Page 148 of The Wrong Brother

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“It probably isn’t. But you’ll want to hear what I have to say.” I meet her eyes steadily. “It’s necessary.”

For several seconds she simply stares at me, weighing whether she can close the door before I react.

She knows she can’t.

Not because I’d force my way inside, but because she can sense the patience I have. The willingness to take something all the way to the conclusion.

Eventually, with visible reluctance, she takes down the chain and opens the door another foot.

The motel room is small but tidy. A little kitchenette occupies one wall, a worn sofa sits beneath the window, and a stack of library books rests beside an armchair. Someone has tried to make the space feel like home with inexpensive curtains and a potted plant struggling to survive on the windowsill.

It isn’t much, but it’s enough for relief to wash through me quickly. A part of me has been scared for Kate—scared at the kind of woman I’d find here.

I step inside and close the door behind me.

Shannon remains standing near the entrance as though she’s afraid to venture farther into her own space.

“You found me.”

“I’ve always known how to. I just didn’t look that hard before.” I feel the truth in it even as I say the words.

Confusion crosses her face.

“Then, why now?”

Because Andrei finally pushed too far. Emma is carrying my child. Kate deserves the truth before the rest of the world learns it.

I study the woman who spent years trying to keep safe a daughter she was never allowed to keep. It isn’t hard to conjure the memory of the agony on her face when I told her what I planned to do: find Kate and take her in as my own.

I draw a slow breath.

“It’s time.”

The words settle heavily between us. Shannon’s shoulders sag as though she’d been expecting them all along. Her eyes close briefly.

When they open again, they’re shining with tears.

“He found out, didn’t he? He knows where I am and that you?—”

“No.”

Shannon goes still, brows knit. Unshed tears glisten along her lashes.

“Kate did.”

Silence fills the little motel room. Then Shannon presses trembling fingers against her mouth, and I watch years of hope and heartbreak collide in a single moment.

She doesn’t speak for several long seconds.

Instead, she lowers herself slowly onto the worn sofa as though her legs have given out, her eyes fixed somewhere beyond themotel room wall. I stay standing, giving her the space to process what I’ve just told her, though every instinct urges me to keep talking until she understands exactly what’s at stake.

“Kate knows,” she whispers.

“She knows she has parents. And she knows what her father did.”

Shannon nods once, tears slipping silently down her cheeks.