Finally a Family

“What?” The question exploded out of Ethan as his tilting chair slammed on the floor. “Read that again?”

Dan sighed. “Please, Ethan. Just wait. Let me finish. ‘Hannah, you get this half of the farm on one condition. You stay here in Riverbend for six months, and you stay on the farm. When six months is over, you can do what you want with your half. If you leave before the six months are up, you don’t get half.’” Dan glanced up at Hannah. “Do you understand what I just read?”

Though Hannah nodded, she struggled to process the concept. She chanced a quick look at the man beside her.

Ethan rocked in his chair as well, his face hard and angry. Not difficult to see he didn’t like the idea, either.

CAROLYNE AARSEN

and her husband Richard live on a small ranch in northern Alberta, where they have raised four children and numerous foster children, and are still raising cattle. Carolyne crafts her stories in her office with a large west-facing window, through which she can watch the changing seasons while struggling to make her words obey.

Finally a Family

Carolyne Aarsen

Published by Steeple Hill Books™

Accept one another then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.

—Romans 15:7

To the children who never had a choice.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Questions for Discussion

Chapter One

So this was the town Sam had scurried back to thirteen years ago.

Hannah rocked back and forth on her feet as she looked up and down the main street of Riverbend, studying it through the eyes of one left behind for this place.

The downtown boasted older-style brick buildings and ash trees lining the street, the first hint of spring in the fresh green misting their bare branches. Pleasant enough.

Even though Sam wasn’t Hannah’s biological father, she thought his nine-year relationship with her and her mother would have given him some permanent stake in their lives. But this town and his extended family had obviously exerted a pull stronger than they had because in the thirteen years he was gone he never came back for her, or wrote or even phoned. Two days ago, however, Hannah received the news from someone named Dan that Sam had passed away three weeks earlier. Dan had politely requested that she come to Riverbend for the reading of Sam’s will.

Hannah glanced down Main Street and pulled a face. This town was too small for this big-city girl’s liking. Far removed from any major centre and with too many pickup trucks, Hannah thought, her attention drawn by a particularly loud red one making its way down the street toward her.

Hannah flipped open her cell phone and, though she’d had it on since she left Toronto, she checked her messages again. Nothing from Lizzie, her business partner, about how things were progressing on the purchase. Hannah had been reluctant to leave, but Lizzie had encouraged her, saying that nothing was going to happen in the next week, so here she was. She didn’t need to meet with the Westervelds till tomorrow, but curiosity had her come a day early. Just to explore and familiarize herself with Sam’s surroundings.

Hannah pushed back her own concerns as she drew in a long, slow breath, catching the tantalizing whiff of coffee blended with the distinctive scent of yeast and bread.

She rolled her stiff shoulders as the light changed, already anticipating the bite of the dark brew combined with a warm muffin. Or maybe a Danish.

A couple of young girls slipped past her and dashed across the street, waving at the driver of the noisy red pickup who had turned onto the main street and was parking in front of the bakery.

Then one of the girls bumped into a little boy coming out of the bakery.

The boy dropped his doughnut and his lip quivered as he looked at the treat now lying frosting-side down on the sidewalk. She hurried to his side and knelt in front of him. “Are you okay?” she asked.

He only nodded as she checked her pockets for loose change, but all that came up were a few nickels.

“Susie Corbett, get back here.” A man stepping out of the fancy red truck called out to the delinquent girls.

The shorter girl with the curly blond hair heeded the summons and slowed her steps. The other kept running.

“I said now, Susie.” While he barked out his demand, the man walked over to Hannah and the little boy.

“You okay, Todd?” he asked, though his gaze came to rest on Hannah.

His eyes, an unusual color of sage, fringed with thick, dark eyelashes, caught and held her attention. His finely shaped lips curved into a crooked smile emphasizing his hollow cheekbones. His expression clearly had one intention. “Thanks for helping,” he said, the timbre of his voice lowering and, in spite of knowing what he was playing at, Hannah felt a lift of attraction.

