“Cilla told me this was tied around your wrist when she found you.”
He looked up again. Her dark blue eyes were wet.
“I’ve been paid in advance to help you find out where you came from, Wolf—if and when that’s something you want to do. Okay?”
“I—I don’t know. I can’t even think right now.”
“I wouldn’t ask you to decide anything now,” she said quickly. “Look, I met with your mom and Dan Tyner—the attorney—a couple of times when she was setting all this up. Her story… It got to me, that’s all. I’m at your disposal, okay? Whenever you’re ready.”
He peeled apart the curtain of confusion for a moment. She was taking a card from a pocket, handing it to him. “At least you know your name is really Wolf. At least, that’s what the bracelet suggests.”
He said, “If you talked to Ma, you probably know more about me than I do.”
“It’s all in the diaries. She told me it was. But I’ll tell you anything you want to know. Anything I know, at least.”
He nodded. “I was…searching her bedroom for answers. Easier ones, faster ones, I guess.”
She nodded. “I’d like to…visit her, if that would be okay with you. I want to let her know that her wishes are being carried out. It was important to her. All she had to leave you, she said.”
“Sure, but…there’s not much time.” His throat convulsed so hard it hurt. He tried to swallow, failed, and when he spoke again, his voice was strained. “You want to meet me at the hospital in the morning? I usually get some breakfast at the diner around the block before visiting hours start.”
“Wow. Every day, huh?”
“This week. The last two I went after my shift at work.”
“You’re a good son.”
“Yeah, but whose?” He lowered his head, shaking it slowly. “Sorry. I promise I won’t wallow in self-pity for more than a few hours. I’m just…still reeling. I don’t even know what questions to ask you.”
“Don’t ask me anything. Let me tell you everything she told Dan and me. In the morning, over breakfast. And in themeantime, you’ve got journals to go through. What time? In the morning?”
“Eight a.m. too early?”
“Eight’s good,” she said. “See you then. Or, if you need me sooner…” She didn’t finish the sentence, just nodded at the card she’d set on the coffee table’s doily, gathered the lined hood of her jacket up around her ears, and headed out into the gently falling snow.
Willow Brand, Sky Dancer Ranch
“He was perfect in every way,” Uncle Garrett said in his low, deep voice.
Willow was dying to hear the story of her brother, but she was also worried about her mom. She’d never seen her look the way she’d looked when Willow had uncovered the cradle.
“His name was Jonathon Wolf Brand,” Garrett went on. “Johnny Wolf, we called him. He was born on September first, just two years before you, Willow.”
Her throat tightened painfully and her eyes burned. “I had a brother.”
Aunt Chelsea came closer and hugged her, but that meant Jeremiah had to let go. “He was gone before you came along, honey,” she said.
“Flash flood came through that year,” Garrett went on. “Your mamma, she was on her way to the clinic, taking Wolf for his first checkup. He was just two weeks old. The water came on like a demon. No warning. It just came. It took the car, smashed itinto a tree. She got him out of the back as it filled with water, but then another wave came and swept ’em both right out into the river. She tried to hold onto him. Shefoughtto hold onto him. But the current took that baby right out of your mamma’s arms.”
“Ohmygod,” Willow whispered as her cousins closed ranks around her.
Ethan, the eldest, asked, “How could you not tell us this, Dad?”
It was his mom, Chelsea, who spoke up, though, not Garrett. She said, “Taylor couldn’t get over it. I don’t know how anyone could. She…had what they used to call a nervous breakdown and wound up spending six months in-patient in a psychiatric hospital.”
Willow’s throat spasmed and made her gulp aloud.
“We never found his little body,” Garrett said, and his voice broke on the words. “Every police department up and down the border was looking for him, too, but…discreetly. If it’d hit the press, it would’ve done Taylor in.” He lowered his head slowly. “I had the power to keep it kinda quiet.”
