Page 53 of A Whisper of Summer Magic

She needed to calm her mind and proceed logically. She added bath salts, a sprig of lavender and scented bath oil and after a brief personal conversation with her good and bad angels, she slipped on a robe and returned to the kitchen and took a Roshni 2021 Reserve pinot noir out of the mini climate-controlled wine cellar off the kitchen. She’d bought a mixed case from several vineyards on a weekend trip to Oregon’s Willamette Valley with Jessica a couple of autumns ago, and they’d agreed to save the reserves for something special. They’d already opened one bottle to celebrate Chloe’s engagement.

“I can always order more,” Meghan muttered the excuse to the absent Jessica, because the sisters would want to share a bottle the night before the summer wedding—when Chloe focused long enough to pick a date.

Would Rustin and Storm now be a part of the wine sharing to celebrate special moments? Would Jackson?

The thought practically sent her brain spinning offline. She was way out over her skis as her father would say, and no, she didn’t want to think of him now. She couldn’t even begin to sort all the crazy emotions and questions rampaging through her brain. That was why she was taking a bath and drinking wine before she tried to find Chloe’s bio mom.

“And what the heck am I going to do with that information if I find it?”

It wasn’t as if she told her sisters everything, but she usually did—even her screw-ups along with the professional triumphs. She hadn’t even made it back to her car before she’d called Jessica after her first and last attempt at yoga to share how she’d fallen out of a half-moon or crescent moon or some sort of lunar-inspired pose and knocked over her water bottle—which hadn’t been closed all the way, slicking the floor and taking out another—along with another person.

Yoga was on the never-again list.

But finding Chloe’s bio mom was a bigger deal, a bigger secret than humiliatingly clumsy yoga.

And that their dad was Chloe’s bio dad was a huge toxic secret that she hadn’t yet begun to wrap her head around.

She poured wine generously—practically a goblet. Feeling like a medieval lady of the manor, she returned to her bathroom to submerge herself in warmth, fragrance, and wine.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

Ugh. That made her think of yoga.

Usually, she would jog in place and thinkFight. Fight. Fight. Win. Win. Winto focus herself or before facing a daunting challenge. But she was trying to relax.

“Dang it.” She reached for her phone, too curious and anxious to wait. She put in a few key words: Opera Singer, Charlotte, NC, ZP—not expecting much, and nearly dropped her phone in the water at the headlines, articles and pictures that popped up on her screen.

International opera star Athena Zoe Panopoulos. And the pictures—heart-shaped face; huge eyes; dark, tumbling curls.

“Hey, are you okay? Why are you sitting in the dark?” Jessica walked into the bathroom, and the shaft of light from the kitchen lit up Meghan’s wide-eyed stare.

“Opera,” Jessica snorted. “That’s new. More Clo’s speed than yours, but hey that woman looks like…” Jessica trailed off.

She perched on the edge of the clawfoot tub. “What’s going on?”

Meghan looked into her sister’s wide, startled gaze that likely mirrored her own. So much for secrecy. She could keep secrets professionally, but never with her sisters, not for long.

“I think this might be Chloe’s bio mom.”

*

“Contrary to popularbelief, tea does not solve every problem.”

“Don’t even start with me. What are we going to do?” Jessica demanded as she bustled around the kitchen eyeballing dried loose tea into a diffuser and pouring the boiling water into a large yellow ceramic teapot, improbably with an elephant painted on it.

“We have to tell Chloe.” Meghan was certain.

“How are we going to tell her?” Jessica looked ill. “She’s planning to get married this summer. I don’t want to ruin this for her.”

“We can’t keep her bio mom a secret.” Last Christmas, Chloe had confessed that she’d never fully felt like one of them, and each of them had felt gutted about it. “Chloe deserves to know.”

“How can we implode her world? This is a magical moment in her life. She has to pick a date, a venue. We need to help her plan,” Jessica listed. “What is this going to do to her? Will she want to find her mom? Find out why she was abandoned?” Jessica clutched both hands on her head and rolled a circle with her body like she was swaying in the wind. “What will her mental state be?”

If Meghan didn’t have the same questions, she would have found Jessica’s response funny—so Jessie. Make tea, state the problem, find a wedding tangent, react in a physically funny, though slightly weird way.

“What are we going to do?” Jessica moaned. “And why did she leave Chloe like a Christmas gift? Are we going to need to hunt down the bio dad too?”

Meghan thought she was going to throw up. “I don’t know. That’s why I was in the bath trying to relax and not think about it—so I could come up with a plan before I faced you.”

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