“Let’s go!” Morgan cried. “Come on!”
“It’s in town. North End,” he said to Shiloh. “Where the old video store and the Snow Bird Café used to be. You can’t miss it.” With that, he twisted the key in the ignition. The engine fired, and he backed up, swung his truck around, and hit the gas.
Her heart was a stone, her legs wooden as she strode to her SUV and slid into the warm interior. By rote she began driving, but she didn’t see the fence posts shooting by, nor the geese flying in formation in a blue Wyoming sky, nor even the back end of Beau Tate’s battered old truck as it kicked up dust before turning onto the county road.
No, in her mind’s eye she saw Faye as she had been the night she’d left: fearful, weak, and trembling.
You should never have gone. Never left her alone with that maniac. You were the stronger one. Always. You left her to get pregnant and bring another girl into that hell of a marriage.
Rationally, she knew she was being too hard on herself; that she’d been the child whom her mother was supposed to protect. Still, of the two of them, Shiloh was the one made of tougher stuff.
She flashed onto the day that her mother had married Larimer Tate, how happy and full of hope Faye had been, her blond hair twisted into a chignon, her dress a gossamer frothy ivory, her face filled with expectation. At sixteen, Shiloh had known the man was bad news, but Faye, forever a romantic dreamer, had thought Tate would turn their luck around, help save the ranch, help her deal with her headstrong, wayward daughter.
What a joke.
Shiloh set her jaw and felt the sting of tears.
She’d always thought there would be time to repair their broken emotional fences, to reconnect with her mother. Now, it seemed, it was too late.
Chapter 4
The hospital was built on a hillside where once a strip mall from the fifties had been perched. Constructed of stone and glass and flanked by a wide parking lot, Prairie Creek Hospital was small by big city standards but a major upgrade from the clinic that had serviced the area for previous generations. EMERGENCY ENTRANCE was clearly marked in red letters, and as Shiloh grabbed her purse and swung out of her vehicle, she noticed a helicopter landing pad close by.
Beau Tate’s truck was parked haphazardly, taking up two spaces, but he and Morgan were nowhere in sight.
Already inside.
Shiloh made her way to the entrance.
A double set of automatic doors whispered open, and she had to dodge an elderly man in a wheelchair. In a bathrobe and slippers, clutching a plastic bag of belongings, the patient barely glanced at Shiloh as he was pushed to a waiting vehicle. Inside, she spied Tate talking to a woman seated behind a large circular desk. Next to him, bouncing nervously from one foot to the other, Morgan was fighting tears.
As Shiloh strode to the desk she heard. “. . . sorry. Nothing I can do.” The receptionist, whose ID tag read NINA CORTEZ, was petite and sharp-featured, her black hair shot with strands of silver and tucked into a neat bun at the base of her skull. She was also wearing a practiced smile that didn’t quite touch her eyes.
“I want to see my mom!” Morgan insisted, alternately glaring at the woman and glancing beseechingly up at Beau.
“I think it’s important,” he said.
“I understand, but the doctors are with her now.” Nina didn’t waver.
“I’m Faye Tate’s daughter,” Shiloh said, walking up to them. As the next of kin and an adult, maybe she could make an inroad past the roadblock of Ms. Cortez. “Shiloh Silva.”
Nina’s intractable expression cracked a little, and her gaze shifted, her dark eyes narrowing. “Shiloh Silva?” she repeated. “Wait a minute. I think I read about you . . .” Disbelief clouded her features. “I thought—”
“I’m her daughter too!” Morgan interjected, shooting an angry look at Shiloh.
“I understand,” Nina said to the girl, but her eyes were on Shiloh. “Right now no one can see her. Not yet. If you’ll all just take a seat, someone will be out to update you shortly.”
Morgan was having none of it. “But—”
“It’s no use, Morgan. We’ll have to be patient,” Beau said, and with a big hand placed over her shoulder, he effectively guided his distraught sister from the desk.
Nina said, “You’re one of those girls who went missing, what, about ten years ago?”
“Fifteen,” Shiloh corrected.
“I thought . . . the whole town thought you were dead.” Nina was sizing her up, mentally trying to connect the image of the woman standing in front of her to pictures that had been all over the newspapers years before.
“Not everyone.” Shiloh didn’t elaborate. Her mother had known she was alive, and possibly a handful of other people.
Nina obviously didn’t approve.
Shiloh didn’t care. “Look, I just want to see my mom and make sure my sister sees her, too.”
The receptionist’s face returned to its original bland expression. “You’ll have to wait with the others. But if you’re the legally responsible party, you need to go to the next desk and fill out some paperwork, insurance information, medical history.”
“I don’t know if I have any information that will—”
“Right there,” Nina said, pointing emphatically to the next desk. “Rebecca will help you. Now, next in line, please.” Nina rained her smile on the woman behind Shiloh, a twenty-ish mother holding a whimpering baby.
Fine, Shiloh thought and, with a last glance at Beau and Morgan, now seated on the bland chairs flanking the windows, made her way to the next desk where blond, cheery Rebecca Aldridge was ready with forms and questions that Shiloh had no way to fill out or answer.
*
The wait was excruciating. Sitting in the uncomfortable chairs, staring at the clock, holding Morgan and trying not to show his irritation at Shiloh, Beau tried to hang onto his patience. Both he and Shiloh had been to the desk several times, asking for information, and had been put off each time.
“I want Mom,” Morgan whispered as she sat next to him. “Why won’t they let me see her?”
“Rules,” he said.
Her face crumpled. “But—”
“I know.” His heart tore a little bit. Why the hell wasn’t someone giving them an update? He was about to storm to the information desk again when a doctor approached. Tall and reed-thin, in green scrubs, he paused only to confirm with the desk before heading in their direction. His face was somber, his eyes, behind rimless glasses, dark and serene.
“Ms. Tate?” he asked Shiloh as they all stood.
She didn’t correct him. “I’m Faye Tate’s daughter. Shiloh.”
“Me too,” Morgan said, fear showing in her eyes. “I’m her daughter too.”
The doctor’s sober gaze shifted to Morgan for just a second, and he paused a moment before addressing Shiloh directly. “I’m Dr. Sellers. I was your mother’s ER physician.”