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  FAMILY

  BLESSINGS

  LaVyrle Spencer

  BERKLEY BOOKS, NEW YORK

  This novel is a work of fiction.

  Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously,

  and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  FAMILY BLESSINGS

  A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1993 by LaVyrle Spencer.

  Excerpt from Home Song copyright © 1995 by LaVyrle Spencer.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement

  and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.

  For information address:

  The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is

  http://www.penguinputnam.com

  ISBN: 978-1-1012-1931-7

  A JOVE BOOK®

  Jove Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  JOVE and the “J” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.

  First edition (electronic): June 2001

  PRAISE FOR THE BESTSELLING NOVELS OF

  LaVyrle Spencer

  “A modern fairy tale, complete with a deserving heroine, a prince of a guy, and a happily-ever-after ending.” —People

  “A superb book . . . it leaves the reader breathless.” —New York Daily News

  “LaVyrle Spencer has written a truly special story . . . The Hellion is nostalgic and captures the feeling of love lost and years wasted . . . Superb.” —Chicago Sun-Times

  “Highly recommended . . . Spencer brings an added dimension to her stories. Call it grit, warmth, call it whatever you like—it works!” —The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

  “The characters are warmly drawn and their dilemmas realistic, and Spencer knows how to tug at readers’ heartstrings.” —Publishers Weekly

  “Deft, unpretentious, and down-to-earth, LaVyrle Spencer . . . never fails to please.” —The Anniston Star

  “A superb story.” —Los Angeles Times

  “As warm and folksy and loving as a group hug.” —Kirkus Reviews

  “A study of humanity at its brightest and most kind.” —West Coast Review of Books

  “Once again Spencer’s characters take on the richness of friends, relatives, and acquaintances . . . Refreshing.” —Rocky Mountain News

  “A journey of self-discovery and reawakening.” —Booklist

  Titles by LaVyrle Spencer

  THEN CAME HEAVEN

  SMALL TOWN GIRL

  THAT CAMDEN SUMMER

  HOME SONG

  FAMILY BLESSINGS

  NOVEMBER OF THE HEART

  BYGONES

  FORGIVING

  BITTER SWEET

  SPRING FANCY

  MORNING GLORY

  THE HELLION

  VOWS

  THE GAMBLE

  A HEART SPEAKS

  YEARS

  SEPARATE BEDS

  TWICE LOVED

  SWEET MEMORIES

  HUMMINGBIRD

  THE ENDEARMENT

  THE FULFILLMENT

  To the memory of

  our beloved daughters

  Sarah and Beth

  Do not stand at my grave and weep

  I am not there, I do not sleep.

  I am a thousand winds that blow,

  I am the diamond glints on snow,

  I am the sunlight on ripened grain,

  I am the gentle autumn rain.

  When you awaken in the morning’s hush,

  I am the swift uplifting rush

  of quiet birds in circled flight,

  I am the soft stars that shine at night.

  Do not stand at my grave and cry,

  I am not there, I did not die.

  —Anonymous

  Many thanks to my nephew,

  Officer Jason Huebner

  of the Anoka Police Department,

  Anoka, Minnesota, for his help

  during the research and writing

  of this book. Love you, Peanut.

  Thanks also to Dawn and Bob Estelle

  of Stillwater Floral for

  their help with information

  about the florists’ trade.

  1

  FORChristopher Lallek life couldn’t have been better. It was payday, his day off, all the junk was scraped out of his old beat-up Chevy Nova, and his brand-new Ford Explorer had come into Fahrendorff Ford. It was an Eddie Bauer model, top of the line, with a four-liter V-6 engine, four-wheel drive, air-conditioning, tilt wheel, compact digital disc player and leather seats. The paint color was called wild strawberry, and it was wild all right, wilder than anything he’d ever owned. Within an hour the papers would all be signed and he’d be slipping behind the wheel of his first new vehicle ever. All he needed was his paycheck. He swung into the parking lot of the Anoka Police Station, cranked his old beater in a U-turn and, out of long practice, backed the car against the curb beside two black-and-white squads parked the same way near the door.

