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Monica from the records office nearly screeched with pleasure when Luke marched up to her desk. She jumped up and spread her manicured fingers across the counter. Her eyes hardly registered Heather directly beside him as she took in full view of this rugged, handsome man.
“There you are,” she purred. “I haven’t seen you at the bar this week. Worried we scared you away.”
“Been busy, is all,” Luke replied. “Life as a sous chef isn’t the easiest.”
“You’ll be the big boss one day,” Monica told him.
“And so will you,” Luke said. “Someday, you’ll rule this town from the record office all the way to the top.”
Monica blushed and swept a blond curl behind her ear. She then turned her eyes toward Heather and gave her a little up-down as she assessed Heather in Luke’s sweats. “What can I do for you two today?”
Back in the record collection, Heather gave Luke a cheeky grin and said, “You know how to get what you want, no matter what, don’t you?”
Luke shook his head. “No way. And before you ask me if I feel guilty about old Monica over there, I’ll tell you for sure she has about three boyfriends right now, all of whom are head over heels in love with her— as they should be. She’s certainly not my type at all.”
He fluttered his fingers over the birth files in February of 1977, the same files they’d parsed through weeks before. Here, he drew out a file that read Melanie Hyde— the birth certificate for Heather, from all those years before, when Melanie and Adam hadn’t yet arrived at the name “Heather” and had put a filler of Melanie’s name. Below, beside Father, Adam Keating’s name was listed; below that, Melanie Hyde was listed as the mother. They’d both given their signature— two foreign-looking swooshes in faded blue ink.
“She had him fooled from day one,” Heather whispered in disbelief. “My birth unraveled his entire world with Jane, Nicole, and Casey. Like a bomb went off.”
It was difficult for Heather to comprehend what might happen if and when she encountered Melanie. On the drive over to the record office, she’d half-imagined herself finding Melanie still up in the mountains with the man she’d left Adam for. She’d be in her sixties, probably— maybe a direct reflection of Heather herself, who’d always struggled, now that she thought of it, to see herself in her sisters and her stand-in mother, Jane.
Her mind had often given her the term “sociopath” while she’d read over the diary entries. What kind of woman could have done what Melanie had done? What had brought her to such cruelty?
And worst of all, did Heather have any of that cruelty within her?
What was it her other mother, Jane, had always said to Casey, Nicole, and Heather? “Kindness. It costs nothing but means everything.” Aunt Tracy had said the words in the years after Jane’s death, taking up the narrative. Kindness seemed a foreign concept to the likes of Melanie Hyde.
“So I guess we’re searching for a record of Melanie Hyde,” Luke said. He splayed the birth certificate out on the counter between them and then returned to the front desk to retrieve Monica.
Monica returned, typed the password into the computer to enter, and then instructed them on searching through current records, which had been moved online five years before.
“It took us some time to move into the twenty-first century,” she told them pointedly. “But now that we’re here, it makes everything a whole lot easier. Are you looking for lost family members? Lots of people are hungry for their family tree, now that Ancestry dot com and Twenty-Three and Me are so popular. Just type who you’re looking for here...” She gestured toward a little empty box and then headed back up to the front desk, where someone waited for her.
Heather poised her fingers over the keyboard. With tentative motions, she typed out, “Melanie Hyde,” then let it sit there for a moment.
“Some part of me doesn’t want to know,” she admitted to Luke. “This woman was cruel and manipulative. She left me with a man who wasn’t my father after she stole everything from him. She led Adam to kill himself, and I’m pretty damn sure she didn’t care.”
Luke nodded. “But I still understand this desire to know. I’ve had it all my life.”
Heather clicked enter.
Almost immediately, the screen flung up a single result:
MELANIE HYDE
BIRTH: March 17, 1954, Bar Harbor, Maine
DEATH: October 7, 1999, Bar Harbor, Maine
Heather fell back into the chair just behind her. She gaped at the word: DEATH. In the span of a single day, she’d learned of the existence of this other mother. She’d lived. She’d given birth. She’d done a hundred cruel things and perhaps some good things, too, and then had died at the age of forty-five. She’d lived only one year beyond Heather’s current age.
