A new beginning…from this day on

Jakob Nilsson has tried to keep his distance from Amy. Like a forbidden temptation, he’s always known his weakness where she’s concerned. Then an unexpected weekend brings them together. Despite the torture of being so close to her, Jakob is glad he’s there…especially when the opening of a time capsule reveals a confession that upends Amy’s world. Nothing is the way it was.

But that revelation also means the barriers between Jakob and Amy are gone. Finally he’s free to pursue the woman who has always fascinated him. The challenge now is to convince her to look beyond their past. And to consider a future that includes him.

“I’m staying.”

Jakob reined in the thoughts that reared up at the image of sleeping under the same roof as Amy. She didn’t need that now. What she needed right now was a friend. That might be all she’d ever want from him.

“You really don’t have to stay, you know.” She looked at him, her eyes dark, the gold highlights subdued. “You’ve done what you came to do. I’ve crawled out of my depression. I’ll call Mom tonight and confront her. I promise.”

“And I’m going to be here when you do.” He wasn’t going to let her drive him away. “If you don’t want me to listen in, I won’t. That’s your choice. But when the call is over, you shouldn’t have to be alone.”

The chin came up again. The defiance was back in her eyes. “I’m used to doing things alone.”

“Maybe so.” He held out a hand. “But this time you don’t have to.”

Her stare fell to his hand as if it was the snake in the Garden of Eden. Tempting, but also terrifying.

They’d touched so rarely. He waited to see what choice she would make.

Dear Reader,

I was actually a history major in college. And, yes, I’ve written a few historical novels along the way, but what’s come to intrigue me most is the more recent past. I’m always fascinated by what moves people to act the way they do. I’ve come increasingly to believe that most of our behavior, not to mention those extremely influential little voices we all have in our heads, has roots in our childhood. If, say, you’re getting out of a bad marriage but grew up in a stable, happy home, do you quit trusting all men? Not usually. Turn it around, though, so that Dad was unreliable, cheated on your mom, failed you when you needed him—then probably you never did really trust men.

The logical corollary is that our parents are the people they are because of their childhoods. And so often, we don’t know our parents as well as we think we do. Heck, it’s not like any of us tell our kids everything, either! Even when no one is trying to hide anything in particular, a lot goes unmentioned. Sometimes those mysteries would help us understand a parent better, and by extention ourselves.

My own father is gone now, and my mother’s memory is failing, which means there’s a lot I’ll never know about them. It’s gotten me thinking more than ever about the questions I never asked.

The time capsule was the perfect story idea for me. Lots of innocent stuff went in it, but also a few real secrets. In the case of my heroine, the mysteries of her past and her mother’s have kept her from being able to imagine sharing her life with anyone. But here’s a secret her mother never wanted her to know, one that shatters their already difficult relationship and remakes it into something that might be better…or might not. This particular secret also produces a shocking change in Amy Nilsson’s relationship with a man she had never imagined herself loving...

Hope you enjoy the book and come to care about these people as much as I did!

Janice Kay Johnson

P.S. I enjoy hearing from readers! Please contact me through my publisher, Harlequin Books, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, ON M3B 3K9, Canada.

From This Day On

Janice Kay Johnson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

The author of more than seventy books for children and adults, Janice Kay Johnson is especially well-known for her Harlequin Superromance novels about love and family—about the way generations connect and the power our earliest experiences have on us throughout life. Her 2007 novel Snowbound won a RITA® Award from Romance Writers of America for Best Contemporary Series Romance. A former librarian, Janice raised two daughters in a small rural town north of Seattle, Washington. She loves to read and is an active volunteer and board member for Purrfect Pals, a no-kill cat shelter.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

CHAPTER ONE

WELL, THAT WAS WEIRD.

At first only puzzled, Amy Nilsson flipped the crisp white envelope over, as if the backside would offer any illumination. As she’d expected, the only printed information was on the front: a return address of Wakefield College in Washington State, and her mother’s name and address. Her mother’s full name, Michelle Cooper Doyle, followed by Class of 1980.

To the best of Amy’s knowledge, her mother had graduated from the University of Oregon. If she’d ever attended any other institution, she hadn’t said so. She’d never so much as mentioned Wakefield.

Mom’s mail had become one of Amy’s responsibilities when she moved into her mother’s house to care for it while she and Amy’s stepfather were abroad for two years. Ken Doyle, her stepfather, had accepted a visiting professorship at the University of New South Wales in Australia.

Probably it was dumb, but Amy had been convinced that living in Mom’s house, living her life, in a way, would give her insight into who her mother was. And how pathetic was it to realize your best chance of getting to know a parent was in absentia? Michelle Cooper Doyle was so closed off emotionally, she felt increasingly like a stranger to Amy. And yes, the whole living-in-the house strategy was working to some extent—she inadvertently made small discoveries almost daily about Mom.

Sadly, the mail had been a huge disappointment so far. Mom was handling bills online. What little came for her was junk. A gardening magazine seemed to be her sole subscription.

But now, something out of the ordinary. A real clue.

Maybe, Amy cautioned herself.

The scent of fresh-brewed coffee filled the kitchen. She dropped the handful of mail onto the table atop the Oregonian and concentrated for a few minutes on pouring coffee, dressing it up with sugar and one percent milk and toasting a bagel. She felt like a kid eyeing packages under the Christmas tree. Anticipation was half the fun. Amy wrinkled her nose, thinking it. Sure, right. In her experience, gifts were as often socks or underwear as they were anything fun or exciting. Chances were, this package was nothing but a solicitation for money.

Yes, but why ask her mother if she had no connection to the college? And...why did someone there think Mom had attended?

Then she sat back down in the dining nook, where she could see her mother’s rose garden through small-paned French doors. Amy had sworn, cross her heart and hope to die, that she would take care of the garden in exchange for living in the house.

She briefly admired the roses, still in full bloom and looking pretty darned good, if she did say so, thanks to the soaker hoses she was religiously turning on every evening, as well as the last application of manure tea. Making it was one of her newly acquired skills.

Setting aside the newspaper, Amy tossed most of the mail into the recycling bin she kept beside the table. Square in front of her sat the mysterious envelope from Wakefield College, which had the formal look of an invitation.

So much for anticipation. Open it, already! Sliding her finger beneath the flap, she suppressed a tinge of guilt. In theory, she was supposed to forward anything that looked personal to Mom. But really, she convinced herself, how personal could this be?

It actually was an invitation, she discovered. An astonishing one that had her reading and rereading. Former students of Wakefield College, who as English majors had put an item into a time capsule almost thirty-four-and-a-half years ago, were invited back to the campus for the capsule’s premature opening. Apparently the relatively minor earthquake that had shaken eastern Washington and Oregon had damaged the foundation of one of the buildings on campus. Although less than thirty-five years old, Cheadle Hall was to be torn down and replaced. Upon reflection, college administrators had decided to open the time capsule now rather than put it in the foundation of the new building and wait until the planned fifty years had passed.

Amy kept grappling with the fact that the college thought her mother had been on campus thirty-four years ago, putting something—who knows what—into this time capsule. And yes, when she grabbed the envelope again, it was definitely addressed to her mother, Class of 1980. Cooper was Mom’s maiden name. Doyle was her current last name. There was, of course, no mention of her former married name, Nilsson.

It seemed undeniable that Michelle had attended Wakefield for at least a couple of years. Which meant either she’d lied about having graduated from the U of O, or she had transferred after—what?—two years at Wakefield? Three? And why had she never mentioned it?

Amy reread every scrap of text yet again, searching for answers. The fact that the college knew her mother’s married name suggested that she’d stayed in touch. Why had she done so if she’d chosen not to finish her undergraduate education at Wakefield? And why had she left a high-end liberal arts college to finish her education at a big state school? Money?

Lots of questions, no answers.

If this was a clue, Amy had no context for understanding it.

She could email her mother, but Mom never liked talking about the past, and especially her childhood or young adult years. Mom got impatient whenever Amy asked questions about her marriage to Josef Nilsson, too.

“For goodness sake!” she’d exclaimed the last time Amy had tried to learn more about her dad from her mother’s perspective. “Any relationship is between the two of you. It doesn’t have anything to do with me.” She had cast a suspicious glance at Amy. “Why are you asking? Did he say something?”

Since she talked to him maybe three or four times a year, Amy could reply with complete honesty, “No.”

End of discussion.

But...Wakefield College. Where did it come into her mother’s history?

Doing some math in her head, Amy frowned. Her mother had to have met Josef somewhere around the same time the capsule was set into the foundation of this Cheadle Hall. Amy had been born early the next year. So probably that was why Mom had transferred to U of O—because Dad was there. That made sense. The mystery was why the subject of Wakefield College had never come up at all. No, Amy and her mother were not close, but she’d still have thought that, at some point, Mom would have said, “I went to Wakefield for a couple of years.” Especially since it must have meant something to her, or she wouldn’t have given the college her married name and address so she’d continue to get mailings.

More than weird.

Amy eventually went out for groceries. As always, she browsed the store’s magazine section carefully. A freelance writer, she regularly published articles in half a dozen of the magazines that were displayed. She was always trying to come up with the right angle to get in at others.

Today, though, she remained distracted, even unsettled, for reasons she didn’t altogether understand. Wasn’t this what she wanted? She’d believed she could solve the mysteries of her own life if she understood her mother better. Here was an opening. So why did she feel...hesitant?

Oh, boy. Was it possible to want something, and not want it, too? The truth was, she had never liked thinking about her childhood, either. Her mother and she had that much in common.

She had been deeply hurt by her parents’ divorce when she was six. She had adored her father. Dad had been the loving parent of the two, but somehow all that changed after the divorce. Her bewilderment at the way he distanced himself had become anger. Every-other-weekend visits gradually dwindled until, by the time she was a teenager, she wasn’t seeing him more than a couple of times a year—a few weeks in the summer, Thanksgiving or Christmas, sometimes spring break. By then, she’d been in full rebellion.

Her mother had never been an affectionate woman; Amy had since realized she was the kind of woman who should never have had children at all. Probably she’d realized that, too, because Amy had no sisters or brothers, unless she counted her half brother, Jakob. Which she preferred not to. He’d apparently resented her existence from the minute she was born, and their relationship had never gotten any better. Until three months ago, she hadn’t seen or heard from him in years, although she got occasional updates on his life from her father.

Founder, owner and CEO of an outdoor gear empire, Jakob lived in Portland. After Amy moved into her mother’s house several months ago, he’d called to acknowledge that they were now in the same city. They had spoken politely about getting together but hadn’t made any plans. He hadn’t called again, and she didn’t expect he would. She had every intention of making an excuse if he ever did suggest they get together for a cup of coffee or dinner. Her memories of Jakob were not, on the whole, positive.

That evening, Amy told herself it was only curiosity that prompted her to phone her father. He had relocated to Phoenix when she was about ten, one of the reasons her visits with him had been pared to two or three times a year.

“Amy!” he said, sounding surprised but pleased. “How are you?”

They chatted for a few minutes about work, weather and a few items from the news before a pause in the conversation gave Amy her chance.

“Something came in the mail today that surprised me. I didn’t realize Mom ever went to Wakefield College.”

There was a small pause. She couldn’t decide if it was significant.

“Yes, she decided to leave after her sophomore year.”

“Because she met you?”

“No, I happened to get a job in Florence that summer. We met in May, right after she got home from Wakefield.”

Was it her imagination that he was speaking carefully, as if thinking out what he wanted to say?