  He sprang out whistling “I’ve Got Friends in Low Places” and took a happy leap onto the sidewalk, scanning the sky from behind a pair of mirrored sunglasses strung with hot-pink Croakies. Perfect day. Sunny. Couple of big white fluffy clouds in the east. Eighty degrees now shortly before noon, and by the time all the guys met at the lake it would be pushing ninety and the water would feel great. Greg was going to stop and price oversized inner tubes; Tom was bringing his Jet Ski; and Jason had the use of his folks’ speedboat for the day. Some of the guys would bring beer. Chris would pick up a couple of six-packs of soda and some salami and cheese, maybe a pint of that herring in cream sauce that he and Greg loved so much, and drive out there in his shiny new truck playing his new Garth Brooks CD—hey, hell of a deal.

  He unlocked the plate-glass door and walked into the squad room, still whistling. Nokes and Ostrinski, both in uniform, were standing beside the computer table, looking sober, talking.

  “Hey, what’s new, guys?”

  They looked up and fell silent, watching him poke a hand into his mail cubicle, come up with an envelope and rip it open. “Payday at last—hot damn!” He swung around, scanning the check, then slapped it against his palm. “Eat your heart out, boys, my new Explorer came in at last and it’s all dealer-prepped and ready for pickup! If you want to go outside and administer last rites to my old Nova—” It struck him suddenly that neither Nokes nor Ostrinski had moved. Or smiled. Nor had they said a word since he’d come in. From the patrol room two more uniformed officers came silently through the doorway, looking equally as solemn as the two already there.

  “Murph, Anderson . . .” Christopher greeted, wary now. He’d been a police officer for nine years: He recognized this silence, this somberness, this stillness too well.

  “What’s wrong?” His eyes darted from man to man.

  His captain, Toby Anderson, sp
oke in a grave tone. “It’s bad news, Chris.”

  Christopher’s stomach seemed to drop two inches. “An officer went down.”

  “Afraid so.”

  “Who?”

  Nobody spoke for ten seconds.

  “Who!” Chris shouted, his dread mounting.

  Anderson replied in a low, hoarse voice. “Greg.”

  “Greg!” Christopher’s features registered bald-faced surprise, followed by disbelief. “Wait a minute. Somebody’s got their wires crossed here.”

  Anderson only shook his head sadly. His gaze remaned steady on Christopher while the others studied their shoes.

  “But you’re wrong. He’s not on duty today. He left the apartment no more than an hour ago to come over here and get his check, then he was going to the bank, then he had to stop by his mother’s house, and as soon as I picked up my Explorer we were going to buy a water tube and go out to Lake George.”

  “He wasn’t on duty, Chris. It happened on his way here.”

  Christopher felt the truth shoot through his nerves to his extremities and turn them prickly. He felt his head go light.

  “Oh, shit,” he whispered.

  Anderson spoke again. “A pickup ran a red light and hit him broadside.”

  Shock created havoc inside Christopher and hammered his features into hard, unaccepting lines. He dealt with tragedies daily, but never before with the death of one of the force. Certainly not with the death of a best friend. He stood in the grip of conflicting reactions, his human side sending heat and weakness streaming through his insides, while the trained lawman maintained an analytical exterior. When he spoke his voice came out patchy and gruff. “He was on his motorcycle.”

  “Yes . . . he was.”

  Anderson’s pause, his throaty voice precluded the need for details. Christopher’s throat closed, his chest constricted and his knees began trembling, but he stood his ground and asked the questions he’d ask if Greg were some stranger, little realizing that shock had him operating as if by remote control.

  “Who responded to the call?”

  “Ostrinski.”

  Christopher’s eyes found the young police officer, who appeared pale and shaken. “Ostrinski?”

  Ostrinski said nothing. He looked as though he’d been crying. His lips were puffy and his face pink.

