Beneath the Patchwork Moon (Hope Springs, #2) (11 page)

“Maybe then.” He shook his head, scuffed his boot against the dry hardwood floor. “I doubt she did later.”

“Later?”

“When I was at school. When I was away.”

Oh, he had it wrong. “Distance wouldn’t have changed her mind—”

“Sierra was pregnant.” Three words dropped like bricks on the surface of a still lake, the circle of the impact widening, widening…

“What?” Her voice broke on the word, her whole world crumbling. He’d known? All this time, and he’d known?

When she blinked him into focus, he was nodding. “She called me not long after spring break and told me. She asked me to come home and hold her hand while she told our parents.”

The tips of her fingers had gone cold. They burned like icicles when she pressed them to her mouth. “I had no idea. I knew about the pregnancy, of course. But not about her calling you. Or that she’d planned to give your parents the news.”

And why hadn’t she known? Sierra had told her the rest. She’d told her everything. So why not this? It didn’t make any sense… unless Sierra hadn’t wanted her to think badly of Angelo for not coming. Except that wouldn’t have mattered unless Sierra had known Luna and Angelo were together. She hadn’t… had she?

“I wondered if you knew. I mean, not that she was pregnant, that was a given, but about her calling me.”

They’d shared everything else. Why not this? And why hadn’t Angelo mentioned knowing before now? “What did she say? I know it’s not my business—”

“There’s not a lot to tell.” He reached up and raked back his hair. “She told me she was pregnant, and she wanted to tell our folks but didn’t want to do it alone. She wanted me to fly home for the weekend and have her back while she did.”

Not long after spring break, he’d said. Did that mean he didn’t know the rest? “What did you say to her?”

“I told her she was old enough to get herself into trouble, she was old enough to face the music.”

But she never had, and Luna wondered why, when doing so might’ve changed everything—for their families and their friends and a tiny life who would never know what she’d lost.

Angelo went on. “The medical examiner didn’t say anything about her being pregnant at the time of her death. At least as far as I know. I assumed she’d lost it. Maybe even in the accident. Or gotten rid of it. It was half Gatlin. I didn’t figure Oscar would want to be tied down.”

This was what made her so sad, made telling the truth so hard. Neither Sierra’s family nor Oscar’s knew what the two had shared. Luna was the only one. And she didn’t know whether she had the words to make anyone else, even Angelo, understand.

“She would never have gotten rid of it. She and Oscar…” She let the sentence trail, thought better of telling him everything the couple had done.

“She and Oscar were stupid.”

“Don’t say that,” she said, a sharp hitch grabbing at her chest. “They were happy. They were… happy.”

“So what happened? To the baby? How far along was she when she called me?”

“If it was after spring break, then four months. She got pregnant in December.”

“Four months?” He pushed off the couch arm, paced to the front door and back, his steps hard. “I thought when she called me she’d just found out.”

“No,” she said and bowed her head. “She’d known awhile.”

“Was she sick?”

“Oh yeah. I always had crackers with me in case she needed them.”

“How did she hide being pregnant from our parents all that time? How did she hide it from her teachers?”

“I helped,” she said, leaning against the closed drawers and pulling her knees to her chest. “We bought her new uniforms. They fit well enough that she just looked like she was getting fat. It was easier over the summer. She only had music classes three days a week. The other days we holed up in the tree house, though she had no business climbing up there. Or we hung out in her room. Out of sight, out of mind. And she almost didn’t show through the whole pregnancy.”

“If she was still pregnant during the summer, then in September…” He stopped, stepped away, his mind obviously whirring.

Luna swallowed. “She had the baby the Friday before the accident.”

“And?” he asked, as slowly he turned back, his chest heaving, his eyes both fiery and dark. “Where’s the baby now?”

Luna had no idea. And that was the gospel truth. Though if Oliver Gatlin had gone digging… “She gave it up for adoption.”