“What kind of work were you doing?”

He laughed. “Construction, what else? I worked on building a new resort. Not so new anymore.”

Amy did know that her mother had grown up in Florence, famous for miles of sand dunes above the Pacific Ocean on the Oregon coast. “You don’t think it was because of you that she decided not to go back to Wakefield?”

Again he hesitated. “She said she didn’t want to, anyway. But I guess she couldn’t have gone back no matter what. Frenchman Lake is a pretty small town. I’d have had a hard time finding work there.”

They had been married that August, barely three months after meeting. Mom had only been twenty, Dad twenty-three. They hadn’t had to tell Amy she was the reason for the wedding. Accidental pregnancies often worked that way.

“Why the questions?” he asked now. “What did the college want? Money?”

“No.” She explained about the time capsule. “It might be interesting to see what Mom put in it. I could go to the opening in her place.” She hadn’t known she wanted to attend until the words were out.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea? Your mother values her privacy.”

She didn’t like feeling defensive. “I’m assuming whatever she put in is sealed. I wouldn’t necessarily have to open it.”

“Then why go at all?” her father asked, reasonably. “Chances are they’ll mail anything that doesn’t get picked up. You can send it on to her.”

“That’s true.” So why feel deflated? “I’ll think about it.”

“Good.” His voice had relaxed. “Jakob tells me you talked.”

“Yes, he called. He suggested getting together, but we haven’t managed yet.”

Her father didn’t question the absurdity of that excuse. In three months, two single adults who were truly interested in meeting up could certainly have managed to find a few free hours. Dad had to be aware that Jakob and Amy had never had an easy relationship.

The call ended with her feeling unsatisfied by what he’d told her. If pregnancy didn’t explain Mom’s decision not to return to Wakefield, what did? Why had she never, even once, mentioned that she’d gone there?

Over the next few days, Amy wrestled with her conscience. She had no doubt at all about whether Mom would want her to see whatever she’d put into that time capsule. This was the woman who repelled the most casual question about her past. But the knowledge triggered old anger for Amy. Other people talked casually about their parents.

Yeah, my mom went to Fillmore Auditorium all the time when she was a teenager. How cool is that? She even admits she took LSD. Or, Mom says she loves Dad, but she still wishes she’d finished college before they got married. She insisted on telling me about every crappy job she ever had. In gory detail. Which I guess worked, because no way am I dropping out for some guy.

Hearing the voices of friends, Amy thought, Me? I didn’t even know where my mother went to college.

She had no idea whether her mother’s reticence had the same reasons as her own, which she did understand. Amy had spent her adult life blocking out growing-up years that had been mostly painful. She did holidays with her mom and Ken, who was an intelligent, kind man. That was pretty much the sum total of her relationship with her mother.

She’d actually been surprised when they asked if she would consider housesitting for them. It would be nice to think she was the only person they trusted, but the truth probably had more to do with the fact that, thanks to the ups and downs of her writing career, she pretty much lived on a shoestring and they knew it. They were doing her a favor. Two years with no rent was the next best thing to winning the lottery. She’d be able to save money. Maybe even do something wild and crazy like take a real vacation.

Her thoughts took a sideways hop. Speaking of money, was there a possible article in the time capsule? Of course the alumni magazine would undoubtedly be running one, but there had to be a tack she could take to intrigue readers who had no connection to Wakefield. The hopes and dreams of teenagers, captured so many years ago and now being revealed, unaltered. The reactions of former students as they were reminded of who they’d once been. She toyed with the notion that there was something dramatic in the capsule, a revelation that would provide a dramatic story for the Atlantic or the New Yorker.

She smiled wryly. Dream on. Okay, for Seattle Met, maybe.

It would be interesting to see a list of names of the attending alumni. Given the college’s reputation and national ranking, some well-known public figures had undoubtedly graduated from Wakefield.

Oh, well, she had a few weeks to decide whether she really wanted to go. In the meantime, she had to concentrate on researching an article she knew she’d get paid for.

Deciding she wouldn’t get dressed at all today—the boxer shorts and camisole she’d slept in were comfortable and cool—Amy took the coffee to her stepfather’s study, where her laptop had replaced the one he had taken with him.

A few minutes later, she was almost engrossed enough to forget the peculiar fact that her mother had, by her silence, lied about her college years.

* * *

JAKOB NILSSON DROPPED his phone on the end table and reached for the remote control. He didn’t immediately touch the mute button to restore sound on his television, however. Nothing much was happening in the Mariner game he’d been watching, and he was still trying to figure out what his father had wanted.

Dad was a straightforward kind of guy. Blunt, even. Out on a job site—he was a contractor—he could best be described as a sledgehammer. So why had he just talked in circles?

The purported message had been that he thought it was a shame Jakob and Amy weren’t acting the part of close and loving family members, given that they probably didn’t live a mile apart. Jakob had pointed out that he hadn’t so much as seen Amy since—he’d had to stop and think—Thanksgiving five years ago. He hadn’t mentioned that the only reason he remembered the occasion at all was that it had been so awkward all around. At the time, his marriage was deteriorating. The fact that Susan was sulking had been obvious to all, casting a pall over the gathering. She hadn’t bothered being polite to his stepmother—yeah, Dad was on his third marriage—or to Amy, who looked as if she’d rather be anywhere at all than at Dad’s house for a not-so-festive holiday meal. Jakob wasn’t sure why she’d shown up that year, when she didn’t most.

Before that... He really had to search his memory to nail down the previous time he’d seen Amy. A Christmas, he thought. Her mother had just remarried, he remembered that, and she’d gone back east with her new husband to celebrate the holiday with his aging parents. Amy hadn’t looked real happy to be at Dad’s that time, either. Jakob would have followed his usual pattern of making an excuse once he heard she was coming, except what could he do? It was Christmas, and Susan wouldn’t have understood.

Jakob couldn’t even say he understood. He only knew his relationship with his half sister had been prickly from the beginning—his fault—and by the time they were both teenagers, uncomfortable. He didn’t let himself think about why. Water under the bridge. He no longer had any reason to dodge her, but no reason to seek her out, either.

Still, the conversation with his father had been bizarre. While he meditated, Jakob tossed some peanuts into his mouth, chewed, then chased them down with a swallow of beer.

Dad wanted something besides a warm and fuzzy relationship between two people he knew damn well couldn’t even tolerate each other. It had to do with Amy’s mother and with a time capsule opening. Jakob wouldn’t swear to it, but he kind of thought he was supposed to talk Amy out of going to collect whatever her mother had put in it.

He grunted at the idiocy of the whole line of conjecture. Yeah, sure, he was just the guy with the best chance of influencing Amy’s behavior.

When Mariner player Gutiérrez knocked the ball over the head of the Texas Ranger shortstop, Jakob restored the sound long enough to follow the action. Gutiérrez made it to second. The next player up to bat struck out, though, bringing the inning to an end, and he muted the ensuing commercial. His thoughts reverted to their previous track.

Why would Dad think Michelle had put anything of even remote significance in that time capsule? Jakob was speculating on why it mattered if Amy got her hands on whatever that was when he thought, Oh, shit. Unlike Amy—he hoped unlike Amy—he had been old enough to understand some of what Michelle and his dad were fighting about before they separated and then divorced. Now he did some math in his head and thought again, Shit. His father knew something. Maybe not for sure, but enough to want to keep Amy away from that time capsule and what was in it.

Dad wasn’t using his head, though. Hadn’t it occurred to him that if neither Michelle nor her daughter showed up to claim her contribution, the college would undoubtedly mail it to Michelle at her address of record? That address being the house where Amy currently lived and where, apparently, she was opening the mail.

Whatever secret this was, neither Jakob nor his father had a prayer of keeping it out of Amy’s hands.

Thinking back to the conversation, he guessed his father didn’t really know anything. He was only uneasy.

Jakob considered calling him back and saying, Hey, what’s the scoop? But he doubted his father knew how much he’d overheard all those years ago.

And maybe misunderstood, he reminded himself. He’d only been nine years old when Dad and he moved out. His confusion over what he’d overheard was one reason he had never said anything to Amy. He hated her anyway, he’d assured himself at the time. After that, as they got older, he didn’t know what he felt about her, only that they weren’t friends, and they weren’t sister/brother in any meaningful way.

They still weren’t.

Yeah, but his interest had been piqued. It wouldn’t hurt to give her a call, would it? Take her to dinner, maybe, if she didn’t make an icy excuse. He found he was curious to know what she was like these days. His impression five years ago—even nine or ten years ago, when they’d shared Christmas Day—was that Amy had passed to the other side of her wild phase. She’d removed most of her piercings and let her hair revert to its natural chestnut color. Her makeup had been toned down considerably, too. She’d become an adult.

He knew she was a reasonably successful writer now. He’d actually bought magazines a few times to read her articles, which he had to admit had been smart, funny and not much like the angry teenage girl and then young woman he’d known.

Maybe he’d like her now.

The thought was insidious and made him feel edgy for no obvious reason.

Call her? His hand hovered over his phone. Or don’t?

* * *

AMY WAS JARRED from the paragraph she’d been reworking by her telephone ringing. She glanced at it irritably. Friends knew not to call her past about seven o’clock in the evening. That’s when she did her best work.

But her eyes widened at the number that was displayed. It was local, and she was pretty sure she recognized it. After a momentary hesitation, she picked up the phone.

“Hello?”

“Amy.” The voice was deep and relaxed. “Jakob.”

“Jakob.” Her thoughts scattered.

“Dad called this evening. He was telling me about this time capsule thing. I’m being nosy.”

“It is a little strange.” She hesitated then thought, Why not? “Did you know my mother ever went to Wakefield College?”

“Can’t say I did, not until Dad mentioned it tonight. You mean you didn’t know, either?”

“I’d swear she never mentioned it. I assumed she’d done her entire four years at the University of Oregon. But apparently not.”

“Have you emailed and asked her about it?”

The all-too-familiar anger stirred again. Why would she ask when her mother would either not answer, or only tell her it was none of her business?

“No. She and I never talk about the past. And I’m sure it’s no big deal.” I am lying, Amy realized. To her, knowing her mother had put something in the time capsule felt like a big deal. “I just thought it was interesting, that’s all. It even occurred to me that there might be an article idea in the opening of the capsule.”

He got her talking about the possible article, mentioned one of hers he’d read, which flattered her more than it should have, and finally suggested they actually have dinner together.

“It would make Dad happy to know we’d done something.”

He’d played the guilt card deftly, she thought, but found herself tempted, anyway. Who else could she talk to about this? Jakob at least knew some of the background and seemed to be genuinely interested. He sounded like a nicer guy than she remembered him being, too.

Amy made a face. Yes, it was possible she’d been ever so slightly prejudiced against him. So, okay, he tormented her throughout her growing-up years, but maybe that wasn’t so abnormal for an older brother. Especially one dealing with his father’s remarriage followed by the birth of a baby sister who supplanted him, in a sense.

He presumably had grown up.

“Sure,” she said cautiously. “When did you have in mind?”

* * *

JAKOB HAD THE NEXT EVENING in mind, as it turned out. Either he didn’t have an active social life right now, or a cancellation had provided an opening in his schedule.

