It was her mother’s box and the only thing Erica reserved from the estate sale. She remembered the first time she laid eyes on it as a little girl. Her mother had warned her against ever opening it, and the clear tape that sealed it shut had never been stripped off.
Erica’s first thoughts about the box had been childish. Perhaps it held a superwoman outfit or something that would give away some deep, dark secret her mother was trying to hide. As she grew older, she thought maybe it was something personal, like old photos or memorabilia from life before motherhood.
With her mother gone, she had procrastinated in ripping the tape off that box lid. If it held what she thought it did, she hadn’t been ready for it. Maybe now, after the night she’d had, and after she realized that she could stand a tiny bit of her mother’s memory without bursting into tears, Erica could handle it.
She set the coffee cup on the floor beside her, dragged out the box, and sat down in front of it. Heavy, battered by the move and years of dust caked into the cardboard, this box had been the only secret between her and her mother. She just hoped it was worth the wait.
Carefully, she pulled off the tape and opened the flaps.
Photo albums.
The leather covers held together thick black pages, lined with sticky plastic sheaths that kept the photos in place. Tucked in the crevices between them were trinkets and scrapbook souvenirs of movie ticket stubs, restaurant receipts, gum wrappers, and other paper paraphernalia from a life before Erica was born.
She opened the top scrapbook and found a young woman staring back at her, a beautiful face in chromatic colors, a face that looked familiar, and yet foreign. It was the same face she saw looking back at her in the mirror. Her mother, as a child, a baby, and then a teenager, filled the pages of the album. Ancient photos of her roller-skating at the rink in Decatur, prom poses with a man she didn’t recognize, with braces and a big hairdo. Her grandparents were featured in a few of the pictures, her mother sitting between them on a flower-print couch in a home she had never visited. Mobile homes, trips to the beach, and a German shepherd licking her mother’s grinning face.
Erica smiled at each of them, transported back to a time that Mom had never talked about. High school graduation photos, clippings from old newspapers, a proud woman holding up a college diploma with a dark green cap propped crooked on her head.
It felt like her heart would break under this pressure, but she didn’t cry. She didn’t regret all the times they could have talked about those school days or the men leaning up against vintage cars, the men her mom must have dated.
One page into the second album made her freeze. With the page tilted between her fingers, she saw the face of a man beside her mother’s. Her heart rose into her throat as hazel eyes stared at her. Each quickened thump could be felt against her breastbone.
She knew this man from somewhere. The hairstyle was a little different, but she knew his face. She turned the page again. Romantic photos of candlelight dinners, of a wedding, of a reception with a towering cake and a gorgeous white dress. A new home, their home in Decatur, the one she’d sold before moving to Tolstone. The old blue Mustang was alive again and in mint condition in the driveway, with that man leaning against it like the others had. This time, they were together. Him and her mom.
Then, her mom was pregnant. Pages upon pages of ugly maternity dresses flew before her eyes as her mother’s stomach grew bigger and bigger. Then, a hospital front. Erica had never seen her baby pictures because they were all here in this box, stored away from the light of the world, away from her eyes, because it wasn’t just her mother holding the pink bundle in the pictures. Her father sat on the edge of the hospital bed with his arm around her mother, gazing down at Erica’s wrinkled, puckered face.
Erica couldn’t breathe. This was her father, the man who had abandoned them when she was just a baby.
Onward, she turned the pages with trembling hands, though she willed them to be steady. Pictures of people she didn’t know, people she didn’t recognize at all. A few pages more of intimate moments where she ate for the first time in her high chair, andstarted to walk, her father holding her up by her tiny hands as little pudgy legs tried to hobble across the living room carpet.
The last picture of the album, the one that finally pushed the tears out from the corners of her eyes, was the one of her and her father taking a nap together on the floor. They lay on her old yellow blanket, the one she never went to sleep without until she was at least ten years old. Her father had touched this blanket, and suddenly, it became something sacred and scorned at the same time.
Erica stared at the man in the pictures, the man whom she had never known the name of. Not until now, and that was only because she recognized him. She knew who her father was.
Chapter Fifteen
Dominic bowed hishead over the steaming coffee mug. He’d forever be thankful that Cole had a coffee machine in his office at the Tolstone police station. The alpha, along with Hank, held their own mugs as they continued to discuss the fate of Wyatt and his pack in Tolstone.
Caffeine, however, might not have been the best choice of drink at the moment. For the last hour or so, Dominic had suffered from an anxiety that he couldn’t name. They had two violators, an injured alpha, and a traumatized shifter on their hands, but none of that worried him so much. They could handle it. This was a persistent, inexplicable anxiety that could have only originated from one source.
Something was wrong with Erica, but as long as this meeting was in session, he couldn’t go to her. Not yet. As soon as everything was settled and he knew that all the loose ends had been taken care of, Dominic would leave the police station and likely spend the rest of the day with her. That sounded nice.
“Apparently, Nathan was convicted of several felonies before joining Wyatt’s pack.” Cole skimmed through the hefty background report, the one that should have been conducted before they ever admitted the shifter into the town. “The rap sheet is about as long as my arm, but some of the top offenses have been aggravated sexual assault.”
The sheriff, likely irritated with himself for not digging deeper into Nathan’s past, tossed the file onto the table in front of Dominic.
Hank shook his head. “I knew something wasn’t right about that guy.”
“We all did,” Dominic replied. “We all would have assumed that Wyatt wouldn’t have let a man like that into his pack too. He’s as much to blame as we are.”
After today, they would have to add background checks to the vetting process for every shifter who sought refuge in Tolstone.
“How’s Gage?” Cole asked Hank.
After a long sip, he answered, “He’s recovering fine. He wanted me to tell you that Erica’s jeep will have to wait for… obvious reasons.”
At the mention of his mate, Dominic kept his expression carefully neutral. He had to, especially in front of the two men who were particularly interested in their relationship. Hank wanted him to put the pack first, while Cole had the greatest attachment to Erica out of all three men.
Cole nodded. “That’s expected. You want to tell her, Dominic?”