“Back at you.” She kept her smile aloof. No sense encouraging one of the locals on a quick visit.

She forced her attention back to the little boy. “Sorry, I don’t have enough change for another doughnut,” she said.

He sighed and nodded.

“That’s okay. Susie will pay,” the man said as the girl came nearer. “Won’t you, Susie? I think you owe Todd about fifty cents.”

“Uncle Ethan,” she wailed, but even as she protested, she dug in her pocket. “You won’t tell Mom, will you?” she asked as she handed the money over.

“Of course I won’t tell your mom, you little twerp. Just don’t act like such a toughie.” He made the letter V with his fingers and pointed them at his eyes. “Remember, I see everything.”

Susie gave a nervous laugh.

“Okay, Uncle Ethan.” She took a few hesitant steps backward. “Can I go now?”

Uncle Ethan flipped his hand toward her in a dismissive gesture. “Shoo. Run along.” Ethan handed the coins to the little boy, who took them with a quickly murmured thank-you and scooted inside the bakery.

When Hannah stood, Ethan looked at her again. This time she caught a hint of puzzlement in his eyes.

“Do I know you?”

Hannah laughed then. Any number of smart remarks came to mind, but his laugh answered hers before she could share any of them.

“That was as lame as a two-legged cat. Sorry.” He scratched his head, rearranging his hair.

Weekend cowboy, Hannah deduced, taking in the long legs clad in crisp blue jeans and the polished cowboy boots.

“It’s so hard to come up with original lines these days. All the best ones have been taken,” Hannah said.

He looked as if he was about to answer with a smart remark of his own when a woman’s voice caught his attention.

“Ethan. Wait up.” A lithe blond woman came alongside him and slipped her arm through his. “I didn’t know you were coming to town, handsome.”

Ethan flicked his attention toward the woman, then back to Hannah.

Who, officially, was no longer interested. She had spent too much time with guys like Ethan. They encouraged women until things got too serious, then the men developed a sudden severe case of attention deficit disorder and moved on to another woman.

Case in point, Alex Deerborn.

No thanks.

She moved past him, the scent of coffee growing stronger and more tantalizing by the minute.

“So who was that?” she heard the blonde ask.

“I’m not sure, Jocelyn,” he responded.

His vague comment made her look back again. “Uncle Ethan” stared at her, a frown pulling his well-shaped eyebrows together, ignoring the woman clinging to his arm.

“I think I saw her.”

Morris Westerveld lowered his newspaper and favored his son with a puzzled look. “Saw who?”

“Hannah Kristoferson.” Ethan dropped onto the couch in his parents’ house, balancing the plate he’d stacked high with the freshly baked peanut-butter-chip cookies he’d found cooling on the kitchen counter. He’d lived on the farm for the past few years, but he still dropped in on his parents in town from time to time. Though his father, the principal of Riverbend High School, hadn’t done any work on the farm since he was in high school himself, Ethan often used him as a sounding board. Although his dad had never liked farm work or living on the farm, he humored Ethan by listening.

“Where did you see her?”

“I thought I saw her by the bakery after I gave Susie trouble for knocking Todd over.”

“What does she look like?”

“She should comb her hair. I’m sure Janie didn’t let her out of the house looking like that.”

“I meant that Hannah girl.”

Ethan took another bite. He had known whom his father meant. He didn’t want to think about Hannah and why exactly his uncle Sam had been so insistent she come for a simple reading of a will that had been postponed against her arrival.

“She’s tall. Long brownish hair, pretty thick. Curly. She was wearing some kind of bandanna over it. Brown eyes. Doesn’t look much different from the picture Uncle Sam had in the house.” Ethan added a shrug to the monologue as if to show his father that Hannah was simply an inconvenient blip on his radar instead of someone he’d been wondering about ever since he had first seen that picture.