They’d agreed to meet at the restaurant, and he beat her there. Amy was glad she’d checked it out online and therefore dressed appropriately. It wasn’t the kind of place she usually dined. Her all-purpose little black dress fit in fine, though, and the four-inch heels lent enough sway to her hips, she was vaguely aware that a couple of men turned their heads when she passed. Good. She’d been determined to look her best for this reunion. Jakob might be her brother, but she sure as hell didn’t want him looking at her with disdain the way he had the last few times they’d seen each other.

The maître d’ led her straight to a window table where Jakob waited. He spotted her when she was on the other side of the room and rose to his feet, watching her as she came.

The minute she set eyes on him, she felt sure a cancellation explained the fact that he had been free to have dinner with a mere sister tonight. This was a man who could have all the women he wanted, whenever he wanted.

He got his height and looks from their father. Amy hadn’t. She’d forgotten how Jakob dwarfed her. Or maybe not—perhaps her subconscious had prompted her to wear the tallest heels she owned.

Jakob was also ridiculously handsome, his features clean-cut, his nose long and narrow, his cheekbones sharp enough to cast a shadow beneath. He had dark blond hair that was probably a little longer than business-standard, but lay smooth except for a curl at his collar. His eyes had been a breathtaking shade of blue when he was a kid, but had become more of a blue-gray by the time he reached adulthood. He looked as Scandinavian as his name suggested.

She did not. Amy had inherited her mother’s brown eyes and hair that was neither brown nor red nor anything as interesting as auburn. Mom was a brunette, but apparently a great-aunt was a redhead so it ran in the family. Nobody had curls like Amy’s, though. That cross was hers alone to bear.

“Amy.” Jakob smiled and held out a hand. Not his arms, thank heavens—nobody in their family hugged, and she didn’t want to start with him.

“Jakob.”

They shook, his big hand enveloping hers. It felt warm, strong and calloused, which was interesting considering he presumably sat behind his desk most of the time.

Or maybe not. He’d always been the outdoorsy type, and given his business—sporting goods—he likely tested some of the products himself. Lord knows there were plenty of mountains within a day’s drive for him to climb and forests for him to hike into.

She was reluctantly aware that he had, if anything, gotten better looking with the years instead of softening around the middle or starting to gray or whatever, the way you’d expect. He was thirty-seven, after all, which ought to be edging past his prime. Part of her had been hoping for the teeniest hint of jowls, a few broken blood vessels in his nose...something.

No such luck.

The maître d’ seated her and then presented a white wine to Jakob, who approved it. Left alone with their menus, Jakob and Amy looked at each other.

The experience was more than strange. They hadn’t been alone together—focused solely on each other—in almost twenty years. She had hardly seen her brother after he’d left for college, when she was fifteen. At Christmas once or twice, maybe. One summer, she remembered, he’d worked in Tucson and, oh, gee, just never managed to get home while she was there. The summer after that, Colorado. Amy hadn’t gone to her dad’s the summer before she herself started college. Not seeing Jakob had been fine by her. Better than fine.

Now she thought, He’s a stranger. I don’t know him at all. Never knew him.

“I’m not sure how we managed to avoid each other so completely for so many years,” he said, as if reading her thoughts.

“Determination and motivation.” Amy sipped the wine then glanced at it with surprise. It had as little in common with the kind of wine she usually drank as she did with her brother the stranger.

His mouth crooked. “I was a shit to you when we were kids, wasn’t I?”

“You were.” She found herself smiling a little, too. “I don’t suppose you were exactly thrilled when I came along.”

“You could say that. I don’t remember much about it. I was only three when you were born, after all. But I was already dealing with the shock of suddenly having a new mother who didn’t seem very interested in me, and next thing I knew she wasn’t fat anymore, and there you were, squalling and ugly and I could tell my daddy was totally in love with you.”

Well, Dad got over that, she thought tartly, downplaying the hurt.

“It’s a wonder older siblings ever like the younger ones,” Amy said reflectively.

“You so sure they do?”

They shared a grin.

He nodded at the menu. “Better decide what you want to eat. Our waiter is looking restless.”

The restaurant specialized in steaks but had a few alternatives. She chose salmon, baby potatoes and a Caesar salad. Once the waiter had departed, Amy looked at Jakob again.

“So what’s the deal? Why did Dad call you about this time capsule opening?”

“I have no idea.”

Amy felt sure he was telling the truth. Or mostly the truth.

“I’m not sure he knew,” Jakob continued. “I suppose that’s what caught my interest.”

“Were you supposed to distract me so I wouldn’t go?”

“He didn’t come out and say so, but that’s the impression I got.”

“What could she possibly have put in it that Dad doesn’t want me to see?” She’d only asked herself the same question a couple dozen times in the past two days. “It’s not likely to upset me even if Mom did something completely scandalous when she was a student. Even if that something scandalous got her kicked out of Wakefield.” Now, that was a new thought, one that explained why Amy’s mother had deleted the college from her personal history.

No, wait. If that was true, why would her mother have updated the college records with her married name and current address?

Because on some level she wanted official forgiveness or at least the legitimacy of being treated like any other former student? And maybe, it occurred to Amy, the reason Mom had been able to keep Wakefield a big secret was that, in fact, the college never had sent her any mailings. This could be the first, necessitated by the fact that she had been included in the time capsule thing. They might have gotten her information from some other alum with whom Mom had stayed in touch, say.

“You know,” Jakob said, “I’ve barely seen your mother since I was—I don’t know, nine or ten?”

She nodded. “By then you were already making yourself scarce when Mom and Dad traded me back and forth, weren’t you?”

A truly wicked grin flashed. “Yeah, but sometimes that’s because I was behind the scenes setting up my latest prank.”

She glared at him. “The snake in my bed was the worst.” A memory stirred, much as the coiled snake had. “No, I take that back. The time you hid in the closet dressed all in black with that monster mask was the scariest.”

“Yeah.” To his credit, he looked chagrined. “Dad was seriously pissed that time. He put me on restriction for a month. I was the star pitcher for my Little League team, and I had to drop out.”

“Which made you hate me even more.”

“Possibly.” He sounded annoyingly cheerful.

It felt really odd to be reminiscing with her former tormenter. The bitterness she’d always felt seemed to be missing. In fact, she realized at one point during the middle of the meal, it felt odd to be reminiscing at all. Had she ever talked about her childhood with anyone, besides the superficial level that was exchanged with new friends, college roommates and whatnot?

No.

Jakob, she figured out as they talked, hadn’t exactly had the ideal childhood, either. First his mother was killed in a car accident, then his father married a woman who had no interest in mothering the little boy. Grand entrance: cute baby sister who entranced Dad. A divorce, another change of school. Then yet another move, this one to Arizona, followed by his father’s third marriage when Jakob was seventeen.

“I’d forgotten you were still living at home when your father remarried again,” Amy said thoughtfully.

“I spent as little time there as possible.”

“You don’t like Martina?”

He shrugged. “She’s fine. I never actively hated her. Truthfully, it was never her at all.”

Amy nodded her understanding.

“She had the sense to stay hands-off, so we’ve developed a decent relationship. She’s good for Dad, which is what counts.”

That might be, Amy couldn’t help thinking, except that Jakob had chosen to make a life a good distance from Phoenix. Of course, that could have more to do with the fact that the young Jakob Nilsson had been hooked on mountain climbing—or at least the idea of mountain climbing—and had immediately headed for Colorado and college in Boulder, within easy reach of a whole lot of impressive peaks he could scale.

“What about your stepdad?” he asked. “Is he okay?”

“Ken’s a good guy. In fact, I like him better...” Appalled, she stamped on the brakes. Oh, man. Had she almost told Jakob, of all people, that she liked her stepfather better than her own mother?

Yes, indeed.

They stared at each other, his eyes slightly narrowed. He’d heard the unspoken part of her sentence, loud and clear. Amy didn’t like the sense that Jakob saw deeper than she wanted him to.

“So.” Intent on her face, he kept his voice low, the reverberation jangling her nerves. “You think you’ll go to that time capsule thing, or not?”

“Why do you care?” That sounded rude, but was real, too. Why was he interested?

His shoulders moved in an easy shrug. “Like I said, now I’m curious. I was kind of thinking, if you wanted company, that maybe I’d go with you.”

She had to be gaping. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

His grin was irritatingly smug. “Nope. What’s family for?”

Amy rolled her eyes, which seemed the expected response, but she also had the really unsettling realization that she had absolutely no idea what family was for. Or maybe even what family was.

Jakob was implying that it meant having somebody to stand beside you. The notion was downright foreign. Amy couldn’t have even said why it was also strangely appealing. It shouldn’t have been, not to a woman who never considered surrendering her independence for anyone, for any reason.

“Do you mean that?”

His eyebrows rose. “That I’d come with you?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah.” He looked a little perplexed, as if he didn’t know why he was offering, either. “Yeah,” he repeated more strongly. “I mean it.”

“Okay,” she heard herself say. “I haven’t made up my mind yet.” Why was she pretending? Of course she’d made up her mind. In fact—had there ever been any doubt? Trying to hide her perturbation, she offered, “But if I do decide to go... You can come if you still want to.” She’d tried so hard to sound careless, as if she were saying, Suit yourself, doesn’t matter to me. Instead...well, she didn’t know how he would interpret her invitation or the way she’d delivered it.

“Good” was what he said. Jakob’s eyes were unexpectedly serious. “We have a deal.”

So not what she’d expected from the evening. But...nice. Something warmed in Amy despite the caution she issued herself: if he ran true to form, her darling half brother was setting her up for a fall. The splat-on-her-face kind.

He was signaling the waiter and she understood that the evening was over. He had whatever he’d wanted from it.

She just didn’t quite get what that “whatever” was.

CHAPTER TWO

JAKOB SNEAKED A glance at Amy, who was gazing out the passenger-side window at the stark red-brown beauty of the Columbia River Gorge. She might be fascinated, but he suspected she was pretending. She was a Northwest native, and had seen the admittedly striking but also unchanging landscape before.

He couldn’t quite figure out why he’d insisted on coming on this little jaunt. His being here didn’t have anything to do with his father. In fact, he hadn’t talked to Dad since the one peculiar call. Just yesterday, his father had left a message that Jakob hadn’t returned. Maybe because he didn’t want to tell him that Amy was going to the damn opening—but maybe because he didn’t want to try to explain his own part in this, when he didn’t get it himself.

The one part he did understand was why he’d insisted on driving. Polite man that he was, he had walked her to her car the night they’d had dinner together. She drove, he discovered, an ancient, hatchback Honda Civic. He recalled running his hand over a rust spot on the trunk.

Two days ago, when they discussed final arrangements, he had suggested that his vehicle might be more reliable.

“Just because my car’s old doesn’t mean it’s unreliable!” she had snapped.

“We’ll be making a long drive across some pretty barren country. Not where you want to break down.”

“I didn’t break down when I drove down here from Seattle.”

He knew stubborn when he heard it. Unfortunately, that was one trait they shared. A family one?

“How many miles does it have?” he asked.

There had been a noticeable pause before she answered. “One hundred and fifty-four thousand.”

He seemed to remember muttering something that might have been obscene.

When it got right down to it, though, what kept him stubbornly repeating “I’ll drive” had been the appalling image of trying to wedge himself into the damn car.

When Amy had surrendered at last, she said grudgingly, “I guess since my car doesn’t have air-conditioning, it might be better if we take yours.”

His mouth twitched now into a smile he didn’t want her to see. For God’s sake, it was supposed to top a hundred degrees in eastern Washington this weekend! Imagining how they’d be sweltering right this minute made him shake his head.

