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I snap my gaze back to Hazel. “What?” I grit out.

Hazel shakes her head slowly. “No.”

I stare at her. “No?”

“No,” she says again. “I never had an abortion.”

My thoughts scatter.

Pregnancy.

My father.

No abortion.

The woods.

The secrets.

“Miscarriage?” Ella whispers.

Hazel looks down. Then back up. “No.”

The air leaves my lungs.

Hazel swallows. “I carried the child to term.”

I drop my lips into an O.

What? How? Why? When? Do I even know the man who fathered me?

“You had his child?” Ella says.

Hazel closes her eyes. A tear slips down her cheek. “Yes.”

I force my mouth to work. “My father’s child.”

“Yes.”

“A son?” I ask.

Hazel opens her eyes. “Yes.”

The shovel slips from my hand.

It hits the ground with a dull metallic sound.

“I have a half-brother?”

39

ELLA

“But you said you don’t have a son,” I say.

Hazel lifts her head, and I immediately regret the words.

She shakes her head. Slowly. Sadly. “Not anymore,” she says. “I have two other daughters from a different man. But my son—the one Arthur Vexley sired—is gone.”