“I couldn’t. I … I…”
My father set his hand on her arm. “Don’t.”
“She needs to know. It’s time.” She drew in a breath and laced her fingers with his. “I was only a few weeks from delivering. I’d never gotten that far along, so I didn’t realize. How could I? The baby didn’t move like babies do.”
I didn’t like the way this story was headed, but I had to know. As she’d said, it was time.
“I went into labor at home. It was hard, fast. I had her here. She was—” Her voice broke.
“Stillborn,” my father said. “I suppose we should have called the doctor, the hospital. I don’t know. We didn’t. I … couldn’t. We buried her near the others.”
I didn’t realize I’d taken Owen’s hand again until his fingers tightened around mine, and I clung. “And then?”
“I would visit the grave every day,” my mom said. “Then one morning I heard a baby crying.”
She paled and her lips trembled. I understood. She’d thought she was crazy. Who wouldn’t?
“I followed the sound and—” She swallowed, smiled. “There you were. Naked, without even a blanket. It was July, but still.”
Raye’s words—almost exactly.
“You were in the woods alone. No note. Nothing.”
“They didn’t deserve you,” my father said. “So we made you ours.”
I saw how it had happened. My mother had been expecting, then she had a baby. Why would anyone doubt that the child Pam Carstairs presented to the world as hers wasn’t?
“No one ever came asking questions? No news reports of a missing baby?”
“No,” my mother said.
In a normal world, someone should have been searching for me. But if I’d time-traveled from the past, not so much.
“It never occurred to me that you were a twin,” my mother continued.
Triplet, but who was counting?
“Where was the other girl…?” Mom tilted her head. “What’s her name?”
“Raye.”
“Where was Raye found?”
“Side of the interstate between Madison and Eau Claire. Near New Bergin.”
“That’s a hundred and fifty miles from here. Why would they separate you like that?”
“The farther apart the babies were left, the less likely anyone would connect them,” Owen said. “It’s a lot harder to find two separate mothers of unrelated children than it is to find one mother of twins. Even harder to find a dumped baby that was never reported as dumped.”
“So how did Raye find us?” my father asked.
I wasn’t touching that question. Not now. Hopefully not ever.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I glanced between the two of them. “I was teased all my life for being adopted.”
“Would it have made things better if I’d told you that you were?” my mother asked. “You didn’t feel as though you belonged already.”
“Because I didn’t.”
“You did,” she insisted. “You do. You’re my child. My firstborn. I waited years for you.”
Had my mother kept the truth from me because she couldn’t accept it herself? Had she replaced that dead child in her heart and mind with me and in so doing made what had happened fade away?
“I’m not her,” I said softly. “You buried her in the woods.”
“I know who you are. Just because I didn’t give birth to you myself doesn’t make you any less mine. Once I had you, I was…” She made a motion with her hands, looking for a word to describe that feeling. “Whole. Healed. You used to pat my stomach and call for a brother or sister. Every pregnancy after you came to live with us went to term. It was a miracle.”
Or magic.
What could I say? Maybe I had healed her.
“You still should have told me.”
“Why?” My father spread his big, hard hands wide. “Someone tossed you away to die in the forest.”
“That makes it all right to lie, commit fraud, and kidnap a child?” Owen asked.
“I told you he shouldn’t hear this,” my father said.
“Owen won’t tell anyone.” I squeezed his hand. “Right?”
“Don’t you want to know who your real parents are?”
I already did, but I wasn’t going to share.
“That’s a problem for another day. I’m a little preoccupied with figuring out who tried to kill me.”
“Shouldn’t the police be doing that?” my mother asked.
“Deb has a lot on her plate.”
Animal mutilations. Peggy’s murder. Owen’s mom running amok.
“How is it that your twin sister shows up in town the same day someone tries to kill you?” my dad asked.
“It wasn’t her.”
“You’re sure?”
“Raye is the same height and weight as me. Whoever put the pillow over my face was a lot bigger.”
Mistress June size.