by Jamie Pope
He smiled, and she remembered how she had never seen him do so before all of this happened. He had been so quiet. He had changed so much in the past few months. It was unfair of her to accuse him of playing her. They might not want the same things, but it wasn’t all a lie.
“I’ll go get dressed.”
She nodded as he walked away. Forty minutes later, her doorbell rang. Her sister had arrived.
* * *
Cullen watched as Wynter froze at the sound of her doorbell. Her breath caught. Her eyes went wide. The nerves had been vibrating off her all morning. He took the decision away from her. He opened the door to see a woman who looked remarkably like Wynter standing before him. Sunny was nervous too, but she was smiling and had beautiful wide eyes that seemed to smile too. Her hair was styled in short ringlets. She had chubby cheeks and a large, round belly. She was the personification of her name.
“Hello, I’m here to see Wynter.”
“I’m here.” Wynter walked forward and stepped around him.
The women silently stared at each other for a moment. “Hello, little sister. I’m so happy to meet you,” Sunny said to her.
Wynter burst into tears and reached for her sister. The women held on to each other and just cried for a long time. Cullen almost turned away, feeling like he had been intruding on a private moment. He hadn’t seen his sister for years, but he had known her. He had gotten to enjoy her. No one had hidden her existence from him. He couldn’t imagine what it must have felt like for Wynter, but seeing her now, how she clung on to this woman, made the last few months of turmoil worth it. She had someone in her family that no one could take away.
“Come in,” Wynter said, releasing her sister from the hug. “Excuse my manners. I should have let you come all the way in before I attacked you with a hug.”
“Don’t apologize.” She turned back and looked at the man still in the doorway. “I have to thank you for reaching out to me. I’m sure I was driving my husband crazy talking about you. This is Julian, by the way.”
A very large man walked through the door. He had green eyes and massive arms and it was then Cullen remembered that he had played professional football before he had become a lawyer.
“It’s very nice to meet you, Julian,” Wynter said.
“You as well. We’ve only seen your picture, but seeing you up close . . . It’s remarkable how much you look alike.”
“Thank you. Sunny is so beautiful. You both are. Your children must be gorgeous.” She looked back at Cullen. He wondered how she was going to introduce him. What was he to her in that moment? “This is Cullen. If it weren’t for him, I would have never found you.”
“I’m glad you did,” Sunny said, taking a seat on the couch and placing her hands on her pregnant belly. “I didn’t want to intrude on your life. I didn’t know how much you knew about our mother.”
“I don’t know anything about her. I was told I was an orphan adopted from South Africa. My father refuses to admit anything to me.”
Sadness swept across Sunny’s face. “Mama was not well. She was mentally ill. When I was five, she took me out of school and told me we were going on a trip. We ended up in New York and we spent the next year homeless and then moving from place to place. At first, I thought it was an adventure. I thought Mama was being a free spirit. My child’s mind couldn’t understand what was wrong with her. But she got sicker and sicker as time went on. She was paranoid, especially after one of her boyfriends hurt me. She stopped allowing me to go outside. She would disappear for days and leave me in a closet to keep me safe until she got back. But one time she never came back, and a neighbor who I used to go to for food noticed that she hadn’t seen me or Mama for a while sent the police to find me. I spent the rest of my childhood in foster care after that. Your father might have lied to you about who you came from, but Mama could have never taken care of you. She was too sick. He was right to take you away.”
Cullen watched as Wynter sat heavily on the couch and processed the information that had been given to her. “He should have told me that. I would have understood.” She looked up at Sunny. “She tried to take me from a horseback-riding lesson when I was ten. I could tell then that there was something wrong with her, but I had no idea who she was. I wish I had known.”
“You don’t know where she is now, do you? I have been searching for her for years, but everything comes up as a dead end. The last place we tracked her to was your father’s office, but that was the year you were born.”
“I don’t know. I didn’t know her name until Cullen’s friends told me.”
“Your friends?” Julian asked. “They must have powerful connections. It wasn’t easy finding you.”
“They are all former intelligence agents.”
He nodded. “That’s who I hired to be my private detective. Mr. Bates went through a lot of trouble to make sure no one ever learned of the connection.”
“Yes.” Wynter nodded. “He never expected his affair to be headline news this year either.”
“Who do you think is behind it?” Sunny asked.
“I’m not sure,” Cullen said. “But there’s only one person who has the answer to all of your questions and I think it’s time we start asking him.”
Chapter 20
Wynter was having had a hard time believing that her sister was here. She kept staring at her, taking in her features. They had the same nose. The same chin. The same shaped face. She thought she was crazy to feel a connection to her, a stranger she hadn’t even known a full two hours, but it was there. Sunny had known their mother. She lived with her, survived living with her. It pained her to know that she had to live with a mentally ill woman and then in foster care, bouncing from home to home with no real stability, no real family to love her.
