Free Perfect Family by Patricia; Potter Page B

approach.
    But she had little time to study the room. Sarah led her to a dresser and took from it a large framed photo of a man and woman seated in two chairs. Behind them were five young men and a girl.
    â€œThis was taken in nineteen-forty. I was sixteen. Halden, whom you met tonight, was thirty-two, and this is Harding.” She pointed to a handsome young boy of around seventeen and handed the photo to Jessie, who looked at it wonderingly. “Is this your father?”
    Jessie couldn’t answer for a moment. Harding Clements had a wide grin on his face as if he’d just stolen cookies from a cookie jar or committed some other mischief. She couldn’t remember ever seeing her father smile like that.
    And yet she knew that her father and this man were the same. She’d recognized him immediately. The set of his eyes, the heavy brows, the tall, rangy form. She had never seen a photo of him as a young man, had never even been able to imagine him as one. He’d always been so much older than other fathers, so … severe, distant, forbidding. Her fingers went over the photo as if she were trying to capture his image. Maybe she was.
    Her breath caught in her throat. She could barely breathe. And her heart thumped faster. Her father! She knew. She knew .
    Then she looked at the girl standing next to Harding Clements. Her hair was caught in the wind, long and blond. A smile lit her face. The girl, frozen in time, did look much as Jessie had a few years ago.
    She stood, stunned. The picture mesmerized her. Six siblings.
    Why had the one brother left a group that looked so … pleased with each other?
    She felt Sarah’s arm go around her. “He was my favorite brother,” she said. “He was a year younger, and we always looked after each other.”
    â€œWhy … would he leave?” Jessie finally asked the question that wouldn’t go away.
    â€œI don’t know,” Sarah said, but Jessie instantly sensed that she did indeed know. Or suspected.
    Jessie looked from her father’s photo to the two young men next to him. They were identical.
    â€œHugh and Heath,” Sarah said. “They were identical twins, just like Cullen’s twins. Hugh was killed in Europe in World War II. They were together when … Hugh stepped on a mine.”
    â€œWhat happened to Heath?”
    â€œHe died a few years later,” Sarah said shortly.
    Jessie tried to recall exactly what Alex had said about the man they believed was her father. Your father disappeared the same day his wife and brother were apparently caught in a forest fire. They were both killed. We think he heard about it and just … wanted to get away .
    â€œHeath? Was he the one caught in the forest fire?”
    Sarah looked startled. “How did you know about that?”
    â€œAlex.”
    The startled look disappeared, but Jessie saw something unsettling in the woman’s eyes before she spoke again. “I didn’t know Alex had mentioned that, but yes, it was Heath.”
    â€œAnd Harding’s wife?” She could not let herself say father . Not yet.
    â€œYes.” It was a flat answer,
    Sarah then reached over and pointed to the second man to the right. “This was Harry, another brother. He ran the ranch until he died and my husband took over. Now Ross is in charge.” It was obvious she was trying to change the subject.
    â€œI haven’t met Ross yet, have I?”
    A shadow crossed her face. “No, he isn’t here. I expect him later.”
    â€œHe’s your son?” Jessie was still trying to get the relationships in their right place.
    â€œYes,” Sarah replied softly.
    Jessie’s gaze turned back to the man that now on one level she was beginning to accept as her father. He had been forty-eight when she was born and was in his mid-sixties when he died. She couldn’t remember when he wasn’t gray, when deep lines hadn’t aged his face beyond