The high school guidance counselor had given Maddie the link for the career assessment survey, so they’d spent the first hour in the computer lab, filling out the questionnaire. She planned to go over the results at their next session, but there were still twenty minutes left in this one.
I could use some help here, Lord.
No sooner than Maddie sent up the silent prayer, Aiden limped into the room.
“The door was unlocked again.” He claimed the empty chair at the table as if it had been reserved especially for him.
As if he hadn’t been a no-show on Saturday afternoon, even though Maddie had stayed an extra hour—or two—waiting for him.
Aiden’s decision not to follow up on his request for help didn’t surprise Maddie. What did surprise her was the disappointment that had clung like a burr on her favorite cardigan for the rest of the day.
She hadn’t seen him at New Life Fellowship on Sunday morning, either. Maddie served in the church nursery twice a month, and by the time the last set of parents had picked up their child, everyone had left the building.
She’d told herself it was for the best, but here he was again. And once more, the teenagers were giving Aiden their full attention.
Maddie set down the clicker and went with it.
“Aiden, what was the topic of your senior presentation?”
“My senior presentation?”
She nodded. “You were a year ahead of me in high school, and I had to give one, so I’m pretty sure you did, too.”
“Maybe he skipped that day,” Tyler interjected.
The gleam in the boy’s eye told Maddie he was contemplating it, too.
“It wouldn’t matter.” Skye slid lower in her chair. “They just make you do it the next day.”
“What if he hadn’t come back the next day?” Tyler retorted. “Or the next? What if he hadn’t come back at all?”
Why did Maddie get the feeling that Tyler wasn’t talking about Aiden anymore?
Skye tossed her mane of brown-and-lavender-striped hair. “Then he would’ve been stupid—”
“Survival camping.”
Skye and Tyler, who were glaring at each other across the table, spun toward Aiden.
“What’s that?” Skye blurted.
“You go into the woods with nothing more than you can carry in a backpack,” Aiden explained. “You find your own water. Food. Make a shelter to sleep in.”
The girl’s eyes widened. “That’s crazy.”
“The faculty board thought so, too.” Aiden grinned. “But I still got an A.”
“It sounds like one of those shows on TV,” Tyler said. “I saw one episode where a guy climbed into a hollow tree and it was full of wasps. He got stung, like, a thousand times.”
Aiden shrugged. “I didn’t have to worry about bugs. It was February.”
He’d gone camping. In February. On purpose.
“Where did you sleep?” Justin unexpectedly joined the conversation. Maddie grabbed onto the back of a chair for support.
“I made a snow cave. Snow is actually a great insulator.” Aiden dropped his voice a notch. “That’s why you don’t see bears putting on sweaters before they go into hibernation.”
Skye giggled.
Giggled.
Justin had spoken up, Skye was acting seventeen instead of twenty-seven and Tyler was actually looking at Aiden instead of his cell phone.
And Maddie? She was a little in awe—and a whole lot of envious—at how effortlessly Aiden had connected with the three teenagers.
“You’re supposed to write an outline and do research and stuff.” Tyler tossed an accusing look at Maddie, as if she were the one who’d written the guidelines for their senior presentation.
Aiden laughed. “You don’t think I did some research before I ventured into the woods when it was only ten degrees outside?”
Tyler crossed his arms, covering his interest with a skeptical look. “They really let you talk about camping?”
“I didn’t just talk,” Aiden said. “I brought in my backpack and showed them how I made it through the weekend with the supplies I’d packed. Like Maddie said, the whole idea behind the senior presentation is to learn more about something that interests you...and in the process maybe learn something about yourself.”
At least someone remembered what Maddie had said during their study session the previous week. She just hadn’t expected it to be Aiden.
An alarm chirped, and Tyler reached for his backpack. “I gotta go,” he mumbled.
“Hold on a second.” Maddie decided it was time to take control of the conversation again. “Does anyone have any questions before our next meeting?”
She was greeted with silence.
“All right... I’ll see you at six thirty this Friday.”
They all grabbed their things and bolted for the door.
Everyone except Aiden. He raised the hand that wasn’t in the cast.
“I have a question. How do we find my sister?”
Maddie gripped the back of the chair again to counteract the unexpected weakness in her knees.
“But I...when you didn’t show up on Saturday, I thought you’d changed your mind.” The words came out in a rush, and the light in Aiden’s eyes disappeared as swiftly as the sun on a winter afternoon.
“No one in my family had a reason to come into town that day,” he said after a moment.
And Aiden couldn’t drive.
Maddie realized how difficult it must be for such an independent man to rely on others—even his own family—for help. Which made the fact that Aiden had returned to the library to enlist hers a little scary.
“Anna had to finish up an order tonight and get it ready for shipment, so I hitched a ride with her,” Aiden continued. “Bracelets...not ice cream, just in case you were wondering.”
