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Dani was always my first call when I had a problem, but she was at her doctor's appointment. She was going to find out if her baby was okay. I could not drop this bomb on her, not until I knew what was going on. "She's at the doctor's office with Steve. They're doing an ultrasound. I can't call her right now."
"What about your father?"
"I could call him." I grabbed onto the idea like a lifeline. I punched in my father's number, but it went straight to voicemail, and I remembered Steve telling me that my father had been out of touch. I hung up without leaving a message because I had no idea what I would say. "He didn't answer."
"What about Vicky?"
"No," I said. My stepmother was the last person I wanted to talk to right now.
Jeff gave me a troubled look. "What do you want to do?"
My mind was spinning, but there was only one answer to that question. "I have to go to San Francisco, and I have to leave now."
"That's a three-hour drive, maybe longer at this time of day."
"Then I better get started."
"This is a bad idea," Jeff said. "You should talk to Dani."
"No. I need to find out what's happening. Then I'll talk to her. Please don't tell her, Jeff. Don't tell Steve, either. Promise me."
My demand made him uncomfortable. "I don't know. You're acting on emotion, Brynn. This could be a bad decision."
"Well, it's mine to make," I snapped. "I need you to give me a day before you say anything to my sister or her husband. I want her to have a night to celebrate. This could all be nothing, so the last thing I need to do is cause her undue stress."
"All right. I won't say anything," Jeff said with an unhappy glint in his eyes. "I wish I could go with you, but I have a lot of meetings tomorrow."
"I'll be fine." I ushered him out the front door, then locked up, and ran to my car. As I started the engine, I knew I wasn't anything close to fine. My world had just turned upside down. I'd thought the call I'd gotten from Ray earlier was the one that would change my life. But I had a terrible feeling it was going to be this one.
CHAPTERTWO
The three-hour driveto San Francisco passed in a blur of anxiety and confusion. It didn’t help that it started raining an hour into the drive, because the rain reminded me of the storm that had taken my mother’s life.
Or maybe it hadn’t…
But her being alive seemed impossible to believe. She had a different name, I reminded myself. Laura Hawthorne. Maybe I should have taken a minute and searched for Laura Hawthorne online instead of jumping in my car, but it was too late now. I was going to San Francisco no matter what.
As the windshield wipers wiped away the constant splatter of rain, I thought back to the night my mother died.
We'd been living in Los Angeles. My dad had tucked us into bed after reading one of our favorite stories. He didn’t normally do the bedtime books; that was my mom’s job. She’d snuggle into bed with us, and we’d talk our way through the stories. But that night my mother was out of town. She’d gone to New Orleans to visit a friend from childhood. My dad had made us dinner, which consisted of hot dogs and mac and cheese out of a box. Then he'd read us a story as quickly as possible, tucked us in, turned off the light, and closed the door.
Only a minute passed before I got out of bed and asked Dani to play horses with me. Dani said we were supposed to go to sleep. She loved to follow the rules. I ignored her and started playing with our horse farm. Eventually, she got out of bed to join me. It wasn’t the first time we’d stayed up past our bedtime. We’d loved playing in the shadows of our nightlight, in our own little world.
At some point, I heard my dad’s phone ring. It was loud and close by. He was out in the hall. Dani and I froze, thinking we were going to get caught for playing after bedtime. But then he shouted, "Oh, my God! Oh, my God!"
We stopped playing and stared at each other. Something was terribly wrong. My father wasn’t the kind of man to raise his voice. When he got angry, he got quiet.
The phone rang several more times after that, and each time, my father's voice grew louder. Dani and I crept to the door. I put my hand in hers. I was scared. I knew something bad had happened.
We heard the front door open and close. We snuck into the hallway, hoping my mom had come back early. But my dad was talking to the neighbor, a woman by the name of Mary Carpenter. She put her arms around my father. He was shaking.
I started shaking, too. Dani squeezed my hand. "It's going to be okay, Brynn," she told me.
I cried in response.
That’s when my dad saw us.
"You’re supposed to be in bed," he said, tears in his eyes, as he walked toward us.
