Perfect Family Read Free Page A

nudged her, as if aware her attention had wandered away from him. She reached down and touched him, and he settled under her feet again, happy with just that small touch.
    She opened it, read the invitation, then reread the address on the envelope again. Jessica Clayton . Her name. Her address. It was obviously some kind of ironic mistake.
    An invitation to a family reunion .
    A family she’d never heard of .
    She didn’t need this today. She didn’t need reminders that she had no family. Not even a distant cousin.
    Even the words family reunion summoned up images. Warm, wonderful pictures of everything she’d once dreamed about. So many childish dreams. Whenever her father had stumbled into their rented quarters, smelling of whiskey or beer or cheap wine, she would close her eyes and wish for a mother, a sister, a doting grandfather. She would wish for the type of family she’d seen in television series or read about in books.
    Her fingers stroked the envelope. No return address, but many invitations didn’t have return addresses. And there was no phone number inside. It was an informal invitation, obviously computer-generated, with horses galloping across the top. There was no R.S.V.P.
    It was, in fact, an announcement more than an invitation, obviously sent to people who knew the phone number, the address, the sender. She couldn’t even tell the mail carrier to return it to the sender. The rightful recipient would never receive it.
    As someone who had never received such an invitation, she felt regret for that unknown person, that person with her name. But probably she would be notified by another member of the family. Close families kept in touch. At least, she’d always thought so. Her imaginary family had.
    For a moment, she let herself believe it was for her. She slowly released a breath, just realizing that she’d bottled it up in her throat. Her fingers had dropped the invitation and were stiff with tension. Or was it memories? Memories she’d tried to erase. But all of them had returned today. Fear had returned, and so had the insecurity.
    Her family had never been more than a father. A father who was distant at best, an angry drunk at worst. This card was a mocking reminder.
    She saw him now in her mind’s eye. His defeated eyes. His blustering defiance when he was fired once again for drinking, his absences when she had to try to find something to eat in empty cabinets, the smell of alcohol when he returned late at night, mumbling words she didn’t understand.
    Still, she had loved her father. He was older than most fathers, having married late in life. Her mother had been a waitress, far younger than him. She had left them when Jessie was only two, and neither of them had ever heard from her again. Jessie had never tried to find her, but instead had steeled herself emotionally from the realization of being unwanted by one of the two people who should have loved her most, and being considered a … burden by the other. She never knew whether her mother’s desertion had turned her father into the embittered man she knew, but sometimes she had seen grief, even longing, in his eyes. And each time he got that look on his face, he would disappear for a day or two or even three.
    He would lose his job and they would move again. States faded one into another. New York. Maryland. Kentucky. Tennessee. As she grew older, she’d asked about her mother, but she never got an answer. She grew accustomed to the shadows that never disappeared. Or perhaps he had been the shadow.
    The only thing that had saved them was his reputation as a horse trainer. He’d been able to extract every measure of speed from the horses under his tutelage. He understood them as few others did, and in return they gave him everything they had. But eventually he would be fired. They would move to another place where someone else was willing to give him still another chance.
    She glanced down