Maddie didn’t know Anna Leighton very well—she’d been several years ahead of Maddie in school—but it was common knowledge the young widow had converted the second floor of The Happy Cow, her family-owned ice-cream shop, into a combination studio and boutique where she designed and sold a unique line of nature-inspired jewelry.
It was also common knowledge that Liam Kane had proposed to Anna a few weeks ago.
Maddie had overheard a group of women talking about how excited Sunni Mason was that two of her adopted sons had found love.
“Only one more to go,” one of them had said.
“I have a feeling Sunni will have a long wait with Aiden,” came her friend’s laughing response. “I’m not sure there’s a woman fast enough to catch that boy. Not that they haven’t tried, mind you.”
Maddie was used to people speaking freely in front of her. She was a permanent fixture in the library—like her desk or a lamp—and everyone seemed to forget she was there.
Still, Maddie didn’t want to analyze too closely why the details of that whispered conversation had been stored away, when so many others had slipped from her mind.
“Can you post this on your community message board?” Aiden dipped his hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. “I had to come up with a legitimate excuse for turning down Anna’s rocky road sundae.”
Maddie glanced down at the flier. The top half gave detailed information about River Quest, and underneath the dotted line was a registration form for those adventurous enough to sign up.
Suddenly, Aiden’s words sank in. “Your family doesn’t know you’re looking for your sister?”
Something dark flashed in Aiden’s eyes. “They know I promised I would...they just don’t know I started yet.”
* * *
Aiden was relieved when Maddie didn’t press him further and ask why. Not when he wasn’t sure of the answer himself.
All Aiden knew was that he couldn’t fail and disappoint his family
. Just once, he wanted to be the hero who swooped in and saved people from trouble instead of the one causing it.
Maddie pulled her chair out from the table. “I...I’ll need some basic background information from you, and we can go from there.”
“Now?”
Aiden’s question seemed to surprise her. “Isn’t that why you’re here?”
“Yeah, but I thought we’d be setting up another day and time to meet,” he said slowly. “You worked all day and then had to spend the evening with Dallas and Ponyboy—”
“Aiden!” Maddie clapped a hand over her mouth but couldn’t quite suppress the laughter that backlit her beautiful green eyes. Beautiful green eyes that narrowed with suspicion a split second later. “Wait a second. You said you don’t read. The Outsiders is a classic.”
“There’s a book, too?” Aiden cocked his head, careful to keep his expression neutral. “I thought it was just a movie.”
He waited for the look of horror or pity, but the suspicion only deepened, which kind of took the fun out of teasing her.
Aiden had figured out at an early age that people didn’t think he had a lot going on upstairs. He wasn’t like his brothers. Brendan could crunch numbers and decipher complicated spreadsheets, and in his spare time, Liam could assemble a rocket from a box of spare parts.
In one of his Sunday morning messages, Pastor Seth had told the congregation that God gave all His children unique gifts. For Aiden, though, finding those gifts felt more like combing the grass for Easter eggs rather than spotting a brightly wrapped present under the tree on Christmas morning.
In other words, he was still looking.
“I don’t mind starting tonight.” Maddie pulled out the chair next to his and sat down, stirring the air—and Aiden’s senses—with the scent of lily of the valley. He recognized the fragrance because the flowers appeared every spring. They weren’t showy like Sunni’s roses or the hydrangeas that bloomed along the foundation of the house. Lily of the valley blossoms were small and delicate. Easily overlooked. But if a person was paying attention, the flowers were surprisingly strong, brightening the shadowy places in the yard and thriving where others would have faded away.
“Aiden?”
He hadn’t been paying attention. “Sorry.” Aiden shifted restlessly, rattling the joints of the high-backed wooden chair. No doubt the conference room was a cozy, comfortable place to hold a meeting, but at this time of night, the pain from his injuries would normally have already forced him to the couch. “What’s your first question?”
“What is your sister’s name?”
“I don’t know.” Aiden pushed the words out through gritted teeth.
“But...” Maddie paused and searched his face. “How can you find your sister if you don’t know her name.”
“That’s why I asked you for help.”
“Okay...” Maddie drew in a breath. Released it again. “We’ll do what we always do when we’re not sure where to start, then.”
“Dive in headfirst?”
“Ask God for direction.”
“Ask God.”
Aiden shouldn’t have been stunned by Maddie’s suggestion. She was a believer. Attended church every Sunday, just like he did. But the fact that prayer hadn’t crossed Aiden’s mind showed how far he’d drifted from God since the accident.
He tried. He really did. But Aiden didn’t know what to say—and he wasn’t sure God was listening. In his darkest moments, Aiden wasn’t sure God cared about the details of his life at all. If He did, where had He been the night Aiden had ended up in the ditch, leaving both his body and his plans for River Quest temporarily out of commission?
An all-knowing God had to know how important the competition was to him.
But Aiden flashed a smile at Maddie, because he battled those unsettling doubts the same way he’d been battling his pain.
Alone.
“That’s a good idea.”
* * *
Maddie released the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding when Aiden agreed.
