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Prologue:
Farmington, Massachusetts
Callie pressed her nose up against the window that overlooked the back yard. She was kneeling on a kitchen chair so she could get a good glimpse of what it looked like outside. It was still snowing. Tiny little snowflakes were falling from the sky. Sometimes she wondered if God sent them to remind her and Mac to keep hoping. She wrinkled her nose as the cold from the glass made her shiver and pull away from the window.
It was so beautiful outside, she thought dreamily. A winter wonderland. Everything was covered in snow and ice. She could see icicles hanging off the roof of the house. It looked like God had dumped a bag of sugar on top of the pine trees. And dusted the ground with flour. Callie let out a chuckle at the thought of it. She could almost picture it even though she didn’t know what God looked like. Was He really a he? Or a woman? Brown skin? White? Or purple? She didn’t know. What was important was that He was always with her and Mac, keeping watch over them.
“Callie! Where are you?” Her brother’s voice rang out in the stillness of the kitchen.
“Here I am, Mac,” she cried out. “It’s snowing. Can you believe it? Mac, let’s go outside.”
Mac let out a groan. “Callie! You know we’re not supposed to go outside. Mama said.”
“Mama is sleeping and you know she won’t be up for hours. Whenever she lies down in the middle of the day she stays asleep for a long long time.”
Mac ducked his head down and peeked outside. A grin lit up his face. He let out a sigh. “It’s really coming down out there,” he said in a voice full of awe.
“Yes. It looks so pretty. We could even make snow angels if we wanted to.”
Mac frowned. “It wouldn’t be worth it if we got caught.”
Callie jumped up from her chair. “Yes! Yes it would. It would be worth anything. All the gold in China. All the tea dumped in Boston Harbor.” She crossed her hands. “Please, Mac. Pretty please. With cherries on top.”
Mac bit his lip. He shifted from one foot to the other. “Maybe for just a few minutes.”
“Yay!” Callie squealed as she began to hop up and down with excitement. “I love you Mac! I love you so much.” She reached up on her tippy toes and pulled Mac’s face down so she could plant a sloppy kiss on his cheek. She loved kissing Mac. He always smelled like the soap she liked best and sugar cookies. She threw herself against his chest and burrowed into him. There was no place on earth that felt safer to her than in her brother’s arms. He’d promised to protect her for the rest of
their lives. And she knew he would never break a promise to her.
“Wait here. I’ll get our stuff,” Mac said as he turned and walked out of the kitchen. A few minutes later he had returned with an arm full of gear. Boots. Coats. Mittens. Hats.
“Sit down so I can put your boots on,” Mac instructed. She sat down in the chair as Mac put her pink boots on her feet. He helped her put her pink coat on, then zipped her up. While he put his boots and coat on, Callie jammed her fuzzy hat down on to her head and slipped her fingers in her mittens.
“Ready?” Mac asked with a wide grin.
“Yep!” Callie said with a nod. Mac moved toward the back door and wrestled with the lock. After a few turns he got it open. Sunlight poured into the kitchen as he pulled the door open. Callie held up her mittened hand to block out the glare from the sun and the white snow. She ran outside with her arms stretched wide. Mac raced after her. He bent down and scooped up some snow in his hands, making a snowball. He held it up in the air, making a move to throw it at her. She covered her eyes and screamed, waiting for the moment when the snowball would hit her. Seconds passed by. She removed her hands from her face and saw Mac standing there with a smile on his face. “I can’t hit you with it, Callie. It just wouldn’t feel right. You’re my little sister. It’s my job to watch over you.”
Callie felt her heart growing bigger by the second. Mac was so sweet. Someday she was going to find a boy just as nice as Mac and marry him. And she and Mac would buy houses right next door to each other and have dinner at each other’s houses. Their kids would grow up as cousins and they would all be the best of friends. Someday, she thought, all of her dreams would come true.
Sometimes she felt sad about Mac. He was so good. It scared her to even think of him growing up and moving away from her. He was five years older than her. Someday he would leave home and leave her behind. Tears gathered in her eyes at the thought of it.
“Hey! What’s wrong? Is it too cold outside? Do you wanna go back inside?” Mac asked.
“No,” she said, blinking away her tears. She wrapped her arms around Mac’s chest. “Don’t leave me, Mac. Not ever,” she said against his chest, her words almost swallowed up by his down jacket.
Mac gently pushed her away so he could bend down and peer into her eyes. He reached out and lifted her chin up. “Hey, Callie. Where would I go? Home isn’t home without you. Don’t you know that?”
“Yep, I know that. We’re two peas in a pod,” she said, repeating the phrase her mother used to always say. Mama hadn’t said it in a long time. There were lots of things she didn’t do anymore. Callie worried that she didn’t love them anymore.
