Page 77 of Tattered (Lark Cove 1)

The one thing I’d always wanted to be was part of a family. A real family. The illusion of Logan with me and Charlie was too tempting to pass up, even if it only lasted a while.

“Do you have more to do out here?” he asked.

I nodded, easing out of his arms. “Just a bit. Feel like hanging out in here while I finish?”

“Yeah. Would you mind if I poked around? I’d like to see more of your other pieces.”

“Um . . . sure.”

I felt a rush of nervous, excited energy. I wanted Logan to like my other pieces but I was working with actual garbage here. If he was going to inspect my workshop, I needed a drink.

“Want a beer?” I jerked a thumb over my shoulder toward the door. “Hazel refilled the ice in one of the coolers so there are some cold ones left over from the party.”

“I’d love one. Thanks.”

I nodded and walked outside, fidgeting with my fingers as I hurried to the porch. I couldn’t recall everything I’d stashed away in the workshop’s drawers and cabinets. Most of it was just unfinished projects. I think I had a painting or two complete that I needed to drive up to Kalispell. And I’d finished my spoon nest while he’d been in New York.

I climbed the porch and grabbed a couple of beers from the cooler. Then I picked up my pace, practically running back to the shed.

Was my sketch pad in there?

My feet skidded on the grass. Shit! Yes. I’d left it out there last week. I’d had trouble sleeping one night and come out here to draw the image plaguing my dreams.

Logan’s face.

In fact, during the two weeks he’d been gone, I’d filled a ten-page sketch pad with his eyes, nose and perfectly shaped ears. He did not need to see that.

I jerked out of my stupor, running back to the shed. I hit the door but Logan’s back was to me. “Here,” I panted, holding out his beer.

He turned, bringing something he’d taken out of a drawer with him.

“That’s j—”

“What’s this?”

Thank god. I nearly collapsed with relief to see him holding an old, tattered box instead of my sketch pad. “Oh, that’s nothing.”

He lifted the lid, revealing a stack of old Polaroids.

Hazel must have snuck them in here one day. She’d been on me to do a scrapbook with these photos for years. I guess she thought that by leaving them in my workshop, I’d be inspired.

“What are all these?” Logan asked, lifting a handful from the box.

“Just some pictures Hazel took a long time ago.”

Pictures I didn’t like to look at because of the memories that came with them. Hazel thought I needed to embrace my childhood and be proud of how far I’d come, considering my start in life.

I didn’t agree. I preferred to block out all the lonely nights and uncelebrated birthdays.

I hated thinking about how a mother could dump a newborn baby in a pile of garbage. I’d spent the first two hours of my life with food scraps, foul odors and filth—or so I’d been told. The theory was that my mother had pushed me out, then tossed me in a Dumpster.

That was after she’d gotten me hooked on heroin in the womb.

Luckily for me, a homeless man who’d been sleeping in that Dumpster’s alley had come “home” a little early that night and carried me to a nearby hospital. I’d detoxed. I’d grown. I’d made it further than most thought I ever would.

But while Hazel reveled in all that I’d become and my fighting spirit, I didn’t like to think about how a mother could abandon her child. I didn’t want the reminder of how the one person who’d been supposed to love me had so easily thrown me away.

I had no idea who my mother was, or my father.