A swatch of ink-black hair slid over his forehead, veiling his expression as he bowed his head.
The hum of the furnace was the only sound in the room and Aiden didn’t seem inclined to break it, so Maddie was the one who asked for direction and wisdom. She tacked on a silent prayer for Aiden’s healing—of the body and mind—before she closed with a heartfelt but expectant amen.
And opened her eyes to find Aiden looking at her expectantly. Without the patch, Maddie got a close-up view of the jagged cuts that fanned out from his eye.
“Not very pretty, but at least it still works.” Aiden winked at her to prove it.
Maddie was mortified he’d caught her staring. Maybe her dad was right. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to be alone with a man in the library.
“If you don’t know your sister’s name,” she managed to stammer, “then we’ll start with her birthday.”
“I’m not sure of that, either.” A muscle worked in Aiden’s jaw. “Brendan overheard our mom talking to a caseworker, but she’d hidden her pregnancy from everyone. He had no idea how far along she was at the time. She could have just found out she was pregnant or been about to give birth, for all we know.”
“How old were you at the time?”
“About three, according to my brother.”
That gave them a timeline to work with anyway. “What are your parents’ names?”
“Carla Kane...” Aiden paused.
Maddie jotted that down. “And your father?”
“Darren Kane.” The temperature in the room seemed to plummet from toasty to single digits when Aiden said the name. “But he was a long-distance truck driver, and he and my mom...things were never good between them. They split up a few times before they finally divorced.”
“Oh.” Maddie jotted that down only because she needed a moment to fit that piece together with what she already knew about Aiden’s background. Her heart twisted at the thought of what his home life had been like before he and his brothers had moved to Castle Falls.
“And no, I can’t contact them and ask what happened to our sister.” He’d anticipated Maddie’s next question. “Darren went off the grid after the divorce and Carla...” Aiden’s jaw tightened. “A friend of hers sent Sunni a letter when I was fourteen, letting us know she’d passed away.”
“Aiden...I’m so sorry.” No matter what Aiden’s relationship with his biological mother had—or hadn’t—been, finding out about her death that way would have been difficult.
“Apparently Carla got sick, but she refused to go to the hospital to find out what was wrong. Her appendix ruptured and the infection spread through her body. She wasn’t in the best of health to begin with.” Aiden picked up a pen and tapped it against the table. “She was living in Grand Rapids at the time, so the funeral and burial were there.”
Aiden’s expression didn’t change, but in the erratic drumbeat of the pen she heard the emotion he couldn’t—or wouldn’t—express.
“Did you go?” Maddie resisted the urge to reach for his hand. She was venturing into unfamiliar territory, where any misstep could result in Aiden walking out the door.
He reminded Maddie of the river he loved. Below the surface of Aiden’s roguish smile and easygoing charm were hidden depths as inviting as they were unpredictable. Especially for a girl who’d never learned how to swim.
“We couldn’t. Trish Jenkins—that was her friend—didn’t get around to sending the letter for six months.”
Maddie questioned the sensitivity of someone who hadn’t given Aiden and his brothers the opportunity to say goodbye to their biological mother, but she kept her feelings to herself.
“Where were you and your brothers born?”
Aiden told her the name of the hospital, and Maddie nodded. Finally. Something she could wor
k with. “I’ll search for adoption agencies downstate and see what pops up.”
“Brendan did say that whoever Carla was talking to that day mentioned a closed adoption.”
Maddie struggled to maintain a neutral expression as she wrote that down, but she must not have been successful because Aiden leaned forward.
“You’re sure you want to take this on? There’s still time to back out.”
I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.
The quote from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice zipped through Maddie’s mind, even though Aiden Kane was more rakish swashbuckler than brooding aristocrat.
And you, my dear Maddie, are a wallflower, remember?
An old-fashioned term but one that fit a quiet girl who loved vintage clothing and tended to blend in with her surroundings. Aiden might not have noticed her, but that didn’t change the fact that he needed her.
“I’m not backing out,” Maddie said.
“Okay.” The genuine relief on Aiden’s face washed away any lingering doubts Maddie had about taking on such an unusual request. “What do you typically charge people for something like this?”
“There’s no charge. I’m the librarian, remember?”
Aiden Kane was no different from anyone else who came into the library. Helping him was simply part of her job.
But when Aiden smiled again, Maddie suspected she was going to have to remind herself of that often.
Chapter Six
Aiden’s pain pill was wearing off.
It was the only thing that would explain his sudden, inexplicable urge to count the number of pale gold freckles scattered across Maddie’s nose.
“I’d better go.” He pushed to his feet, ignoring the pain that bloomed in his knee. Over the weekend, it had dropped from an eight to a seven, so Aiden supposed the physical therapist’s claim that he was slowly improving was accurate. The “slowly” part was, anyway.
He pressed his hip into the back of the chair for balance, not wanting Maddie to know he was paying the price for rejecting her suggestion they move to the more comfortable chairs in the reading nook.
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