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What Family Means
Geri Krotow
To Debra Bradley, marriage is being with the man you've always loved–despite the odds. Despite what other people think. And marriage is about family, about protecting your children from a sometimes hostile world. To her husband, Will Bradley, family is about creating a safe haven. Where it doesn't matter that one of you is white, the other black.Where it's never mattered… All these years later Will and Debra are still in love, still each other's best friend. They've made a good life for themselves and their children. But their daughter, Angie–pregnant and estranged from the husband she loves–has to discover for herself what family means….
Praise for Geri Krotow’s debut title, A Rendezvous To Remember
“Geri Krotow’s assured debut is a true gift to readers—a novel packed with emotion and filled with an expansiveness that crosses generations. It combines a woman’s journey of the heart with her discovery of devastating secrets of the past…all adding up to a triumphant and uplifting conclusion.”
—Susan Wiggs, New York Times bestselling author
“Geri Krotow’s debut book is a wonderfully written story of love nearly lost. Actually, it’s two wonderfully written stories, interwoven through time.…I will anxiously await this author’s next book. Her style is fast-moving and easy to read, and this book is very highly recommended to anyone who enjoys romance…or an emotional book.”
—Rob Ballister, www.militarywriters.com
Geri Krotow is a “new author to watch.”
—Debbie Macomber, New York Times bestselling author
“I stand in total amazement that this is Geri Krotow’s first published book. What a beautiful and moving story of love during two very different generations! Talk about an emotional punch…A Rendezvous To Remember is a real-world story told with all the heart and emotion of real people loving each other.…A Rendezvous To Remember highlights the true depth and power of love.”
—CK
S Kwips and Kritiques
“Geri Krotow makes a notable debut with A Rendezvous To Remember, an absorbing, richly detailed story with wonderful characters.”
—Romantic Times BOOKreviews
Dear Reader,
It is with great delight and joy that I wrote What Family Means, my second published novel, for you. Set in my native city of Buffalo, New York, and the surrounding western New York area, this story demonstrates what love of one another and love for family can do. It can bridge backgrounds, communities, people from all walks of life. In the not-too-distant past heroes and heroines from different backgrounds and upbringings weren’t applauded when they fell in love, or when they managed to make their love work despite overwhelming odds against it. Will Bradley and Debra Schaefer not only made it through the struggles and conflicts that their families and society threw at them, they raised a beautiful family. And their love still endures after almost forty years of marriage.
I hope you are able to cheer on both Debra and Will as they face their conflicts, yesterday’s and today’s, to provide a love that lasts a lifetime, not just for them as a couple but for their family. Love, this is what family means.
Please send me your thoughts on this story via my Web site, www.gerikrotow.com.
Peace,
Geri Krotow
What Family Means
Geri Krotow
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Raised in Buffalo and western New York State, Geri always dreamed of romance and adventure. A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, she moves around the world with her navy pilot husband, two children, a dog and a parrot. Geri loves to hear from readers. You can reach her at her Web site, www.gerikrotow.com.
With all my love to Alex and Ellen,
who teach me every day what family means.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER ONE
Present Day
Buffalo, New York
Debra
“YOU’VE NEVER BELIEVED ME about this the whole time we’ve been married. Why should I expect you to change now?”
Will Bradley, my husband of thirty-five years, stared at me with an intensity that made my hands clench on the shirt I was putting in his suitcase. His charcoal eyes sparked with annoyance. Will was never one to get easily worked up, but judging by the twitch over his left eyebrow, my latest obsession with our grown children’s lives had sent him over the edge.
Or at least very close to it.
“I hear you, Will, you know I do. But the kids, especially Angie, haven’t had the smoothest path.”
I tried to keep the “look” off my face—the expression Will and our children said I’d mastered. The “I’m right so don’t even bother to argue” look.
Apparently I didn’t succeed in keeping my face blank. Will’s nostrils flared as he drew a deep breath.
“Dammit, Debra, you go back to this every time.” Will referred to my long-held belief—and, okay, guilt—that our interracial marriage had placed undue burden on our children.
He glanced up from packing.
