget moved into the room and faced her across the desk. Margaret eased herself into the chair; her slight frame had gone thin and frail the last two years. Her own damn fault. She just didn’t know it. Because Sarah had provided.

She’d taken the high road and done the right thing despite how hard Margaret made it to remain kind and not angry all the time.

Bridget stood with her arms folded, ready to do battle over her brother, even if he didn’t deserve it.

Sarah shouldn’t have let this go on for so long. She had her own excuses and reasons why she put Sean’s family on the back burner. He’d left her enough to clean up and take care of. She could only do so much.

More excuses and reasons that didn’t matter to Margaret, who suffered because of her own stubbornness and Sarah’s.

“You love Sean. You remember him a certain way.”

Margaret cautiously nodded, while Bridget glared at her sister-in-law.

“I have tried to allow you to keep your memories of Sean just as you remember him. Most of it is real. But what he told you about college, our marriage, the company . . . It’s all half-truths and lies. You’re so angry with me about what he told you, and I’ve allowed you to believe, because I didn’t want you to think less of Sean. Having two sons, I can see why you’d want to believe that Sean was a wonderful person without any flaws. But we all have flaws.”

“Some of us more than others,” Bridget shot back.

Margaret gave her one of those harsh looks she liked to level on Sarah, but it quickly faded and her gaze turned thoughtful. “He was wonderful until you came along and ruined everything. He had such a bright future ahead of him. The business was everything to him. He told me how you made him work so hard that he was never home. You were never happy because he couldn’t make money as fast as you wanted. He told me how you spent everything he made. You were so busy out having a good time that you couldn’t be bothered with the boys. He said you never let him come to see me, and kept the children away from us here. And I’ve seen you while you’ve been here. You’re constantly on the phone or computer, probably online shopping and chatting with your friends.” She said all the words, but the heat and certainty behind them waned as doubt crept in.

Luke didn’t react to anything Margaret said, surprising Sarah. He gave her a nod to prod her on.

“Yes, you’ve seen me on the phone and the computer. I’m working. Always working. Because I’m not just the name behind Spencer Software, I run Spencer Software. I always have. Sean had a dream but didn’t want to put in the hours and hard work it takes to build a company. So he used me to do it and took all the credit. Without my hard work and technical know-how there wouldn’t be a Spencer Software. “

She pinned Margaret in her gaze. “Everything you said about me wanting more money, always going out and having a good time, spending money we didn’t have, all of it applies to Sean. Not me.”

Margaret sucked in a breath in shock, but Sarah continued. She was going to make Margaret understand if it was the last thing she ever did. “Sean wouldn’t have gotten through his last year of college if it hadn’t been for me. He’d burned out and turned to drinking to cope, which made it even harder for him to get through his classes. He wanted to leave and start the company without finishing his degree. I convinced him he’d be better off with the degree in hand, that it would open doors. I got him through his last year of school. If you’ll remember graduation, you’ll recall I graduated summa cum laude, while Sean didn’t even graduate with honors.”

Margaret’s eyes turned thoughtful. Sarah assumed she was thinking back to graduation, and hopefully, to what her son was like when he attended college.

“He was quite the charmer back then. I never realized he was using me until it was too late and everything was a complete mess. He knew I had talent and he used my abilities and me because he saw an easy mark. A young woman alone and lonely; pay her attention, she’ll eat it up and try to please to get more.” It embarrassed her to remember how she’d been back then.

“Sarah.” Just her name on Luke’s lips conveyed all his sympathy and understanding.

She wasn’t that girl anymore. She stood up for herself now. “Yes, we started the company together, but early on, Sean just couldn’t keep up. He found it a lot easier, and much more fun, to be the salesperson and drum up business. I’m not saying that isn’t worth anything, but without all the work I did to back it up there would be no company today. And when that work made clients come to us and Sean didn’t have to sell so hard to keep the orders coming in, well, he liked to travel and have the time of his life. At first, he made it seem like the trips were for business, and then he just simply took off whenever he wanted. He was spending money like it would never run out, and I was trying to keep the company afloat.” She looked at Margaret with regret. “If you sent Sean money, I can tell you, it didn’t go into the business. He probably spent it on a trip, or . . . something else.”

Bridget had a question in her eyes that she didn’t voice, and then her gaze reflected whatever revelation came to her mind. Still, she said nothing.

Sarah wondered if Bridget had always known more about the real Sean than she let on.

She didn’t think Bridget would share, so she went on enlightening them to the realities of Sean’s life. “We’d been approached by venture capitalists to take the company public. We were in the process of doing just that when I got pregnant with Nick. I didn’t feel well during the pregnancy, so I frequently worked from home. The perfect setup. I could stay home with Jack and work while I was pregnant. It left a disconnect sometimes between me and what was happening in the office. Sean would bring the contracts home and I would do the work. What I didn’t know was for every five or six programs I was completing, Sean was taking credit for four of them, so the venture capitalists would continue to have confidence in his ability to run the company and continue to give the company money. We needed the investors’ money so we could get to the initial public offering of the stock. Sean felt once the stock went public the company would explode like all the other tech companies, and he’d be wealthy beyond belief.”

Margaret nodded. “That would have happened if he hadn’t died.”

“No, it wouldn’t have. When Sean died I sent you a check for what was left of his share of the business and our personal assets.” She opened the one envelope that Margaret had opened and pulled out the letter she had sent and the check.

