“Yep,” Nikki said sadly. “That was all he cared about. Not her. Not me, and certainly not Mom. He had to look good all the time, and we were often ushered into the shadows. We had to become journalists like him. Even in that, we didn’t have a choice.”
“You didn’t want to be a journalist?” Paul asked as his brows dipped.
“I did, but if I hadn’t, he’d have forced the issue. For a while, Trish didn’t want to do that,” Nikki told him. “But he told her she had to have the baby and then come back to Seattle University to study journalism, and she did. But as you can see, she wanted to run a business.”
“Life wasn’t all roses and unicorns,” Paul replied. “I can’t say there was much difference in my own household. Not my parents, I mean,” he said as he explained and crossed his arms on the table.
“With your wife and daughter, you mean?” Nikki asked sensitively.
“Yeah.” He sighed as he stared at the table. “It’s been ten years, and the wound still feels fresh. It was a jarring time when I found out she had late-stage leukemia. Sarah was only thirteen when we found out, and that took a turn for the worst,” he said.
“I can’t imagine it was easy for you to handle a teen girl,” Nikki said.
“You have no idea,” he replied. “After Nat died, it was even worse. I was hurting, and there were times I had to just lock away what I was feeling to try to deal with what Sarah was going through.”
“As if the teenage years weren’t bad enough,” Nikki said with understanding. “I’m sorry you had to go through that all alone. It was clearly not easy. I remember what it was like losing my parents, and I wasn’t even close to them at the time. But they’re your parents, you know?”
“Yeah,” Paul said and wiped his hands down the corners of his mouth. “Why is there so much sadness between us?”
Nikki laughed softly. “I don’t know,” she replied. “Bad luck?”
“Perhaps,” Paul replied. “How about livelier things. You are a big-shot journalist like your father.”
She smiled. “Yeah, I’ve been killing it for the past twenty years at theProvidence Journal.”
“Picked up where your dad left off?”
“Something like that,” she said. “I love doing it, but my ex-husband hated it. He thought I should have done something more ‘respectable’ like report on war crimes.”
“He clearly didn’t know you well,” Paul replied. “You? In a war zone?”
Nikki laughed. “You know me all too well. I like safety.”
“As we all should,” he said and started to stare at her until he could see the discomfort on her face. “I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable, but it’s hard not to wonder, why now? Why are you back now?”
“Paul, I try not to get too serendipitous when it comes to us. I don’t want to get ahead of anything and then get disappointed. I just want to focus on my sister for now.”
“I know,” he said as he reached for the file again. “Where do you want us to begin?”
“We know she lives in Seattle, which is great. That’s close by versus if she were living in New York now or Alaska.”
“True,” Nikki replied.
“She’s a server, by what’s in here. She’s had some run-ins with some bad company and has trouble with an ex-boyfriend or boyfriend,” he said as he lifted his head to look at her. “How do you want to approach her?”
“I mean, it’s very convenient that she works as a server,” Nikki told him. “We could go to Seattle to the restaurant where she works. Keep an eye on her for a night or two and see what she’s like.”
Paul knitted his brows. “You’re not trying to delay the inevitable, are you?”
“No, no,” Nikki assured. “I just don’t think I’d want some strangers showing up out of the blue to tell me that I’m their long-lost aunt and I’m adopted.”
“Hmm,” he mused. “You may have a point. But won’t she get suspicious if she sees us there all the time andthenwe tell her who we are? Maybe a direct approach is better.”
“The two ways have their merits,” Nikki agreed. “Okay, here’s what we can do. How about we go there and just go with the flow? Maybe we’ll say it on day one, or we’ll wait.”
“I can live with that. When do you want to go?” he asked.
“As soon as possible. We’ve waited long enough, and I’m afraid I might get cold feet if we keep dragging this out.”