Jakob suddenly realized she was looking at him, eyes narrowed.

“What was that expression about?” she asked, sounding suspicious.

“Just feeling glad we have air-conditioning,” he admitted. “It’s hot as Hades out there.”

“Nobody likes someone who says ‘I told you so.’”

Jakob grinned. “Did you hear those words coming out of my mouth?”

“Close enough.” Amy was quiet for a minute. Then she shrugged. “The glove compartment pops open every time I go over a bump. Usually the stuff in it falls onto the floor.”

“You’re telling me I’d constantly have a lap full of...what? Maps, registration, flashlight?”

“Um...hand lotion, dark glasses, ice scraper, receipts.” She pushed her lower lip out in thought. “Probably a couple of books, too. I always keep something in there in case I get stuck in traffic, or finish the book that’s in my purse.”

He flicked her a glance of disbelief. “Finish the book when? While you’re driving?”

She frowned severely at him. “Of course I don’t read when I’m driving! Just when I’m at red lights, or we’re at a standstill on the freeway. You know.”

He groaned.

She sniffed in disdain.

After a minute he found himself smiling. “Wouldn’t have mattered if you’d won the argument anyway, you know.”

Her head turned sharply. “What do you mean?”

“When I arrived to pick you up, you’d have been bound to have a flat tire.” He paused, that smile still playing on his mouth. “Or two.”

The sound that burst out of her was somewhere between a snarl and scream. “Oh, my God! I’d almost forgotten. That was one of the meanest things you ever did.”

This time his glance was a little wary. At the time, he’d thought it was funny. Funny was not, apparently, how she remembered the occasion.

“I was so excited when you emailed and promised to take me with you to the lake with some of your friends. I told all my friends how I was spending spring break in Arizona, and that my so-cool fifteen-year-old brother wanted to do stuff with me.” Her glare could have eaten a hole in a steel plate. “I showed my friends pictures of you. I didn’t tell them how awful you’d always been. I thought—” her voice had become softer “—you actually wanted to spend time with me.”

Jakob winced. He’d had no idea his invitation, issued via email under his father’s glower, had meant anything to her. By then, he had convinced himself Amy hated him as much as he did her and would be glad if something happened that got her out of having to spend the day with him.

She’d arrived that Friday and his father had fussed over her, sliding a commanding stare Jakob’s way every few minutes, one that said, You will be nice. Predictably, that had made his teenage self even more hostile.

Dad had just started seeing Martina, though it was another year and a half before they got married. She’d loaned her bike for the projected outing. When Jakob and Amy went out to the garage come morning, one of the tires on Martina’s bike had been flat. Examination showed a split between treads. He’d immediately said, “Wow, the guys are waiting for me. Bummer you can’t come.” After which he took off.

His father had suspected him but never been able to prove he was responsible for the damaged tire. Dad had worked Jakob’s ass off that summer, though, and he hadn’t objected too much because, yeah, he’d slipped out to the garage at 3:00 a.m. and slit the tire with a pocketknife.

“I’m sorry,” he said now, and meant it. He didn’t like knowing he might have really hurt her. “Teenage boys aren’t the most sensitive creatures on earth. Dad was forcing my hand and I didn’t like it.”

She shrugged. “Yeah, I figured that out eventually. I lied when I got home and told all my friends about this amazing day with you, and how this really hot friend of yours acted like he wanted to kiss me.” She grinned infectiously. “Which would have scared the crap out of me, you understand.”

He laughed in relief. “No surprise. Some of us hadn’t worked up the nerve to kiss a girl yet.”

Amy eyed him speculatively. “You? You’ve always been so good-looking, and I don’t remember you ever going through, I don’t know, one of those gawky phases. You didn’t even get acne, did you?”

He shook his head. “I actually think I was in one of those awkward phases that summer, though. I was sullen all the time. You were blinded because I was older.”

“Maybe.” She looked away, back out the side window. “Twelve was a hard age for me. Puberty, you know, and middle school.”

He nodded, although he wasn’t sure she saw him.

This whole conversation felt astonishingly comfortable and yet really strange, too. In their entire history, they had never had a real conversation of any kind. Unlike most siblings or even stepsister and stepbrother, they hadn’t banded together against their parents. He’d waged his campaign of torment and she’d fought back as effectively as a much younger, smaller and weaker opponent could. Jakob felt a little sick at knowing how unrelentingly cruel he’d been.

Which brought him back to brooding about why he had volunteered for this ridiculous expedition. Yeah, he’d been taking it a little easier these past couple weeks, after the successful launch of a store in Flagstaff. He’d given some thought to finding a friend to join him in a backpacking trip this week. Sometimes he needed to turn off his phone and disappear into the mountains. Instead...here he was.

Amy stayed silent for a while. He kept sneaking looks at her averted face.

She’d changed, and yet...she hadn’t. As a kid, he’d thought she looked like some kind of changeling, as if a little fairy blood had sneaked in. Pointy chin, high forehead and eyes subtly set at a slant. Her eyes weren’t an ordinary brown, either; they had glints of gold that intensified when she got mad. She’d always been small. Not so much short—he guessed she was five foot four or five inches tall, but slight, with delicate bones. None of that had changed, even though there was nothing childish about her now.

He’d always been fascinated by her hair, too. When she was a baby and toddler, he’d spent a lot of time staring at her curls. He had never seen anyone with hair quite that color, or quite so exuberant. Not that the word exuberant had been in his vocabulary then. One of his earliest memories was getting yelled at when all he was doing was touching her hair. He’d been experimenting to see if the curls bounced back when he straightened them. Michelle had told Dad he was pulling Amy’s hair. He still remembered the flash of resentment at being falsely accused.

Good God, he thought, there he’d been, three years old, maybe four—Amy hadn’t been a newborn by then, but not walking yet, either—and the seeds of their discord had already been sown.

He surely did hope she didn’t remember what he’d done to her hair when she was a lot older.

She had beautiful hair, the color hard to pin down. He’d finally figured out it was because she had strands of seemingly dozens of colors all mixed together. Everything from ash to mahogany, and just enough of a sort of cherrywood to make you think she was a redhead even though she wasn’t exactly. She didn’t have the Little Orphan Annie thing going—her curls weren’t red enough, and they weren’t tight enough, either. When she was a teenager Amy grew her hair long enough to pull back in some kind of elastic. And in a couple of her school pictures, she’d obviously straightened it, which must have been a battle royal. Her hair wouldn’t have taken it sitting down.

He smiled, thinking about it.

“Every time I look at you, you’re smirking,” she said, surprising him. Her tone was mock-resigned.

Jakob chuckled. “I was imagining how hard it must have been to straighten your hair for your senior picture. You don’t do that anymore, do you?”

She wrinkled her small, rather cute nose at him. “Lord, no. The only times I got away with it were when I was aiming for a very specific time. I had about an hour-and-a-half window of opportunity before curls started popping out like, I don’t know, anthills in the sand. Boing, boing.” She surveyed him in disfavor. “You have no idea how much I envied you your hair, do you?”

“Me?” he said in surprise. “It’s straight. It’s blond. It’s boring. Yours has life.”

She seemed to hunch her shoulders the tiniest bit. “I would have liked to look more like Dad. You do.”

Jakob was glad to have the excuse of concentrating on passing a slow-moving RV right then so he didn’t have to address her comment immediately, or directly.

Once he had his Subaru Outback in the east-bound lane, he glanced at Amy. “My mother was blonde when she was a kid, too, you know. Her hair darkened like mine has. A little more, I guess. I thought of hers as brown.”

She nodded. “I’ve seen pictures.”

Yeah, he guessed she would have. That’s all he had of his mother, since he hadn’t been even a year old when she was killed in a car accident. For a young guy like his dad, who worked construction, finding himself the single parent of a baby must have been a major cataclysm. In retrospect, Jakob couldn’t blame him for remarrying the first chance he got. Unfortunately, Jakob had been an adult before he achieved any understanding of his father’s choices.

“We’re getting there,” he observed.

They had crossed into Washington State when the Columbia River swung in a horseshoe, first north and then east, the highway separating from the Columbia to take them along the Snake River north of Walla Walla and Waitsburg. He saw a sign for Frenchman Lake—25 miles. Half an hour, tops.

“I made reservations.”

She’d already told him that. She sounded nervous, Jakob realized. In fact, her hands were knotted together, squeezing, on her lap.

“Did I tell you that creep Gordon Haywood refused to talk to me?”

“Yeah.” He smiled. “You can’t totally blame the guy for not wanting to be hit up by a journalist when he’s trying to enjoy a walk down memory lane.”

“‘Hit up’? I have thoughtful, provocative conversations with people I interview.”

“Do you accuse them of smirking?”

“You’re my brother,” she said with dignity. “That’s different.”

He laughed out loud. “Good to know I get favored treatment.”

Amy didn’t rise to his comment. She was quiet for a good ten miles, but Jakob kept an eye on her. “Was this a really stupid idea?” she blurted.

From his point of view? Maybe. Jakob couldn’t help feeling a little uneasy at this tectonic shift in their relationship.

But for her? He thought about it for a minute. “No,” he said at last, with certainty that surprised him. “This matters to you. You may not even know why, but it does. I assume you’re trying to figure out some things about your mother. You could have waited placidly back in Portland until whatever she stuck in the time capsule appeared in your mailbox. But passive isn’t your style. Charging ahead and demanding what you want is a better fit. That’s all we’re doing here.”

She frowned at him. “You make me sound like a bitch.”

“No. You were a feisty little girl, and unless you’ve changed more than I think you have, you’re a feisty woman. That’s a good thing, not bad.”

“Oh.” She fell silent again for a few minutes. “Okay. Thanks, Jakob.”

The gratitude sounded less grudging than usual. Amusement lifted one side of his mouth when he glanced at her. “You’re welcome.”

“I meant...not only for what you said. For coming along, too. I’d have been okay making the trip by myself, but...it’s nice that I didn’t have to.”

“I figured that. I expect to have a good time.” He frowned a little himself as he realized the truth of what he was about to say. “I’m already having a good time.”

Her expression was skittish and distinctly wary. She didn’t say anything else. Neither did he.

* * *

AS FAR AS Amy could tell, Jakob hadn’t lied—he seemed to be enjoying himself.

The college had organized all kinds of activities. Jakob was enthusiastic about most of them and assumed she would be, too. He dragged her along on the wine-tasting tour, although her idea of how to choose the right wine was picking the one that was on sale. He bought a bunch of wines, too, and lovingly carried them up to his hotel room so they wouldn’t reach boiling temperature in the back of his SUV, parked in the sun.

He persuaded her to come along when he played golf, too. She had to concede the game—sport?—sort of looked fun. If she’d had unlimited free time and funds, she might have been tempted to take it up. Jakob admitted that, while he enjoyed a round now and again, he most often played because businessmen negotiated and networked out on the country club course. They also judged each other in part on how far below par they played, so he’d made sure he was good. He was so good, in fact, that he won the tournament staged by the college, which seemed to embarrass him.

They skipped the evening reception at the college president’s house and ate at a restaurant, where he talked about his business and persuaded her to tell him about her writing. Amy was still astonished to know that he had bought magazines only to read the articles she’d written. She’d figured she was out of sight, out of mind, as far as he was concerned. It was disconcerting to discover he’d been at least a tiny bit interested in her life.

Over dessert and coffee, they bickered like the sister and brother they were. Most disconcerting of all was that Amy couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a dinner date anywhere near as much fun.

