Page 13 of Came the Closest

“She wants to talk to us,” I interrupt calmly, nudging Indi forward, “so let’s not jump to conclusions before we hear her out.”

Shock pulses through my body, thrumming like a livewire, and I lean back in my chair at Dad’s kitchen table.

My mom is gone.

Not gone to Switzerland or to Bali like when we were kids and she’d fly somewhere on a whim. She’s really, truly gone. The permanent kind of gone that comes with a death certificate and a carved gravestone placed in a seaside Maine cemetery.

I think maybe I should feel sadder, but I don’t really feel anything. My mother was out of my life more than she was in it, and she’s been gone to me for the last eighteen, almost nineteen, years.

But that’s not why I’m shocked, not really.

That has to do with finding out that Milo is my half-brother. My mother’s fourth son.

“She got sick shortly after Milo was born,” Indi says quietly, twisting the glass of water Gran handed her on its coaster. Her eyes are glued to the mouth of the cup. “It was a risk, having a child at her age, and she knew it, but she took it. Vincent didn’t want…”

“Vincent didn’t want what?” Jordan asks harshly.

Dad sets a hand on Jordan’s good shoulder and squeezes.

I look away from the paternal gesture with a lump in my throat that I can’t swallow.

“He didn’t want another child,” Indi says, holding Jordan’s gaze unwaveringly. “His son was as good as grown when he and Mother, uh, got together, so I wasn’t exactly welcome. But another child of his own? He loathed that she wanted to keep the baby.”

It takes effort to keep from fisting my fingers on the tabletop. Indi was tightlipped about the man our mother married before she left, but I’d still had a sick feeling about Vincent Pierre.

Not unlike how I feel about Ben Rhodes, frankly.

“It wasn’t like he had anything to do with him after he was born,” Indi continues. “When he and Mom weren’t traveling for business or pleasure, he wasn’t around Milo and me much. Which, honestly, was just fine by me.”

My jaw tightens. Of course, my free-spirited mother would marry a man who saw children as a hindrance and not as a gift. I don’t want children of my own, but I’d never treat them like that if I did.

“What happens now?” Graham asks evenly. “With the boy.”

Indi hesitates, and the premonition returns. The I-don’t-know-what-it-is-but-it’ll-change-my-life one. Indi glances toward the living room, where Jolene and Milo sit cross-legged on the blue and ivory woven rug between the coffee table and sofa, playing Go Fish. Milo hasn’t let go of his teddy bear, but he is smiling. Surely the kid can’t be too traumatized if he can play cards with a chatterbox of a girl he doesn’t know from Adam.

And then Indi turns her pale gaze directly at me.

No.

I don’t know what she’s going to say, why she’s looking at me, but I know my answer is going to be no for whatever it is.

“Mom named Colton as the custodial guardian in her will,” she says, “and Dad as the financial guardian.”

Silence.

I can’t gauge the reactions around me because I can’t comprehend my own. All I feel is an overwhelming desire to say no. I don’t know what kind of cruel joke the Universe thinks it’s playing or what my mother was smoking when she wrote her will, but it can’t be true.

I cannot be a child’s guardian.

Not even if the child belonged to my mother.

I push back from the table, my head pounding. “No.”

“Colton—”

“Let him go, Indi,” Dad says quietly.

Possibly for the first time in my adult life, I agree with my father.

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