Bittersweet by Susan Wittig Albert

the porch of the old ranch house that she and Sam had remodeled when they were first married. The house stood at the top of a long slope that led down to the Sabinal River. Off to the right was another long, low structure: the guest lodge that Sam’s father built when he ran the place as a game ranch. Leatha and Sam had remodeled it in the past few months in preparation for their birder guests.
    Leatha held out her arms as Caitie jumped out of the car and raced toward her.
    â€œGramma!” Caitie cried excitedly. “We’re here, Gramma!”
    â€œMy little girl,” she said, burying her face in Caitie’s hair. “My dear, sweet little girl. How very glad I am to see you, baby.”
    I walked toward the porch slowly, feeling the tears come to my eyes, although you have to know some of the story in order to appreciate why. It’s rather like a soap opera, I’m afraid, but families are messy and real life is often chaotic, with love and lust and old dishonesties and deceptions all tangled together. Caitie is the daughter of my half brother, Miles, the illegitimate son of our father, attorney Robert Bayles, and Laura Danforth, his legal secretary and longtime mistress. Both are now dead.
    My mother hadn’t known about Laura or her son. In fact, she hadn’t known any of this story until Miles brought to light the old, dark mysteries around my father’s murder. Then Miles was murdered, too, leaving Caitie both fatherless and motherless. The little girl came to us, to McQuaid and Brian and me. We’re now a family.
    I hadn’t known how Leatha would react to Caitie. If you’d asked me, I would have said that she was likely to reject the daughter of her husband’s illegitimate son, or at least, not to welcome her—and I suppose I wouldn’thave blamed her if she had. My father had rejected her for another woman. Rejecting his granddaughter would be tit for tat, an extra fillip of sweet posthumous revenge.
    But that isn’t what happened. How she did it is a mystery to me, but Leatha found it in her heart to embrace Caitie exactly as she would her very own granddaughter. And I’m grateful, for Caitie’s sake and for my own, especially at family holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas. These are bittersweet holidays because so much has happened to divide us, and yet so much has brought us together.
    Now, Leatha raised her head, her eyes filled with tears. One arm around Caitie, she held the other hand out to me. “I’m so glad you could come, China,” she said, in that soft Southern honey voice of hers. “I needed to see you.”
    I noticed that she was wearing corduroy slacks, a blue plaid shirt, and loafers, and that she hadn’t had her hair done recently or paid much attention to her makeup or her manicure. In fact, her nails looked as if she’d been doing the outdoor work on her own for the past week. She was no longer the carefully groomed socialite I had known growing up. She looked drawn and weary.
    I kissed her cheek. “How’s Sam?” I asked. “What about those complications?”
    â€œIt looks like he’s out of the woods for now.” Leatha put on a bright smile. “I stayed all night at the hospital and only got home a little bit ago. He’s doing fairly well, the doctor says. In fact, he sent me home. He knew I was just dyin’ to see the two of you.” She cuddled Caitie against her. “Especially this one.” She lifted her eyes to mine. “Let’s go inside, dear. I’ve made some chili for our supper, and you can put a salad together forus. And then, if you want, we can get started on those pies for tomorrow’s dinner. Pumpkin, of course. Mincemeat, too—and there’s one jar left of the Fredericksburg peaches I canned last summer. I was saving it for Brian. He always says he loves my peach pie.”
    I’m always surprised when my mother reveals her