Page 83 of One Last Promise

He had nothing. Wait . . . “Shep told you about Roz. Axel was there—maybehetold Flynn that you were going to the hospital. . . . And hello, but what kid doesn’t like ice cream? I don’t know, Tillie. I just know that you need to take a breath here. Calm down?—”

“Calm.Down?” Her voice wavered again. “Did you not catch the news brief? I’m wanted—and now a fugitive—and Hazel is probably going to foster care!” Her hands shook, and if she came one step closer, he could close the distance, get the gun from her.

Not that he believed she’d actually shoot him.Probably not.

“Do you know what it feels like to be ripped away from your family, to live in foster care?”

“No. But I do know there are many foster care families?—”

“It’s not about foster care! It’s about the fact that you have no control over your life. That in a second, your entire world could implode. It’s about being seven years old—or twelve—and having to sleep in a foreign bed with strange people telling you to call them Mom and . . .” She shook her head. “I told Pearl I’d never let that happen to Hazel.Never.”

His voice fell. “Okay. But—listen. We can figure this out. As her mother, you have rights, even if Rigger does have custody?—”

“But I’mnother mother.” The words emerged soft, almost as if wrenched from deep inside.

He stilled. His heart, his brain, his breath.What?

She looked wrecked, her voice broken. “I’m not her mother. Pearl was. I’m her aunt. And the only one she has.”

Oh. The words shook through him.

And then, somehow, deep inside, the words released the terrible knot he’d been fighting for three days. “You didn’t have an affair with Rigger.”

Her mouth pinched. “I was a different person back then, but not that different. And I would never have betrayed my sister.”

The sadness in her tone made him ache. But honestly, “You can’t blame me, Tillie. You didn’t tell meanything. This entire time, you’ve been acting like you’re her mom?—”

“Iamher mom.”

Right. He sighed. “Okay. But do you have legal custody of her?”

She swallowed, her mouth tightening. “I should. Pearl wrote a letter to the court, but . . . Icouldn’t . . . we couldn’t . . .”

“So after your sister died, you just . . . kept her.”

“What would you have done, Moose? Given her back to Rigger?”

And that’s what didn’t make sense. “No, probably not, but . . . that’s the thing. Why does Rigger even want her? He has a family, a wife, and a home and . . . I don’t understand.”

“He got the judge to issue a kidnapping warrant on me so he could track me down. He doesn’t want her. He wantsme.”

The night had sprinkled a few stars above, and they illuminated her face, stony but broken, and her words in the driveway returned to him.

“Because you could destroy him.”

She nodded. “I could testify against him. I should have testified against him.”

“For what?”

“For . . . so much. But mostly, murder.”

He froze. “What?”

“It’s a long story.”

“Okay. What if you told it to me without a gun pointing at me.”

She winced. “Moose, I’m . . . I . . .”

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