Fireside by Susan Wiggs (autobiographies to read .TXT) 📕

to be humiliated. Rather than spiraling into despair like a latter-day Jane Austen character, Penelope van Dorn had embraced the new project.

Racing in a taxi to the airport last night, Kim had hoped to find a sense of peace and security, home with her mother. Instead, she’d found a house filled with strangers and painted all the mad colors of the rainbow. She realized she had a lot to learn about her father. At the moment, however, she could barely think straight.

Now that she understood the financial fiasco that had necessitated her mother’s move, Kim wondered if Penelope was only pretending to like it here. Pretending that turning her home into a boardinghouse was some kind of delightful, quirky adventure.

Finally, in the dead of winter, Kim could fully appreciate how radically her mother’s life had changed two summers ago, when she lost her husband. The contrast between her Manhattan lifestyle and the winter wilderness of upstate was sharply pronounced. Yet it struck Kim that she didn’t know her mother very well. She had never bothered to look beneath the surface of Penelope Fairfield van Dorn. Instead, she’d taken her at face value, the way the rest of the world did.

If she accomplished nothing else here, Kim thought, at least she could remedy that. She would help her mother sort out her finances. Now Kim understood the reason why Penelope had not urged her to visit. Her mother hadn’t wanted to burden her with the knowledge of her true circumstances. Hadn’t wanted to poison a daughter’s memories of her father with something so inconvenient as the truth.

Things happened for a reason. Kim would do whatever it took to help her mother. If this meant moving to a tiny mountain town and rolling up her sleeves, so be it. This was hardly the life Kim had planned for herself, but her own goals and plans and hard work had led to a dead end. She’d been driven by a need to impress her father, burnishing his reputation by making a name for herself. In a way, that was exactly what she did for her clients—made them look good. Clearly there was a flaw in that strategy.

She wasn’t likely to find the answer to her dreams here, but maybe coming here would yield something more precious—the chance to reconnect with her mother. To give back to the one person who had given Kim unconditional love. And maybe, if Kim was very lucky, to figure out a direction that didn’t lead to disaster.

Four

There were some papers for Bo to sign before the airline could officially release its unaccompanied minor.

“See you around, AJ,” said the flight attendant, handing Bo duplicate copies of the paperwork. She was a pretty woman in her dark uniform and sweater, and in a different situation, Bo might flirt with her, offer to buy her a drink—which he now needed worse than ever.

She offered a smile that somehow hinted she might be open to such an offer. In general, women tended to like him. Now was hardly the time for flirting, though. “He did great,” she reported. “You must be very proud of your son.”

Bo nodded, but didn’t know what to say to that. What the hell was there to say? Twelve years the kid had been on this earth, his flesh and blood, walking around, and this was Bo’s first time to see him. He had no clue what AJ thought; the boy was regarding Bo like a stranger or, at most, a distant relative.

Which pretty much described Bo to a T—distant. Relative.

It was completely screwed up.

And none of it—nada, zippo—was the kid’s fault. So Bo offered his most disarming smile to the flight attendant and said, “Yes, ma’am. I sure am proud.”

A gate agent double-checked the paperwork in AJ’s neck tag. Then she handed Bo a receipt, like a claim check for a rental car. “All set,” the agent said. “Have a nice day. Thanks for flying with us.”

Bo nodded again and stuffed the receipt in his pocket. “Baggage claim’s this way,” he said, indicating the sign.

They started walking, keeping a wide gap between them, like the strangers they were. Naturally, Bo couldn’t help checking him out. AJ was small. Like, really small. Bo didn’t know how big a twelve-year-old was supposed to be, but he was pretty sure AJ was puny.

As they passed a trash can, the kid took the tag from around his neck and dropped it in the garbage.

“Hey, I sure wish we were meeting under different circumstances,” Bo said to him. He didn’t know what the hell else to say.

No response. Maybe the kid was in shock, or something. If so, it was understandable. This was probably the scariest day of the boy’s life.

Bo played Yolanda’s phone call over and over in his head. That she’d called him at all was unprecedented. Over the years, she had called him only a few other times—to tell him of AJ’s birth, to advise him she was marrying some guy named Bruno, and—just last year—to let him know she was getting a divorce.

For reasons of his own, Bo had been more than willing to abide by her wishes, to keep his checkbook open and his mouth shut. He didn’t know diddly squat about being someone’s father, but he sure as hell knew how to give money away.

And then yesterday…the urgent call that didn’t leave him a choice. “Thank God, you answered,” she’d said in a voice he barely remembered.

“Yolanda?”

“I’m in trouble, Bo. There was a raid at work. I’m at the Houston Processing Center of the INS.”

“The INS.” It took a second for him to realize what she was talking about. Then it came to him—Immigration and Naturalization Service—and he felt a sick curl of apprehension in his gut. “Hell, Yolanda, what does that have to do with you?”

“There’s no time to explain,” she said. “I’m not supposed to be making any calls, but I’m desperate, Bo. I’ve been