“Snow angels!” Mac screamed as he flopped down on to the ground and lay on his back. He began moving his arms up and down to make angel wings. Callie sat down next to him and placed herself on her back. She looked up at the bluest sky she’d ever seen as she moved her arms up and down. Mac’s laughter rang in her ears. It was the most beautiful sound she had ever heard in her life. She didn’t hear it often enough. Not with Frank around. And Mama…dear, sweet Mama…she wasn’t the same anymore. She let Frank do things, terrible things that were wrong. And mean. Frank wasn’t married to Mama yet he lived with them. And he didn’t like her or Mac. She could tell by the way he looked at them as if he wanted to get rid of them. The way he enjoyed hurting them. Mac most of all.
Her brother protected her. Always. He was her favorite person in the entire world. Without Mac she would be scared all the time. She had a secret that only Mac knew. She used to wet the bed. Frank scared her so much that it gave her bad dreams. Every time she woke up from her nightmares about him, her sheets and mattress were wet. The first time it had happened she cried her eyes out because she knew she would get a beating for making a mess. Mac had come to her bedroom and helped her clean herself up. He had taken all her sheets and hand-washed them, then thrown them in the dryer downstairs.
Then he had wiped down her mattress and put baby powder to make it smell nice. He had taken some other sheets from the hall closet and made up her bed for her. Then he had tucked her back into bed and sang her a lullaby until she fell asleep. And he had stayed up until the sheets were dry while she was sleeping.
God picked Mac to be her brother and her best friend. She was the luckiest sister in the world.
**
Going outside and playing with Mac in the snow made today the best day ever. She was hoping that tonight she would dream about it. Sometimes if she closed her eyes and thought about something right before she went to bed, it showed up in her dreams.
Everything changed when Frank came home. Callie knew he had been at a bar because he smelled like beer and cigarettes. Mac always told her they needed to stay out of sight when he smelled like that. Frank had found wet spots in the laundry room. He’d gone outside and seen their footprints in the snow. He had figured out that they had gone outside without permission. She had been so scared at his yelling that she had broken a glass. It had slipped right through her fingers and crashed on the floor. Glass had been everywhere.
Mac took the blame. When Frank came into the kitchen screaming and yelling, Mac had stepped in front of her and told Frank it was all his fault. Like always, he protected her.
Mac hadn’t even cried when Frank slapped him across the face and told him to go get his belt. But she had cried for him. Frank made her stand there and watch as he whipped him. That night she crawled into Mac’s bed and nestled up against his chest. He was her hero. Her best friend. The most special person in her world.
Dear Lord, she prayed. Look after Mac. Not just today, but for always.
“I promised you a long time ago that I would always watch over you. That will never change, Callie.
Mac Donahue
Chapter One
Callie Duvall let out a sigh as she looked around her bedroom in an effort to make sure she hadn’t forgotten to pack any of her precious belongings. Although she was still in shock over the events of the last few weeks, she knew she had to snap out of it. She couldn’t stay here a minute longer, not after what she had discovered. Not after what her father had done.
Her whole entire life as Callie Duvall had been a lie. And something told her that the pain she was going through at the moment hadn’t even scratched the surface.
Secrets kept for most of her twenty-six years had risen to the surface and taken her completely by surprise. And because of those lies she was moving out of the Duvall mansion and settling in to her own place, a cozy little cottage near the beach. It was a modest place, especially considering the home she'd grown up in, but she was very grateful that Hattie was letting her stay there. There would be no servants or drivers. No breakfast laid out on the side table in the dining room. No dirty clothes whisked away to be dry cleaned or washed. Not a single luxury would be at her disposal.
And frankly, it made her so happy she wanted to shout it from the rooftops. It was high time she was on her own. She'd lived at the Duvall mansion her whole life. She let out a harsh laugh. Not her whole life. There had been another life before she became a Duvall.
For the first five years of her life she'd been Callie Monahan from Massachusetts. All the fragments of memory she'd had her entire life had been real. The memories of her brother Mac—her hero—had been real. He existed. Mac hadn’t died, even though she had been told that lie by her parents. He had been alive and well for these past twenty years. A lovely couple in Cape Cod, Massachusetts—Alec and Maggie Donahue—had adopted Mac and six other boys. A month ago Mac had come looking for her, prompted by his own memories and a deep conviction that she was out there somewhere. After hiring his PI cousin, Parker Donahue, to track her down, Mac had shown up at her doorstep with his then girlfriend, Delilah, eager to reunite with her.
And for all these years she had been mourning the loss of her brother. Another lie told with such sincerity by her parents who had adopted her through an illegal adoption ring. Desperate for a child after their biological daughter
passed away, her parents hadn’t been as meticulous as they should have been about vetting the adoption agency. At some point her father had determined that Mac was alive and in foster care. And rather than tell her that her beloved brother was indeed alive, she had been told her brother was dead.
How could he have lied about something so important?