Afterward, they’d arrived barely in time to nab seats in the back of a small auditorium to hear Senator Gordon Haywood, of Utah, speak. She had to admit the guy had charm and something probably best described as charisma. She didn’t like his politics, though, and was still irritated that he’d refused to give her the interview. She might get an article out of the opening of the time capsule, but was beginning to doubt it. If she’d been set on it, she should have spent the weekend talking to alumni, not riding in a golf cart and sipping wine. What a waste, she thought. A free-ranging conversation with possible presidential contender Gordon Haywood would have been an easy sale to any number of publications.

Now, on the final day of the weekend’s festivities and despite the blistering heat, Jakob leaned back against the substantial trunk of a big tree, arms crossed, seemingly prepared to enjoy the main event, too. He wore chinos, sandals and a bright red T-shirt. She’d forgotten that he had always loved bright colors.

Amy had stationed herself several feet away, needing a little separation for reasons she didn’t understand. Her arms were crossed, too, tightly. It was silly to feel on edge like this, but she did.

Great moment to have a revelation. Maybe I don’t want to know who Mom was, before I was born. Did I really think it would help me to know why she became a woman who couldn’t love her own child?

Because the answer was a resounding no. She still harbored more anger at her mother than she’d acknowledged even to herself. There probably wasn’t an explanation on earth that would make her go soft with sympathy and understanding.

And the truth was, given that Mom had intended to major in English, she and most of the other students had likely put their very best writings into the time capsule. Since she had ultimately majored in sociology with a minor in Spanish, whatever Mom had written at nineteen or twenty was probably less than a marvel of literature.

Fidgeting, Amy glanced at Jakob to see him watching with seeming amusement and interest as the college president triumphantly pulled the capsule out of the foundation of the damaged building. He hefted it onto a table set up for the purpose on the green sward that seemed to form the heart of the campus. The crowd surrounding them cheered and clapped.

Amy couldn’t seem to stay still. She shifted her weight from foot to foot and tapped out beats with her fingers unheard even by her. She’d find herself watching this face, or that. A couple of times, her gaze intersected with that of a man who stood with Madison Laclaire, the director of alumni relations who’d organized the event. He was paying more attention to the crowd than he was to what was happening up front. There wasn’t even a flicker of expression on his face when his eyes met Amy’s. Was he some kind of security?

Why do I care?

Amy knew perfectly well she was only trying to distract herself.

“Rob Dayton.”

She quivered with a kind of alarm when she realized the college president had begun to call out names. A tall, skinny guy without much hair stepped forward to take an 8½-by-10-inch manila envelope. There was some good-natured teasing as he retreated with his contribution.

“Linda Gould.” Lars Berglund, the president, glanced around, but no one responded and he set aside this envelope. The next couple, too.

“Ron Mattuschak.” A stocky, graying man claimed this one.

Now Amy stood absolutely still, as if she’d miss hearing her mother’s name if she so much as twitched. She didn’t even look at Jakob.

Half a dozen names later, it came.

“Michelle Cooper Doyle.”

What if this was a truly awful, horrible idea?

I don’t have to open it.

A knot in her throat, Amy went forward. A handsome man with silver hair and bright blue eyes, President Berglund handed her an envelope with a murmured, “I’m sorry your mother couldn’t be here.”

She said something—probably a thank-you—and walked quickly back to the tree where Jakob waited, his eyes keen on her face. He was no longer amused by the proceedings, she realized on one level. She had no idea what her expression showed, but whatever it was had him concerned. The fact that he was paying such close attention warmed her. She was suddenly very glad she hadn’t come alone.

Not until she had reached him did the realization of what she held in her hand kick in. The envelope was heavier than she’d expected and harder, too—a book? she wondered. There was room for it to slide around in there, unlike a sheaf of papers that would have fit just right. Her fingers flexed as she became conscious there was also a softer lump. This didn’t feel like a short story.

Tension built in her chest.

For no good reason, she and Jakob stood there dutifully, trapped by good manners much like concert goers too polite to walk out midperformance, while name after name was called, and people went forward one at a time. She noticed that the alumni director took one of the envelopes. The hard-faced man at her side did, too, which meant he wasn’t here as security after all. Amy couldn’t help noticing that his expression became even more remote after he accepted the envelope for Joseph Troyer. She understood how he felt.

At the end, Berglund upended the capsule and something small fell out.

“A petrified Tootsie Roll,” the president said, and the grand occasion ended with a laugh.

“Do you want to get some lemonade or a cookie?” Jakob had stepped closer without her realizing it.

Amy wasn’t hungry, but she was thirsty, she realized. No surprise, as hot as it was out here. “I wouldn’t mind a lemonade.”

He grabbed a couple of cookies, too, and wrapped them in a napkin. They walked across the field toward the street where he had parked. Voices of the small crowd they had left behind were an indistinct buzz in her ears. She was hardly aware that they passed students—even though once she had to dodge a Frisbee. Ten seconds later she couldn’t have said who’d thrown it. Reaching Jakob’s red Subaru was a relief.

They opened the doors to release the heat and he got in, started the engine and cranked up the air-conditioning. Amy stood there, the weight of the package feeling more significant than it could possibly be.

“Hop in,” Jakob said, and she complied, fastening her seat belt and then staring down at the envelope.

I don’t have to open it.

She almost snorted. Right. Sure. She’d wasted an entire weekend to come to the glorious opening of the time capsule, and she was not going to open the package her mother had put in it. Who was she kidding?

She slid her thumb under the flap and the glue gave way. Wildly curious now, she reached in and pulled out...yes, a book of some kind. No, an academic datebook, the kind you wrote assignments in. And a small bundle of cloth with pink flowers on a white cotton background.

The tension swirling inside her coalesced into dread. Panties. That’s what she held in her hand. A pair of her mother’s bikini underwear.

Amy stared down at them, unable to think of a single good reason Mom would have put them in this envelope to be saved for fifty years.

Her hands moved fast, but clumsily, as she stuffed both items back into the envelope. Desperate to no longer be touching it, she put it in the canvas messenger bag at her feet.

She and Jakob sat in silence for a minute or two that felt longer. Her hands were balled into fists now.

“Amy?”

“I shouldn’t have opened it,” she said in a stifled voice.

“What do you want to do?”

She made herself look at him. “Will you take me home?”

“Yeah.” His voice was very gentle. “Of course I will.”

* * *

“DAMN IT, AMY.” Jakob had insisted on carrying her duffel bag in and now didn’t want to leave. “I can tell you’re upset. You don’t have to be alone.”

“I need to be alone if I’m going to look at it.” She knew she was begging for understanding. “It’s probably nothing. Some kind of joke.”

He didn’t look as if he bought that any more than she did.

“But, in case...” She stopped. “I need to respect her privacy.”

“All right,” he said after a minute, still sounding reluctant. His broad shoulders moved, as if he was uneasy. “Maybe you should call your mother instead. Wait and see what she says.”

“She’d tell me to throw it away.” Amy knew that, as if she could hear her mother’s voice, sharp and alarmed. She also knew that she couldn’t do any such thing. She’d come this far. She had to know.

He opened his mouth, and then closed it. She wondered what he’d been about to say, and why he’d had second thoughts about saying it.

“All right,” he said again. “Will you call me? Let me know what you found? Or at least that you’re okay?”

“Sure,” she said, having no idea if she meant it or not. “I’ll call.”

He left finally, not looking happy. Amy didn’t care. She was entirely fixated on the yellow-orange corner of the manila envelope poking out of her bag. She felt like she imagined a member of the bomb squad did as they carefully approached an IED. She couldn’t afford to let herself be distracted. Something bad would happen.

She waited until the sound of the engine diminished as Jakob drove away from the house. The street was quiet. Although evening approached, the heat of the day lingered and she hadn’t seen any neighbors out working in their yards. Later, when it cooled off, lawn mowers might be fired up. Right now, she had never been more aware of her aloneness.

She felt most comfortable alone. That’s what a lonely childhood did to you.

You know you’re going to do it, so why are you dawdling?

Good question.

Amy made a production out of pouring herself a glass of white wine first, although she kept a cautious eye on the corner of the envelope as if it might explode if she turned her back on it. Then she sat at the table, took a sip of wine and made a face. Ugh. Hanging out with someone like Jakob, who had good taste and plenty of money, could ruin you for real life.

She took another swallow anyway before reaching for the envelope, opening it and dumping the contents onto the table.

Staring at them, she was quite sure the panties hadn’t been clean when Mom put them in the envelope. The crotch was stained and sort of crunchy-looking. Amy’s stomach lurched. She turned her attention to the datebook.

It was, she discovered when she opened it, exactly what she’d assumed. It started in September, with the beginning of the academic year. Her mother’s handwriting was recognizable but immature, more given to rounded lines and swirls than it was now. Mom had liked exclamation points, too. She’d noted assignments, dates of quizzes, when papers were due, but also used it as a diary.

Maybe it was cowardice that had Amy starting at the beginning rather than going right to the end. She never read the last page of books the way some people did. That seemed justification enough for her choice to proceed chronologically.

Amy read the first entries carefully. Her mother had been really excited to be back for her sophomore year. Partly, she’d been glad to get away from home. She had hated, hated, hated her summer job—half a dozen exclamation points—waitressing. Amy made a face. Coincidentally, she had worked as a waitress one summer, too. Apparently she didn’t give off the right vibes, because she got lousy tips and she had vowed to dig ditches the next summer if she had to. Anything else.

Mom developed a crush on a junior, whom she didn’t remember having noticed the year before. He was a transfer student, she eventually discovered. Joel. No last name given. Amy had begun skimming by that time. Michelle Cooper and this Joel did some flirting. He kissed her at a frat party not long before Christmas break.

Amy was flipping pages more and more quickly. Joel’s name kept popping up. Another guy asked Mom out but she didn’t want to go.

He’s okay, she wrote, but I don’t like him that much.

By spring it was apparent that Joel was seeing other girls. Michelle wrote about how she was sure he liked her. She couldn’t understand how he could make out with her in his dorm room one night and then lie with his head on some other girl’s lap the very next day in plain sight on Allquist Field.

The other guy—Steven—was determined. He was in one of Michelle’s classes and always managed to sit next to her. He talked her into having coffee at the Student Union Building a couple of times. She still didn’t sound enthusiastic, but finally she wrote, It’s stupid to just sit in my room. Steven had asked her to have dinner with him and attend the opening night of the spring musical put on by the theater department.

Amy turned the page. Her heart clenched at the sight of blank pages. Nothing for the entire week, not so much as a note about a class assignment. That couldn’t be the end, could it? She turned the page.

The following week, there was two lines, the scrawled handwriting ragged.

He raped me. But who will believe me?

The next week: I can’t go to my Econ. class, not knowing he’ll be there. I’ve been to some of the others, but I watch for him all the time. Yesterday I saw him crossing the field and I felt so sick I ran back to my room and hid for the rest of the day.

Finally, I don’t think I can make myself come back to school here. I don’t ever want to think about what happened again. But I can’t completely pretend, can I?

She wrote about how what she put into the time capsule could be a kind of funeral offering for herself. The old me is dead. She had intended to throw away the panties that had his sperm on them, but when it came time to do laundry each week, she couldn’t make herself touch them. Now she had decided to stuff them into the envelope along with the diary.

There was one last line.

This, she concluded, is what happened to me at Wakefield College. This is what I choose to say: Steven Hardy raped me.