  “Well, go on . . . tell me,” Christopher insisted.

  “I’m sorry, Chris, he was dead by the time I got there.”

  Out of nowhere came a hot smack of anger. It sent Christopher whirling in a half circle, flinging a chair out of his way. “Goddamnit!” he shouted. “Why Greg?” Beset by passion, he lashed out with the most simplistic blame. “Why didn’t he ride with me! I told him I didn’t mind taking him by his mother’s house! Why did he have to take his motorcycle?”

  Anderson and Ostrinski reached out as if to comfort Christopher, but he recoiled. “Don’t! Just . . . just let me . . . I need . . . give me a minute here . . .” He spun away from them, marched two steps to an abrupt halt and exclaimed again, “Shit!” Fear roiled within him, spawned by a shot of adrenaline that turned him hot, cold, trembly, made him feel as if his entire body could no longer fit inside his skin. Working as a cop, he’d seen reactions like this dozens of times and had never understood them. He’d often thought people hard when their response to the news of death took the form of anger. Suddenly it was happening to him, the quick flare of absolute rage that made him storm about like a warrior rather than cry like a bereaved friend.

  As swiftly as the anger struck, it fled, leaving him shaken and nauseated. Tears came—hot, stinging tears—and a hurt in his throat.

  “Aw, Greg,” he uttered in a strange, cracked voice. “Greg . . .”

  His fellow officers came up behind him and offered support. This time he accepted the touch of their arms and hands on his shoulders. They murmured condolences, their voices, too, strangled by emotions. He turned, and suddenly Captain Anderson’s arms were around him, big burly arms trained in the martial arts, clasping him hard while both men strained to withhold sobs.

  “Why Greg?” Chris managed. “It’s just so damned unfair. Why not some . . . some dealer selling coke to school kids or some parent who’s beating on his k . . . kids twice a week? Hell, we got a hundred of ’em in our files.”

  “I know, I know . . . it’s not fair.”

  Christopher’s tears streamed. He stood in his captain’s grip, his chin pressed to Anderson’s crisp collar with its fifteen-year chevrons, listening to the bigger man swallow repeatedly against his ear, feeling the captain’s handcuff case pressing his belly while the other officers stood nearby feeling useless and vulnerable.

  Anderson said, “He was a good man . . . a good officer.”

  “Twenty-five years old. Hell, he’d hardly even lived.”

  Anderson gave him a bluff thump on the shoulder and released him. Christopher lowered himself to a chair and doubled forward, covering his face with both hands. Visions of Greg flashed through his mind: earlier this morning in the apartment they shared, shuffling out of his bedroom with his brown hair standing on end, scratching his chest and offering the usual bachelor good morning: “I gotta pee like a racehorse. Outa my way!” Then plodding from the bathroom to the kitchen, where he stood holding the refrigerator door open for a good minute and a half, staring inside, asking, “So what time’re you going to get the new Explorer?” Reaching inside for a quart of orange juice and drinking half of it from the carton, belching and finally letting the door close.

  He couldn’t be dead! It wasn’t possible!

  Only one hour ago he was standing by the kitchen cupboard eating a piece of toast, dressed in bathing trunks and a wrinkled T-shirt that said MOUSTACHE RIDES FREE! “I gotta stop by my mom’s,” he’d said. “The end busted off one of her garden hoses and she asked me to put a new one on.”

  Greg was always so good to his mother.

  Greg’s mother . . . aw, Jesus, Greg’s poor mother. The thought of her brought a fresh shot of dread and grief. The woman had been through enough without this. She didn’t need some strange police chaplain coming to her door to break the news.

  Christopher drew a shaky breath and straightened, swiping a hand under his nose. Somebody handed him some hard napkins from the coffee room. He blew his nose and asked in a husky voice, “Has the chaplain informed his family yet?”

  “No,” Captain Anderson answered.

  “I’d like to do it, sir, if that’s all right.”

  “You sure you’re up to it?”

  “I know his family. It might be easier coming from me than from a stranger.”

