by Amanda Wen
Simple as that. For an untold number of years, Kimberly had been right under Sloane’s nose. Making the same city home. Eating at the same restaurants perhaps. Visiting the same museums and libraries.
Watching the same sunsets.
“You said in your emails you grew up in Cleveland.” Sloane glanced up. “Is that true?”
“Born and raised. My whole family lived there at the time. I was the first one to leave. For college. In Seattle. I got a full ride to a private liberal arts school there. I wanted to study English literature. Become a college professor and spend my career in academia.” Kimberly’s eyes fixed on her lap; her fingers laced together. “And I thought I was ready. I was a straight-A student after all. Valedictorian. On top of the world. But I had no idea how that world really works.”
Sloane picked at a loose cuticle. Her whole body tensed, her stomach knotted. Answers loomed like storm clouds on the horizon. Answers she’d sought her whole life.
Was she ready to hear them?
Kimberly’s attention shifted toward the flapping flag at the cemetery’s entrance. “So when my lit professor said he wanted to tutor me after hours … I thought that was exactly what he meant.”
A gust of wind clanked the flag’s metal rings against the eagle-topped pole.
“When he told me it was okay to act on our feelings, that they were normal and natural … I believed him.”
Sloane’s breathing grew shallow. Her legs itched to run. Had she really wanted answers? Was it too late to change her mind?
“When he told me he loved me, that he wanted to be with me forever … I thought that meant he’d leave his wife for me.”
Sloane’s hands balled into fists. A naive college student and a lecherous lit professor. That was her DNA. That was how she came into the world.
Kimberly gave a dry chuckle. “He didn’t, of course. Not even when I showed up with the baby.”
A scream welled inside. Sloane bit it back, but it filled her chest and throat and demanded escape. Maybe if she gave in, if she screamed and screamed and screamed, she wouldn’t have to hear the rest.
“I thought once he saw what we made together, he’d realize what a fool he’d been. But I was the fool. For so, so many reasons.” Kimberly’s voice was robotic. As though she were relating the story to a brick wall rather than the child she’d abandoned.
“He threw me out of his office. Told me he never wanted to see me again. Threatened to file a restraining order. So I got on a bus, my life in pieces …”
“And you left me.” The words were a dull thud.
“Yes.”
The screaming stopped. The storm fizzled. The answers she’d sought for so long lay quiet in her lap.
She expected to feel angry. Relieved. All the things, all at once.
But she felt nothing. Nothing except a sad resignation.
She wasn’t a baby to her mother. Not a person. Not really.
She was a last-ditch effort to save a doomed relationship.
And, true to form, she hadn’t been enough.
“I found out later I had severe postpartum depression. Not that that’s an excuse for what I did. There is no excuse, and I’m sorry, Sloane.” Kimberly was crying. “I’m so sorry, and I—”
Sloane held up a hand. “Can we … not do this? At least not right now? I need some time.”
Kimberly sniffled and dabbed her tears with a tissue. “Of course.”
Sloane crossed her legs and stared at the sky. Brilliant blue, with white cotton-ball clouds. Oblivious to the miserable woman and her miserable daughter below, trying to make some sense of their miserable beginning.
An ache welled in her chest. If only Garrett were here. He always knew how to smooth things over. He’d pull her close and stretch out those long legs and let her be a mess for a bit.
But he wasn’t here.
She hadn’t been enough to save that relationship either.
“So what’s your life like now?” Sloane searched her memory for fragments of her mother’s emails in hopes of steering the conversation to safer territory. “You’re married, right?”
Kimberly stashed the tissue in her purse. “Yes. Third time was the charm. Todd’s a heart surgeon. He and I are going on twenty-two years.”
Third? And that didn’t count her birth father. Sloane’s mind spun. “Do I have siblings?”
“You have a brother and a sister. Well, half.”
Still, people who shared half her DNA.
Yet they had nothing in common with her at all.
“Do your kids know about me?”
