Read Online Family Matters (DiCarlo Brides book 4) (The DiCarlo Brides) by Heather Tullis - Free Book Online

entitled to their evening of stupidity. At least I cashed in because of mine.”
    Rosemary clenched her teeth and told herself not to react. That’s all she had been to her mother—a paycheck. George had been very generous with his financial support, but it was never enough for Wanda. Even knowing her mother never loved her, it still hurt to hear it now.
    Rosemary went into the garage, thinking that she would give herself five minutes to stew and then she would move on. Worrying about her mother only stressed Rosemary, and didn’t fix anything. The shelves were full—fuller than she remembered, but she hadn’t been in there for years. The walls were full of shelves and pegboard organizing garden tools, half-empty paint cans and camping gear.
    The car was still parked there—it was a new mid-sized sedan, a Honda in midnight blue and still had the dealer-printed plate in the back window. That meant the real plate was probably in the pile of mail on the hall table. Since the car wasn’t going anywhere for a while, Rosemary opted to ignore it for now.
    Don and Cecelia had taken the nearby subway tunnel into downtown DC for their lunch date, leaving the car parked—a not uncommon event considering how hard it could be to find parking downtown.
     Rosemary ran her hand over the glossy paint and remembered the faded Geo Metro they’d been driving since before Cleo was born. They had taken her to the hospital in that car, had brought her and Cleo home again a couple of days later. She had remembered sitting behind Cecelia and looking over at her baby’s face, the sweet way she puckered her lips in sleep, the few bare inches of skin they allowed to show between her soft pink sleepers and the blankets.
    Rosemary had reached over and brushed her knuckle down Cleo’s cheek, knowing she wouldn’t have too many more chances. She’d made arrangements to miss a few weeks of classes, but she needed to go back the following Monday if she didn’t want to be hopelessly behind everyone else. The last thing she wanted to do was face everyone’s questions about the baby, what she’d done with it, the speculation and whispers. But for that few minutes as the car returned to the warm house filled with love and laughter, Rosemary was able to just stare at her child and know Cleo’s life would be good because she would have a mother who wouldn’t treat her like she was a burden and a father who was closer than a phone call away.
    Rosemary blinked away the memory and the tears that welled in her eyes. It had been almost a decade, but the memory of that day was so strong, she could feel the pain still clawing inside her. Only now it was joined by the pain of losing the best parents she or Cleo could ever have.
    She sighed, then turned back toward the exit, brushed the handle of something with her leg and heard a creaking sound. She looked up in time to see the shelf of camping equipment wobble, then break, dumping the contents, which poured down on her. She stopped the camp stove before it knocked her against the car, but it slid down and bruised her leg. The tent tumbled after it, beaning her on the shoulder as the Dutch ovens clattered to the ground and the big blue-enameled coffee pot hit her in the face. Several other items banged against her on their way to the cement floor and she thought for a second that the whole wall might collapse on her.
    The crashes continued for a moment and then settled as almost everything along that wall ended up piled on the ground around her. When it all came to rest except for the clanging sound of a can rolling across the cement, she realized that she’d been holding her breath. Her heart raced and her hands shook. Her cheekbone hurt, and she would probably have bruises on her arms and legs.
    She wondered why Don had piled everything up like that—he had a little girl, why hadn’t he made sure it was secure? The thought of Cleo getting caught in the fallout sickened her—she might have been