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“What happened to him?”
“There was a rumor that he and Mrs. Banner were…” She snaps her wrist in a circle.
My eyes widen. “Really?”
“It was never proven and he moved away soon after. He and his brother are estranged. No one knows where he is now.”
“You don’t think… is Hawk’s dad not his real dad?”
“Oh, heavens no. The timelines don’t match up. Hawk was already several years old when these rumors started floating around.”
I breathe a sigh of relief. Losing his mother is enough. Finding out he’s been lied to all his life? I don’t want Hawk to go through that.
“Anyway,” Linda takes a sip, “there was a time when Hawk would spend most of his days out there in his uncle’s shack.”
“Doing what?”
“Going on adventures.” She chuckles fondly.
Thinking about a smaller, cuter Hawk is a little easier to bear and I smile genuinely for the first time since Hawk and I broke up.
“His uncle told him he could visit other worlds through the doorway and Hawk wanted to prove it was true.”
My pulse quickens. Is that just a coincidence or…
I shake my head. Set my tea down. “I should go.”
“I’ll come with you,” Linda says eagerly, grabbing her mug and hooking her arms with mine. “Since Hawk’s been gone, the house has been so quiet. It’s a bit lonely. You don’t mind, do you?”
“N-no.”
“Good.” She escorts me to the garden.
The sun is shining brightly.
Birds twitter their goodbyes.
At least Nature and Linda came out to wish me a safe trip back.
“I remember Hawk was about seven or eight when he came back home one evening wet from head to toe,” Linda says in a conversational tone. “He told his mother that he’d gone through the doorway.”
“Did he?”
“Apparently, he’d fallen into a lake and some girl saved him.” Linda laughs. “He went straight to his mother and said ‘Mama, I’m going to marry that girl. I promise you. She’s going to be my wife.’ It was the darndest thing.”
My pulse skitters to a frantic beat.
I stop in front of the shack.
“What?” Linda eyes me.
“At the time, was Hawk scrawnier? Sandy-blonde hair? Greenish-blue eyes?”
“Y-yes. Hawk’s hair turned darker as he grew older and his eyes turned fully blue with time. How did you know that? Did you see one of his old childhood photos?”
I stumble back as memories of the day Jenna died burst through my mind.
“Get in, Shanel!” My sister waves from the water.
