Dead Certain - Mariah Stewart [80]
“It’s nice to meet you,” Ramona said to Amanda.
“It’s nice to meet you, too, Ramona.”
The waitress arrived with their meals. “Sorry, I forgot about your salads,” she said as she put their plates down. “You eating, hon?” she asked Ramona.
“Oh. No. I . . . I’m not staying.” She gave Sean a weak smile. “Will you call me? Please?”
“Sure.” He nodded.
“Bye.” She turned sad eyes to Amanda, then walked away.
The waitress returned with their salads. “Sorry. Things just got hectic all of a sudden in the kitchen.” She looked over the table. “I forget anything else? More iced tea, Chief? Miss?”
They both shook their heads.
“Holler if you need me.”
They ate in silence for several minutes.
“How’s your meat loaf?” he asked.
“Fine.”
More silence.
Finally, Amanda couldn’t stand it any longer. “She seemed so sad. Ramona.”
When Sean did not respond, she said, “Sorry. Didn’t mean to pry.”
Sean continued to chew.
“It’s not what you think,” he said after a time.
“I wasn’t thinking anything.”
“Yes, you were. You’re thinking she’s an old girlfriend”—he put his fork down—“and that I just rudely blew her off.”
“None of my business.”
The fingers of his right hand began to tap on the tabletop, and his eyes narrowed, as if he were in the midst of an inner debate.
“I hardly know her,” he finally said.
“Sean, you don’t need to feel that you—”
“She thinks she’s my sister,” he pretty much blurted out.
Amanda’s jaw dropped noticeably. “She thinks she’s . . .” Amanda repeated slowly, as if not quite understanding.
“She thinks she’s my sister.” He said it again, more deliberately.
“Why does she think that?”
“Because Greer told her she was.”
“You’ll forgive me if I appear to be having a little problem following all this.”
“How do you think I feel?”
“How do you feel?”
“I don’t know.”
“Okay, Greer told Ramona that she is your sister.” Amanda paused. “Half sister or whole sister?”
“Greer thinks maybe half, but no one’s really sure. That part’s apparently still up in the air.”
“How did she find you?”
“Greer found her.”
“How?”
“Same way she found me.”
“Well, that turned out fine. I don’t understand what the problem is.”
“The problem is that Greer wants to embrace Ramona like—” He stopped in midsentence.
“Like a long lost sister?” She finished it for him.
“You’ve seen how Greer is. She is just too trusting. Too open. Before you know it, she’ll have Ramona under her wing like the mother hen she is.”
“And that would be wrong because . . . ?”
“What if it turns out not to be true? Greer’s heart is going to be broken.”
“I would think that for Greer to have contacted her, she’d have researched this pretty carefully,” Amanda said gently.
“I have no reason to believe that my mother ever had any children other than Greer and me. And she didn’t want either of us. Dumped us both on her mother and never looked back. Why would she have gone and had another child?”
“You were very young then. You wouldn’t have known whether your mother had had another child. And what if it’s the truth? What if Ramona really is your sister?”
“She’s not.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because.” His jaw set squarely and he made a point to look away.
“Because you don’t want her to be?”
“Bring you folks anything else? Coffee? Dessert?” The waitress paused in flight past the table.
“Amanda?”
She shook her head.
“Just the check, please, Linda.”
Linda stopped long enough to total up the check and drop it onto the end of the table. “Thanks, Chief. See you tomorrow.”
“You eat here every day?” Amanda asked on their way out, more to break the uncomfortable silence than because she was deeply interested.
“Pretty much.”
A serious rattle of thunder greeted them as they started down the steps from the door to the parking lot. A crackle of lightning burst close by. They both looked skyward and mentally calculated the arrival time of the impending storm.
“Look, I guess I was out of line,” she said when they’d gotten into the Jeep. “I said more than I should have. I’m sorry. It’s none of my business.”
“My fault for bringing it up.”
He started