A Father's Stake. Mary Anne Wilson

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       CHAPTER TWO

      THE TRIP FROM Los Angeles to Albuquerque, New Mexico was the first time Grace Evans had ever flown in her twenty-six years. As she stepped out of the terminal with her suitcase and overnight bag, she spotted a tram she was supposed to use to pick up her rental car. Half an hour later, she was in that car, a red compact, and heading out of the terminal parking lot toward her future. At least she hoped it was her future—her daughter’s and her mother’s as well.

      Her world had been turned upside down, and she still didn’t know if this trip would lead to something more than a huge wish on her part. It had all started two weeks ago. After a double shift waitressing at the diner, she had been exhausted as she’d headed to the tiny, second story apartment she and her family shared in a less than gentrified area of Los Angeles. All she wanted was a hot bath after ten hours on her feet.

      She’d found her mother in the living room with a stranger. The man probably wasn’t much taller than her own five-feet-two-inches and was sitting in the rocking chair. Grace had immediately noticed the assortment of papers spread on the low coffee table.

      The stranger stood when he saw her, smoothing the front of his elegant dove-gray suit.

      “I am Ethan Vaughn, with the Seals, Silkirk and Vaughn Law Firm.” Grace barely had the time to acknowledge her mother’s strained expression before he took her hand and said, “I am representing your father in a legal matter that concerns you.”

      She’d just stared at him. Her father? She looked around, then let go of his hand and sank onto the couch by her mother. Reclaiming his seat in the rocker, he’d leaned forward, picked up a couple of papers and handed them to her.

      The first one she read was a deed for a three hundred acre property in New Mexico, outside a small town called Wolf Lake. “What is this?” she asked, then stopped as she saw her name on the deed. She stared at it, certain she was hallucinating.

      “A property deed and....” He motioned for her to look at the next sheet of paper.

      The hallucination expanded. In her hands was a cashier’s check for fifty thousand dollars attached to a verification letter that had her name on it. She’d shaken her head, then turned to her mother. Gabriella Michaels touched her daughter’s knees. “It’s yours,” she said in a shaky voice. “It’s all yours.”

      Mr. Vaughn had spoken then. “Your father wanted me to bring these to you.”

      Charles Luther Michaels had disappeared from Grace’s life when she was about three years old. The man had been there one day, and gone the next. No goodbyes, no arguments, no warning.

      “He’s restless,” her mother had explained more than once. “He needs to be on the move, and he’s not equipped to be a husband or a father.” The words had meant little to a tiny girl who didn’t have a daddy anymore, and though the tears had long since dried up, she had never quite lost that deep longing for a family.

      When her own marriage had failed, she wondered if she’d deliberately picked a man like her father to try and prove to herself that she could make it work. But she’d been wrong. So very wrong. Her daughter Lilly, now six, hadn’t even been born when Jerry Evans said he couldn’t do the whole family thing. Her mother’s mistake had become her own, and the only good thing out of the mess was her daughter. Grace had listened as Mr. Vaughn explained that the deed and money were hers if she wanted them. If not, they could go to charity. She’d almost laughed at that, although she’d recognized that the laughter would have bordered on hysteria. She was close to being her own charity with a child to support.

      As she drove now into the afternoon sun, the New Mexico countryside passing by unnoticed, her mind refused to settle. By the time Mr. Vaughn had left the apartment that day, she’d known that no matter what the reason behind this sudden windfall, it was hers, and she could make the life she’d always dreamed of for her little family.

      Maybe Lilly could go to a school that didn’t require security guards at the doors, even for kindergarten. The air had to be cleaner out here, the streets safer. As the miles flew by, she was getting closer and closer to the end of her own personal rainbow. New Mexico. She’d never thought much about it before, except for the city of Taos far to the south, an artists’ mecca. But that had been in her teens, when she’d had dreams of being an artist after she graduated from high school. Instead she’d ended up as waitress at The Table, a down-on-its-heels diner.

      She exhaled. The owners were talking about making the diner into a bikini bar, giving the area yet another dive. Now she wouldn’t have to figure out how to get another job in the city or worry about how she could make her boyish figure fill out a bikini. She shook her head at that thought. She’d been getting a bit desperate before Mr. Vaughn suddenly appeared in her apartment.

      She glanced at her bag on the passenger seat and smiled. If this worked out, she wouldn’t ever be desperate again. She had images of rolling pastures and maybe a horse or two, some cows and chickens, definitely a dog and a cat. Everything she’d never had and never would have in her Los Angeles neighborhood. Clean air, clear skies, safe surroundings. It all sounded like a fairy tale to her.

      She just didn’t know why the euphoria she’d had while planning this trip had deflated a bit since she got on the plane. She felt a tinge of fear now that all this might just be her own fantasy. After all, her father had never owned anything, he’d never wanted to. No money, no land, nothing like that.

      That afternoon in her apartment, she’d looked from Mr. Vaughn to her mother and voiced her confusion. “I don’t understand any of this. Is he dead?”