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He nods. “Yeah. Maybe you can answer some of my questions too.”
“Of course.” What little I know I have no reason not to share.
“Then come on to the back, we can chat more comfortably in here.” He jerks a thumb behind him.
Five minutes later, Atticus and I are sitting on a worn leather sofa in an office in the back of the house. I’m clutching a glass of water, but I haven’t been able to take a sip.
“How did you know her?” I ask.
Jonas sits at his desk, in a high-back swivel chair, facing us. “My mother, Carla, was friends with Dawn for many years. Mom was a nurse in Scranton. They met at the hospital. Dawn was initially brought in as a Jane Doe.”
Shock pins me to my seat. “What happened?”
“She was found in a hotel room, unconscious. She had tried to kill herself.”
I gasp, my hand covering my mouth. “I had no idea.”
“She struggled a lot with depression. But she did better after she got on meds. Mom took her in and helped her get a job in town at the diner.”
“That was very kind of your mother.”
He rests his elbows on the desk, steepling his fingers in front of him. “They were close. When Mom got sick with Parkinson’s, Dawn moved into the guest house out back and helped me with her care.” He gestures behind him. “Then when Dawn got sick three years ago, I took care of her. She was like a second mother, in some ways.”
Like a second mother.The words echo through me. A second mother to someone who wasn’t her child. Why couldn’t she be our first mother?
I swallow and force the next words out. “How did she die?”
“Pneumonia. Her immune system was weak, from the dementia.”
Unthinking, I reach for Atticus, his fingers effortlessly entwining with my own.
“Did she ever say anything about her past?”
“Not until the end, when her mind was gone. She would call out for Finley sometimes, and say things like she was talking to someone.”
I take a small sip of my water and then set it on a coaster on a side table. “What did she say?”
He scratches the back of his head. “I couldn’t really track it. She would talk about random things, like she was finishing a conversation that had started twenty years ago.”
“She never mentioned anyone other than Finley?”
“I’m sorry. No.”
My mind is spinning.
Nothing about the rest of us, the twins, Mindy, Piper, or me? Why? I’ll never know. It’s too late. The thought is unsettling, leaving me off balance.
I’m still processing the information overload when Jonas speaks. “She would never talk about her past before she came here. Can you tell me what you know? Where she came from?”
Numbly, I nod. “She’s from Whitby, in New York. She... I don’t know why she left us.”
His brows lift. “Us?”
“Me and my siblings. There were six of us.”
He rocks back in his seat, face blanching with shock. “Six children? I didn’t know.” He scrubs a hand through his hair. “I had no idea Dawn left so many behind.”
I don’t know what to say, or how to respond. I’m not even sure what to think.
