what happened?”
“I made the mistake of holding my baby, that’s what. Knowing what’s best and what you feel…” Her eyes glistened. “But I thought, for my son’s sake, I can do this, I can let him go. Except it’s a little hard to let go when there’s this thread keeping you tied to each other. After a few months I knew if I didn’t cut that thread completely, I’d go crazy.”
“Then why are you here now?”
“Because when Ida died,” she shot back, “it hit me that I had nobody else in the entire world I could call family. No aunts or uncles, no cousins, nothing. And maybe this doesn’t make sense to anybody but me, but I just…I just wanted to make sure my kid was okay, that’s all. For my own peace of mind.”
“Fine,” Aidan said in a low voice. “You’ve seen him. So you can go back home with a clean conscience.”
Winnie’s head tilted on her long neck, the serrated ends of her hair sliding across her shoulders. “You would think,” she said sadly, and realization slammed into Aidan that it wasn’t anger making his skin crawl.
It was fear.
Even in the waning light, there was no mistaking Aidan Black’s don’t-mess-with-my-cub expression. If nothing else, at least Winnie could comfort herself knowing the adoption had taken so strong. Hey, if the roles had been reversed, she’d probably see her as a threat, too.
Except the roles weren’t reversed, they were what they were, and the fact was, a glimpse hadn’t been enough. Why she’d ever thought it would be, she’d have to dissect at some future date. Not that she wasn’t aware how thin the ice was she was skating on, just being here to begin with. But now that she was here—
“I don’t suppose you’d consider letting me spend some time with Robbie?”
“You’re not serious?”
Winnie felt as if she was trying to swallow five-year-old peanut butter. “Just as a friend. As your son, not mine. And you have every right to tell me to go to hell—”
“Back to Texas would be sufficient, I think.”
Tears threatened. No, she thought. “I know you don’t trust me—”
“And you’re wastin’ both of our times,” Aidan said, hands up, starting toward his truck.
“You could try to get to know me!” she shouted toward his back. “The me I am now, not the whacked-out teenager you met exactly once, and only for an hour at that. I swear,” she called out when he reached the driver-side door, “I would never do anything to hurt my own child! To hurt any child!”
Aidan turned. “Maybe not intentionally. But the effect would be the same.”
“How?” she said, coming off the porch, hearing Fool, fool, fool echo inside her head, helpless as usual to stop her mouth once it got going. “Aidan, I promise I’m no more interested in turning back the clock than you are. I’ll even respect if you’ve never told him he’s adopted—”
“Of course he knows he’s adopted!” Aidan said, long fingers squeezing the door handle. “But not only has he shown absolutely no curiosity about his birth parents, he’s still torn up about his mother’s death. Don’cha think that’s enough stress for a nine-year-old to deal with at one time?”
“Yes, I do. I’ve been there. So I’ve got a pretty good idea how Robson’s probably feeling.” She paused, suddenly identifying the nameless emotion she’d seen in the boy’s eyes back at the store. “Hell, he drags his pain around with him like a ball and chain. And yeah, it’s that obvious,” she said at Aidan’s raised brows, deciding it probably wouldn’t do to point out that Aidan did, too. She swallowed. Came close. “If you don’t want him to know I’m his birth mother right now, I’m fine with that.”
For the first time, she sensed Aidan’s wavering.
“Please,” she said softly, briefly touching his arm, muscles stiff underneath a layer of weathered denim. “I know I’m asking a lot, and you’ve got every right to say no—”
“That I do,” he said, his eyes going flinty again. “I’m sorry, Winnie,” he said, like he wasn’t sorry at all. “I can’t take the chance.”
It was stupid, how much it hurt, especially considering how low she’d thought her expectations had been. And anyway, even if she did get to see Robson, what if this new objective turned out to be no more satisfying than the first? What if she ended up returning to Texas with a heart even more broken than before, just like Elektra’d said?
Except then she realized it was too late, she’d already opened that particular can of worms and there was no cramming them back inside.
Nodding, her gaze sliding away, she backed up, her arms crossed. “Does he even know my name?”
“No.”
Her eyes lifted again. “You ever gonna tell him about me?”
“Only if he asks.”
After a moment, Winnie nodded again, hoping to make it back inside before the tears fell.
“So you’ll be leaving in the morning?” she heard behind her.
“I suppose. Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s been a long day—”
“Watch out for the electricity, it’s a bit dodgy.”
Winnie turned, thoroughly confused. “Uh, yeah…Tess already told me—”
“And I assume you have a cell phone?”
“Charging even as we speak—”
“Give me your number, then,” Aidan said, digging his own phone out of his pocket.
“Why?”
“You’re on my property, I’m responsible for your welfare. So just give me your number, damn it.”
Shaking her head, Winnie stomped inside, fished a pen out of her purse and scribbled her number on a Burger King napkin from a pit stop in Moriarty, then went back outside and handed it to him.
“Then you better give me yours, too. Just in case a herd of rabid raccoons storms the house during the night.”
She thought maybe his mouth twitched. “505-555-2076.”
She scribbled it on a second napkin, although since she had a mind like flypaper she’d already memorized it. After that they stared each other down for another couple of seconds until Aidan finally opened his door and climbed into his truck.
“Hey,” she called over before he could shut his door.
“What?”
“I may have made some really, really dumb choices in my life, but something tells me choosing you and June as my baby’s parents wasn’t one of them.”
Then she went inside, thinking, Chew on that, buster.
Some time later, sitting on the bed in a pair of seen-better-days sweats, the tub of cheesecake ice cream rapidly vanishing as she stared at the flames belly-dancing in the fireplace, Winnie realized she’d stalled out at O-kay…now what?
By rights, she supposed she should at least be a little spooked, out here in the middle of nowhere all by her lonesome, with nothing but a lazy dog—she cast an affectionate glance at Annabelle, smushed up against her thighs—to protect her. But Winnie had never been the spookable sort. Not by things like slasher movies or ghost stories or things that went bump in the night, anyway.
Nor was she generally prone to boredom, since having lived most of her life in her own branch of nowhere she’d learned early on how to keep herself occupied. There’d always been people to see, fat to chew, businesses to keep tabs on, ailing grandmothers to