Reid took a deep breath. “It wasn’t until I started looking over state lines that I found something.”
I started to feel dizzy. “What did you find?” I asked softly, leaning toward him.
Fox pressed my palm harder against his chest. His heart pounded erratically beneath my hand.
“Right around the time your mother would have left,” Reid continued, “there was a woman found in West Virginia. She’d been brutally attacked and dumped in a forested area along a creek. Although her injuries were significant, she survived.”
All the air left my lungs.
“She had severe trauma to her head,” Reid murmured, and he cleared his throat. His eyes flicked to the idling sedan before returning to me. “She was found with no identification. When she woke from an induced coma, she made a near full recovery physically—but didn’t remember who she was or anything about her life before.”
I shook my head. This couldn’t be right. I had to be hallucinating.
“My father killed my mother,” I said, repeating the information that Ash had told me. “My brother said—” I couldn’t even finish.
“We think that he truly thought he had killed her.” Reid crossed his arms over his chest, looking like he stifled a shiver. “With everything she went through, sheshouldhave died. But…she didn’t.”
I put a hand, like putting up a barrier would make the information less overwhelming. “What are you trying to tell me?”
“Skye,” Fox said quietly, like he was trying to soothe a small child, “we’re pretty sure we found your mom—and she’s still alive.”
The words felt like too much. A hope built in my chest, but I was so afraid to acknowledge it. I glanced at the parked sedan. Something pulled me toward it, a yearning ache that I couldn’t explain.
I rose to my feet without thinking, my eyes locked on the car idling at the curb.
Fox stood with me. His hand was warm and steady, though mine trembled.
I didn’t know if someone gave a cue, but at that moment, the passenger-side door opened.
A woman stepped out.
My lungs seized as that hope in my chest swelled. She had long, dark hair that spilled down her shoulders, a single streak of silver cutting through at the front. Even from here, I could see a gnarly scar running from her left temple up into her hairline.
Her eyes, so much like mine, locked onto me. Her chest heaved with rapid breaths as she started toward me.
My knees went weak, and I clung to Fox’s strength to stay upright.
The man who had driven her lingered by the car, but he barely registered in my brain.
All I saw was her.
Her face was so achingly familiar it hurt, but I still wanted to curb the hope making my heart burst. Part of me believed that this couldn’t be real. I had to be dreaming.
And then I would wake up absolutely crushed.
She stepped onto the porch, the boards creaking under her weight.
She stared at me a moment longer, gaze shifting around my face, like she was looking for some kind of confirmation.
“Mom?” I spoke before thinking, my voice a strangled, shocked cry.
The woman blinked, and then her eyes widened—shock and recognition lighting up her face.
“Oh, my God,” she said softly in a voice I recognized. “Skye.”
When she said my name, I knew it was her; there was no doubt. I had heard her say it countless times.
Had I ever heard her voice that clearly in my dreams?
