Page 274 of One Wild Wish

Sarah. My mother. I no longer understood what those words meant. My life had become a novel. The twisty, crime kind with mafia and wise guys and bodies dumped into rivers, but under it all was a desperate teenager, drowning in despair. “She seemed so sad and alone.”

August’s expanding chest pressed against my body, making us both rise. He blew out a slow breath. “I can’t imagine what she went through.”

“And to leave me with her sister? Never come back for me? No wonder my mom or Mary, or whatever I’m supposed to call her, resented me.”

“She did come back, though, in a way. That’s why the luggage went missing. Eleven years late, but she sent for you.”

Eleven years. That number again. I picked apart my limited knowledge of my aunt-turned-mother. One fact rang clearer than the rest: she’d sent me birthday cards, one a year for eleven years, then they’d stopped. After a fight with her sister, because of me. There had never been a return address. I’d checked when the cards had stopped, thinking I’d reach out to her. My mother had likely been in the dark about her sister’s whereabouts. Had no way to deliver me to her.

If Sarah had called her to check on me, while refusing to reveal her location, it could have provoked Mary to lash out at her, tell her not to call again.

I filled August in on those details, my words tumbling out faster as I spoke. “Sarah must have sent the suitcase the next year, after that call, before my twelfth birthday. Assumed I got it and chose not to contact her. Do you think that’s why she cut our ties? Because I never reached out?”

His callused fingers grazed my arm, up and down as he stroked me. “This has to be an intensely sensitive issue for her. There’s major insecurity with that. She must have assumed you didn’t want contact. I’d choose to suffer over barging in on your life after that.”

“But why not call? So many years later, why send the case?”

“Maybe the same reason people text and email. It’s less personal. Rejection wouldn’t sting as much. And the diary and note allowed you to know Sarah better than a shocking call.”

I shut my eyes, listened to the gegong-gegong of August’s steady heart. My aunt was my mother. My mother was my aunt. Mary could have been the girl who’d tracked my father to the Blue-Eyed Raven, desperate to find him. Hoping for a clue to her sister’s location. There was no way to know. Mary and Ted were both gone. Still, I’d learned more today than I had in twenty-eight years.

Too much and not enough.

Here, tucked safely against August, the weight of it all felt bearable. Inconceivable, but bearable.

“Sarah gave me up to keep me safe and give me a better life,” I said, as though speaking it aloud would make the choice clearer. It did, slightly.

“Sounds to me like she felt cornered, unable to care for you.”

I couldn’t imagine that kind of terror and impotence, but I remembered how depressed I’d been in college, how alone. No supports in my life. Add a madman trying to kill me and a surprise baby, and I might have cracked as epically as her. I also wasn’t sure how to unpack this glimpse of my father, a man who’d threatened and had possibly killed people.

Thankfully, I hadn’t knocked on that red door earlier. Who knows what would have greeted me? In time, I’d go. I’d ask questions and learn all I could, find out if I had siblings. For now…

I wasn’t sure what I’d do for now.

“Are you angry with her?”

August’s question caught me off-guard. There were too many emotions to name. “I’m feeling kind of numb.”

Again, I replayed the steps that had led me here, a twisted chess game of calculated moves and countermoves. Each bit of information learned the past two days, each second, minute, hour had contributed to discovering this secret. Without every choice made, good or bad, this box would have stayed buried, this truth forever lost.

Another possibility struck, so hard, I nearly bit my tongue. “We wouldn’t be here.”

August unlatched my hand from his ribs. I hadn’t realized I’d dug my fingers in. He slinked down until we were eye to eye. “We wouldn’t be where?”

“If Mary got the suitcase when she was supposed to, seventeen years ago, she would have given me the diary and address. I wouldn’t have hesitated to move across the country.” I pressed closer to him, wound our legs together. I soaked in his handsome face. “I wouldn’t have driven you nuts as teens.”

There would have been no WTF.

No painful years without him.

No making up and falling in love.

No Ainsley and Rachel.

August kissed me and rolled me on top of him. He secured his arms around my waist. “I hate that you missed growing up with your mother, but I’d be lying if I said I’m sorry you never got that diary. I don’t know how I lived without you the past nine years, but I can promise you you’ll be the first and last person I speak with every day for the next ninety-nine, no matter what countries we’re living in.”

I’d rather make it nine hundred and nine. “Time zones might make that tough.”