Amy stared at that last line, and at the date when her mother wrote it. Oh, God, oh, God. Heart drumming, she counted on her fingers. Her mother had always said she was premature, and she’d never thought much of it because it was true she was small at six pounds fourteen ounces. That was the weight on the little card that had come home from the hospital, so she knew it was true. But considering she had stayed small and skinny and matured into a slight woman, that wasn’t undersized for full-term, was it?

If her mother had lied, if Amy had in fact been full-term...the timing was right.

Steven Hardy was her father. The man who had raped the young Michelle Cooper.

She felt as if she’d walked into a plate glass window. Bang. Dazed, she knew.

No wonder Mom couldn’t love me.

Amy ran for the bathroom, and barely made it before the acrid bile rose from her stomach.

CHAPTER THREE

JAKOB WENT HOME to his condominium, wishing he’d been able to talk Amy into dinner, at least, before he left her. As scrawny as she’d always been, she wasn’t ever very interested in food. He knew damn well she wouldn’t eat at all if she was upset by whatever her mother had put in that envelope.

He swore out loud, then scanned the contents of his freezer. Pizza was easiest. He turned the oven on, continuing to pace restlessly while he waited for the preheat buzzer.

He hadn’t gotten a real good look at what Amy pulled out, but he knew a pair of women’s panties when he saw them. Why in hell would the woman have put a pair of her own underwear in the time capsule?

His pacing took him to the wall of windows that were the reason he’d bought the condo. He was looking down at the Willamette River, dark but for glimmers of gold reflected from downtown lights. To him, the river always looked primitive despite the way humanity had caged it. He loved driving down to Champoeg and seeing the Willamette the way it had looked to early settlers, broad and powerful, floating between banks of deep forest.

The oven buzzed; he put in the pizza and set the timer. He made himself sit down and respond to emails he’d mostly ignored over the weekend. But his attention was only half on them. He kept seeing the shock on Amy’s elfin face when she pulled the last damn thing in the world she could have expected from the manila envelope.

As usual, he’d dropped his phone on the kitchen counter when he came in the door. Not so usual, when he went to the john he took it with him. He kept staring at it, as if he could will it to ring. Call.

Apparently that didn’t work, because it stayed stubbornly silent. He wanted to phone her, but she’d expressed herself too bluntly for him to mistake the message: Thank you, but I want to be alone. I don’t need you now. It wasn’t as if they were close. Jakob frowned. Close? They were strangers, and that was mostly his fault.

He had the momentary sense of standing on the edge of a dark, terrifyingly deep abyss. He didn’t like thinking about Amy, because those thoughts always brought him to this place, one that felt more like fear than he wanted to admit. As always, he found himself mentally backing away from it.

No point in revisiting their relationship. Fact was, he’d never acted like a brother did to a dearly beloved, or even barely tolerated, sister, and she had every reason in the world to resent him at the very least. The wonder was that she’d actually accepted his offer to accompany her to Frenchman Lake.

If something did upset her, why would she turn to him? She probably had good friends, maybe even a guy she was seeing.

Yeah, but then why hadn’t she asked that guy or her best friend to go with her this weekend? She could have said “Thanks but no thanks” to Jakob then and even gotten a little secret pleasure out of rebuffing him.

Maybe she didn’t have any good friends who lived nearby. Yeah, she’d gone to college here, but then moved away. Amy had only been back a few months.

He reluctantly admitted to himself that she had needed him because she didn’t have anyone else.

And because she needed family? He winced at that word in reference to Amy and him.

Nope, he told himself, not going there.

She’d promised to call him. He took another impatient look at the clock on the microwave. 8:39 p.m. Over two hours since he’d dropped her off.

Call, damn it.

* * *

IT TOOK SOME doing, but Amy found her baby book in a box on the shelf in her mother’s closet. She didn’t even know what she hoped to learn, but she was desperate. Anything. A clue. Somehow she was holding her fear and horror at bay. She’d taken a huge leap by assuming her mother had lied to her all her life.

Please let me be wrong.

The closet was vast. When Mom and Ken bought the house, it had had four smallish bedrooms upstairs, and in common with many houses of this era the few closets were grossly inadequate. Especially for a woman who loved shoes.

So the first thing they did was have walls torn out, and the floor space that had been two of the bedrooms was used to enlarge what had been the only upstairs bathroom up here, along with creating a second bathroom and a giant walk-in closet. The remaining small bedroom was for their very occasional guests. Like Amy. So far in her stay, the only reason she’d stepped foot in Mom and Ken’s bedroom was to run the vacuum cleaner around and whisk a feather duster over the blinds and the top of the end tables and dressers.

And yes, she’d known her mother had a thing about shoes, but not the extent of it. In her search to find anything about her childhood or origins, she’d been excited to find underbed rolling containers. Not so much when she pulled them out to find all four of them held shoes.

Wow, Mom. What a waste of money.

Amy didn’t bother with the dresser. Like her mother would keep daily reminders of her unwanted daughter among her socks, jeans or lingerie, where she’d see it every day.

Oh, ugh. Don’t wanna think about Mom’s lingerie.

She also ignored Ken’s section of the closet, which took up about a quarter of it. She could see the gaps where he’d removed clothes and shoes to take to Australia for the two-year stay. It was harder to spot gaps in Mom’s side, because she owned a truly ridiculous amount of clothes as well as the shoes.

Banker-style cardboard boxes marched along a high shelf. Amy dragged a chair in and took them down, one at a time.

Tax returns and files about expenses on the house. Slap the lid on, heave box back onto shelf.

Next.

Bank statements. Credit card slips. Receipts. Amy had always known her mother was obscenely well-organized, but this was ridiculous. Did she keep every scrap of financial information forever?

Amy had reached a corner. She could only remove this box because she hadn’t put the previous one back in place. It weighed less, she realized right away as she lifted it down, which meant it wasn’t packed with dense files as the other ones had been.

She stepped carefully to the floor, set the box on the seat of the chair and lifted off the top.

For a long moment she stared without comprehension. Then an involuntary sound escaped her and she reached out.

Her blankie. Oh, my God, she thought, I’d forgotten it. How could I? How she’d loved this blanket—no, really more of a comforter, with batting inside. The back side was flannel, worn thin by her childish grip. The front was a cotton fabric in swirled lavender and darker purple imprinted with white horses leaping over puffs of white clouds. Some machine quilting kept the three layers together.

She lifted it out of the box and held it close, burying her face in the soft folds the way she’d done as a child. Her smile shook as she remembered the major temper tantrums she’d thrown when she couldn’t find “horse blankie.” How funny that she couldn’t even recall when she’d lost interest in it. She’d had no idea what had ever happened to her much-loved blankie.

Mom had kept it? Amy was knocked off balance by the unimaginable.

After a minute she set it aside and took out another of her childhood treasures, a stuffed puppy that wasn’t as white as it had once been. She wound up the key on the bottom. Tears dripped down her cheeks when it played the familiar tune, “(How Much Is) That Doggie in the Window?”

Oh, Mom. Had she felt anything when she packed these things away? Or had she briskly assumed Amy might want them someday when she had her own children, and never given them another thought?

There were other toys here, too, including a couple she didn’t remember at all. One was a plastic rattle with tiny tooth marks in it. Hers. Finally, at the bottom of the box, were the baby book and a photograph album. Those, she decided to take downstairs to the kitchen table.

She had trouble making herself open the cover of either book or album. Seeing the contents with new eyes was going to hurt.

Baby book first. There was a time she’d thought the fact that her mother had filled it out so carefully meant she must love her daughter. By the time Amy was a teenager, she knew better; the precise entries, the school pictures glued to appropriate pages, were only another manifestation of Mom’s anal personality. Give her a form to fill out, and she was a happy woman.

The details were undeniably all there.

The card from the hospital was attached to the first page. Yes, Baby Girl Nilsson had indeed weighed six pounds fourteen ounces.

Before she went further, Amy booted up her laptop and went online to a site that had a chronology of child development. Then she compared the dates Mom had noted for “first smile,” “rolled over,” “sat up alone” and so on with the chronology. Amy had been early each step of the way. Perhaps because she was little and wiry, she’d barely bothered with crawling, instead walking at eight months and running not much later.

She closed her eyes momentarily. How could she ever have believed she was premature?

She flipped back to the first page, where her mother had written her name, the hospital where she was born, her birth date. Amy’s gaze snagged on two lines that were blank. Mother. Father.

Yet another thing she’d never noticed. A huge thing, given Mom’s personality.

She was almost numb by now. Not entirely; a tsunami was building somewhere deep inside, ominous in its power, but it was still subterranean enough to be ignored.

There were lots of photos of her in the album, mainly, she knew, because her father—oh, God, not my father—had enjoyed taking pictures and had adored her.

A few included Jakob, fewer still Mom or Dad himself. Those were the ones she stared at the hardest, with eyes that burned. She didn’t look like anyone else in the family. A part of her had always known that, but justified it. There was the aunt with red hair. She did have brown eyes, like Mom...only they weren’t at all the same shade of brown as her mother’s. Kids didn’t always look like their parents, she had told herself.

She bore absolutely no resemblance to anyone else in her family, including her only biological relative, her mother.

The tsunami lifted, as if launching itself. She must look like him. The horror was more than she could hold inside. Amy shoved away from the table, staggering to her feet when the chair crashed backward. She felt filthy, contaminated, ugly. Why hadn’t her mother aborted her?

But she knew that, too. Mom wasn’t a regular churchgoer, but she still wore a gold cross on a fine chain around her neck. She had been raised Catholic. Abortion wouldn’t have been on the table as an option.

The part of Amy that was still thinking understood what her mother had gone through, how she had reasoned. She couldn’t take her disaster to parents who had been stern and strict. The only truly acceptable choice to her was marriage. So she had latched onto the first guy who came her way, slept with him, lied to him, let him think the monstrous thing she was going to bear was his.

And then she got lucky, because Amy was small enough that Josef hadn’t guessed the baby wasn’t his. But somewhere along the way he had begun to wonder.

Or had he? Amy asked herself with near-clinical detachment. Perhaps instead something had happened. Blood type would have been a dead giveaway. Amy had given blood and knew she was B positive. She was willing to bet that Mom wasn’t...and neither was Josef Nilsson. Yes, that would have done it. So then came the yelling that the adults had silenced when she came into a room, the intense, hissing arguments that she could almost hear clearly through her bedroom wall at night. Only a kindergartener, she had pulled her covers over her head and huddled, not wanting to make out words.

No wonder the man she had believed to be her father had gradually lost interest in her! Looking back, she knew he had tried. Really, he had been kind. It was for her sake that he’d maintained the facade. But even then, at six and seven, at ten and twelve and fifteen, she had known something was wrong.

She had known that neither parent truly loved her.

And her brother Jakob sure as hell hadn’t.

Oh, God, she thought in shock. He knew. He must know.

He’d endured her weekend visits, and she wasn’t even his sister. No wonder he’d resented her. Despised her.

She stood in the middle of her mother’s kitchen, almost catatonic. A soft, keening sound came from her throat. Her very existence felt like an abomination. She wanted to wipe herself out.

Every time her mother looked at this child born of rape, she must have felt violated all over again.

Able to move again, Amy backed away from the table that held the baby book with all those careful notations, the album filled with pictures that reinforced how different she was. Empty stomach or not, sickness rose inside her, pushed by the huge swell of emotions she couldn’t let herself feel.

