Jim had only made the effort to get Craig his license, insisting that the girls hadn’t needed one. Even now that they’d gotten away from him, they still hadn’t been able to get their licenses.
The small town where they lived didn’t have a DMV, and they had no way of getting to the nearest one. So they had to make do with walking everywhere. Which wasn’t a problem, since the town wasn’t big. But it kept them trapped in the area, even though they’d managed to leave the homestead years ago.
It had taken far too long for them to work up the nerve to leave. Actually, it had takenherfar too long. Kiara would have left as soon as she’d turned eighteen if it hadn’t been for Angela and, to a lesser degree, Sandra.
Instead, it had taken almost ten years—and Sandra’s death—before they’d left. Once they’d settled into life in Briar Hollow, Angela wished they’d done it sooner. Kiara’s response to that had always been that the important point was that theyhaddone it. Better late than never.
Now Angela was looking at another possible change in her life. Would finding a sister mean she and Kiara could have a life beyond Briar Hollow?
She wasn’t sure what she wanted the answer to be.
As the days and weeks passed, without hearing any response to Kiara’s call, Angela tried to put it out of her mind. Kiara, however, wasn’t ready to give up so easily.
“This will be my last call,” Kiara said on New Year’s Eve, nearly six weeks after that first phone call. “If they don’t respond to this one, I’ll stop calling.”
“You said that before every other call you’ve made,” Angela reminded her.
She put the sandwich she’d prepared for Kiara on a plate and handed it to her, before making one for herself.
“I know.” Kiara set the plate down on the table, then sat in her chair. “But this time for sure.”
Angela joined her at the table. “Why this time for sure and not all the other times you’ve said it was the last time?”
“New year, new project,” Kiara replied with a shrug. “And if they have no interest in who you might be, their loss.”
Recalling the beautifully dressed woman on a handsome athlete’s arm, Angela wasn’t so sure they had lost anything by not getting in contact with her.
Over the past few weeks, she couldn’t help but wonder—if they really were siblings—why they’d been separated. Why whoever adopted the woman in the picture hadn’t wanted her too. Why Jim and Sandra hadn’t wanted Angela’s sister.
Though they had questions—well, Kiara had questions—Angela had felt a growing certainty that maybe it was best not to know about her past. Maybe God didn’t want her to know. She’d been praying about it and was willing to accept that perhaps that knowledge was not God’s will for her.
Sometimes she wished she remembered things about her life before the Reynolds the way Kiara and Craig did. But perhaps it was better that she remained clueless. Just forget about the past—both before her adoption and afterward—and focus on the future she and Kiara were striving for.
One far, far away from Briar Hollow and her adoptive father’s reach.
CHAPTER TWO
Jude tapped his phone to accept the call, then put it on speakerphone before setting it on his desk. “Hello, Mom.”
“Darling!” His mother’s voice filled the air. “Happy New Year’s Eve!”
“Same to you.”
“Do you have any special plans?” she asked.
Jude stared through the window at the towering evergreens outside the cabin he called home on the Burke Estate. “Nope. Nothing special. I probably won’t even be up until midnight.”
“That’s such a shame,” his mom said with a sigh. “You should have someone special in your life by now. You’re forty, you know.”
"Thirty-eight, Mom. I'm thirty-eight," Jude corrected, his tone flat. He leaned back in his chair, pinching the bridge of his nose.
"That's still too old to be alone on New Year's Eve." The concern in her voice was genuine, even if her methods were intrusive. "I worry about you, sweetheart."
"You don't have to, Mom. I'm fine. Really." Jude glanced at the security monitors on the wall of his home office that displayed various angles of the Burke estate. All quiet, as it should be. "The job keeps me busy."
“Too busy.” There was a hard edge to her voice. "Your father was the same way. Always the job first."
Jude's jaw tightened. Though not surprised at the direction their call had taken, he wished that, for once, they could have aconversation without his mom venting her frustration about her marriage to Jude’s dad.
