“Who are they?”
Thomas’s composure finally cracked.
“My sister and her husband.”
The room seemed to shift beneath me.
I studied his face.
Really studied it.
The gray-blue eyes.
The narrow chin.
The slight curve of his nose.
Features I had seen in my own reflection every morning.
“No,” I whispered.
Thomas swallowed.
“My sister Eleanor had a daughter.”
Diane stood abruptly.
“Enough.”
The officer blocked her path.
Thomas kept going.
“She and her husband died in a car accident when the baby was seven months old.”
My mouth went numb.
“The child was supposed to come to me.”
I couldn’t breathe.
“But she disappeared.”
Grant squeezed my hand.
Thomas’s eyes filled with tears.
“For thirty-one years, I thought my niece had died too.”
I looked at Diane.
“What did you do?”
She said nothing.
“WHAT DID YOU DO?”
Clara startled, and I instantly lowered my voice as tears ran down my face.
Diane looked away.
Thomas answered for her.
“Your mother—Eleanor—was Diane’s cousin.”
Piece by piece, the truth emerged.
Diane had been twenty-four, broke, unmarried, and already pregnant with Brielle’s father when Eleanor and Michael died.
She had temporarily taken me after the accident because Thomas was overseas on a construction project and couldn’t return for several weeks.
But before he came home, Diane left the state.