“Jesus,” Heather whispered.
Luke spread a hand over her back in an offer of comfort. Heather was listless.
“She’s gone,” Heather said finally.
“What about your father?”
Heather investigated Roger Conrad and found that he, too, had died. Her heart dropped into her stomach.
“I’m an orphan in so many different ways,” she lamented, her voice breaking.
According to the server, Roger Conrad didn’t have any family leftover in Bar Harbor or surrounding areas. Melanie, however, did.
“Kim Hyde Robinson.” Heather breathed the name to herself. “Her sister. She had a sister.”
She was listed as a divorced mother of two, born in Bar Harbor two years before her sister, Melanie. This made her sixty-nine years old.
“There’s an address,” Luke pointed out.
“Yes. I see that.” Heather felt as though she walked on hot coals.
“You want to go check it out?” Luke asked.
**
HEATHER TYPED KIM’S address into her phone’s GPS and watched as the rain pattered across Luke’s truck windows. Luke was quiet, capable at the wheel, knowing full-well that conversation wasn’t in the cards for Heather, not now as her mind raced.
Again, Nicole texted her.
NICOLE: I’m super worried about you.
NICOLE: I’m at the inn.
NICOLE: Come find me when you feel up to it.
NICOLE: I don’t like feeling like you’re out there on your own, dealing with this.
NICOLE: I want to help you carry it.
NICOLE: Please.
Heather pressed her lips together, reading and re-reading the messages. When Luke hovered at a stop sign, she typed.
HEATHER: Please, don’t worry about me. I love you.
It had to be enough for now.
As they passed the Keating Inn, however, Heather snapped her fingers and said, “I can’t meet my aunt in your clothes, Luke.”
Luke gave her a sneaky grin. “What do you have against my fashion-forward sweats?”
“Absolutely nothing if I planned to eat ice cream all day,” Heather said. “If you could just stop by the house...”
Luke nodded. “Already ahead of you.”
Heather hurried into the house, which was blissfully void of any prying eyes from Nicole, headed upstairs, changed into a black dress and a pair of tights, grabbed her raincoat, then, after a pause, placed the relevant diaries into her purse, just in case Kim needed proof. She added just a dash of makeup but left her hair in a heap of curls due to the rain. She looked half-frantic but beautiful, like a character in a dramatic eighties movie. It would have to do.
And when she hopped into Luke’s truck a few minutes later, he whistled and said, “You were gone ten minutes, tops.”
“Impressed?”
“You’re a different kind of woman, Heather Harvey,” he teased. “I’ll give you that.”
Kim Hyde Robinson’s small yellow house was located about a half-mile from the shoreline, where the land began to curl toward the Acadia Mountains. Her house was shrouded with gorgeous, full trees, the leaves of which pooled down to capture the thick raindrops from above. Luke ballooned an umbrella over them both and hustled Heather up to the doorstep. Once there, Heather marveled that this was the second time she’d just appeared at someone’s door like this— first Evan Snow, now this.
In her past life, she would have never done something like this. She would have told Bella and Kristine that it was an invasion of privacy. That it was polite to call first.
Still, as she lifted her fist to the door, she was reminded of the bravery of some of the children in her books. They’d had to find impossible strength within themselves to press forward, to learn and grow. Even at forty-four, she had to find it within herself.
Heather knocked twice before she heard a fluttering of feet behind the door. Nervous, she assessed the garden decorations and the birdbath off to the right. Everything looked clean and bright, well taken care of. Had Melanie ever been to this house before? Had Melanie ever planted a garden? Had Melanie—
Before Heather could continue her panicked thoughts, a woman opened the door and blinked out.