This time when she ran, it was for the shower, where she scrubbed herself over and over, not stopping even when the water ran cold.

* * *

JAKOB CIRCLED THROUGH the alley and saw Amy’s small white car parked beside the garage that he assumed held Michelle’s and Ken’s vehicles.

So she was home.

He had started calling yesterday. Her phone rang, but he always ended up at voice mail. She ignored messages. He tried email. No response. He hadn’t gotten a damn thing done at the office yesterday or today, worrying about her. By last evening, he’d been pissed. To hell with her. He’d offered his support, she didn’t want it. Her privilege. No skin off his back.

That didn’t keep him from trying to call his father. Who didn’t answer, either.

Jakob kept remembering the way Amy stared down at the women’s panties in her hand, and anger vaulted back into worry and then into something even more compelling. He was going to feel like an idiot if she was absolutely fine, didn’t need him. She might have been busy, that’s all, entertaining friends or working.

Feeling like an idiot was a risk he was willing to take.

He rang the doorbell and got no response. After an interval he rang it again, then started pounding. An old guy was out in the front yard next door, using hand clippers to nibble away at a hedge that was already trimmed to perfection. He straightened and glared. Jakob didn’t care.

“Amy,” he bellowed. “I know you’re in there. Open this door.”

He heard noises inside at last. Fumbling with the locks. Then the door opened a crack.

“What?” she snarled.

Oh, man. She didn’t look good, even though he was seeing only a slice of her face. What he could see was wan, freckles he’d hardly known she had standing out like splotches of paint.

Jakob planted a hand on the door and pushed her inexorably backward despite her obvious alarm.

“What are you doing?” she cried in panic. “I told you, I want to be alone.”

“And I’ve left you alone,” he said grimly. “Apparently, for longer than I should have.”

He slid inside the opening and felt a new jolt of shock. “You’re sick.”

Her glare was surly. “I am not.”

He bit off an expletive. “You look like hell. Damn it, Amy...!”

Her hair, that beautiful mass of red-brown curls, was a thicket of tangles, flattened on one side, kinked on the other. Amy’s eyes were huge in a face that he would swear had lost flesh in only two days. It was six in the evening and she wore wrinkled flannel pajama bottoms and a tank top that was faded and stretched out. Her arms, long and skinny, were wrapped around herself as though they were all that held her together.

The defiant stare stayed in place, but as he watched she swayed on her feet.

He swore again and reached for her. She scrambled backward.

“Don’t touch me!”

Was she afraid of him?

“You’re ready to keel over.”

“I’m not. I’m fine. I’m...” She apparently derailed. Her eyes became increasingly glassy. “I’m...”

“Sick.”

“I’m not! I’m fine, I’m...”

“Either sick or in shock.” So what if she was afraid of him? Jakob grabbed her arm. “Where’s the kitchen?”

“What?”

He made a decision and marched her toward the back of the house. She stumbled beside him but seemed to have run out of protests.

The kitchen, he saw, had been entirely remodeled at some point with white cabinets, granite countertops and a copper rack for pans. A table sat in a breakfast nook in front of French doors. He pulled out a chair and let Amy drop into it.

“When’s the last time you ate?”

Her face held no comprehension. “Ate?”

Answer enough. Jakob opened and closed cupboard doors and the refrigerator until he had the ingredients for a primitive and quick menu. Soup and sandwiches. He dumped a spicy corn chowder he liked himself into a saucepan and started it heating while he assembled cheese sandwiches and heated a small frying pan to grill them.

“You can’t make me eat,” Amy said sulkily.

“Watch me,” he told her.

“Why are you here, anyway?”

“You promised to call. I got worried.” He stirred the chowder.

“I didn’t want to talk to you.”

“Yeah, I figured that out.” A fire was burning in his belly. He kind of hoped some food would put it out. “Tough shit,” he added after a moment.

Apparently that silenced her. Her head bent and she stared down at her hands, clasped childishly on her lap.

Jakob got out bowls and plates, flipped the sandwiches and stirred the soup one more time, not once looking at Amy, but aware of her with every cell in his body. He was mad again, and self-aware enough to guess it was a cover for everything else he felt.

Finally, he dished up and set her food in front of her. “You going to tell me what you want to drink, or should I decide for you?”

Her chin shot up. “Wine.”

“Milk,” he decided, and poured them both glasses. Thank God she didn’t buy skim. He could live with two percent.

He sat down kitty-corner from her with his own sandwich and soup. Maybe it would help if they weren’t looking right at each other. “Eat,” he ordered her, and started in on his food. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her stare at the food as if she didn’t know what it was, then finally pick up the spoon. After some hesitant sips, she began to eat faster and faster until she was all but gobbling.

Good.

The meal settled him down some, too. Without a word he got up and set the coffeemaker to brewing, then sat again.

“Okay,” he said. “Now we talk.”

She’d worked up enough spirit to glare. When she opened her mouth, Jakob interrupted.

“It’s not going to do you any good to say ‘I don’t have to.’”

“I don’t understand why you care.”

He fell back on the old standby. “We’re family.”

And finally she quit fighting. The pain in her big brown eyes was so vast, his stomach clenched.

“No,” she said. “I don’t think we are. And you know it, don’t you?”

* * *

SO, WHY DO you care? she wanted to beg him again.

But maybe she didn’t want to know. Because...he was here, and whether she was willing to admit it or not, she’d needed someone. Anyone at all.

“Tell me what you learned,” he said, not addressing her accusation. There were lines on his forehead that hadn’t been there. Despite the neutral tone, she thought he wasn’t only here out of obligation.

Maybe she was kidding herself, but she was going with it for now.

“I’ll show you,” she said, after a minute. Two days ago, she had swept the manila envelope and its contents along with her baby book and the photograph album into a reusable shopping bag—Mom had a whole drawer full of them, neatly folded—and hid it at the back of the coat closet under the staircase, which she went to retrieve.

She returned to find he’d piled the dirty dishes in the sink and was pouring coffee. Amy dropped the bag with a thud in the middle of the table. She pulled out her mother’s datebook.

“Cream? Sugar?” Jakob asked.

She put in her order and he brought both mugs to the table, then retook his seat. Amy shoved the datebook toward him. “I read the whole thing. You can go right to the end. It pretty much tells the whole story.”

He looked down at it for a minute, as if reluctant, then opened it to the back. The pages for April, May and June were blank, of course; by then, the datebook had been entombed in the time capsule. He reached the page that held Michelle Cooper’s final statement, read silently.

Amy knew what it said by heart. The part about how the old me is dead. And finally, This is what happened to me at Wakefield College. This is what I choose to say: Steven Hardy raped me.

Jakob muttered an obscenity and looked up, a storm of emotions in his eyes. Anger was the only one Amy was certain she’d picked out.

“You think this—” he glanced back down at the open page of the book “—Steven Hardy is your father.” The emotions had roughened his voice, but it was also astonishingly compassionate.

“Yes.” The single word sounded so small, so stark. She couldn’t look at him anymore. Instead she gazed, as she had done most evenings since she had moved into her mother’s house, at the garden and the roses she hadn’t watered since she left for eastern Washington.

“Do you have any other evidence?”

“Yes.” She had to clear her throat. She pulled out the baby book. “I was born small enough that no one questioned Mom’s claim that I was premature. But I went through this and compared my milestones with the standard charts. If I really was premature, I should have been behind. I wasn’t. If anything, I was ahead from the very beginning. If my birth weight was evidence that I was premature, I should eventually have gained on my contemporaries, but I didn’t. The truth is, all through school I was in the bottom twenty-five percent in weight. I still am. I’m skinny.”

His gaze flicked over her and he nodded. “You’re small-boned,” he said slowly. “Slim.”

She appreciated his kindness in making skinny sound a little more appealing.

“And then there’s the family album.” She opened that next, turning pages until she found a picture taken, at a guess, not long before the divorce. All four of them were in it. She scooted the album over so he could see the picture.

He looked in silence for a long time. Without looking herself, she knew exactly what he was seeing. Not only the fact that she didn’t fit, but also the tensions that were visible despite smiles for the camera. There was something anxious on her face, bewilderment in her eyes. The adults might be smiling, but they weren’t touching. Josef’s hand lay on his son’s shoulder. Jakob’s expression was stony. Michelle stood behind Amy, but wasn’t touching her, either. There was a distinct distance between the two children, too. Body language all but shouted the news that this family was splintering.

“Not a good moment in our lives,” Jakob observed at last.

“Funny, I remember looking at the picture and not seeing that. I think I’ve been guilty of a lot of self-deception.”

“Maybe.” He waited until she had to turn her head and meet his eyes, closer to gray right now than blue. “But you don’t know, do you?”

“I do,” she said sharply.

“You’re still guessing.”

She narrowed her eyes. “But you already knew, didn’t you?”

He hesitated. “No. I heard things that made me wonder, that’s all. Remember, I wasn’t very old. Mostly, I put what I heard out of my mind.”

The slightest change of intonation in his voice there at the end suggested he was lying, although she didn’t know why he’d bother. After a minute, though, she nodded, as if in acceptance.

“You were only eight. No, I guess nine at the end.”

“Their yelling freaked me out.”

“Me, too,” she admitted. “I pulled the covers over my head at night. Sometimes the pillow, too, when they got especially loud. I knew I didn’t want to hear what they were saying. I was so scared.”

Jakob laid a hand atop hers on the table. His was big and warm and comforting. She stared down at it until, to her disappointment, he removed it.

“I didn’t like your mother,” he said gruffly, “but change is always scary for kids. I felt safe when we were a family. Sometimes I worried Dad would leave me behind if he moved out.”

“Like he did me.” Amy swallowed. “I wanted to go with him so bad.”

“I think he believed your mother needed you, that she loved you.”

She snorted. Not with a lot of authority, but still... “Sure. Right. Get real. He didn’t want me, because I wasn’t his kid. And yes, he was nice enough to keep pretending for my sake, but even then I could tell. He didn’t look at me the same. I knew, but I didn’t want to know. Now, well...” Amy shrugged. “I guess denial only takes you so far.”

Jakob sat there frowning at her. “What have you been doing the past two days? Hiding out?”

She tried a smile, even if it didn’t come off very well. “Yeah, I suppose. I felt...” A huge lump clogged her throat. Felt was past tense. Feel. I feel. “Sick,” she finally acknowledged. “I always knew that Mom...” She gave something like a laugh. “I was going to say, Mom didn’t love me. But it was worse than that. Especially when I was little. It was as if she couldn’t stand to touch me. She’d shy away from me if I tried to cuddle. I learned not to try.” Oh, that sounds pathetic. She managed a shrug. “It’s not like I didn’t survive. Maybe I’m tougher because she wasn’t touchy-feely. In all honesty, I don’t think she would have been even if I’d been a planned pregnancy. Her parents were rigid and cold.”

Jakob nodded. She’d forgotten that he had, of course, met them.

She sighed. “I’ll bet they didn’t do a lot of cuddling, either.”

Jakob’s expression was troubled. Looking at him, she felt as if a band was tightening around her chest. He was a really beautiful man, with that lean face and strong, prominent bones. His hair was disheveled, even spiky tonight. It seemed darker in this light, but the hint of stubble on his jaw glinted gold. As a child, she had so wanted them to be close. She’d taken comfort in knowing he was her brother, that however funny she looked she still shared his blood. Maybe if she had kids of her own, the Scandinavian genes would reassert themselves. Nope, she thought sadly, no such genes here. Hers were...who knew?

