Page 83 of The Shadows We Keep

I don’t know how long he’ll be gone for, so I come to my senses and push myself off the couch to look around the room. Heading straight for the frame with my mother and the tiny baby in it. I can’t tell if it’s me or Alina. How fucked up is that? But the thing that strikes me as odd, there’s only one of us.

The picture’s taken outside a small brick house as if she’s leaving.

Who leaves with only one of their children?

But then again, maybe Alina’s adoptive parents took her right away. I’d always wondered why she didn’t put us both up for adoption. Why she’d kept one of us when she was already doing the challenging thing and saying goodbye to the other?

I’m so transfixed by the photo, taking in every minor detail of her face, absorbing everything I’ve missed for the last fifteen years without a photo of her.

“That’s you.” The deep voice coming from behind scares the shit out of me. The frame almost goes flying from my hands, but I grip tight to keep it safe.

“Why isn’t Alina with us?” I ask timidly. He might not know, but all the information he’s already shared, it’s worth prying.

He heaves a heavy sigh. “They handed her over to her adoptive parents minutes after your mother gave birth.”

“Why’d she keep me?” Emotion clogs my throat. I’m desperate to understand what happened on this day twenty something years ago.

“No one knew about you.” His words come softly.

I swing around to face him, he’s close, but he doesn’t move to take a step back.

“What? How did no one know about me? That makes no sense!” My mind can’t grasp the concept.

“Your mother hid her pregnancy, remember? She didn’t see a doctor throughout the entire thing. Plus, you weren’t exactly born in a hospital.”

“Were you there?” I ask, watching his chin drop quickly in answer. “And she didn’t know she was having twins?”

“No, she didn’t. Nor did she have a regular birth either,” he says.

“What do you mean?”

“When her water broke, she didn’t want to go to the hospital. She knew if she did, they would contact her father. It might not be hospital policy, but that wouldn’t stop someone on staff from reaching out to Fitzpatrick. She called frantic not sure what to do, where to go. I finally—” He stops, eyes growing wide.

Mine follow suit. “Why would she call you?” My entire body freezes, the oxygen in my lungs evaporates.

Holy shit. It can’t be.

My feet move back of their own accord, my back hits something hard before I collapse onto the floor. This can’t be, he can’t be.

But what if he is?

“Keira.” My name splits the air, a plea so desperate and full of yearning.

“You’re—” I can’t even say it. The title feels foreign. Even in my head.

“Listen, I didn’t mean to tell you this way. Trust me.”

“Trust you?” This is a cruel, sick joke. I don’t know who this man is, but he can’t be my father. What kind of father kidnaps their daughter?

“No.” I shake my head refusing to believe what’s so blatantly obvious.

“No?” he parrots back to me.

“You can’t be. This can’t be.”

“It is,mio cuore.”

His confirmation breaks me. Tears I’ve been battling since my eyes peeled open in this room fall. I don’t know if I’m crying from relief, or emotional pain, maybe it’s anger, or for the little girl who always wondered why she was never enough for the man who sired her to stick around.

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