“Then keep it that way.”
“Will do.”
He walked out a hypocrite, knowing he’d just told a huge lie.
Colin got into his company SUV and sat there with the engine off. His hands were tight on the steering wheel as he got his emotions under control.
Maren had spent years raising her sister’s kid without knowing why Mira had shut her out, wondering who Juni’s father was and what he was like. She’d been carrying secrets that weren’t hers to carry.
Colin gritted his teeth. He knew exactly how it felt to be lied to by the person you trusted the most in life, and how it felt when those lies rendered you completely helpless to change things.
After a few more calming breaths, Colin’s hands eased and he started the engine.
He needed to get back to the safehouse.
TEN
Quiet footsteps passingher bedroom door woke Maren. She was still in the half-dreaming awareness of a woman whose entire nervous system had reorganized itself around the sounds a child made in the house. Light filtered through her eyelids and she wondered for a moment why her alarm hadn’t gone off and how much time she had to get Juni ready when reality came crashing in on her.
Right. School’s canceled today on account of running for our lives.
When she’d called Juni’s school from the road, she’d told them Juni wouldn’t be in for the rest of the week. Maybe she needed to call again and say she was withdrawing Juni for the rest of the school year because of a family emergency.
Yeah, ours.
She heard men’s voices speaking low in the front room—Colin and Mac talking.
Maren opened her eyes. She slipped out of bed without turning on the lamp and crossed to the door. As she opened it a crack, she heard Juni say one word.
“Colin?”
Maren just stood there with her hand resting against the knob, listening through the narrow crack.
Mac’s voice came first, warm and easy. “Oh, hey there, early bird.”
“I’m not an early bird,” Juni said, still thick with sleep. “I’m a Junebug. Right, Colin?”
Maren closed her eyes.
Oh, baby.
“That’s right,” Colin said.
Something about his voice—low, careful, almost amused—made Maren’s heart speed up and she did not have the emotional bandwidth to examine why before coffee.
Then Juni asked, “Where ya goin’?”
Maren’s hand tightened on the doorknob.
The conversation moved softly from there. Colin explaining that he had to go talk to the nice people from yesterday.
“Aunt Arden?”
“More like Uncle Kyle.”
That sliced through Maren. But it wasn’t jealousy she felt. It was regret that she hadn’t tried harder to find Juni’s father before now. Juni had been deprived of half her family.
She listened as Mac offered coloring books and the big box of crayons.
