When Kate Medlar saw the big green highway sign that said Lachlan was two exits away, she took the nearest exit. At the wide T in the road, she hesitated. She didn’t know which way to go. Of course, the guy behind her blew his horn. Laid on it. It seemed that he was so frantic to get somewhere that a twelve-second delay put him in a rage.
She turned right because it was easier and the other car sped forward. As he passed, the driver gave her the finger and mouthed the “call you next Tuesday” word.
And people wondered why there were shots fired between cars, she thought. There was a little diner ahead and she pulled into the gravel parking lot. Inside, she took a booth by the window so she could watch her car. After all, everything she owned was stuffed inside it.
When the waitress came, Kate ordered an egg-white omelet, a single slice of whole wheat toast and black coffee. No sauce, no butter, no cheese, no flavor. Long ago, she’d learned that she had not inherited her mother’s ability to eat fried chicken and doughnuts and remain as thin as a broom handle.
It was one of Kate’s complaints about the unfairness of this “I’m fat, you’re not” that had brought about what she’d come to think of as The Great Reveal.
Usually, her mother made no comment on Kate’s weight complaints, but three months ago, she’d said, “That’s because you’re like her. That writer woman.”
The waitress poured the coffee and Kate sipped. When she’d questioned her mother, she was told that “her” was an aunt she’d never heard of: her late father’s only sibling, Sara.
Kate combined the first name and her own last one with the label of “writer woman.”
“Sara Medlar?” she asked in disbelief. She’d been sitting on a stool at the kitchen bar in the little house outside Chicago that she and her mother shared. Ava had been standing at the stove, her back to her daughter.
“The Sara Medlar?” Kate repeated, louder. “The writer whose name is on half the paperbacks in the grocery stores? She’s my father’s sister?”
Ava didn’t turn around but gave a curt nod.
“I knew the last name was the same, but I never dreamed there was a connection.” Kate felt like she should get angry. Shouldn’t she start shouting about the injustice of not having been told this before? But she knew that directing anger at her mother never worked. Besides, the news was oh, so intriguing!
Until that moment the only relatives she’d known about were her mother’s three older brothers. Horrible old men!
Kate’s brain skipped the drama that she was being cheated out of and she said, as calmly as she could, “Why haven’t you told me this before?”
Ava shrugged. “She’s famous. She wanted nothing to do with us after dear Randal left.”
As always, at the mention of her husband, tears came to Ava’s eyes. She’d never made an attempt to “move on” from her beloved husband’s early death.
Kate knew when to back off. Her father, Randal Medlar, had died when Kate was just four years old and she remembered nothing of him. Over the years, she’d tried to get her mother to tell her about him. But Ava’s memories were more deification than about a real man. Kate wanted to know about him. What made him laugh? What talents did he have? But she could never get answers out of her mother.
To hear that there was someone else who knew her father made her so curious that it was like a fire had been lit inside her. That night she didn’t sleep but stayed on her computer, researching the author Sara Medlar.
There was the usual hype around her glorious life and speculations about how she wrote—pen or keyboard?—but no mention of her deceased brother. Kate skipped all that. What she wanted to know was where Sara and her brother had grown up. It took some work, but eventually she came up with the city of Lachlan, Florida.
Further digging, some of it into a paid site that found missing people, said that Sara Medlar had retired from writing and recently moved back to Lachlan.
“Eureka!” Kate said, then began to research the town. She soon found what she was looking for: a local real estate office. Kate had been selling real estate for the two years since she’d graduated from college and she loved it.
There was only one real estate office in Lachlan and it was owned by a woman named Tayla Kirkwood. There was an excellent website, and over the next few days, Kate read it avidly and came to greatly admire Mrs. Kirkwood. She’d spent the past twenty years bringing the derelict t
own back to life. When Tayla was growing up in Lachlan—at approximately the same time as Kate’s father—it had been a peaceful, tight-knit little Florida community. But Tayla had married and moved away. While she was gone, Fort Lauderdale had expanded until it had consumed the town. People moved out; stores closed.
After Tayla was widowed, she returned to find that Lachlan was nearly a ghost town. Several lovely old houses had been torn down.
Angry and determined, Tayla worked to bring the town back to life. She bought and remodeled stores in the downtown area and brought in high-end businesses that drew tourists and shoppers from Fort Lauderdale.
The transformation of Lachlan under Tayla’s supervision was admirable, Kate thought as the waitress put a plain egg-white omelet in front of her. “Want some butter and jam with that?”
“I wish,” Kate said.
“I hear you on that!” the waitress said as she went back to the counter.
The eggs were tasteless, the toast dry. But it didn’t matter—all Kate could think about was the new life she was about to start.
After weeks of reading and researching, Kate had written Mrs. Kirkwood a letter. She explained who she was, complimented her lavishly and said she would like to be considered for a job there.