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The clues had been there. Her mom would never have left her kids of her own free will.
Raine fingered the bracelet Liam and Hammer had made for her with the pendant her mother had gifted to her. Despondency crashed in. And she fell apart.
“I’m so sorry I believed for so long that you’d left me. I’m sorry I yelled at you, blamed you… You tried to give me normalcy and hope. I didn’t…”
Face in her hands, she cried in anger, at the futility of her mother’s death, for her own youthful inability to understand, for the years afterward of poking her head in the sand because she’d been getting by and the truth had been too terrible to contemplate.
As her shoulders shook, Macen curled a hand around her waist. Liam smoothed his hand down her back. They were there in silent support—steady, stalwart. Constant.
“Storm cloud…”
She lifted her head to watch River approach. This wasn’t just about her sorrow. River must have tons of it, too. The tight clench of his jaw and the rapid blinking told her that he worked hard to keep himself together. Whatever his faults, he’d loved Mom, too.
“You okay?” Her voice shook.
“Are you?” His face almost broke. He swallowed, looked away, and got it together. “Mom wouldn’t want to see you cry. That’s why I gave you that nickname, you know. She always said you were a sweet Raine, not a storm cloud. But when I was a punk kid, it was more fun to tease you.”
The memory burst out of the dark corner she’d shoved it in, and she laughed through her tears. “You always tried to make me cry back then. Bully.”
“I thought it was a big brother’s job to tease his sisters.” His smile fell, and he dragged in a shaky breath. “I can’t believe he killed her.”
“And we’ll never know exactly why.” Raine closed her eyes. Of everything that pained her about her mother’s murder, that might hurt worst of all.
“No. But I suspect she wanted to leave him and take us kids.”
“He would never have allowed it. The day I killed Bill, he told me he’d been sure she was having an affair with his brother.”
River shook his head. “That must have been all in his delusional head. Even if it was true, would you blame her?”
Never. “I just wish she’d gotten out alive.”
He shifted his weight from one foot to the next, his gaze darting, as if desperate for some way to focus his energy away from his emotions. “Yeah. But I try to look for the silver linings, tell myself that things happen for a reason. If Mom had really taken us from Bill, I would never have joined the army. You would have never met Hammer and Liam.”
River was right. She’d give up almost anything to still have her mother in her life today. But she would give up everything to keep the men she loved.
“I hope Mom can see us now and that she’s proud.”
Her brother looked Hammer and Liam’s way—seeking silent permission?—before he stepped closer to her and dropped his hand to her stomach. “She’d be happy for you. I want you to be happy, too.”
That might be as close as River ever came to saying that he approved of her choices. Raine didn’t expect him to understand exactly. But if he accepted her, the loves of her life, and the coming baby, she’d embrace him as part of her new family with arms wide open.
Standing on her tiptoes, she hugged him. He crushed her against his massive chest and gave her a tight squeeze. It was odd, embracing a relative stranger and sharing their common grief. But they would always be tied by blood and circumstance and memories. It meant something. It was a start.
When she stepped back, Liam was beside her again, hand on her shoulder, proffering the other bouquet of flowers. She gripped the stems in sorrow, plastic crinkling, and mouthed a silent thank you.
Then she dragged in the most difficult breath all day and stepped in front of Rowan’s headstone.
As she placed the flowers in the plastic holder, regret came in a landslide that nearly buried her. Had she known, on any level, what Bill had been doing? What Rowan had let him do so he’d stay away from her younger sister? No…and yes. Something hadn’t been right, and she hadn’t questioned the relationship between her dad and her sister too hard. She’d asked Rowan if she was all right a few times, but her quiet, studious sibling had never been forthcoming. So Raine had let it go. How much tragedy could she have avoided if she’d paid attention to that nagging in her gut that something evil lurked in the Kendall household? Or would she simply have accelerated the tragedy?
Raine would never know, and that came with its own regret.
