She’d forgotten he knew that. It wasn’t a part of her life that she talked about—it wasn’t part of the reason she normally gave. But once, when Jesse had been about fourteen, and his father had taken his own insecurities out on his son, leaving the child feeling insignificant and unwanted, she’d told him her secret. That she hadn’t just kept him because she’d loved his father and wanted to get married. Or because his maternal grandparents, who’d never been able to have children of their own, were fully supportive of their sixteen-year-old pregnant daughter, offering to help wherever they could to make it possible for her to keep her child. She’d kept him because she didn’t ever want him to feel unworthy of life’s basic necessities—food, shelter and unconditional love.
She’d never, for one second, regretted the decision. But there were times when being Jesse’s mother hurt. A lot.
“I’m sorry, Ma.” The apology came after only a minute of silence. She’d have waited ten if that was what it took. “You’re just freaking me out with all this going-away stuff.”
Jesse was scared. So was she. Terrified.
“My birth mother was well into her forties when she had me. My father was in his early fifties. She’d gone through menopause. They thought pregnancy was impossible.”
“Wow,” Jesse said softly. “You’d think, being that old, they’d have been able to provide for a kid.”
Pulling both knees to her chest, Caroline laid her head on them, the worn denim soft against her cheeks as she gazed out at the yard that had barely changed since she’d moved there at seventeen. The old red maple tree was bigger. But it had already been huge. They’d put up a new fence ten years before. And the mailbox had been replaced when the old one was knocked down by a snowplow when Jesse was still a toddler.
“They did provide for one,” she told her son. “They just couldn’t manage two.”
“Two!” His voice cracked. “You’re a twin?” She almost smiled. It hadn’t taken long for her genius son to figure that out.
“Yes.”
She really should go inside where it was warm. But it was so empty. Unless she counted the memories that wouldn’t leave her alone.
“Cool! Two Mas.” He sounded like he was grinning. Caroline was grateful for the diversion, even knowing it would be short-lived. “Wait. Was the other kid a girl or a boy?”
“A girl.”
“Were you identical?”
“No.” Not that the letter had said one way or the other. Caroline had found out for herself, from pictures in newspaper articles on the Internet about her very successful twin. Her mother had given her the box at the end of September and within a week she’d joined a couple of Internet tracking services and had a folder on her computer filled with information.
“Damn!” Jesse said, quickly adding, “Uh, darn—sorry, Ma.”
“You’re a freshman in college, Jess,” Caroline said, walking over to the porch rail, wondering how many more years it would stand up to Kentucky’s weather. “Certainly old enough to make your own vocabulary choices.”
“It’s just so fantastic.” His voice was more that of her intense little boy than the man he was quickly becoming. “I wonder how they chose which one of you to keep.”
“Birth order,” she told him. “They kept the first. I was born second.”
Silence fell on the line.
“This had to be pretty hard on you, huh?” he asked a moment later. “Here I am, going on like some kind of jerk, not even thinking how this must’ve made you feel. Being the one given away and all.”
“It’s okay, Jess,” she told him, hoping that someday the words would be true. “I’ve always known I was given away.”
“Yeah, but knowing that one was kept—”
A chill swept through Caroline. She brushed some twigs off the top of the chipped porch rail and wrapped her arms around her midriff.
“And there I go again, putting my foot right in it,” Jesse said, bringing a slow grin to his mother’s face.
“So…does this, uh, talk about Shelter whatever have to do with the letter?”
“Yes.” With the thumb of her left hand she reached for the sapphire on her ring finger. According to the letter from Caroline’s birth mother, her twin had been given a ring, too. An opal. Apparently their mother had liked jewelry. “Her name is Phyllis Langford Sheffield. She’s a professor of Psychology at Montford University in Shelter Valley.”
“She married?”
“Yes. To a man named Matt Sheffield, Fine Arts Technical Coordinator at Montford.” She wasn’t too sure about her brother-in-law. She’d found an article about him, too. A disturbing one. Several years before Mr. Sheffield had taken the job at Montford, he’d been charged with statutory rape and sentenced to prison. He’d allegedly impregnated one of his students. That was a piece of news she was definitely not going to share with her son.
“They have any kids?”
“Two.” She thought of the grainy newspaper photo she had in her wallet. “Twins. A boy and a girl. They’re three.”
“Damn!” Jesse said again. “Must run in the genes, huh?”
Her heart gave a little flip at his mention of genetics. “Yeah.”
“Okay, I can see why a trip to Shelter Valley’s important,” Jesse said, almost magnanimously. “I’ll be home for spring recess the last week of March. We can go then.”
Pulling open the buttons on her coat, Caroline went inside, letting the screen door fall shut behind her. Randy had bought her year-round windows for the door a few Christmases ago, so she could leave the big old wooden door open, even in winter, and see out into the yard.
“I’m moving to Shelter Valley, Jess. This weekend.”
“No way, Ma! You can’t! You’re being ridiculous. I get it about wanting to see your sister. Hell, I even get that you’re feeling lonely, what with Dad dying and me gone almost right after, but you can’t just up and move! What about the farm?”
“I’m going to hang on to it for a while. At least until I see how I like Shelter Valley. It’s all paid for and the taxes are practically nothing….”
“We have cattle, Ma,” Jesse said, as though speaking to a child. “They aren’t just gonna wait around to see how you like life on the other side of the country. And we sure as hell can’t afford to pay someone to look after them for us.”
Us. It sounded so good. Too good. Because it wasn’t true anymore. Jesse was off starting a life of his own. And Caroline had her own life to tend to. Whether she wanted to or not. She had some consequences to pay.
“I sold the cattle.”
“You what?”
Even with the phone at arm’s length, she could hear Jesse’s yelp. She’d wanted to talk to him about the cattle—had thought he deserved to be a part of the decision—but she knew he’d talk her out of selling. And going.
And sister aside, she had to go. There was more reason to go to Shelter Valley than she could tell her son. He’d have to know eventually, her saner side kept reminding her.
But there was only so much she could handle at a time. And right now, that didn’t include Jesse’s likely reaction to her other news.
“I sold the cattle to give me enough money to live off until I get settled.”
“I