Ethan didn’t want to think about the implications of Hannah’s presence and the questions that raised. He preferred to concentrate on the chewy cookies and the shred of comfort they gave him. A feeling in short supply since Sam’s death.

Though Sam had been in the hospital for the past six months, each morning Ethan got up, he still expected to see his beloved uncle and farming partner standing by the stove, asking Ethan how he wanted his eggs. Each morning the pain was as deep as the day before. That had made it difficult to get the equipment ready this spring for a job that, of all the farm work, Sam had loved the most. Working the fields.

“She doesn’t sound too remarkable,” his father said.

“Nope.” Ethan took another healthy bite. “Nothing remarkable about her at all.”

And he was lying through the peanut butter chips filling his mouth. When he had seen the girl he assumed was Hannah standing on the street corner, her expression holding the faintest glint of humor, he’d been intrigued enough to slow his truck down for a second look.

When she had tried to help out his nephew, she struck a chord in his heart. And then he’d tossed out that lame question.

Do I know you?

He blamed his lapse on the hint of laughter in the shape of her arching eyebrows and her soft mouth. Brown hair flowing like melted chocolate over her shoulders and down her back had also added to his momentary brainlessness.

In spite of his rather uncharacteristically gauche question, he still wanted to go after her and ask her a few questions, which would have violated his hard-won rules for living.

Keep your pride. Don’t go running after any girl. Let them come to you.

This had been his mantra ever since Colby left him the day before their wedding because she suddenly decided she couldn’t move onto the farm.

It took him four months to get over her, five months to use up all the envelopes that came with the thank-you cards and six months to decide he would never go running after a girl again.

“Hannah was supposed to be here by today, so that girl could easily have been her.” Morris Westerveld gave his newspaper a shake and dived into the news of the world again.

Ethan sighed and picked a crumb off his fingertip.

If that girl was Hannah, she would bring nothing but questions and potential trouble to the family and—more specifically—to him.

The family had all breathed a collective sigh of relief when Sam came back from Ontario thirteen years ago. Grandpa Westerveld, Sam’s partner on the family farm, had been injured in a bad accident and Sam was needed. Ethan was sixteen at the time and chafing to quit school so he could work full-time with his grandfather on their family farm. Ever since he could throw a bale, Ethan had spent evenings and weekends and every holiday helping his grandpa.

Sam slipped back into the groove but never said much about the nine years he’d been gone or the woman that he’d been living with and her little girl. Nor did he ever get married.

After Grandpa Westerveld died, Sam, his son, took over the struggling farm, and when Ethan graduated from high school Sam took his nephew on as his new partner.

Now Sam was dead, after a six-month battle with cancer. And, per Sam’s request, Sam wanted one Hannah Kristoferson and Ethan Westerveld at a private reading of his will, the reading to be put off until such time as one Hannah Kristoferson could be tracked down.

Though no one understood the reasons for Sam’s unusual request, the Westerveld family all knew about Hannah and her mother, Marla, and their involvement with their brother and uncle.

Sam and his father had had a falling out and Sam had left, determined to make it on his own. He started hitchhiking across Canada and got as far as Toronto, where he met Marla and Hannah at a Laundromat. Hannah was three. He dated Marla for a time and then moved in.

During Sam’s stay in Toronto, the family kept up a regular communication with Sam. They all wrote and phoned. When he returned, he never mentioned Marla or Hannah. The only reminder of those lost years was a few pictures and some homemade cards, and the cheques he sent Marla Kristoferson every month.

When Sam was admitted to the hospital, he asked the family to try to find Hannah so he could see her before he died. By the time they finally found her, Sam had been dead and buried for three weeks.

Ethan pushed himself off the couch. He didn’t need to give Hannah or her mother any more headspace. He had too much work to do and too little time to do it in.

Chapter Two

Hannah paused at the entrance to the acreage to check the name on the sign: Dan and Tilly Westerveld. She put the car in gear, took a calming breath and turned down the driveway. The tall spruce trees lining the driveway could have been welcoming or sinister, depending on one’s mental state.

