I closed my eyes. Remembering what had happened when I’d lost Michelle was hard to face every day, but at the same time I’d always been thankful for what time I’d had with her. I’d gotten to hold her for a few minutes before they had taken away both my babies and only returned with one. What had happened five years later…? That’s the one memory I hated to remember. It was the one that I woke up in a cold sweat to some nights.
“It’s okay, Mom.” Mieke squeezed my hand and I opened my eyes, smiling for her. It would always ever be just for her when I smiled with those memories running through my head.
“You’re scaring the hell out of me here, Anna.” Zander’s voice growled at me. “What happened? What put that look on your face and how the fuck do I erase it?”
I opened my mouth but the sound of the doorbell stopped me. I frowned, glancing at the clock on his wall beside the television. It was nearly midnight, so who the hell could be at his door? Jealousy shot painfully through my chest. Was I about to come face to face with one of Zander’s many lovers? I didn’t know if I could handle that after just ripping my heart open by telling him about our daughters and then having to face the near tragedy of losing Mieke five years later.
“That’s my food,” Mieke surprised me by saying as she got to her feet. “They had your card on file so I charged it to that. Is that okay, Dad?”
“Yeah, that’s fine, sweetheart.”
She rushed to answer the door. Zander and I stayed where we were, our gazes lovingly watching our daughter. She said something to the delivery boy and then set the two bags of food on the table by the door. After the boy left, she stepped halfway out the door and pressed the doorbell thirteen more times.
Zander chuckled. “I guess you really did tell her all about me.”
“I never lied to her when she asked about you, Z. She deserved to know.”
His jaw clenched and he nodded, but didn’t say anything more.
Returning to us, she grinned at her father. Setting the two bags on the coffee table beside Zander, she started taking out cartons of delicious-smelling Chinese food. Finding the egg rolls, she stuffed half of one in her mouth before continuing her task.
“Are you going to eat all of this by yourself?” Zander didn’t look like he believed it could happen, and I threw my head back, laughing for what felt like the first time in forever. He frowned at me. “You mean she can?”
“And more,” I assured him.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Zander
My kid could put away some food.
My kid.
I never thought I would say those words, but watching Mieke stuff the last egg roll into her mouth, I realized it felt right. She was so beautiful, so full of life, and completely perfect. When she’d told me about Michelle always living as long as her heart still beat, I’d lost my shit. It had taken everything in me to stay where I was and not run back to the bathroom. But I knew I couldn’t do that. She needed me. Annabelle needed me.
While she ate her noodles, fried rice, and honey chicken, she told me a little more about herself. Annabelle remained mostly quiet while Mieke spoke of her childhood. I now knew she had to wear braces when she was twelve, but only for a year. I now knew she liked raspberry sherbet, and hated pickles. I even now knew that she was a year ahead in school and would be graduating this year from high school. My kid was some kind of freaking math genius and she had her pick of colleges.
I liked hearing Mieke talk, but what I really needed right then was to know what had happened when she was five. What had put that haunted look on Annabelle’s face? What was worse than losing one of our babies?
I waited until Mieke was leaning back against the couch beside her mother. Her stomach was finally full and she had a content smile on her face. The second I asked about it, the small smile that was on Annabelle’s lips disappeared and Mieke sat up a little straighter, but she looked more concerned for Annabelle than anything.
“I’d just turned five,” Mieke said, her tone soft as if she were afraid to speak too loudly. “Mom was out of town with Uncle Noah for a charity concert and I had a field trip to the Parthenon in downtown Nashville. Aunt Chelsea was supposed to go with my class, but Ben was sick and she had to take him to the doctor.”
“Ben?”
Mieke smiled a little easier this time. “My cousin. He’s a year younger than me, and my best friend. He has a sister, Audrey. She’s three years younger than me.”
“Do they look like Noah?” I asked Annabelle, curious about my old friend’s kids. Did they look like him, like Mieke looked like me? Or did they look like Chelsea?
