She looked up. Shelby sat across from her on a matching sofa. They were in Megan’s private study, the place they always gathered when they were visiting her. It was a big, cozy room, filled with soft leather furniture and shelves of books and family photos, and almost always friends and members of Megan’s large family. But tonight the five of them were alone.
“She says this was the only fancywork she ever had time to do.” Shelby quoted from the note Megan had read them as she distributed the gifts. It had been handwritten, short and unsigned. “That sounds so sad.”
“I can’t imagine ever being this small.” Michael had placed the tiny blue sweater bearing his name on a table, as though distancing himself from the woman who had given it to him, embroidered it so lovingly and then walked out of his life. “At least we know now the names pinned to our shirts really were the ones she gave us.”
When they were small, the triplets had sometimes climbed into the branches of the live oak tree in the back yard and wondered aloud who they might be. Garrett, older by two years, had scoffed at them. He remembered their names, he’d insisted when they picked others they liked better. He’d told Megan so from the very first day.
But one day when the three of them were ten and Garrett was twelve, they’d quit asking him about memories of their real mother. That was the day he and Michael had gotten into a fight over Garrett’s insistence that he could remember nothing about her anymore. And if he did he wasn’t going to tell Michael, or Shelby and Lana, either. She had thrown them all away, he’d said. Just like they were toys she didn’t want. If she didn’t want them, then he didn’t want to remember her. That had been the last time he’d spoken of her to Lana. And not long after that Lana had made the same promise to herself.
“Why do you think she sent these things to us now?” Shelby asked, her eyes sparkling with emotion. “Why, after all these years without a word?”
“Who knows.” Michael moved restlessly around the room, his hands shoved in the pockets of his pants. The physical resemblance between Shelby and Michael was marked. The same with Garrett. They all had tanned skin and dark auburn hair and strongly marked lashes and eyebrows that had somehow become muted to cinnamon and cream when they got to Lana.
“What if she’s in need? I mean, if she never had time for a hobby then maybe she still hasn’t got enough money—”
“You can’t go by that, Shelby. You can’t make any kinds of assumptions from that note. We may be dealing with a real nut case here.”
“Mike. You’re talking about our mother.”
“She’s not my mother. My mother was Sheila Lord. I don’t intend to go looking for some stranger to replace her.” Michael had taken their mother’s death hard. Their father had been sick for several months before his death. But Sheila had only complained of a headache, of needing to lie down for a few minutes. She’d died of a massive stroke only an hour later. Some days it was hard for Lana to believe she was gone, even though it had been almost three years.
Shelby winced at the vehemence in their brother’s tone. Some of the excitement faded from her eyes. “I…I thought you might want to help me find her.”
“Find her? What in hell for?”
“She said she loved us,” Shelby whispered. She turned to Lana. “What do you think, Lana? Shouldn’t we look for her?”
Lana glanced helplessly at Megan. The older woman smiled her understanding and encouragement. She knew how much Lana still missed her mother. “No,” Lana said, placing her little pink sweater on top of Michael’s blue one. “I’m with Mike. Let her come to us. She obviously knows who we are, how to find us if she wants to. I won’t go looking for her.”
“I’ll help you, Shel.” Garrett was standing with one shoulder propped against the fern-filled marble fireplace. He looked at the scruffy, bedraggled teddy bear that had been his gift from the past. If he remembered playing with it as a toddler, he gave no evidence of it.
“Oh, Garrett, will you?” Shelby’s smile returned, brighter than before.
“It would be easier if you helped us, Mike.” The words seemed pulled from somewhere deep inside him. Garrett didn’t ask favors easily, even from those closest to him.
But Michael was adamant. He was perhaps the most stubborn of them all. “No, bro, not this time. I have absolutely no interest in the woman who didn’t care enough about any of us to try and keep us together as a family.”
“But, Mike.” Shelby tried again. “You don’t know that. She left us for Aunt Megan—”
“Yeah, I know she could have turned us over to the welfare people to get sucked into the system, but she couldn’t have known we’d stay together. It’s only because Aunt Megan knew how much Mom and Dad wanted a family. We were damned lucky, that’s all. She doesn’t deserve any credit for that.” He picked up his sweater and Lana’s and went to put them in the plain cardboard box in which they’d come. “I don’t want anything to do with her.”
“Please, Michael. Don’t throw it away,” Shelby begged. “Lana, you, too.”
He turned to her, the little pink sweater still in his hands. “I wasn’t going to throw them away. I’m just not interested in looking at them anymore.”
“Me, too, Shel, honey. I…I just don’t want to take it home with me,” Lana said uncertainly. She’d been on her own for half a dozen years. She was able to take care of herself, but these relics of their past had hit her hard.
Michael handed the box with the three little sweaters to Shelby. “Don’t get in a huff, sis,” he said with that devastating smile of his that lifted one corner of his mouth higher than the other.
“I’ll take yours for safekeeping. I’ll take the teddy bear, too, Garrett, if you don’t want it.” Shelby held out her hand. “You can come and get them whenever you want.”
Garrett handed the bear over. “I don’t need anything to remind me that I was left on the doorstep of a public building without even a blanket to cover me.”
“It was quite warm the day you came to me, Garrett,” Megan said. “I remember very clearly. There was absolutely no question of you suffering from the cold.” There was a slight note of reproof in her low, cultured voice as she stood and walked from behind the big mahogany desk where she’d been sitting.
“There’s always something inside you that’s cold when you don’t know who you are or where you come from.”
Shelby and Lana exchanged looks. They had never heard their brother speak like that before. “I’m going to start looking for her first thing tomorrow,” Garrett said. “I could use your help, Mike. But if you don’t want anything to do with it, I’ll go it alone.”
“Like I said—deal me out.”
“I’ll help you, Gar.” There was a note of defiance in Shelby’s voice.
“Thanks, sis.”
“I’ve got to be going,” Michael announced. “Thanks for everything, Aunt Megan. Shelby, are you ready to leave?” Michael had picked Shelby up at Austin Eats when he left Maitland Maternity. He’d offered to drive Lana, too, but it was more convenient for her to take her own car. And besides, she’d been too upset to deal with introducing her brother to Dylan and Greg. And then having to explain their new living arrangements. Time enough for that when the shock of their mother’s gifts had worn off.
“I’ll drop Shel off at her place on my way to the ranch. It’s not out of the way. We’ve got some stuff to talk about,”