True to Me - Kay Bratt Page 0,6

going through every hit to see if that Wesley Maguire had any connection to California or Hawaii. Or carried a resemblance to herself. But she’d always come up empty.

After college she tried not to obsess about what it was that pushed her mother into leaving her family and culture—discarding it like wet boots after a heavy rain. It was curious. Her mother had traded all she’d ever known for a man who would prove to be disloyal, and a life on the mainland, in a small town where everyone thought Hawaii was a foreign country or simply a scene on a postcard.

Why?

She didn’t want to hurt her mother, so she held her questions inside, letting them burrow there and grow thorns.

Then the cancer came. Soon they were battling two long years of sickness that led to the confession, then death.

Her mother’s passing had only opened the door to more questions. Like where did the inheritance money come from? The money was one of the biggest surprises of Quinn’s life. She’d expected the estate attorney to tell her there was next to nothing left after paying the medical bills. Instead she’d been given a small fortune. She should’ve been really happy at such a windfall, but it was perplexing why her mother hadn’t used some of the money over the years. While their lifestyle had been comfortable, it was modest, to say the least. Quinn wanted to find out more about the inheritance. Needed to find out more.

The note her mother left her was such an unusual action from a woman who had never wanted to talk of the past, but it pushed Quinn into endless hours of online research that led to nothing. She thought of the photo. She’d found a Carmen Crowe on Facebook—actually, about seventeen of them. But none of them from Hawaii or who matched the projected age. She knew it was most likely that Carmen had married and dropped the name Crowe.

Sending her DNA off was really a last resort. So far nothing had happened. No magical leaves appeared on her bare-limbed tree. No long-lost relatives popped up willing to embrace her. It was as though she and her mother had been dropped onto the earth without the cumbersome, yet sometimes needed, support of family. Something just didn’t add up, and Quinn was determined more than ever to find out just what.

A knock at the door startled her. Her food had arrived, and that meant dinner, a bath, then a fall into what she knew would be a restless sleep. There were big things looming ahead of her, and if Quinn knew her subconscious, it would be a night of dreaming about them.

Chapter Three

Some women were born with natural beauty, the kind that allowed you to roll out of bed, run your fingers through your hair, and face the world without reservation.

As much as it saddened her, Quinn wasn’t one of them. It would take her some time to get her face on and look appropriate for the public. She sat up, stretched her arms over her head, and tried to blink away the grogginess. Feeling heavy with fatigue from a restless night, she slid out of bed and crossed the room.

She opened the door to the balcony, and suddenly the quiet was gone, sucked out in an instant. In its place, birds chirping and the sound of the surf crashing against the beach filled the room, shifting the solitude into something bearable.

At the desk, she pulled out the chair and sat, then turned on her computer and opened Facebook.

She typed “Elizabeth Senna” into the “Search” field.

Hundreds of women sharing her mother’s name showed up. She changed her search to “Elizabeth Ellen Senna Maui.” It didn’t do much to narrow the choices. Obviously, Senna was a popular family name.

Moving on to the ancestry website, she logged in and opened the messages box. She hoped for at least a distant connection to show up.

Nothing.

She looked at her watch, then closed the laptop and headed for the bathroom, still perplexed that in this age of technology and loss of privacy, she’d unearthed absolutely nothing helpful. Was the universe against her finding her heritage?

After a quick shower, Quinn dried her hair before coaxing it into a low-hanging twist. She expertly applied her makeup, her hands graceful and nimble, nearly moving without any thought.

One of the valuable lessons that Ethan had taught her was that one’s appearance was the first tool that could be utilized to achieve success. When they