She nodded. “Ben is his double, but Audrey looks more like Chelsea.”
I turned back to Mieke. “Okay, so you were on a field trip?”
“After we walked through the Parthenon we had lunch out on the lawn. I ate my lunch and then some of the other kids started playing. I didn’t want to, so I stayed on my blanket and fell asleep. The teachers were more concerned with watching the ones running around than me.” She shrugged. “So they didn’t notice when someone grabbed me.”
Annabelle let out a whimper and I instinctively grasped her hand as my heart started racing. “What?” I didn’t mean to shout, but I didn’t have control over the volume of my voice right then.
Mieke nodded as I felt Annabelle tremble with the memories. “There had been a lot of visitors at the Parthenon that day. One of them was a woman who’d just lost her daughter to cancer. When she saw me just lying on the blanket, she took me.”
Annabelle stood up so quickly I didn’t know how to react. She combed her fingers through her long, pale-blond hair, scattering the streaks of hot pink. “I can’t,” she whispered. “I just can’t do this.”
“Anna?” I’d never seen her like this. It gutted me to see it now. The look on her face told me she was reliving a nightmare. She was shaking and looked so pale it was as if what Mieke was telling me had happened only the day before and not nearly twelve years before.
She turned to face me with eyes that were wild. “Some psycho took our baby, Z. She just took her in the middle of a crowded place and no one even saw her. She had her for two days. Two. Days. Do you know how that feels? Do you? To have the reason you get up in the morning missing and not knowing if she’s okay? If she were cold or scared? If someone was hurting her?”
My throat tightened and I couldn’t breathe, let alone speak, so I shook my head. I had no clue what she had felt then, but if it was half as bad as what I was feeling right then, just hearing about what had happened, then I could imagine.
“This girl?” She pointed at Mieke with a finger that shook. “She is my reason for breathing and I couldn’t wrap my arms around her. I couldn’t hold her and tell her everything was going to be okay. She was scared and alone with a woman who could have done anything to her. At the time we didn’t know if it was a man or a woman, a pedophile or what. The local cops brought in the Feds, but they had no leads and after the first day they told me that statistically I wasn’t ever going to get her back.”
“Mom, I’m okay. It’s over. That was years ago. She didn’t hurt me.” Mieke tried to soothe her mother, but Annabelle shook her head and let out a sob that cut me to the quick.
She turned accusing eyes on me. “I didn’t want to believe them. I refused. I tried calling you. I tried so many times to just get you to speak to me for a minute. Two seconds. Anything. Our baby was missing and I n-needed you.”
I reached for her, unable to not touch her a second longer. I grabbed her trembling hand and pulled her down onto my lap. A broken sob seemed to tear from her chest as she clung to me. “I needed you,” she whispered.
I buried my face in her hair, letting my tears fall. “I know. I know.”
“You b-broke your promise.” If she had hit me, I couldn’t have hurt more. I almost wished she would hit me. Beat the shit out of me. I needed it, fucking deserved it. Maybe the physical pain would relieve some of the emotions choking the air
out of me right then. “I needed you—we needed you and you just left us. You didn’t want us.”
“I did want you,” I groaned into her hair. “I wanted you so bad I hurt.”
Annabelle shook her head, still sobbing. “No. If you had, you would have come back. You wouldn’t have broken your promise.”
I didn’t argue with her. There was no use right then when she was so distraught, and I didn’t have the emotional strength to go down the road of what I’d been feeling back then—what I still felt now. All my energy was focused on Annabelle and how she was falling apart in my arms.
A soft hand touched my arm and I lifted my head just enough to see Mieke standing beside us. She had one hand on my arm, but the other was rubbing her sobbing mother’s back. “Please don’t cry, Mom.” Annabelle’s sobs abruptly stopped but turned into little hiccups that tortured me just as bad as her sobs had. “And don’t take your pain out on Dad. If he’d known, he would have been there with you.”
