“I’m eighteen now.”

“Happy belated birthday, but that doesn’t answer my question.”

“The state dropped me from your program the day I walked across the stage. Can’t afford your overpriced fees.”

“Consider this a conversation between two people who know each other.”

I toe the legs of the table. I contacted her. I’m the one that’s forcing open this door. “My mom’s family is looking for me.”

Not an ounce of surprise, and I swear under my breath. “You already know.”

She frowns as a yes.

“How?”

Her head moves to the side, and I answer for her. “Jacob.”

Mrs. Collins still works with my younger brother on his night terrors. He harbors guilt because he’s the one that lit the candle that started the fire that killed our parents. Because of this, she’d be privy to anything regarding him, including if my mother’s parents requested to meet him.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Mrs. Collins blows out a long stream of air then bends out of view. A zipper rasps, then paper crackles and she reappears on the screen. She holds a dollar in her hand. “You see this?”

“Yeah.”

“You gave it to me.”

I raise an eyebrow.

“You left it on my desk on the last day, remember?”

Barely. “That’s because you bought me a Coke.”

“No, the Coke was a gift, but you did give me this dollar because...”

She drifts off, and her eyes are begging me for something. I’ve got no clue as to what that something is so I repeat her last statement to see where that gets me. “I gave you the dollar.”

Mrs. Collins nods like I gave her the correct answer for final Jeopardy. “Yes! You gave me a dollar because you knew that you would possibly be asking for...”

She circles her hand for me to finish. Aw, fuck me. I suck at charades. “Your help?”

“Yes! Exactly! So that means that you’re asking me to be your therapist again?”

Got it. “I left payment for you so you can be my therapist again. So, yeah, I’m asking.”

“I accept! Yes, Noah, your mother’s family is trying to find you.”

“And you couldn’t tell me because you’re Jacob’s therapist, not mine.”

“But I’m yours now, so we can talk.”

“I’m in Vail, and I have their address.”

Mrs. Collins slumps back in her chair like I announced I detonated a nuclear bomb in a day care. “Who told you about your mom’s parents?”

“Carrie.” I pause. “I got the address from Keesha.”

“Have you visited them?”

“Not yet.”

She picks up a pen and taps it against the table. “How does the idea of meeting your mother’s family make you feel?”

“How much do you know about them?”

“Enough.”

“More than me?”

“Probably.”

Conversations with her have always been like playing an intense poker match, but usually she’s on the fact-finding mission, not me. “Are you going to download what you know, or am I going to continue to waste my time?”

She halfheartedly grins. “If that’s all you wanted to know, you could have asked Carrie or Joe or Keesha. All three of them know more than me. In fact, you have your mother’s family’s address in your hands. Who better to ask than the source?”

I readjust, and the chair squeaks beneath me.

“But you didn’t do that. You called me. What’s going on, Noah?”

There’s a shifting inside me. Years of self-preservation fighting against the new trust formed with the head shrink. I scrub my face with my hands, hoping it will help win the war, but it’s still hard as hell to open my mouth.

“My mom ran away from them. At least that’s what Carrie and Joe said. And she never brought them up to me. In fact, she said they were dead, and she was an only child.”

“So your mother lied to you.”

“She didn’t,” I snap.

“She didn’t?”

She did, and I feel fucking betrayed. A strangled sound leaves my throat, and I lean forward. I feel betrayed and angry and pissed. “My mother never lied to me.”

Never lied and never downplayed. Not when one of our dogs died. Not when Grandma was diagnosed with stage-four cancer and then when Papa died of a broken heart six months after she passed. Never did my mother try to make a situation less than what it was.

* * *

Hurt is a part of life, Noah, she said to me when she held my hand at the hospital the last time I saw my grandmother. I’m not doing you any favors by shielding you from it. Besides, it’s always better to be honest.

“Tell me about your mom,” Mrs. Collins says when the silence must irritate her.

“She talked to me in Spanish.” Even when it pissed me off. She was a Spanish professor, and she was determined that I’d be as fluent as she was. “And she laughed a lot.”

My throat swells, and grief pulls at me. “She’d poke her head into my bedroom at night and tell me she loved me.” When I was younger, I used to say it back. Then somewhere along the way, I stopped.

I could throttle the guy I was then. My mother was there, in my room, night after night, and I never said the words back. Fuck me.

What’s worse, Mom told me she loved me before I left that night and told me to wake her when I got in. The opportunity was there. I could have opened my damned mouth and told her what I can’t tell her now. But I didn’t. Instead, I failed her. I failed her in the worst way possible.

I clear my throat and tug at the collar of my shirt as too much heat has built up around me. Fuck this. Just fuck this. “Do you know if it’s true? Did Mom’s family misunderstand? Did they think that Carrie and Joe were adopting me, too?”

Did they think I was being taken care of, or did they purposely leave me to rot in foster care? That coil forever ready to spring inside me twists one more time, and it’s like I’m racing toward an explosion.

“Noah, why does it matter now?”

“It does.”

“Why?”

I scoot to the edge of my chair and have to force myself not to fly out of it. “Because! What if they wanted me? What if someone fucking wanted me, and the system screwed it up?”

The door to the business center clicks open, and Echo hesitates when she spots me, then Mrs. Collins, on the screen. Faster than a jackrabbit, Echo spins to leave, and I swivel the chair to catch her. “Don’t go.”