Finding Our Forever (Silver Springs #1)(51)

“No big ones.” Her mother’s vanity could wear on her. Lilly could be a little materialistic, but Cora couldn’t say anything derogatory about her. She already felt too disloyal just by being here—and getting involved in Eli’s life and Aiyana’s life...

“I’d like to meet her.”

Cora wasn’t about to invite Lilly to the ranch. She planned to keep this new world separate from the one she’d left in LA. Otherwise, she’d feel even guiltier. “She’s really busy.”

“Doing what?”

“She’s a big philanthropist, always involved in one community event or another.”

“That makes her sound caring.”

Except that she sometimes gave the impression she did charity work more because she was bored and liked the positive attention it brought her. “She is caring. It’s complicated, completely harmless. No one is all one way or the other, you know?”

“She doesn’t have a job?”

“Doesn’t need to work. But she has lots of friends she goes out with for...for brunch and movies and what have you. And she golfs,” she added weakly.

“Ah, I can see she’s completely buried.”

Cora heard the sarcasm but pretended she hadn’t. “She is.”

“We’re not that far from LA,” he said.

“Yeah. She’ll come visit. Sometime.”

He lifted his head to give her a funny look. “I mean we could go there any weekend you choose.”

“Maybe for Christmas,” she mumbled since the holidays sounded a long way off.

He didn’t say anything. He got up and went into the bathroom to turn on the shower so they could wash off the sticky residue of the frosting, and she leaned over to check her phone. She’d tried to reach Matt earlier, before going to the basketball courts to find Eli for breakfast, but he hadn’t picked up. He hadn’t responded to her text, asking him if he got home okay, either. She thought he was just going to write her out of his life, and was happy to have him do that. But when she took a moment to listen to the voice mail her mother had left while she was having dinner at Aiyana’s, her blood ran cold. In a voice choked with emotion, Lilly asked her why she hadn’t told them she’d gone to Silver Springs to meet her biological mother.

“Oh God,” Cora whispered. Matt hadn’t told Aiyana and Eli why she’d sought out a job at the ranch—but he had told Lilly.





Chapter Seventeen

“What did you say?” Eli poked his head out of the bathroom to see Cora grabbing her clothes off the floor and hurrying to get dressed.

“I said I have to go.”

“But...you’re sticky.”

“I’ll rinse off at home. There’s been a—a family emergency.”

Feeling a fissure of concern, he hooked his arms above his head using the lintel of the doorway. He would’ve helped gather her things, but she already had her clothes and there wasn’t much he could do to help her dress. “What kind of emergency?”

“My mom...she’s upset about something. I have to go home.”

He turned off the shower. “Would you like me to drive you there?”

“No. It’s fine. I’ll go alone. I don’t know when I’ll be able to come back so...so you should stay here.”

“Then...do you need someone to cover your classes tomorrow? If I can’t get one of the other teachers to combine, I can always show them a movie or something—act as babysitter, at least.”

Cora couldn’t conscionably leave her students in the lurch and make him step in, not when this wasn’t the type of emergency Eli assumed. No one had been hurt or killed; no one was in the hospital. This was merely the consequences of the fact that she hadn’t been able to let certain things go—things that some adopted kids, maybe even a lot of them, could do with apparent ease. “No. I’ll be here.”

“It’s already eight o’clock!”

“The drive’s only two hours. I can get there and be back before morning.”

“After being up all night, will you be in any condition to work?”

“I’ll muddle through. School doesn’t last that long.”

“I’m willing to help you,” he said. “Just tell me what’s wrong.”

When she looked up at him, she had tears in her eyes, which brought him out of the bathroom. “Cora...”

“I’m fine.” She put up a hand to ward off the comfort he’d hoped to offer. “I... I need to go. I’m sorry,” she said and hurried out.

Eli stared after her. Just when he felt as if he was getting close to her, closer than he’d ever been to a woman, she seemed to retreat behind some invisible wall.

For a change, it wasn’t him. But that didn’t mean it wouldn’t turn out to be a problem.

*

The silence in the kitchen felt tangible—like a thousand pounds of sand bearing down on Cora’s shoulders, so heavy it was hard to bear up beneath it. Both of her parents were sitting at the table across from her, but neither seemed to have much to say. Lilly had cried a lot, and Brad acted confused, as if he was still trying to piece together why she’d needed more than what they’d provided when they’d given raising her their best effort.