Somewhere Out There(93)

What the hell? She pulled out the folder, holding it in her right hand, wondering whether or not she should open it. But her curiosity immediately got the better of her, and she reasoned that since her name was on it, she had every right to see the contents.

As she scanned the documents, Brooke’s face flamed red and her stomach twisted. Natalie had run a background check on her. She’d encouraged Brooke to trust her . . . to open up . . . and the entire time she secretly thought Brooke might be a criminal.

“Brooke?” Her sister’s voice snapped Brooke out of her thoughts. “Is everything okay?” Natalie glance at Brooke’s hands, then Brooke saw her sister’s eyes go wide.

“Wait,” Natalie said. “I can explain.”

“There’s nothing to explain.” Brooke slapped the papers down onto the counter and held her arms rigid at her sides.

“Yes, there is,” Natalie said. “It wasn’t me. Kyle was just being overprotective.”

“Which explains how he treated me,” Brooke said. She had thought it was a good thing that Kyle was protective, but it didn’t occur to her that he would have taken it this far. That while he and Natalie smiled at her and made polite conversation, they were digging around in her past. Brooke felt dirty and ashamed, even though she had done nothing to deserve it. She couldn’t believe this was happening. Her chest ached as though her ribs had been kicked. “So much for me being family.” Her voice was splintered by tears.

“Brooke, please,” Natalie said, with a touch of desperation. Her chin trembled. “I’m so sorry. It was a mistake. It never should have happened. He didn’t tell me he was doing it. I didn’t know, or I would have stopped him. He’s sorry, too.”

Brooke shot her younger sister an icy glare. “I don’t believe you.”

Natalie didn’t move. She simply stared at Brooke, helplessly, with tears running down her cheeks. Brooke stared back at her. She should have known better than to let Natalie in so quickly. Brooke couldn’t believe she’d been foolish enough to make this mistake.

Without thinking, she spun around and strode through the living room and out the front door to her car. Ink-black clouds had moved in from over the gray waters of Puget Sound. Fat droplets of rain fell from the sky, splattering on the pavement, turning it dark, too. Fuck her, Brooke thought. Fuck her and her so-called good intentions.

“Brooke, wait!” Natalie said, following her outside.

Ignoring her, Brooke yanked open the trunk of her car. She lifted the brown box out of the spot where she’d placed it the morning she met Natalie for brunch. She’d kept it there ever since, unsure if she was ready to share it with her sister. She’d felt possessive, a little greedy, wanting to keep Natalie all to herself. But now that Natalie was showing her true colors, it was time for Brooke to show hers, too. She shut the trunk and jogged back to the front porch, holding out the box to her sister. Thunder clapped in the sky, and a moment later, lightning flashed, raising the hairs on Brooke’s skin.

“Here,” she said. “Take it. I don’t want it anymore.” Natalie looked at the box and then back to Brooke, confused. Brooke narrowed her eyes as she spoke again. “I know where our mother is. She lives up north, in Mt. Vernon, with her husband. She’s a veterinarian. Her last name is Richmond. She’s been there for over twenty years, since she got out of the Skagit Valley Women’s correctional facility. She spent seven years in prison for child endangerment and attempted kidnapping of a child. She doesn’t have any other children. She trains service animals for people with special needs. She’s a real saint.” Brooke sneered as she spoke those last words, watching as Natalie’s mouth dropped open.

“How?” Natalie asked, nodding toward the box, which she had yet to take from Brooke’s hand.

“One of my customers was a detective.” Chuck Baker was a hard-edged older man who had been a regular at a bar where Brooke had worked ten years ago. He liked to chat about his job when she served him his nightly pint of stout, telling her stories about how he tracked down suspects using the databases that only law enforcement had access to, and after several months, Brooke worked up the courage to ask him to use his connections to find her birth mother. He liked her well enough to bend the rules, as long as Brooke promised never to use his name in connection with how she got the information.

Natalie’s chin trembled. “But . . . I don’t understand . . . why didn’t you tell me about this before? Why did you let me think you didn’t know where she was?”

“I guess I didn’t trust you yet,” Brooke said. Her voice was hard. Unyielding. “And now I know why.”

Natalie closed her eyes, briefly, as though she’d been slapped. “Brooke, please,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

“I don’t care,” Brooke said. Natalie finally took the box, looking as though she might say something else, but before she could, Brooke spun around again and descended the steps. A gust of wind threw icy pinpricks of rain against her face.

“Wait,” Natalie called out. “Did you meet her?”

“No,” Brooke said, not bothering to look back. “She’s all yours.” What Brooke didn’t say was how she’d driven to their mother’s vet clinic and parked across the street, trying to work up the courage to go inside. She didn’t say that she’d seen the house their mother lived in with her husband, Evan, and the four dogs that played in the front yard. Somehow, seeing all of this, knowing that the woman who’d abandoned them had moved on and built a life without ever trying to find the daughters she’d once had, filled Brooke with bitter, twisted grief. She never wanted to see her mother again.