CHAPTER TEN

S
hock rooted Angelo in place. Shock and disbelief and a frightening amount of rage. Nothing here made sense. Not a single thing Luna was saying. He had to have it wrong.

He took one step closer, then another, stopping when his shin bumped the coffee table. “She had the baby? And she gave it up for adoption?”

Luna nodded, her gaze on the drawer she’d just pulled open, a barrier between them, a shield.

Dear God.
He scrubbed both hands down his face, breathing hard, finally jamming his hands onto his hips. “And you didn’t think her family might want to know? Might have a right to know? Might care that a piece of the daughter, the sister they’d lost, still lived in her child?”

“Of course I thought about that.” The drawer shook from the pressure of her hands curled around the edge. “I’ve thought about that every day for ten years. But Sierra asked me to keep her secret. She didn’t want anyone to know until she and Oscar told them.”

“Screw what she wanted. She was a kid.”

“She was an adult.” She yelled the words, her hair flying as she whipped her head around to face him. “She’d turned eighteen earlier that summer. Oscar, too. They didn’t need
their parents’ consent for anything. They were both legal adults when the adoption process was started.”

He thought back to when his sister had called him, calculated the dates. She hadn’t been eighteen then. “I guess she had a C-section? Or was induced? Unless someone waved a magic wand to have her go into labor the weekend you two were away at art camp.”

“She was induced, yes.”

“Of course. The postmortem would’ve shown an incision, and I can’t imagine a reputable hospital releasing her so soon after surgery. But it should’ve been just as obvious to the coroner that she’d recently given birth.”

“Unless there was no postmortem,” Luna offered. “It’s not like the cause of her death was in question.”

He didn’t know. He barely remembered those days. He’d heard nothing from his parents about what had happened with Sierra’s body. Even thinking about it now… “What was it? The baby? A boy or a girl?”

“A girl.”

He sank onto the sofa, buried his face in his hands. It was bad enough that he’d kept the secret of his sister’s pregnancy from their parents… but this? How was he ever going to live with this? Because if he’d said something about Sierra expecting… “So I have a niece out there somewhere. My parents have a granddaughter.”

Luna was slow to answer. “Biologically, yes, but none of you have any claim on the child. Sierra was the only one in your family with rights. And she signed those away.”

He shook his head. “There’s got to be some recourse. I’ll need to talk to an attorney—”

“Why?”

“Why?” He looked at her, but didn’t really see her. All he could see was red. “What kind of stupid question is that?”

“You’re not thinking straight.”

“Of course I’m not thinking straight.” He yelled the words, gestured wildly. “You just told me my dead sister had a daughter.”

“Angelo, listen,” she said, closing the drawer, moving closer, the coffee table still between them. “The child is ten years old. She legally belongs with the family who adopted her. She may not even know she’s adopted. Are you really going to charge in like a bull trying to get your way? Because, what? You didn’t come home when Sierra called you, so ruining her daughter’s life is going to make up for that somehow?”

“How is giving her the truth of her heritage going to ruin her life?”

“How is giving her the truth of her heritage going to make the life she has any better? She’s a child, Angelo. A little girl. She may have other siblings, and no doubt friends at school, at church. She might be in dance class, or in Girl Scouts, or taking cello lessons. Telling her where she came from, what happened to Sierra and Oscar… Don’t you see how that truth could turn her world upside down? Even if you could get access to the records, could you really do that to a ten-year-old girl?”

He didn’t have an answer. He wanted to tell her that the child wasn’t the only one in the picture, the only one with stakes in the game. He wanted to tell her that he and his parents and siblings were the girl’s blood relatives, so of course knowing them would make her life better. But that was such a crock he couldn’t believe he was thinking it. He was gripping,
reaching for anything to kill the pain. He was trying to make himself feel better over failing his sister before she’d died.