“No.” Kimberly’s voice was small. She seemed to shrink in on herself. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t.”
Sloane felt like a boxer who’d suffered so many blows she’d grown numb to them. “It’s fine.”
“This is Ethan.” Kimberly held out her phone. “He’s a sophomore. Plays football at Collegiate.”
Sloane blinked, stunned, at the dark-haired young man clad in the blue and gold of one of Wichita’s private high schools. This stranger bore some resemblance to her. Same hair color. Same nose. But how could anyone with athletic ability be related to her?
“And this is Siobhan. She’s my daughter with Greg.” Kimberly’s finger slid left to display a breathtakingly gorgeous brunette. Slender and willowy, with the same high cheekbones as her mother—their mother. But she also bore a more than passing resemblance to Annabelle.
“She studied music in college and works at a church now, plays violin, sings on the worship team.”
Sloane’s head jerked up. “She sings?”
“She has a beautiful voice.” The words were rich with pride. The kind of pride Sloane would have heard had Kimberly kept her. And she’d have a sister. A sister who sang, who grew up right here in Wichita. She could’ve run into them dozens of times. The library. Cowtown. Riverfest. She nearly choked. Ethan and Siobhan—her brother, her sister, her blood—had likely been some of those field trip kids shuffling through the exhibits. Probably before she worked there, but still. And she’d never known.
Because Kimberly chose not to allow it.
“She gets that from my father,” Kimberly was saying. “He had a voice to die for, God rest his soul—”
“He’s dead?”
Kimberly crossed herself. “Three years next month.”
It was too much. It was all too much.
“You took that from me.”
“I’m sorry?” Kimberly paused, her phone halfway back into her purse.
“I sing. For fun. At a jazz club. I said that in one of my emails.”
“You did, and I—”
“No.” Sloane stood. “I sing. I sing because I can’t not sing, and I never knew anyone else like that—except, hey, I’ve got a sister who’s the same way. And a grandpa. Only he’s dead, and I’ll never know him because you took that chance away from me. You took my family from me because you were a naive teenager who used me to try to patch up your doomed affair. And when that didn’t work? You left me on a bus.”
Kimberly’s mouth opened, but no sound came out.
“And I would have been happy with you.”
Kimberly got to her feet. “No, Sloane. You wouldn’t. You have to trust me on that.”
“Why?” She flung out her hand. “Sounds like Ethan and Siobhan are doing just fine.”
“They have adults for parents. Not a heartbroken, messed-up, mentally ill teenage single mom.”
“But they know you love them. They know you’re proud of them. They know they’re not just some bargain-basement plan B.” Sloane paced the grass in front of the little concrete bench. “Did you know my parents wanted to have a little girl more than anything else in the world? So they adopted me. And I tried so hard to be everything they wanted. But I couldn’t, because I wasn’t theirs.” Tears welled, but she held them back. “I could have grown up knowing who I was and where I came from. That I look just like my Italian great-great-grandmother. That the big old house up in
Jamesville belonged to my family. All that, I could have known. But I didn’t. Because you took it from me.”
“Sloane—”
“No.” She gathered her purse. “I’m sorry, but no. I just can’t.”
Blinded by tears, she stumbled to the shady spot where she’d parked her car, flung her purse in the passenger seat, and pulled out of the cemetery, her tires kicking up clouds of white gravel dust.
Finally, after decades of searching, she had what she wanted. Answers to her life’s core questions. Information she thought would make her complete.
Instead, she felt emptier than ever.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
GARRETT REACHED FOR his coffee and flew through another email. Though his inbox this Monday morning was predictably full, it was a comfortable, manageable full. Inbox Double Digits, once a pipe dream, was now the norm. And given a few more minutes of quiet, there was at least a snowball’s chance he’d reach Inbox Zero.
Such was life in a more settled state.
He and Kimberly Walsh had agreed to terms on the house last week. After Friday’s closing, it would no longer be his burden. Lauren, relieved that the deal with Williams had fallen through, was thrilled to sell to Kimberly. As for Grandma, it seemed Plaza de Paz was treating her so well she barely even remembered the house. Whether that was due to her disease or to how happy she was in her new digs, he wasn’t sure. But he’d take it.