Hearing her defend me like that to her mother shamed me. I didn’t deserve her taking up for me like that. I’d left her mother and, in my refusal to face my pain and self-hate, I’d essentially left Mieke as well. I’d failed them both. I deserved everything Annabelle threw at me and so much more.
Eventually Annabelle cried herself to sleep, her arms still wrapped around my neck. I lifted my eyes from the beautiful girl, who had turned into an even more exquisite woman, to meet my daughter’s tired gaze.
Mieke gave me a sad smile. “She always does this when she remembers…” She broke off and shrugged. “I guess it exhausts her.”
I brushed my lips over Annabelle’s forehead and stood with her in my arms. “Come on,” I told the girl. “You and your mom should get some sleep.”
I carried Annabelle down the hall to my bedroom and laid her in the middle of the king-sized bed. Pulling the covers over her, I glanced at Mieke who was standing on the other side of the bed. “You two take the bed. I’ll take the couch.”
I had another bedroom, but I’d turned it into my music room. It had my keyboard and guitars in it. I’d fix that in the morning, I promised myself. I wanted Annabelle and Mieke to stay with me for as long as they were going to be in California. I didn’t want to waste another second away from them.
Mieke lifted her green and gold gaze from her mother, startling me yet again with their unique blend of the two colors. Her eyes couldn’t be labeled as hazel; there was too much green. The gold was just enough to catch your attention and hold it. “Would you… Will you lie with us for a little while? I’m tired, but I don’t think I could fall asleep right away.” I blinked, surprised by her softly spoken question, and she bit her bottom lip. “Please? Just for a little while?”
Giving her a nod, I climbed in on the right side of the bed beside Annabelle. Instinctively, I wrapped an arm around her and pulled her against my chest. She let out a soft, shuddery breath and burrowed against me as if she was desperate to get closer in her sleep.
Mieke kicked off her shoes and turned off the light as she climbed into bed on the other side of her mother. With the door still open, I could see her worried face as she watched me holding her mother so close. “She acts so strong that sometimes I forget how vulnerable she really is.” Mieke stroked a hand down Annabelle’s arm, seeming so much older than she really was.
We lay like that for several long minutes, both of us quiet as we watched Annabelle sleep. My gut was churning, my mind racing from what Mieke had told me earlier. Maybe I hadn’t been there to feel the fear when my daughter had been taken, but I felt it right then. Annabelle must have lost her mind…
“How did they find you?” I couldn’t help but ask, my mind stumbling over all the things that could have happened to my little girl when she’d been snatched.
The hand that had been stroking up and down Annabelle’s arm lifted to her mother’s hair, combing her fingers over the hot-pink strands. “Mrs. Viars didn’t hurt me, Dad. So don’t torture yourself about that, okay?” She continued to stroke Annabelle’s hair, as if she needed to soothe her mother even though she was sleeping. “She took me to her home and fed me mac and cheese, played Barbies with me. I was scared, but only for a little while. She was nice but distraught from the loss of her daughter. Later they told me that it was because I reminded her of her little girl that she took me. Her mind was protecting her from the pain of the recent loss, and seeing me confused her.”
I swallowed around the lump in my throat, relief washing through me as she told me about her time with this Mrs. Viars woman. “But how did they find you, sweetheart?” I needed to know or I knew I’d never get another second of sleep for the rest of my life.
Mieke smiled, as if knowing how badly I needed her answer. “Mrs. Viars’ sister came to check on her two days after she took me. When she saw me and realized I was the little girl the entire state was looking for, she called nine-one-one. She didn’t want the cops to scare me, or her sister to get hurt, so she told them to be gentle. A woman, a Fed I guess, knocked on the door a few minutes later and took custody of Mrs. Viars.” She shrugged. “I don’t remember a lot after that. It became kind of crazy. I remember a cop picking me up and wrapping a blanket around me because I was still in Mrs. Viars’ daughter’s nightgown and it was chilly outside. I remember being a little scared about all the strangers and the flashing lights of all the cop cars. One woman might have come into the house, but there were at least twenty cop cars outside.”