Right now, echoes of Hansel and Gretel were teasing her memories. Though Hannah was pretty sure no tempting gingerbread house complete with wicked witch lay at the end of the graveled driveway, a sense of foreboding still surrounded her as she drove.

The driveway gave one more turn and then opened up into a large open space, also surrounded by spruce trees. She slowed, then turned toward an area she presumed was a parking lot. It was occupied by a small white car and the same bright red truck Hannah had seen her first day in town.

Hannah locked the car and, as she slipped the keys into her purse, took a moment to look at the Westerveld home. The house was large, all shades of cream and brown, and set off by a heavy fieldstone foundation.

Contemporary, imposing and probably expensive.

The house had two wings connected by a thirty-foot-high section composed of glass, creating an abundance of natural light.

Dan Westerveld must share Sam’s love of gardening, from the look of the large landscaped lawn broken up with clumps of shrubs and flowers. Beyond the house Hannah caught a glimpse of a fountain and a gazebo flanked by flower beds.

Spikes and a few patches of green broke through the dirt. She would love to see this place in the summertime, she thought with a tinge of disloyalty, letting the peace and quiet of the place surround her.

It had taken a lot of money and a lot of time to make this place look like this. The house alone would have set them back beaucoup bucks, never mind the landscaping costs.

What was a simple hairdresser with plans of buying an old, decrepit salon thinking this family owed her?

Her anger and her grief over Sam were inextricably intertwined with her anger against his family. If they hadn’t interfered, she might have had a father yet. If the Westervelds had stayed out of their business, her teen years might have had some cohesion and order instead of the chaos and confusion it fell into after Sam left.

She strode up the brick walk, marched up the slate steps to the recessed front door and pressed the doorbell.

Hannah, taking charge.

After a few moments, the door opened to reveal a middle-aged woman clad in blue jeans, a corduroy blazer over a white T-shirt and a polite smile.

“You must be Hannah. Come in.” She stood aside to let Hannah in. “I’m Tilly Westerveld. Welcome to our home.”

The interior was even more impressive than the exterior. The entrance soared two floors, lit by the wall of windows.

“Can I take your coat?” Tilly asked as Hannah’s eyes were drawn, against their will, to a staircase arching gracefully up to the second floor. To her right, through a set of sliding wooden and glass doors, she saw upholstered chairs pushed up to a gleaming wooden table in a dining room, also open to the second floor.

“Sure,” Hannah said, feeling a bit dazed by her surroundings.

“Dan and Ethan are in the study. Would you like a cup of coffee or tea before you go in?”

“Um…no, thanks.” She gave Tilly a belated smile.

“Would you like me to show you the way?”

Tilly’s own smile was as polite as before but Hannah caught a hint of tightness around her mouth. She guessed Tilly Westerveld wasn’t elated to see her.

“That’s not necessary. Just tell me how to get there.”

“The study is just past the stairs. Turn to your left and then left again. The door is open.” Tilly waved her hand toward the hallway leading off the foyer.

“Thanks.” Feeling vulnerable without her jacket, Hannah folded her arms over her stomach and followed Tilly’s directions, a sense of unreality surrounding her like a cloud. She tried not to stare as a double set of glass doors off the hallway to her right afforded her a glimpse of another large room, the great room, she suspected, with its massive fireplace, numerous leather chairs and couches and floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the backyard. A woman sat curled up in one corner of the couch. She looked up as Hannah passed and lowered her book, her features transforming from curiosity to bored disinterest.

Hannah heard the sound of murmuring voices and made another turn, focusing on the reason she was here. The door to the study was half-open, so Hannah knocked lightly on it and waited.

“Hannah Kristoferson?”

The door opened and a man stood in front of her, tall, slightly graying hair, friendly blue eyes with laugh lines radiating from their corners. Just like Sam’s. His genuine smile created a hitch in her heart which, compounded with the embarrassment of being caught snooping, made her feel flustered.