“What do you always say to me, Deb? ‘It’s the twenty-first century. The new generation doesn’t see us in terms of skin color. We don’t get a fraction of the stares we used to draw.’”
“Give me some credit, Will. I know that times have changed, and the kids are all doing great—better than a lot of our friends’ children.”
I stood up from the bed to make my point.
“Angie’s always had it the toughest. She’s older than the twins and remembers the more-blatant prejudice in high school and college. Jesse’s family wasn’t immediately supportive of their white son marrying our biracial daughter.”
Will didn’t respond as he packed his socks and underwear. I hated when he went all quiet like this.
“Why did Angie move back to Buffalo while Jesse’s away? Why didn’t she wait for him to return from his mission?”
I knew I wasn’t the only one worried about Jesse’s safety in Iraq, where he’d gone for humanitarian reasons. He was there to use his surgical skills, working as a government contractor. The military was grateful for civilian talent such as Jesse’s.
Will ran a hand over his short-cropped hair. His fingers caught my eyes. I was always a sucker for his hands—chocolate-brown skin stretched over the most elegant fingers, the most sensual hands, I’ve ever seen. He could have been a doctor like his father if he’d wanted to. But his passion was architecture. He’d used those fingers to produce beautiful buildings instead.
“This is what I’ve never understood, Will. How can you be angry with me for caring about our children?”
“There’s a big difference between caring and care-taking, Debra.”
“Don’t I know it.” As soon as the words slipped out, I realized they would’ve been better kept unspoken.
I sounded like a first-class martyr.
Will’s hands rested on his still-slim hips, his stance combative.
“Is that what this is about? Do you need a break? I know it’s been a long year for you, Deb.” Will referred to my looking after his elderly mother, Violet. She’d become more dependent on us the past nine months.
He didn’t give me a chance to answer.
“I’d be home more if I could,” he went on, “but I need to take care of these last projects, then I’ll go down to just a few a year, let Blair and my associates run things.” Will zipped up his suitcase as I watched from my perch on our bed.
It was a ritual we’d shared since the early days of our marriage. I brought in the piles of clean laundry, he chose what he needed for his business trips, and we talked while he packed.
We usually didn’t fight.
“Honey,” I said now, “I don’t want to argue. I just want to be here for Angie. And I’d love to have your support.”
“I know, baby, she’s your only daughter.” Will smiled at me despite his anger at my too-familiar behavior.
I sighed.
Will walked around to my side of the bed.
“The twins were much more difficult when they were younger,” I said. “Now that they’re grown, it’s as though they don’t need their mama so much. They’re men. But Angie—a daughter always needs her mother.” I couldn’t help the tear that slid out from under my closed lid as Will pulled me into his embrace.
“Honey, I’m just asking you to focus more on yourself, on us. You’ve given Angie and the boys the childhood, the family, you never had and we’re richer for it.”
I soaked up his love, but the question that wouldn’t die nagged at my conscience.
Had it really been enough?
April 11, 1957
Buffalo, New York
SOMETIME AFTER THREE, the school bus churned to a stop in front of the clapboard house. Debra knew the house; it signaled the end of her half day of kindergarten. She was in Miss May’s afternoon class at Lakeview Elementary. Debra liked riding to school on the noon bus because there were only five-year-olds with her. But in the afternoons the older kids came on, all the way up to fourth grade. She thought some of the boys were scary and did her best to sit with her friends.
She got off the bus with four other children. Linda and Lori, twins with matching everything from their blond braids to their saddle shoes, walked to the right and headed toward their duplex.
“Come on.” Will tugged at Debra’s jacket sleeve.
Debra stared at the older boy who ordered her around.
Will. Her mother told her this morning just to go home with him. Debra didn’t like it that she couldn’t go to her own house and be there with Mommy. But Daddy had been gone a long time, and Mommy said they needed grocery money.
So Mommy, who quit nursing school when she met Daddy and had Debra, got herself a job at the doctor’s down the street.
Mommy said the doctor hired her because she needed a job and he didn’t care what color her skin was. Besides, Mommy said she was the best receptionist around and Dr. Bradley knew it.