“I remember that check. It’s for less than four hundred dollars. It was an insult that measly check was all that was left of Sean’s inheritance and the company.” Her anger built again. “It was you. Ever since he met you nothing was ever the same with him.”

Sarah rolled her eyes. “That’s for sure. I unwittingly allowed him to use me, so that he could live the life of a wealthy businessman, even if he had to steal it. And then he left me with a huge mess to clean up.”

“What do you mean, steal it?” Margaret didn’t understand the obvious.

“Luke, you’re a lawyer. Spell it out for her, because if I say the words, she won’t believe it.”

Luke sighed, hung his head for a second, then raised it, and looked Sarah in the eye. “Are you trying to tell us that Sean was embezzling money from the company?”

“Exactly.”

Luke swore. Margaret gasped. Bridget’s eyes went wide.

“When he died there was barely enough money left to make payroll. I had to sell everything we owned to pay off debts he racked up. I sold the house, the six luxury cars Sean had bought, several expensive watches. You name it, and Sean had bought it. I sold it all and still there wasn’t anything left. Then I had to go to the board of directors and investors and prove to them that the work Sean had claimed was his was actually mine. I had to convince them I could run the company and get them their money back.”

“Why didn’t you let it go?” Margaret asked, still not getting it.

Sarah frowned and tried to hold back the anger bubbling up in her gut, threatening to spew venomous words out of her mouth. “Let it go? I had over a hundred and twenty employees who depended on their jobs and the money from the company going public. I had a board of directors to answer to and the investors threatening legal action. I couldn’t let all those people lose their money because of what Sean had done. I could have ended up in jail and the boys would have lost their father and me for a time.

“I’m not blameless in all this. I simply didn’t care what Sean was doing anymore. I had turned my back on him and was trying to start a new company, so I could leave him.”

Margaret gasped.

Bridget avoided eye contact with any of them, making Sarah think that Sean had told her something about Sarah divorcing him. Or a version of it that made Sean look like the wronged party.

Margaret shook her head. “I really didn’t know how bad things were. Sean said he was unhappy in the marriage. But I never thought—”

“Yeah. You blamed me. And with all that going on, you demanded I keep the company for the boys. You made me promise. I didn’t want you to know what Sean had become. I couldn’t let anyone find out all he had done or everything would have fallen apart.”

“If I’d known . . . I just wanted something of Sean’s to survive.”

“It did. The children are his legacy. As for the company, well, Luke pointed out what I’m always reluctant to admit. The company was never Sean’s. It was always mine. I did the work. I made it a success.”

She opened the envelope on top of the stack and pulled out the contents.

“I kept my promise to you. The company is thriving. Since you didn’t cash the original check, I invested it in the company. When I was finally able to offer retirement accounts to the employees, I asked the investment specialist to diversify the money I had originally invested for you. This check represents your investment in Spencer Software and other investments I was advised to make. As for not keeping in touch with you, well, if you had opened this mail, you would know the answer to that. You were simply too angry to see the truth, and too stubborn to give me a chance.”

Margaret touched her fingertips to her temple. “I . . . I don’t know what to say.”

Sarah wasn’t done. “You blamed me for Sean’s death. You were right.”

Margaret’s head snapped up. “What?”

Luke leaned forward. “Sarah, that’s not true. Don’t take that on when Sean is the one to blame.”

“Maybe,” she acknowledged, because Sean had turned his back on her, their boys, and his own conscience. “But I’m the one who, with the help of the chief of police, who was a personal friend of mine, covered up what really happened the night Sean died.”

Bridget gnawed on her thumbnail, looking uncomfortable.

“Why would you cover up what happened?” The lawyer in Luke came out.

“I couldn’t allow the press or public to find out the truth. The stock would plummet, everyone would lose their jobs and livelihoods, the boys would find out the ugly truth about Sean . . . I just couldn’t let them find out . . .” She took a deep breath and finally said the truth out loud. “On the night Sean died he was racing home to confront me. Since he was never home, I left him a message that I was filing for divorce and taking the boys. Without me, there wouldn’t be a company, and he’d go to jail for stealing the money. He was drunk when he crossed the center divider and hit an oncoming car. I settled with the accident victims out of court and paid for their silence.” She looked at Luke. “The report you read said Sean lost control of the car on the rain-slicked road. That was only half true.”

Luke’s mouth drew into a tight line, but he gave her a nod to acknowledge he understood why she’d had to do it.

Margaret stared at her, wide-eyed and in shock.

Bridget bit her thumb too hard and winced.

Sarah wondered if they’d accept the truth, or hide behind denial and keep treating her like the enemy.

Luke already knew most of what she’d said, and a few other things he’d eluded to discovering during his investigation into Sean. She held those back from Margaret. Some things that would only disillusion Margaret more about the son she thought good and honorable.

Margaret needed to know, but—

A knock sounded a second before the library door opened and Jack peeked in. “Uh, Mom, Nick spilled the juice all over the kitchen counter and floor.”

“Na-uh. Jack did it,” Nick called out.

“Perfect. Another mess to clean up.” Maybe she’d confessed enough for one day anyway. “I’m coming.” She dropped the check and contents of the envelope on the desk and headed for the door.

She took Jack’s hand and stepped out of the room, closing the door on any further questions and leaving a lot still unsaid.