Until There Was You(88)

“Seems like it,” he said, grinning. “In the mood for a ride?”

“Sure,” she said. She ran into the house, then emerged again, shrugging into the leather jacket he’d let her keep.

“How’ve you been?” he asked.

“Just dandy.” She pulled on the helmet, then slid on behind him and said nothing more, just wrapped her arms around his waist, and off they went. He drove on the back roads, the full-blown beauty of spring around them, the trees so green it seemed that they were underwater. They passed tumbled stone walls and lawns full of flowering trees, a pond so blue it almost hurt his eyes. The air was soft and sweet, the sun warm, the purr of the Triumph low and tight.

After about half an hour, Liam pulled over by an old cemetery. He turned off the bike and took off his helmet. Cordelia did the same, running a hand through her short hair, looking away.

“What do you think?” he asked, grinning at the world in general. “You love motorcycles now?”

“Yep,” she said, and her voice was a little funny. Still a little pale, too.

Oh, boy. He took a deep breath. “You okay?”

She nodded.

“Are you pregnant?”

“No! No,” she said. “Um…I’m not pregnant. No. I just got some news, that’s all.” And then her face got kind of scrunchy, and she looked away and swallowed.

“Come over here,” he said, leading her to the edge of the cemetery. Whatever it was, he felt an abrupt sense of protection—almost like the urge to beat up whoever had made her cry. Because, yes, there were tears in her eyes, and he felt it like a punch in the lung.

There was a granite bench under a tree; the leaves were so bright green they glowed. The breeze rustled overhead, and a blue jay streaked in front of them.

She wiped her eyes and pressed her lips together.

“Tell me,” he ordered.

She took a shaky breath. “My birth mother wrote to me.”

Was that good? Bad? “That’s big news,” he said.

She nodded, two more tears sliding down her cheeks. “Yeah.” She sighed and leaned back, looking up at the sky. “It’s just…” Her voice dropped to a whisper, same way Nicole’s did when she was teary. “It’s old news, too.” She swallowed. “I guess my birth mother sent me a letter when I was in high school, but my parents never told me. Gretchen did. Today. She read the letter back then. I’m definitely the last to know here…?.” She bit her lip again. “And I’m kind of stunned, I guess.” Her voice broke. “I never thought she wanted to meet me, and all this time, maybe she did.”

Not knowing what else to do, Liam put his arm around her, and she leaned into him, resting her head against his shoulder, her goofy hair soft against his jaw.

Then she wriggled out of his grasp and walked off a ways, into the cemetery. “Sorry,” she called over her shoulder. “I’m not the weepy type most of the time.”

“You don’t have to be sorry,” he said. “It’s a lot to take in.”

He followed her, figuring she’d want to talk—women usually did. She didn’t say a word, however, and Liam wasn’t quite sure what to do, other than wish for that useful manual. “So, do you think you’ll try to find her? Your birth mother?” he asked eventually.

She glanced at him. “I don’t know. I don’t know if her information is still current, or—heck, I haven’t even seen the letter. My mom might have thrown it away.” She stopped in front of a small marble headstone, its words erased by time. “I just feel so bad—she must think I blew her off, you know? If she sent that, what, fifteen years ago?”

“Do you want to meet her?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe.” She knelt down and brushed off some lichen. “Every once in a while, I run into someone who’s scrawny and has hair like mine, and I wonder, is that my relative? It’d be nice to see where I came from.”

“Sure,” he said. Of course, maybe it wouldn’t be. Maybe her birth family was a mess, like his was. Maybe her mom had been a drug addict, and her father was in prison. You never knew.

“When I was a kid,” Cordelia said, “people would constantly ask my parents if I was adopted. They’d never ask about Henry, because it’s pretty obvious, but it seemed like someone was always asking about me.”

“Well, people are idiots.”

She shrugged. “I understood. I mean, I’m white, but I don’t look anything like Max and Stacia, God knows. They’re these big, strapping farmhand people, and I look like Anne Frank. It never bothered Henry—he’s not bothered by much. But it always bothered me.”

“Audrey Hepburn, I was thinking,” he said.

“What?”

“Not Anne Frank. Audrey.”

She paused, gave him a feeble grin. Still, it was something. “You get a sticker for that. Even if it’s wildly untrue.” She sighed. “It’s just…see, when Henry was about five, my mom got pregnant. But they lost the baby, and it was a girl.”

When Emma had been pregnant, she’d had a little bleeding. Turned out to be no cause for alarm, but that night in the E.R. was one of the worst in Liam’s life. Funny how precious something became when you thought you’d lose it. He could only imagine how wrecked the Osterhagens had been.