“You never suspected?” he asked. “Your mother never said anything?”

“Like, by the way, your real father is this creep who raped me when I was only nineteen?”

“Uh...I was thinking more along the lines of saying that she was pregnant already when she met my dad, but he’s a good guy who took responsibility for you.”

Amy huffed out another laugh. “One of the things she wrote in that diary—” she nodded toward the book that still lay open to the final, devastating passage “—is that she didn’t ever want to think about what happened again. Then she said, and I quote, ‘But I can’t completely pretend, can I?’ And she was right, because she was stuck with me. A living, breathing manifestation of the worst thing that ever happened to her.”

Jakob visibly winced.

“Hard to put it all out of your mind once you realize you’re pregnant,” she continued, her tone hard. “Did you know Mom was raised Catholic? I think we can assume if she hadn’t been, I wouldn’t have seen the light of day.”

He sat forward abruptly. “Jesus, Amy, don’t talk like that.”

“I’ve had two days to think about it. Wouldn’t most women who had been raped want to abort the baby?” She saw that he couldn’t deny her conclusion. “But Mom was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Specifically, her religion and her parents. Your dad gave her an out.”

He closed his eyes and scrubbed a hand over his face. He looked older when he was done. “No wonder he was so angry.”

“No kidding.”

“I tried to call him last night. When I hadn’t heard from you. He hasn’t returned my call yet.”

“You were going to ask him if he knew what was in the time capsule?”

“Yeah.” Jakob grimaced. “I was going to ask him if you were his kid.”

“I suppose the panties raised a few questions in your mind.”

“You could say that.” His eyebrows drew together. “DNA testing wasn’t available that long ago, was it? Did she say what she was thinking?”

“Only that she never washed them because she couldn’t bear to touch them. She says in there that they and the diary were a sort of funeral offering. That the woman—girl—she’d been was dead.”

They were both quiet for a minute after that.

Jakob let out a long sigh. “You know what you have to do, don’t you, Amy?”

She gazed at him in alarm. “What do you mean?”

“You have to talk to your mother. We could be completely wrong about all of this. The pieces could fit together in a way you’re not seeing at all.”

“You know I’m not wrong.”

“That doesn’t mean you should sweep it all under the rug, even if that’s what she did. You won’t be able to come to terms with it until you hear her side of what happened, why she made the decisions she did.”

Amy crossed her arms protectively. “What makes you think she won’t keep lying to me?”

“Why would she? You’re not a child anymore. I imagine she kept the secret partly, or even mostly, for your sake. You’re in your thirties now, and it’s tough to take in. Imagine if you’d found all this out when you were sixteen.”

Amy shivered a little. Of course he was right, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t still mad at her mother. Which wasn’t the worst part, she realized. Most painful was the fact that, as a woman, she understood and sympathized with her mother. A second shiver was more of a shudder as she thought about having to bear a child of rape, keep her, raise her, pretend to love her.

Could I?

She honestly didn’t know.

“I’ll call her once I’ve absorbed all this.”

Jakob shook his head, his expression implacable. “Nope. We’ll figure out the time difference and you’ll call her tonight, while I’m here.”

“What?” she snarled. “You think I’ll collapse if I don’t have you here to support me?”

He actually had the nerve to smile. “No, I think you won’t do it at all.”

“My privilege.”

“I want to know, too,” he said simply.

She should have asked why. What difference did it make to him? Did he want permission to go back to ignoring her?

But she couldn’t do it. Some veiled emotion in his eyes made her uneasy. Did he suspect some other truth? If so, she couldn’t deal with it.

Anyway, maybe he was right. She should demand answers now, while the tide of anger still carried her. Wimping out wasn’t her style. She wasn’t about to start now.

“Fine,” she snapped. “I’ll do it. But not because you say I have to.”

He chuckled, deepening the creases in his cheeks.

Amy wanted to punch him.

CHAPTER FOUR

JAKOB’S PHONE RANG only a minute after he and Amy had finished calculating the time difference with Sydney, Australia. He looked at the number then answered.

“Dad.”

Posture having gone rigid, Amy closed her laptop.

“Hope you were calling to tell me you talked your sister out of that time capsule nonsense,” his father boomed in the voice that served him well on job sites.

Jakob winced. “Hold on, Dad.” He pressed the phone to his belly and said quietly to Amy, “Do you want to talk to him? I can put this on speaker and tell him I’m with you.”

“Well, that would be cozy.” Snarky seemed to be her fallback mode, but he saw the anxiety in her eyes when she lifted her head. “Call me a coward, but I don’t think I’m ready to talk to him. I know I’ll have to eventually, but...not now.”

“All right. You can eavesdrop if you want,” he offered, even though he didn’t much like the idea of luring his dad into confidences he didn’t know were being overheard.

She shook her head and started past him. “I need to shower.”

“Amy.” He said her name softly, but she stopped, her back to him. “Ask me if you want to know what he says. I won’t keep secrets from you.”

She nodded jerkily and kept going.

Swearing under his breath, Jakob lifted the phone back to his ear. “Dad?”

“Who was that? Did I get you at a bad time?”

“No, this is fine. A woman. She’s, uh, going to take a shower.”

“Lady friend?” His father sounded pleased. “You haven’t mentioned one recently.”

Jakob didn’t say, That would be because there hasn’t been one in a while, even though it was the truth. He liked sex as well as the next guy, but with the big four-oh looming on the horizon, he’d begun to tire of the effort it took to get some. Dating was mostly a huge waste of time.

He also didn’t say, Nope, I’m with Amy. She’s upstairs stripping and getting in the shower right now. He didn’t even want to think about that, never mind say it aloud.

“No, it’s been a while.” Vague was good, he congratulated himself. “And no, I didn’t head Amy off. In fact, I went with her, spent the weekend in Frenchman Lake.”

Deafening silence.

He made his voice hard. As a businessman, he had it down to a fine art. “You knew what was in that goddamned time capsule, didn’t you, Dad?”

“Why the hell are you taking that tone with me?” Josef blustered. “How would I know?”

“There was a reason you didn’t want her to go. Tell me what you know.”

Another pause. “What was in the capsule?”

“You tell me first.”

His father muttered something Jakob took for profanities. “I don’t know what she put in there. She said some cryptic things about it, that’s all. Stuff about how in fifty years, the Wakefield College people would find out there was a dead body in there. Made no sense, but I got to say, it made me nervous.”

“There were no bodies, but maybe the next best thing.” Jakob stared out the French doors at an idyllic garden, golden in the evening light and too pretty for his current mood. “I remember your fights with Michelle. I heard you accusing her of trapping you.”

“You were a kid. Why would you remember anything like that?”

He turned his back on the garden and took a few steps into the kitchen, where he could lean a hip against the counter. “Be straight with me, Dad.”

After a long silence, Josef said, “I don’t want Amy to know any of this.”

“The horses are already out, Dad. Too late.”

He could hear his father breathing. “Oh, hell,” Josef said finally.

“So you know?” That enraged Jakob. Hadn’t it occurred to either his father or Michelle that a secret like this had the potential to be more destructive than the truth ever would have been?

“All I know is, Amy isn’t mine.”

Jakob found himself reeling even though he didn’t move a muscle. All these years, and now he knew.

She’s not my sister.

The part that stunned him, and yet didn’t, was that his primary emotion was relief. Relief so potent, it poured through him like a drug injected in his veins.

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure,” Josef said gruffly. “She fell off the monkey bars at school. Had what turned out to be a mild concussion, but she also bled like crazy from a cut on the head and her nose, too. At the hospital they checked her blood type. I knew her mother’s and I know mine. Amy doesn’t have either.”

Well, that seemed definitive.

Not my sister. Not my sister.

The relief could have been a full chorus singing, full-throated. He staggered back to the table and sank onto a chair.

“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“Because I couldn’t tell her.” His father cleared his throat. “She’s a sweet girl. She didn’t deserve to find out something like that. I love Amy. As far as I’m concerned, she’s my daughter.”

“You didn’t trust me.”

“When you were a kid? Hell, no!”

“As an adult?” Jakob kneaded the back of his neck.

“You didn’t have anything to do with her. What difference did it make?”

A grunt escaped him. For the first time ever, he faced his own truth. From the time she was twelve or so and getting a figure, he had always felt things for Amy that were mind-blowingly inappropriate for a brother to feel. He’d been pretty sure she wasn’t his sister—but not a hundred percent. What if the sprite he was lusting for was his half sister? The horror and guilt had just about killed him.

Right this minute, it was his father he would have liked to kill.

He unclenched his teeth. “I always suspected. It mattered, Dad. My suspicions got in the way of any kind of relationship we might have had.”

And what kind of relationship would that have been? an inner voice taunted him. He ignored it.

The shower upstairs had shut off some time ago although he hadn’t yet heard her footsteps on the stairs. “I’ve got to go,” he said to his father.

“Like hell you do! What was in the time capsule?”

“I think it’s Amy’s right to tell you or not. It’s not good, though, I’ll say that much. She’s having a hard time dealing with it.”

A pause extended. “Will you be seeing her?”

“Yeah.” Any minute.

“Tell her I love her. I always have.”

Jakob felt himself relax infinitesimally. That helped. It definitely helped. “Okay, Dad,” he said. “I’ll do that.”

He didn’t hear her coming at all. The first he knew, he caught a hint of movement out of the corner of his eye and there she was in the doorway.

She stared at him defiantly as she walked across the kitchen. Jakob was struck by how stiff she was. Usually she was as light as air, hardly seeming to touch the ground. It occurred to him that he never had been able to count on hearing her approach.

“He’s gone?”

The phone lay in front of him on the table. She was looking at him, not the phone.

“Yeah.”

“Are you going to tell me what he said?”

“I told you I would.”

The relief had metamorphosed into something else. Jakob had no idea what he was feeling now. All he knew was that, for the first time in his life, he was letting himself fully see her as a woman. As such, he was almost sorry she’d showered and changed out of the thin tank top and low-slung pajama bottoms into jeans and a sacky sweatshirt. The jeans did a heck of a job molding hips that weren’t quite boyish, though. And he realized that, though he hadn’t consciously noticed earlier, when he pushed his way into the house, he had definitely been aware of her breasts. They weren’t large, but he’d been able to make out their shape just fine. He imagined them nestled in the palms of his hands and was damn glad he was sitting down, because he was getting aroused.

Guilt jabbed, but he stomped on it. Not my sister. He couldn’t help wondering if the seismic shift had fully hit her yet, and if so what the realization meant to her.

Oh, hell, what was he thinking? She was dealing with her mother’s lies, with his father’s lies, with the knowledge that she was very likely the product of rape, and he was rejoicing because he didn’t have to feel guilty anymore for wanting her.

What she needed right now was a friend. A brother. The understanding sobered him. That might be all she’d ever want from him. If it was, he would give her what she needed. There were too many years when he’d hurt her as much or more than Michelle and his dad had. He owed her.

“Sit.”

She sat, but indignantly. “I’m not a dog.”

His grin came despite his plunge in mood. “No, you’re not.”

Her spine didn’t touch the back of the chair. Her neck stretched so long it had to hurt, and that pointy chin thrust out. “So?”

“He found out you weren’t his when you fell off the bars at school. I’d kind of forgotten about that.”

She frowned. “I knocked myself out.”

“And bled. A lot, according to Dad. I don’t know if they were thinking transfusion or what, but they checked your blood type.”

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