“Yes. Sorry. Your wife…told me to come here—” she waved backward, down the hallway in the general direction of the rest of the house “—so I…I’m here. I didn’t mean to stare. It’s just…your yard. It’s…it’s lovely.”

And…stop.

“Why, thank you, Hannah.” Dan Westerveld walked toward the window and beckoned for her to follow. “Come here and you can have a better look.”

“No, that’s okay. I mean, I’m here for a meeting, right?”

“Don’t fuss on account of me,” she heard a deep voice drawl from the other side of the room.

A tall figure stood in front of a set of bookshelves covering the entire wall, floor to ceiling. He held a magazine in one hand, and continued flipping through it while he watched her.

His faint smile mocked her even as she read the interest in his eyes.

“Uncle Ethan.” Ethan Westerveld.

Well, she wasn’t reciprocating his interest. Coming to this Westerveld stronghold had never been a goal. Cozying up to one of “them,” certainly not on the list, no matter how good-looking he may be.

Besides, his whole posture, that look on his face, the smile bordering on self-confident smirk all added up to consummate flirt. Shades of Alex.

She turned back to Dan Westerveld, determined to regain some kind of ground. “Looks to me like you’ve got peonies coming up in the front. What kind are they?” she asked, making conversation as she walked to the window, allowing herself a good look at the yard she had so admired.

“They come from hearty prairie stock my mother’s mother planted on their home site.” Dan stood beside her, his hands in the pockets of his pants. “Sam gave me some cuttings a few years back. He farms…farmed, the old place.” Dan laughed lightly. “Have to get used to the idea,” he said softly. “He was a good man, my brother.”

“I’d like to tell you again I’m sorry,” Hannah said. Politeness deemed she show some respect for his loss. She wished she could be a bit more sincere, but there it was.

“He had a rough few months, toward the end. He was in a lot of pain, but he died knowing he was a child of God and that he was going on to a better place.”

Hannah acknowledged the sentiments with an impersonal nod. She should have known she would bump against Sam’s presence and the beliefs of his family often and in many guises. She might as well get used to the pious talk.

“Have you met my nephew Ethan?” Dan asked, walking around to the other side of his desk. “Ethan, this is Hannah Kristoferson. Hannah, Ethan Westerveld.”

“We met,” Ethan said, laying the magazine aside on a table and sauntering over. A man in charge of his world and comfortable in this place.

“If you want to call that a meeting,” Hannah countered, annoyed with his attitude.

Ethan didn’t stop until he stood in front of her. “Of course it was.” His eyes flicked over her face, as if taking her up on her challenge.

Hannah caught a glint of humor in his gray-green eyes, but she refused to respond.

“Now that you are both here, we can begin.” Dan picked up a pair of glasses and slipped them on his face as he moved some papers on his desk aside. Without looking up, he motioned to the two empty chairs in front of the desk. “You two can sit down instead of circling each other like a couple of banty roosters.”

“Only one rooster, Uncle Dan,” Ethan corrected, hooking the other chair with his shiny cowboy boot and pulling it closer. “And one hen.”

“That could be insulting,” Hannah said.

“Just trying to be biologically correct,” Ethan returned.

“The term is politically correct.”

“Honey, when it comes to chickens the only politics is, the male rules the roost.”

“Until he gets henpecked.”

“Can we start?” Dan prompted, shooting his nephew a warning glance.

Ethan sat, resting his one booted foot across his knee, pushing the chair on its back two legs. Obviously the man felt at home.

Dan gave her a thoughtful look. “Before we start, however, I also want to extend my condolences on the death of your mother.”

His sympathies, though kind, caught her off guard. Though it had been only four months since she’d stood alone beside her mother’s grave, the sharpest edges of her sorrow had already been dulled.

“I’m sure you must miss her,” Dan continued.

“I do, though we hadn’t seen much of each other the past few years.”

Ethan looked puzzled. “But I thought—”