If he’d come home when she’d called him that spring, if he’d stood with her while she talked to their parents, if he’d been the brother he should’ve been, the brother she’d needed, not the selfish ass who was too busy with his own life to care about hers… If he’d done any of that, she wouldn’t have had a reason to be in that car with Oscar Gatlin, traveling the Devil’s Backbone, returning to Hope Springs from giving birth to a child no one had known she’d had.

No one but Luna Meadows. Everything kept coming back to Luna Meadows.

He looked at her, wondering what else she knew. “Why would she have told you to keep her secret? She called me because she was going to tell our parents. Doesn’t sound to me like she was trying to hide it.”

“I don’t know.”

“Did the Gatlins talk them in to giving up the baby?”

“The Gatlins didn’t know she was pregnant. They didn’t tell Oscar’s family either.”

“So I knew, and you knew, and they knew, and the attorney and couple who took the baby knew, and that was it?”

“The couple didn’t
take
the baby. They took care of Sierra. Once the adoption process was under way, she received incredible prenatal care, probably better than she would’ve been able to provide for herself.”

He scrubbed a hand over his jaw, the guilt that had been there all these years eating away at the wall he’d built to contain it. “You don’t know why she changed her mind? About telling our parents?”

Luna stayed silent, stacking old magazines from under the table in piles on the floor.

“Luna?”

“No. I don’t.” She reached up, rubbed at her temple. “I only knew about the adoption. And I promised Sierra—”

He surged forward, shoved at the magazine stack with one foot, scattering them, tearing them. “I don’t give a crap about a promise you made a decade ago. Things have changed—”

“What exactly has changed? She was pregnant. She died. The only thing different is now you know she gave birth. Your knowing that doesn’t negate the promise I made to your sister. Don’t put me in this position. Not now. Not… yet.”

“What does that mean, not yet?”

“I loved Sierra,” she said, on her hands and knees, gathering the magazines again and fixing the mess he’d made. “I probably loved her as much as Oscar, just not in the same way. Keeping her secrets hasn’t been easy, but I’ve done it because I told her I would. It’s just that… I’m starting to wonder if I did the right thing. And if I did it for the right reason.”

“The right reason? Would that be keeping yourself out of hot water?”

“Actually, no. It wasn’t about me. It wasn’t even about protecting Sierra.”

“Then what?” he asked, waiting as she sat back on her knees.

“I didn’t want the Gatlins to cause trouble for the baby’s family.”

He took a deep breath, letting that settle. “And you thought they could find out who they were?”

“I was eighteen. I was grieving. I was in a lot of physical pain. I wasn’t thinking straight, but even if I had been, I didn’t know anything about sealed adoptions or client confidentiality. What I did know was that the Gatlins always got what they wanted. I couldn’t see this being any different.”

“Did Sierra know the couple?”

Luna shook her head. “They did everything through the attorney Oscar contacted. She wanted the break to be complete.”

“But you still thought the Gatlins could find a way around the legalities.”

“Don’t they always? And there had already been so much heartbreak, for Oscar’s family, for your family. I didn’t want to add to that by coming clean.”

“You should’ve come clean.”

Her hands on her thighs, she narrowed her gaze as she looked at him. “Why me and not you?”

“What?”

“Did you tell your parents she called you? Did you tell them she was pregnant with Oscar’s child?”

“No, because I didn’t talk to them all that summer.” Admitting it now shamed him, but it had been wonderful not having to pick up the phone and hear that something else had gone wrong and he needed to fix it. “I was in Rome, and I thought she’d gone ahead and told them even though I didn’t come home. Next thing I knew, she was gone.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“Now you do. Just like now I know you have been lying all this time. And a lie of omission is still a lie. So what else haven’t you said?”

She got to her feet, dusting off the knees of her jeans, then her seat, never looking at him as she pushed by on her way to the front door and walked out. He didn’t turn, or try to stop her, but let her go, staying where he was, swearing to himself he would get to the bottom of the secrets she was keeping.

Five days, five weeks, five months. He didn’t care how long it took.

He wasn’t leaving Hope Springs till he did.