Wynter had a lonely childhood, but her home was stable. The woman who raised her, the woman who she still called Mother, had loved her. That part wasn’t a lie. There was love there and privilege. They had grown up so differently. Wynter had everything handed to her. Sunny had to work for everything. She had been a social worker, her degree paid for by scholarships. There was no studying abroad for her. No summering on Nantucket or on the Vineyard. Wynter felt guilty for having that kind of life when Sunny had to struggle all through hers, but she couldn’t feel sorry for her sister. Sunny had happiness. It radiated through her. Her husband adored her. She had a big family that she created. There was so much love there. It was beautiful. It was the life Wynter had wanted for herself. She was almost jealous of her sister. The money meant absolutely nothing. Love was everything.
The car ride to her father’s office was short. Cullen had called ahead to let her father’s security team know that they were coming, but he had asked them not to warn him. They breezed through the entrance and through the hallways, no one stopping them. But there were looks. Wynter could feel them on her back as they made their way to his office. Who could miss the resemblance of the two women? Who could forget the content of those letters?
Cullen led the way. He walked into her father’s office without knocking. He was dressed in all black again. His hair was tamed, still longer than it had ever been in the year that she knew him, but he looked every inch of the bodyguard that he was. Her father snapped to attention, his eyes widening with shock as he saw them all enter his office.
“What the hell are you doing here, Whelan? I just spoke to you this morning. You didn’t tell me you were bringing her back.”
“No, sir. I think it’s time you speak to your daughter. I’m done being your middleman.”
The rage that crept into her father’s eyes was undeniable. He stood up, looking as if he wanted to wrap his fingers around Cullen’s throat, but the one thing he wouldn’t do was look at Wynter.
“No hello, Daddy? You haven’t spoken to me in months and now that I’m before you, you won’t even look at me. Are you that ashamed of me?”
“Ashamed?” He looked her in the eye for the first time in as long as she c
ould remember. “How could I be ashamed of you? I love you. You are my only child.”
“But not the child you saw in an orphanage, right? Mother always told me to be thankful that I had been rescued, but I wasn’t rescued. You were taking care of your dirty little secret.”
He said nothing, but his gaze traveled to Sunny and settled there. He looked back at Wynter. There was no need for an explanation. There was no denying who Sunny was.
“You did this, didn’t you?” He turned and started approaching Cullen. “You found Grace’s daughter, when the only thing you had to do was mind your business and keep my daughter safe.”
“You don’t get to blame Cullen for this.” She stood between Cullen and her father. “You need to talk to me! Why can’t you admit to what you’ve done? Why did you have to put Cullen in this situation in the first place? That wasn’t his job. You made me his problem instead of dealing with me yourself and it screwed up his life.”
“His job is whatever I tell him to do. He was paid damn well to do it.”
Cullen placed his hands on Wynter’s shoulders. “Being with you has not screwed up my life, Wyn. It’s only made it better.”
She looked back at him, her heart giving a painful squeeze.
“You’re sleeping with her, aren’t you? I’ll kill you.” He lunged toward Cullen, but Wyn plastered her body against his. Sunny’s husband grabbed Wynter’s father and easily hauled him away.
“That’s enough,” Julian said firmly. “Only a guilty man passes blame to everyone else. You need to answer some questions. Your daughter deserves the truth, and so does my wife.”
“What do you want me to say? You already know the truth. I am your birth father. You weren’t adopted. Is that what you came here to learn?”
“There’s more to the story and you know it. How could you do that to Mom?”
“I love your mother. She’s brilliant. I wouldn’t be who I am without her. She helped make me, but she’s my partner, my strategist, the other half of my brain. There’s a deep love, but there was no passion for a long time between us. Your mother wanted the lifestyle. The prestige that came with being married to a powerful man. We had an understanding.”
“What about Grace?” Wynter asked. “Did she understand?”
“Grace worked for me. She had this kind of energy that was electrifying. She was adventurous and exciting. It wasn’t supposed to be serious, but very soon into our affair, I learned she was pregnant. And then I learned she stopped taking her medication. I didn’t realize she was sick when we first met, but she was very sick and she was dangerous. I caught her on the roof once, claiming people were after her. She would disappear for days at a time. I was scared. I went to your mother and asked her what we should do. She wanted you. We could never conceive together and we realized this was the only way we could raise a child. I had Grace quietly declared incompetent by a judge friend of mine and had her confined to a house in Virginia. She was under a doctor’s care at all times when she was pregnant. The first three months, she couldn’t take any medication at all, because there were potential birth defects. She was nearly out of control then. I had to hire more staff, more security to ensure you both were safe, but even after the first trimester when she could take her medication again, she often refused. I knew she could be no part of your life. Your safety had to come first. Especially, after she told me what happened to Sunny. I was terrified she would have hurt you.”
“It’s true,” Sunny said, nodding her head. “There were times when she would be almost like a typical mother, when things were calm, and then she would go through these bad times and she became unbearable to live with.” Sunny briefly shut her eyes as, if trying to block out a memory. “I was older than you when she started to get bad. I could do some things for myself. I could take care of her. She couldn’t have taken care of a baby.”
“What was I supposed to do, Wynter?” her father asked. “I had to protect you.”
“I understand the need to take me away from her. But you weren’t just protecting me. You were protecting yourself. Your image. You could have hid Grace from the world, but you didn’t have to hide her from me.”