And yet. As quickly and easily as God gave him direction regarding the house, he’d been curiously silent on the issue of Sloane. Garrett’s heart still bled at her absence, but he hesitated to call her. To hop in the car and drive down, as had occurred to him more than once while passing the exit for I-35 South on his way to work.
But he’d seen what happened when he charged ahead, and he dared not risk doing that with the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. She was too precious. Too important. So he’d vowed to wait for complete assurance from God as to his next steps. Thus far, that assurance had yet to be given.
Garrett clicked to the next email. “Quick question,” the subject line read. He had to smile. “Quick questions,” as a rule, were never quick. Especially when they came from clients like Gilda Roberts.
But a knock came at the door before he dove in, and Joseph Sterling leaned against the doorjamb.
“Garrett. Good morning.” Sterling’s expression was unreadable. “Could I steal a moment of your time?”
“Sure.” Garrett turned from his computer as the boss settled into the chair opposite him. Sterling leaned back and studied him, fingers interlaced.
Garrett’s stomach tightened. He wasn’t about to get fired, was he?
No. That was ridiculous. Maybe in the thick of things with Grandma, Sterling would’ve had cause. But not now. Garrett wasn’t behind anymore. He didn’t take hours to return phone calls. He was close to Inbox Zero.
“I’ll get right to it,” Sterling said. “You’ve no doubt heard buzz about us possibly opening a satellite office. Somewhere outside the KC metro.”
“I’ve heard rumors, yes.” Garrett’s shoulders relaxed slightly. This didn’t sound like a pink-slip conversation.
“Well, it’s happening.” Sterling’s smile lit his face. “And the suits have asked me for a couple guys to start it up. Given the administrative duties, it’d mean a promotion. Pay raise. Your name was the first to come to mind.”
Garrett’s eyebrows shot up. “It was?”
“Naturally, since the satellite office will be in Wichita.”
The name hit him square in the solar plexus.
“Somewhere on the west side. One of those newer office parks. Can’t remember exactly where. Anyway, I think you’d be a perfect fit for it. You’re young. A go-getter. Plus, it’d be more convenient for you, what with your grandmother, your sister, that girlfriend of yours …”
Girlfriend. The word stung like lemon juice on a paper cut. “Oh, we’re not—I’m not, ah …”
“Never thought I’d see Garrett Anderson speechless.” Sterling gave a quiet chuckle, then eyed Garrett over the rims of his glasses. “So how’s this strike you? Think we could persuade you to pack your bags and head south?”
Garrett blew out a breath. “I’d have to give it some thought.”
“Of course.” Sterling stood. “But we want to get moving on this, so if you’re out, I’ll need to find someone else.”
“Absolutely. I understand.”
Sterling slipped out, and Garrett tapped his pen against his desk, the emails in his inbox blurring as his contacts dried out from staring.
He could be moving to Wichita.
What about his clients? Who else would be so patient with Geraldine Krantz’s weekly stock market panic? Who would take the time to answer Gilda Roberts’s “quick questions”?
And what about him? Wichita was never part of the plan. An idyllic slice of childhood, sure, but his real life was here. Royals games. Arguments over which restaurant had the best barbecue. Great jazz. Rolling hills, thick groves of trees, and the wide Missouri River. He’d grown up here. His family was here.
Except they weren’t here. Not anymore. With Mom in heaven, Dad in Florida … and what were Lauren’s plans exactly? Did she even have any? Would she stay near Grandma, or chuck it all and backpack across Europe? Either was plausible.
He needed to talk to her.
And Sloane.
His heart thudded.
