something rise in her eyes that he was suddenly certain he wanted to avoid. “Not maybe. Should.” Her voice strained and he scrambled for a means to head her off. That wasn’t what he was asking. If there were things he needed to know— “Should have, maybe.” No, Wrecker thought, should not— “Should. Fuck it,” she said, “you’re almost eighteen,” and launched in.
Wrecker felt his stomach lurch as Melody talked, and cried, and talked more. It was as though she’d held everything inside by force of will and once she let go it all had to come out. Her words rolled uncontrollably, and it took every ounce of his resolve not to reach over and clamp a rough hand across her mouth. His head spun with the information. Hello, son, meet your grandparents—and, by the way, you’ve got relatives you never even guessed at. Meg, his aunt? Even better: a mother who’s alive and well and probably on her way to find you. As soon as she gets out of jail. Deedee stumbled over her words, said things badly, tried to correct, stumbled worse, and once the tears started she couldn’t get them to stop. For chrissakes, Wrecker thought. Out of jail? He couldn’t wrap his mind around it. Around any of it. Did he have to know this? Because of why? And what was he supposed to do now?
He sat staring at the seat back in shock, his circuits blown and his face still as a stone.
Melody slowed down, gulped another deep breath. She’d made a giant mistake, she said. She had meant to protect him but she could tell from his face she had hurt him instead. If she had told him the truth from the start—goddamn Willow for being right, again—he wouldn’t be looking at her in that way right now. That way that said, you? You? Even you?
Wrecker dropped his chin to stare at his hands. If he kept all his attention focused there, he could try to resist the arc of electricity that cycled painfully through his body.
Melody paused. She had never before understood so deeply, she said softly, that her omission could be as gravely harmful as an outright lie.
Wrecker scowled, and jerked his arm up with an awkward effort. “Stop.” He didn’t want her apology. “Just say it outright. Tell me again,” he said, his voice as hollow as a rotten tree.
And so she did, because she had to. What she had always said before—I became your mother because I wanted you and your birth mom couldn’t take care of you—all of it true, in its way—became something different, told now. Everything she knew, she told him unabridged. That his birth mother was Meg’s younger sister. That she—that woman, Lisa Fay—had raised him until he was three, and that she’d lost custody of him when she was sentenced to prison for serious crimes. That he had lived with foster families until Len took him in. That he was scared and angry and out of control and too much for Len to handle and so he brought Wrecker to Bow Farm.
She had let him get away once, she said, her voice quavering, and she never would again. Not until he was grown. Until he was a man, and he walked out on his own.
Wrecker’s voice was tight. “What else?”
That was all she knew. Melody hesitated. There was more, she said, and stole a glance at him. But if he wanted to know it, he would have to ask Willow.
“Willow?” he said, incredulous.
Willow had been to see Lisa Fay in jail, and they had talked for a long time. “I wouldn’t let her tell me,” Melody said. Her voice cracked. “I wouldn’t let her tell you, either.” Willow had wanted Wrecker to know, but Melody had sworn her to secrecy. “You were eight,” she said, and her voice trailed off to a whisper. “I had to make a choice.”
“When were you going to tell me?” he asked, a fury behind his words.
“I’m telling you now.” Melody turned her face away and spoke with such a small voice that he had to bend toward her and strain to hear. “I was afraid.” She lifted a hand to shield her face. “I was afraid that I’d wake up one morning and you’d be gone.”
The jet dropped suddenly and Wrecker reached for the paper bag in the seat back ahead and threw up into it.
When he was finished, he glanced at Melody. She looked green.
“You’ve got one there