a decision as I turned off 146 onto a winding road that would take me deep into the center of the Shawnee National Forest. Followed up on it before I could change my mind. At not quite six-thirty in the morning, I used my cell phone to call the Cherokee Rose. Knowing that Katie and Gran would be busy with breakfast preparations. And that Aunt Lucy would be at the front desk in the empty lobby, using the quiet of early morning to work on the hotel’s accounts. That she would answer the phone.
When Aunt Lucy heard my voice—my simple “Hello”—she began talking immediately, chattering nervously. As she rushed to tell me that everything was all right, she said more about an Underground operation than she usually did over the phone. A clear indication, at least, that no one was within earshot.
“We’ve already found a place for Jackie down in Tucson,” she said. “She told me she likes animals and—just by chance—there was a job available in a vet’s office. Our folks are already working on her new IDs. So it’s just a matter of arranging transportation. With luck, that’ll only take a few days. In the meantime, Jackie will be spending most of her time in her room, resting and recuperating.”
That, I supposed, was meant to be reassuring. To make me feel better about Katie’s new involvement with the Underground. But my lingering anger over that made it easier for me to ask the questions that I should have asked years earlier.
“I need some information about my mother,” I said without preamble, and I felt no guilt over the hard edge in my voice.
“Okay,” Aunt Lucy said slowly.
“Was she an addict before she left Maryville? Is that what landed her in prison?”
“So you knew,” Aunt Lucy said, sighing softly. “I’d always wondered. You always seemed to hear—and know—so much. And your eyes… I remember the first time I saw them. So dark and beautiful, but so very sad. And you tried to act so tough. Only five years old, but determined to take care of your sister.” She paused for a breath, then added, “In that regard, not much has changed, has it?”
I wanted to ask my questions, to get the answers I needed, and then to stop thinking about my mother. So I ignored that emotionally charged question.
When I didn’t answer, Aunt Lucy’s voice became more businesslike.
“Lydia had drug problems before she ran away. That was one of the reasons she left. Gran wanted her in rehab. She’d been in and out of prison.”
Aunt Lucy hesitated.
“For what?”
“Why, Brooke? Does it really matter?”
I was tired of secrets, I reminded myself. So I didn’t back down. But I did pull my SUV onto the grassy shoulder at the side of the road because I’d begun speeding dangerously along a hilly, winding road.
“She’s my mother,” I said firmly. “And I’m asking. So, yes, it matters.”
Easy enough to hear the resignation in my aunt’s voice.
“She went to jail for exactly what you’d expect. Possession. Prostitution. Petty theft.”
“But you still gave her money,” I said flatly.
That surprised her.
“You didn’t tell Katie about any of this?” she asked urgently. “She’d be devastated—”
“I never told anyone,” I cut in, offended by the suggestion.
“Of course not,” Aunt Lucy said.
She said it as if my keeping a secret was something she could always take for granted. And I realized that it was.
“I don’t think Gran ever suspected, either,” she continued. “If she had, she would have tried to stop me from sending money. Gran always said that Lydia was a user, and maybe she was right. But I loved my sister, so I helped her whenever I could.”
“Was money all she was after when she visited town? Back when I was fourteen or fifteen?”
That inspired enough silence that I anticipated Aunt Lucy would try to lie to me. As she had when we were children.
She didn’t.
“You were fifteen,” she said with certainty. “You, Katie and Gran had been gone only a matter of minutes—shopping, I think—when she knocked at the side door. She told me she’d been on her way to Nashville with a friend, but they’d fought and he’d taken off with all her money. So she needed my help to get clean. To start a new life. I figured that was a lie, like so many others. But I gave her the money anyway. And then she drove away.”
No, I thought, as I stared out through my windshield and watched a passing car kick up