Heather felt punched through the stomach almost immediately at the sight of the woman’s eyes. They were bright sapphire and enormous, just like Heather’s. Although it was probably a dye job, the woman also had jet-black hair, just like Heather. Even her nose was shaped similarly with the slightest hook at the end.
The woman peered at Heather curiously, as though they’d met before, yet she couldn’t place her.
“Can I help you?”
Heather’s throat tightened. She gripped the umbrella’s handle so hard, she thought the wood might crack.
“I’m really sorry to barge in on you like this,” she said, sounding clumsy. “It’s just that I— well, I have a very sensitive issue to discuss with you. It’s a family matter.”
The woman furrowed her brow. “Is this about one of my kids?”
Heather shook her head. “No. It’s about your sister. It’s about Melanie.”
Kim’s lips parted. She beckoned for Heather and Luke to step inside, out of the rain. Once there, Heather placed the folded-up umbrella on the coat stand and removed her coat, grateful she’d taken the time to don something more presentable. Although Kim had obviously planned to spend the day indoors, she’d still put on a pair of jeans and a black turtleneck, both of which highlighted her still-powerful, lean figure.
She was sincerely beautiful.
“May I offer you two some tea?” Kim still looked terribly confused.
Before Heather could answer, Kim turned on a heel and led them into the small living room with its attached kitchen. There, she placed a kettle on the stove. Behind her, the clock read 11:13. Heather had lost all concept of time.
Kim sat on the easy chair and beckoned for them to sit across from her on the couch. The water remained silent on the stove for the time being. Kim’s sapphire eyes tried to dig into Heather’s similarly sapphire ones.
“You said this was about Melanie.” Kim finally broke the silence.
“Yes.” How could she possibly name everything? “I’m terribly sorry for your loss.”
Kim nodded firmly. “Thank you. Well. To be honest with you, prior to her death, Melanie and I hadn’t spoken in decades.”
“Decades?” Heather couldn’t imagine going a month without speaking to Nicole or Casey in some way, let alone decades.
The water began to roar from the stove. Kim hopped up and poured the tea, seemingly grateful to have something to do with her hands. “She was a piece of work, my sister. Always after everyone else’s money. She borrowed from my husband and me endlessly and never paid us back. That’s not why we parted ways, though. She took our mother’s locket without asking. Sold it and took all the money. Around that time, my husband landed a job in Bangor, and I got pregnant with my daughter. I wanted nothing to do with Melanie or with Bar Harbor at the time. By the time my children and I returned to Bar Harbor, in fact, Melanie was already dead.”
Heather’s heart cracked at the story. She dropped her shoulders as Kim placed the two cups of tea before them. Luke took her hand.
“I’ve just learned that Melanie was my mother,” Heather said finally, pressing through the silence. “I have a photo of the birth certificate to prove it.”
Kim’s face echoed her profound shock. She gaped at the photo Heather had taken at the record office, then fell back on the couch, nearly spilling her tea.
“You’re such a Hyde girl,” she whispered in disbelief. “I knew it when I opened the door. But her daughter? Melanie’s daughter? How did I not know?”
Heather knew she would have to explain everything. It would take time, and it would be painful, but Kim’s eyes were hungry for the story. She took a small sip of the piping hot tea, then dived in— describing where she’d grown up and everything she’d learned in the previous few weeks. The story took well over an hour. None of them took a sip of tea, which cooled to room temperature as it was forgotten.
With the story complete, Kim placed her cup of tea off to the side, rose, and closed the space between them. Heather fell forward into her embrace as tears rolled from her eyes. Even the way Kim smelled seemed familiar, like a piece of a puzzle she’d long-ago lost.
When Kim dropped back, there was the sound of the front door opening. Almost immediately was the scrambling sound of soft feet, then the call of an adult. “Mom? Mom, are you home?”
Heather’s heart surged with fear. She glanced left toward Luke, whose lips were parted with disbelief. Her family was here. They’d been all around her all this time.