  “All right, if you’re sure you want to do it.”

  Chris drew himself to his feet, surprised at how weak he felt. His body was trembling everywhere—knees, stomach, hands—and his teeth were shuddering together as if he’d just stepped into subzero cold.

  Anderson said, “You okay, Lallek? You look a little unsteady. Maybe you’d better sit back down for a minute.”

  Chris did. He hit the chair as if he’d been bulldozed, closed his eyes and drew several deep breaths only to feel tears building once more.

  “It’s just so hard to believe,” he mumbled, clutching his head and shaking it. “An hour ago he was standing in the kitchen eating toast.”

  Ostrinski said, “And yesterday when he went off duty he was talking about you guys going out to the lake.”

  Chris opened his eyes and saw Pete Ostrinski through a wavery pool of tears, a six-foot-four giant, only twenty-five years old, wearing a stricken expression. “Hey, Pete, I’m sorry, man. You’re the one who responded to the call and here I sit blubbering when you took the biggest shock.”

  Ostrinski said, “Yeah,” choked on the word and turned away to dry his eyes.

  Chris took a turn at comforting, rising to drape an arm across Pete Ostrinski’s shoulders and give his thick neck a squeeze.

  “Is he at the morgue already?”

  Ostrinski could sc
arcely get the words out. “Yeah, but don’t go over there, Chris. And whatever you do, don’t let his mother go. He was broken up pretty badly.”

  Chris squeezed Ostrinski’s shoulder once more and let his hand drop disconsolately.

  “This is going to kill his mother.”

  “Yeah . . . mothers are tough.”

  Their records technician, a woman named Ruth Randall, had been standing silently in the doorway leaning against the door frame as if uncertain what to say or do, just as they all were. The door from the parking lot opened and closed and another on-duty uniformed officer arrived. “I just heard,” Roy Marchek said, and the crowded room fell utterly silent. Every person in it dealt with tragedies on a daily basis and had, of necessity, become somewhat inured to them. This death, however—one of their own—hit them in a way that made the impersonal dealings of past police calls feel like cakewalks.

  The outside door opened again and the police chaplain, Vernon Wender, arrived. He was a man in his forties, with erect stature, thinning brown hair and silver-rimmed glasses. Captain Anderson nodded a silent hello as Wender stepped past Ruth Randall and moved into the squad room among the men.

  “We’ve lost a good one,” he said in a respectfully subdued voice. “A terrible tragedy.” A stultifying silence passed while everyone struggled with their emotions. “The last time I talked to Greg he said to me, ‘Vernon, you ever think about how many people hate their jobs? Well, not me,’ he said. ‘I love being a cop. It feels good to be out there helping people.’ Maybe you’ll all feel better if you dwell on that. Greg Reston was a happy man.” Wender let some seconds tick away before adding, “I’ll be here all day long if any of you need to talk . . . or pray . . . or reminisce. I think we’d all feel a little better if we said a prayer right now.”

  Throughout the prayer Christopher lost touch with the chaplain’s words. He was thinking of Greg’s family, especially his mother, and the shock that lay ahead for her. She was a widow with two other children—Janice, twenty-three, and Joey, fourteen—but Greg had been the oldest, the one she’d relied on most since the death of her husband nine years ago. “A strong woman,” Greg had called her countless times, “the strongest woman I know . . . and the best.” In all his life Christopher Lallek had never heard anyone praise a mother the way Greg Reston had praised his. The relationship between them had been one of mutual respect, admiration and love, the kind that brought a hollow lump of envy to Christopher’s stomach as he’d heard about it over the past couple of years since Greg had joined the force. Greg and his mother could talk about anything—sports, money, sex, philosophy, even the occasional hurt feelings that crop up in the best-balanced families. Whatever it was, those two had discussed it, and afterward Chris would hear about it from Greg. He knew more about Mrs. Reston than many people knew about their own mothers, and because of it he had acquired a vicarious admiration and respect for her such as he’d never had for his own parents.