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“Right now.”
His jaw ticked in response. His arms folded more tightly against his body. Great. He was pretending to be a three-year-old now.
She leaned closer and hissed in his ear, “Let’s. Go.”
“I’m not leaving,” he murmured just before the crowd broke into wide applause.
Shane raised a hand. “Thank you so much. And thank you all for coming. My mother would like to say a few words....”
He paused, and Sophie looked up, afraid they’d been spotted. But no. Shane wasn’t looking at her. He was looking at Alex as he stood up from his chair. “I’d like to say something,” Alex said quietly.
Sophie blinked in shock and dug her nails into her brother’s arm. Alex hadn’t planned to speak. If he got up there and saw Sophie and David...
She jerked so hard on her brother’s elbow that he stumbled a step toward her.
“We have no right to be here,” she whispered furiously. “I don’t know what the hell you think you’re doing, but I’m not going to let you do it.”
The audience clapped as Alex approached the microphone.
David tried to jerk his arm from her grip. People were beginning to back away. “I have as much right to be here as anyone. More of a right.”
Sophie looked frantically around at the crowd surrounding them. People were staring now, frowning, putting two and two together. So much adrenaline rushed through her that her limbs began to ache.
“Please, David,” she said. “I’m begging you. Please.”
He finally looked at her. Really looked. “You don’t understand,” he said.
And then she heard Alex’s voice and tears of desperation sprang to her eyes as she prayed he didn’t look in her direction.
“I don’t remember as much about my dad as Shane does. I tried to forget a lot. But I do remember a few things.” He paused as if he were taking a deep breath, and then a gasp rang out across the crowd.
Sophie knew what it was. She knew, even as she turned to watch Rose Bishop stand and point right at Sophie, her whole hand trembling, her face turning red. “What is she doing here?”
There was a strange shuffling sound, the noise of hundreds of people all turning in one direction. Every single face turned to look at Sophie. Every face, including Alex’s. Her vision narrowed to just him, just Alex, his brow furrowing with confusion, mouth parting in shock.
“You trespassing whore!” his mother yelled. A rush of shocked gasps passed through the crowd like a wave. “You’re just as bad as she was!”
“Oh, no,” Sophie whispered. “No.”
“And you!” Rose pointed at David.
The people around Sophie and David backed away as if their awfulness might spread. Sophie was left standing with her hand around her brother’s arm, frozen. She couldn’t move.
“Haven’t you ruined enough?” Rose screamed.
&nb
sp; “Mom,” Shane said. “Calm down.”
“I won’t calm down. Those people destroyed our family and now that this is all we have, they’re trying to destroy this, too.”
Sophie shook her head, but her brother laughed. “You’ve always wanted to erase us. You don’t even want us here, but we lost someone on that trail, too.”
Horror helped her break through the ice holding her still. Sophie jerked David’s arm hard and pulled him a few steps away. “Stop it,” she said, then, “I’m sorry,” to everyone else.
Alex finally seemed to break through his own shock and took a few steps toward her, but his mother started forward, too. Sophie pulled harder on David’s arm.
“No,” David growled. “We don’t have to hide in shame. God knows they never hid. What did we do that was so wrong?”
