Ask Mariah by Barbara Freethy Read Free Book Online

they'll realize that you're not their mother, but if I take them away now, I'm afraid they'll think I'm taking them away from their mother."
    "I can't look that much like her," she said, wanting him to contradict her.
    Michael exchanged a glance with Tony. "You could be her sister," he said, his gaze returning to her.
    "My sister," Tony added, "This is weird."
    She thought so, too. Nothing in her experience had taught her how to deal with a situation like this. She took in a breath and let it out. But she would deal with it, as she'd dealt with everything else in her life in the past year. Her father's illness had given her strength, his legacy to her.
    "All right, we'll let things stay like this for now," she said.
    The girls cheered, and she couldn't help smiling. It was nice to be loved. She just wished it could be for herself.
     
    * * *
     
    Sophia De Luca carefully ironed out the wrinkles in her husband's monogrammed handkerchief. When it was perfectly flat and creaseless, she folded it in neat squares and set it on the couch next to her. Then she picked up the embroidered linen cloth that had graced the top of Angela's dresser since her birth and set to ironing it with the same sense of purpose and determination. It didn't matter that Angela would never again see the cloth. It didn't matter that no one went into Angela's bedroom anymore.
    She couldn't stand to take the room apart, to put Angela's things away, to change the bedspread or the curtains. Angela hadn't lived in that bedroom since she was eighteen years old, but Sophia had kept it exactly the same so that her daughter would have a room to come home to, just in case.
    Angela had never come home, and like so many things Sophia kept "just in case," Angela's bedroom went unused.
    Picking up the starched linen cloth, Sophia climbed up the stairs from her sewing room on the first floor to Angela's bedroom on the second. She carefully placed the cloth on the dresser and put the silver brush and mirror and Angela's favorite music box on top.
    As she looked around the room, she was assaulted with a longing that grew stronger with each passing day, a desire to go back in time or at least to stop the clock from moving forward. She couldn't believe it had been twenty-seven years since she had brought Angela home from the hospital, since she had sat in the rocking chair by the window and sung lullabies to her baby, some in Italian, some in English, all filled with love and promises. How quickly the time had passed.
    Sitting down in the rocker, she ran her hands along the smooth wood. Her husband, Vincent, had built the rocking chair for her just before the birth of their oldest son, Frank. Every night, after a long day in the restaurant, Vincent would go down to the basement and work on the rocker, shining it, polishing it. They had been so in love then, dreaming of the family they would have. There were so many memories in this chair, hours alone with her babies, in the dark of the night, when the world slept. That's when she had felt the closest to them. That's when she had cried. A tear ran down her face as she rocked, thinking about her life, about how silent the house was now.
    Frank, his wife Linda, and their four children lived a few blocks away. Frank had made a good marriage, and at thirty-seven he was ready to take over De Luca's when Vincent retired at the end of the year. Frank would continue their traditions. He would bring honor to the family, because he knew no other way to live. She had been in awe of her oldest son's principles since he was six years old, when Frank had decided that he would not be friends with anyone who lied, called him names, or didn't do their homework. Needless to say, Frank didn't have a lot of friends as a child. But he was a good man despite his rigid ways. And he adored his mother, held her up on a pedestal.
    He didn't know her at all .
    Tony, at thirty-three, was the complete opposite of Frank: emotional, unpredictable,