A Bad Day for Sunshine (Sunshine Vicram #1)(81)

“No,” Auri said, surprised.

“And then you strolled in two hours later,” Sun said. “Like you hadn’t a care in the world. I had no idea at the time what a good actress you were. I’ve since corrected that mistake.”

“I’m so sorry, Mom. I just . . . I want you to have the life you dreamed of before I came along.”

“The life I dreamed of?” Sun stared, unable to wrap her head around the inner workings of her daughter’s brain. “Auri, you are my life. I can’t live without you.”

“But I’m annoying and expensive and frustrating.”

Sun settled a stern expression on her daughter. “Aurora Dawn Vicram, you are also amazing and talented and brilliant. I can’t keep up with you. You’re always two steps ahead of me, no matter how hard I try.”

“So, I’m not frustrating?”

“No! Well, yes, but all kids are. You’re supposed to be. It’s, like, your job. How else are we adults going to pay for our raising?”

“All kids are frustrating? You promise?”

“What?” Quincy asked, a smirk tilting one corner of his mouth. “Did you think you had a corner on the market? Because if you want stories about your mom, we can talk later.”

She laughed and then asked, “Why didn’t you tell me you found the note?”

Sun took her daughter’s hands into hers. “I wanted you to tell me. To come to me. When you didn’t, your grandparents and I agreed to put you in therapy, just so you’d have someone to talk to. I spoke to the therapist. Told her what happened. She said you were a little depressed but that you weren’t exhibiting any suicidal tendencies.” Sun leaned closer. “You are really good if you fooled even her.”

Auri shrugged. “No, she just wasn’t that great of a therapist.”

Sun tackle-hugged her. The duo soon became a dog pile when Elaine and Cyrus joined them, Elaine tickling her granddaughter while Cyrus held her down. Then Quincy decided to play, and the whole melee went downhill from there.


“All right,” Sun said a half hour later as she tried to decide if she needed to be taken to the hospital for internal injuries. She’d gotten the brunt of the brute’s weight. “No more secrets. What do you want to know?”

She was asking Auri, but Quincy spoke up. “Everything. And I mean it this time, or I’m walking.” When everyone stopped to look at him, he stood his ground.

Or he was about to, until Sun asked, “Walking where?”

They burst out laughing, and Sun asked Auri, “Is that what you want? The whole story? I can tell you everything I remember, which honestly isn’t much. But no more secrets. You can ask me anything.”

Auri sat on the floor and leaned against Quincy’s legs. How a guy could make a huge fluffy recliner look small with him in it was beyond her.

Auri looked up at Sun, the deep caramel and green in her eyes breathtaking. “Yes. I want the whole story.”

Sun looked at Elaine and Cyrus, then began, “Okay, when I was seventeen, I was abducted and held for ransom for five days before someone dumped me at a hospital in Santa Fe. I had a traumatic brain injury and was in a coma for over a month.”

Auri’s lashes formed a perfect circle as she listened.

“The authorities believed someone drugged me at a restaurant in Santa Fe. I guess I’d met a friend for dinner? I must’ve pulled over when I was driving home.”

“We found the truck on I-25,” Cyrus said, appearing to get lost in the story. Haunted by it. “She’d probably passed out while driving. She’d scraped the guardrail.”

“It’s a wonder it wasn’t any worse,” Elaine said. Then she got up to make sandwiches. They had yet to eat lunch, but Sun could tell the story was taking a toll.

“When I woke up, I’d lost several weeks of time. I couldn’t remember anything about the abduction or about a month or two leading up to it.”

“Retrograde amnesia,” Elaine supplied from the kitchen.

“It made the investigation even more difficult, because I couldn’t tell the authorities if anyone had been following me or threatening me. If I’d noticed anything out of the ordinary.”

“She could barely remember her own name when she first woke up,” Cyrus said. “She’s come a long way.”

Sun leaned into him and gave him a playful shove before saying to Auri, “And that’s basically it, sweetheart. That’s pretty much my whole story. Besides waking up in the hospital and finding out a month later I was pregnant.”

“Did you ever get your memory back?”

“Not much about the days I was held, but I did get some of the weeks I’d lost before the abduction. A few glimpses, anyway.”

Auri picked at stray fibers on the carpet. “Mom, why did you keep me?”

“Oh, honey, I was in a coma for a month, and then I didn’t find out you were percolating inside me for another month. By the time we found out, you were a part of me. I couldn’t let you go at that point.” She turned to her mom and dad, gratitude swelling inside her. “And your grandparents supported my decision. Without question. They were so amazing.”

“And you really, really, really don’t regret it?”

She leaned over and put a hand on Auri’s face. “I never have, and I never will. Unless you turn out to be a serial killer. But even then . . .”