“Was…your mom there?”
“No. They wouldn’t let her come to the scene. The cop put me in the back of an ambulance and let me play with his badge on the ride to the hospital. He stayed with me while a doctor checked me over to make sure I wasn’t hurt. Someone brought her and Uncle Noah to the hospital.” I saw her chin tremble and lifted my arm from around Annabelle to pull her closer.
“Mom was a little hysterical at first, but when she saw me she tried to keep her calm. I remember her smiling even though she was crying pretty hard. She grabbed me and wouldn’t let me go. She had never squeezed me that hard until that day. She had always been so careful when she hugged me up until then. Uncle Noah was crying too, and I thought that was crazy because I’d never seen him cry before. Seeing his tears scared me more than anything else had during that entire time.” She swallowed with difficulty and continued with a whisper. “It was only then that I realized something bad had happened. That what had happened to me had been something some little girls didn’t come back from.”
“Mieke…” I rasped out, tears burning my eyes. I didn’t try to hold them back. Letting them fall freely, I pulled her even closer, practically squishing Annabelle against my chest in my need to hold Mieke just as close.
Motherfucking hell. I should have been there. I should have been there to hold her and her mother. Maybe if I had, none of that would have happened. Mieke wouldn’t have been taken… And maybe Michelle would have been there too. A choked sob escaped me.
Annabelle sighed my name in her sleep and wrapped her arms around me. She pressed a kiss into my chest, and I felt it even through the cotton of my shirt. Mieke draped an arm over her mother, her hand on my back as she held me just as close as I held her. Together we sandwiched Annabelle between us, protecting her from the bad memories.
Mieke fell asleep a little while later. The sound of her even breaths mixed with her mother’s calmed me enough that I was able to relax, but it was hours later before I even began to feel like sleeping. I didn’t dare move, but watched with a new determination as my two girls slept.
I hadn’t been there for them when they had needed me the most, but that stopped now. I was done hiding from my past fuck-ups. That shit was over and it was time I moved on instead of hiding from them and Annabelle. None of it mattered now.
I had a daughter to get to know and try to make up for not being in her life until now. My gaze dropped to the sleeping beauty curled against me, holding on to me as desperately in sleep as I wanted to hold on to her for
ever. “I love you, Anna. I’m not going anywhere ever again,” I promised her. “Tomorrow our new lives start. I swear to you, baby. We’ll start the life we should have had all along.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Annabelle
The ringing of the doorbell startled me awake. I jerked my head up, my eyes instantly opening. When I found myself in a room I didn’t recognize, I tensed. With the blinds open I could see that the room was painted in warm browns and the bed was a huge California king with chocolate-colored sheets and comforter.
And Zander Brockman was sound asleep beside me, his arm still around my waist, anchoring me to him.
The events of the night before flooded back into my mind and I dropped my head back onto the pillows as I tried to breathe through the memories I’d had to relive. I knew all about Layla and Jesse Thornton’s torment when their twin boys had been born so prematurely, but at least they hadn’t had to say goodbye to one of their precious babies. I understood exactly how Emmie had felt when Mia had almost been taken. She’d only had to live with the thought of her daughter being taken for less than an hour. I’d had days to imagine what was happening to my little girl in the hands of a stranger. The only thing that ever got me through it was imagining Michelle as Mieke’s guardian angel, watching over her twin during the time her sister was gone.
Thinking of my little baby in Heaven, watching over her sister, brought me peace and I was able to smile as a tear spilled from my eyes. I didn’t wipe it away. I’d never wipe away the memory of Michelle like that.
The sound of a voice I vaguely remembered followed by Mieke’s quiet reply had me lifting my head again. Frowning, I glanced at the bedroom door, slightly ajar. Seconds later the door was pushed open and the light was switched on, a frowning Natalie Cutter standing in the doorway.