“Or me,” Sunny said. “You’re how she found me, aren’t you? She wrote me two letters and I never understood how she could have tracked me down, but you must’ve helped.”
“Yes.” He nodded. “She loves you very much.”
“She’s still alive?” Wynter asked.
“Of course, she’s still alive. What do you think I’ve done to her?”
“I don’t know. You’ve gone through a lot of trouble to keep her a secret. No one has seen or heard from her since she tried to take me when I was ten.”
“I couldn’t allow that to happen again. She is in a very secure place now.”
“What about the leak?” Cullen asked. “Who was it?”
“A former nurse. She had made copies of the letters Grace wrote to me. She was looking for a payday. I only hire former intelligence now.”
“I want to meet her,” Wynter demanded. “Today. You owe me that. Sunny deserves to see her mother again.”
Her father nodded once. “It’s a long drive. I’ll lead the way.”
* * *
They drove nearly three hours into Virginia, into the mountains. The ride was beautiful with all the deep greens and thickness of the trees they passed on the way. Wynter might have enjoyed the journey on another day. She was in the car with her sister and her brother-in-law and the man she loved, but it wasn’t a joyful occasion. This was no fun family trip. Everyone was mostly silent on the ride up. She and Sunny just held hands in the backseat. She couldn’t imagine what her sister was going through. The last time she had seen her mother was when she was locking her in a closet. And yet there was no anger there. She was a child. It must have been hard for her to understand why her mother was the way she was, but Sunny didn’t hold a grudge. She didn’t blame her mother for her illness.
Her mother. Wynter kept thinking of Grace as Sunny’s mother, but she was their mother. Their birth mother. But Wynter had a mother already. There was a woman who had given her everything. There was a woman who readily agreed to raise the product of her husband’s affair and never treated her any differently, never treated her less than.
She had spent her entire life wanting a connection to her roots, but now that she had finally learned the truth, she wasn’t sure how she felt. They pulled up to what appeared to be a gated community. There was a booth there. An armed guard came out and approached her father’s car in front of them. After a few words, they were allowed in. There were no other houses, just a long road, maybe two or three miles long, leading up to a large log cabin. It wasn’t anything showy or overtly glamorous, but Wynter could tell this place had been designed as a retreat, with beautiful landscaping and a man-made lake to the side. It was calming and seeing it showed Wynter that her father had put some thought into where he hid the mother of his child.
“She’s sitting on the patio,” her father told them. “It doesn’t matter what time of year it is, she likes to sit there and look outside at the trees. I had to enclose it and install a fireplace there.”
“It’s very nice here,” Sunny said.
“Yes,” Warren agreed. “I want her to be comfortable.” He walked into the house and led them directly to the back where Grace was. Warren motioned for them to stop.
It was a move he didn’t have to make, because she and Sunny froze at exactly the same moment. She was sitting in a rocking chair, her hair long and light blond, with a just a few strands of silver weaved through it. She was wearing a thick cream-colored sweater over a long dress and in her hands was a crochet needle and the beginnings of what looked like a blanket. She was beautiful. The way she moved her hands, showed that she was as graceful as her name implied. Wynter had only seen her once and then she had been filled with panic and fear, but this woman wasn’t the one she remembered. There had been no serenity floating around her.
She looked to Sunny, who had tears rolling down her cheeks. Wynter wondered if this was what she remembered of her mother at all or was it like she was seeing a new person.
Warren approached her. Very slowly. “Gracie?” He kept his voice gentle as not to startle her.
“Warren!” She smiled. “I didn’t know you were coming to see me. You always call and tell me before you do. You call on Fridays. It’s not Friday.”
Her voice was distinctly Southern. It was melodic, almost. She could see why her father was struck by her beauty. She was hard to look away from.
He knelt before her and took her hand. “I came because I brought you some visitors.”
“Visitors?” She shook her head. “I can’t have visitors. No one comes to see me. Only you and sometimes your wife. I like her. I do. How is she?”
That statement knocked Wynter sideways. Her mother had met Grace? More than met, it seemed. She had visited her.
“She’s fine. She’s been unhappy with me lately.”
“You are a trying man,” she said with a laugh. “What did you do?”
“I sent Wynter away. I didn’t think she would be safe, but my wife is missing her.”
“Mamas miss their babies.” She nodded understandingly. “She’s a good mama, right? You said she was.”
“She is very good. Wynter came back home. She’s grown up now. I can’t tell her what to do anymore.”
“No. I suppose not.” Her eyes left Warren and looked at the group of them behind her. Her eyes passed over Wynter, Cullen, and Julian with mild curiosity. But they focused on Sunny.
“Is that my Sunshine?” Grace got up out of her chair, her hands shaking excitedly. “That’s her. That’s my baby! You brought her to me.”
“Hi, Mama,” Sunny said with tears streaming down her cheeks. “I’m so happy to see you again.”
Grace rushed over and cupped Sunny’s face in her hands. She peppered it with kisses. It seemed natural and motherly, even though Sunny was over thirty with children of her own.