This move wouldn’t be like the one he made for Jenny Hickok. It wouldn’t be a hasty abandoning of his lifelong plans, but a surrendering of them to the God who’d had a better plan all along. And the move wouldn’t be for Sloane, necessarily. For all he knew, he’d already torched his chance with her. Even so, Wichita was big enough that awkward run-ins at the corner coffee shop would be the exception, not the rule. The two of them could doubtless coexist peaceably.
Never mind that he ached for so much more.
His coveted quasi-settled feeling evaporated like mist in the face of yet another huge decision. One that would lead to another. And another. And another.
Yes, he needed to talk to Sloane. And Lauren. And his colleagues.
But before he did any of that, he needed to talk to God.
Lord? Hey. It’s me. I’ve got a quick question …
The rough bark of a cottonwood dug into the back of Sloane’s shirt. Damp soil seeped through her pants. And she was probably trespassing, since Garrett’s family didn’t own this land anymore. The “sale pending” sign out front was proof. Heck, Warren Williams’s bulldozer could come along at any moment.
But for now she was here. At Annabelle’s spot. Or as close to Annabelle’s spot as she could reasonably guess. Her foremother found such peace beside these rippling waters.
Maybe she could too.
Her head fell back against the tree and she closed her eyes, enjoying the warm breeze on her face and trying to make sense of this morning. Her whole life, she’d wondered who she was. Where she came from. Why her mother abandoned her. And now she had the answers.
But rather than salve the wound, those answers ripped it wide open. And through its jagged, bleeding edges stormed the words she’d always believed about herself. The silent shrieks that had defined her.
Unwanted.
Unloved.
Not enough.
A gust of wind stirred the leaves overhead and tugged at the soft, weathered envelope between her fingers. She’d almost forgotten Kimberly gave her Annabelle’s letter to Nonna. Before today, she’d have dug into its contents as eagerly as the fragile paper would allow. Now, she eyed the familiar handwriting with abundant caution. Would Annabelle’s words soothe her troubled soul? Or would they pour more salt into that ripped-open wound?
Curiosity won out, and Sloane carefully pulled the yellowed paper from the envelope, unfolded it, and scanned the faded handwriting. A bit wobbly now—the date indicated Annabelle was in her seventies—but still familiar.
The letter was mostly updat
es on relatives. Some of the names registered, others didn’t. But toward the end of the second page, a few lines caught Sloane’s eye. Made her slow in her skimming and drink in the words.
My dear Domenica, it is always difficult for a mother when her last chick flies the nest. I remember how hollowed out I felt when Maggie Ann married Daniel and moved to Oklahoma. I missed her laugh, her sparkling wit, those gray eyes so like her father’s. Children leave, and it is as it should be, but oh how bittersweet!
Rest assured that the God who blessed you with those beautiful children loves them even more than you do. And the Lord loves you too, Domenica. He never leaves you. He alone is sufficient.
It took me many years and many trials to learn this. When my mama passed, God cared for me. My papa left, but God never did. I lost Emmaline, but the Lord held me in my grief. He shepherded me through losing Jack. And yet, when Oliver and Kate planned to move to California, I fought God tooth and nail. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing the only place I’d truly called home. Of giving up on Jack’s dream and being torn from the last bit of him I had.
But the Lord convicted me of my sin. My idolatry—for that is what it was. I had depended on my identity as a daughter, a mother, a wife, a resident of Sedgwick County. But in reality none of those things are my true identity, nor are they yours. We are daughters of the most high God. He alone can satisfy. Even though I still miss Jack dearly and look forward to that day when we are together in glory, I have grown closer to the Lord in ways I never knew I could. He has filled all my empty places and indeed given me the peace that passeth all understanding.
Give my love to John Patrick and the children. You are all in my prayers daily.
Ever yours,
Mama Brennan
As Sloane lowered the letter, a fresh sense of loss gripped her. Something far beyond not getting what she wanted. The sheer emptiness of gazing into the chasm at the core of her being and knowing that all her efforts to fill it had failed.
Trying to please her parents, to be the little girl they wanted so desperately, hadn’t worked.
Meeting her birth mother, getting answers … that hadn’t filled the hole.