There was no way to tell. Yet.
Ella sank into the armchair on the far side of the room. The dog trailing her jumped up into her lap like a large puppy and paced in a circle as he tried to find the right spot to lay down. As a consequence, he nailed her on the side of the face with his tail.
She shot a hand up to deflect it on the next pass. “Come on, Fred.”
He made two more circles before wedging his butt between her and the arm of the chair, his paws over her lap. He set his muzzle down on them with a heavy sigh and closed his eyes.
She dug the fingers of her free hand into the thick fur on the back of his neck. “I know, bud. Long day.”
Jack folded himself down onto the far side of the couch. The other dog, Sam, scampered up from the fireplace and spread out beside him, leaving me with the remaining oversized armchair.
I hesitated to take it, unsure if I was staying. I’d managed to pull my gloves and coat off after walking through the door, no thanks to the dogs, but my boots, which I’d cleaned the snow from before coming inside, were still firmly tied to my feet in case I had to make a hasty getaway. Not that I expected I’d need to – Jack seemed like a pretty good judge of character – but I’d learned over the years that it was better to be prepared to run than it was to get caught out on Instagram by someone looking for their fifteen minutes of fame at your expense.
“You had Willow today?” Jack asked Ella.
She nodded. “Jane and Dave spent the morning finishing up her Christmas shopping and then went home to wrap. The plan was to have some low-key craft time with her at my house, but then she got into the candy canes, and I had to take her sledding to burn off the energy.”
Jack arched a brow. “It work?”
“God, no.”
“Willow is your niece?” I asked, trying to sift through all the names that Jack had mentioned.
“Yup.” She pointed to the mantle of the fireplace. “She’s the little girl in the far right picture.”
I stepped over for a closer look. In the photograph, a small girl with almost as much hair as I had ran through a field of wildflowers. It was shot in late afternoon, with the sun slanting low, rendering the light that surrounded her a soft, hazy gold. It would have been adorable if not for the manic expression on her face that made it seem less likea peaceful frolic and more like she was sprinting toward the person holding the camera like she planned to tackle them.
“She looks like a handful,” I said.
Jack and Ella laughed in response.
“You have no idea,” Ella said.
Sounds like Micah.
Grief punched through me at the thought of my nephew. I locked the emotion down and buried it deep before it could show on my face. More pictures spread out along the mantle, and I took my time looking at them, needing a distraction right now.
Next to Willow’s portrait was one of Jack and his wife Renee, who I recognized from the much larger photo hanging just down the hall. Beside the picture of the couple sat one of them and their grown children. Next to that was one of Jack and a man that looked about a decade older than him, their arms around each other’s shoulders.
My gaze finally settled on a large frame absolutely crammed full of people – a much more visually diverse group of people than I ever expected to see after moving to this part of Maine. I leaned in and picked out Willow and Ella from the crowd.
“Are all these people your family members?” I asked, turning toward Ella.
She nodded. “The middle-aged couple on the left are my parents. The man beside them is my oldest brother, Jacob, with his wife and sons. The woman beside them is my oldest sister, Megan, with her wife, Stacey, on her right. The woman beside them is my sister Jane. Her husband, Dave, is the one holding Willow. Then there’s me, my younger brother Charlie, and the baby in the family, Anabel.”
Jack’s landline rang – another thing I didn’t think he owned was a cellphone. He pushed himself up from the couch, carefully, so as not to upset Sam, and went to answer it. I overheard him say hello beforehe disappeared down the hall, leaving Ella and me alone with the dogs again.
“Are you all adopted?” I asked.
She was the only white sibling in the picture, so she could have been biological, but I didn’t think so. Her parents, also white, were both short and had dark hair. She looked nothing like them.
“We are,” Ella said. “Mom and Dad wanted a big family but struggled with infertility. It’s pretty common to look outside the US to adopt. Jacob is from Somalia, Megan is from China, Jane is from India, Charlie is from Afghanistan, Anabel is from South Korea, and I’m from what’s now Montenegro.”
I frowned, thinking back to my world history classes as I tried to place her age. “You weren’t adopted during the Bosnian War, were you?”
She nodded.
“Damn.”
