Page 78 of Tattered (Lark Cove 1)

I never would.

“Hey.” Logan touched my arm. “Where’d you go?”

“Sorry.” I forced a smile, blinking away the threat of tears. “Just thinking.”

“Is this you?” He turned up a photo from the top of the stack.

I nodded, taking in the photo.

I was standing outside the home where I’d grown up. The one where I’d met Hazel.

My jeans were too short for my string-bean legs, but considering how skinny I’d been, they were probably the only ones that would fit my waist. It was winter, so I had on a stocking cap, which covered my long hair. It was freshly washed for a change and Hazel had just trimmed it that afternoon. My sweatshirt was a size too big and frayed at the hems. My tennis shoes were worn, but for hand-me-downs, they’d been some of the nicer ones I’d owned.

But I was smiling, because the twenty-year-younger Hazel had just told me a joke.

“How old were you here?”

“I think ten or eleven. Hazel would know right off the top of her head. She took that one. And all the other ones.”

She came to my orphanage when I was eight. I remember walking into the kitchen one day, and there she was with a cigarette burning in the ashtray by the window. Her dark hair had been tied back with a red bandana.

“Let me see those for a sec.” I took the stack from his hands, thumbing through them until I found the one I’d been searching for and handed it over. “This was her back then.”

He chuckled. “She was a real-life Rosie the Riveter.”

“Chambray shirt and all.”

He handed back her picture and I stared at it for a long moment. While my own pictures dredged up pain, seeing her from back then was like a warm hug.

Because of Hazel, I had a few fond memories of my childhood. She’d come to work as a cook for the orphanage where I’d been raised. The home had been one of the few open orphanages in New York at the time. While most other children had gone into the foster care system, the director of my orphanage had retained a small group of us. I’d been the youngest, and after I’d turned eighteen, the place had closed.

Hazel had come back to Montana.

Jackson had followed her out here first.

Then I’d come last.

“Is this Jackson?” Logan held out one of the Polaroids.

I nodded. “We’ve been friends for a long time.”

Jackson was sitting next to me on a park bench, glaring at Hazel behind the camera because she’d made him buzz his hair off that morning. The foster home where he’d been living at the time had been infected with lice. And she wouldn’t let him near me until they’d all been killed. He’d bitched and moaned about that haircut, but he’d never grown it longer than an inch since.

Logan’s forehead furrowed as he thumbed through the stack. “There are only kids in these pictures. Is this a school? Is that how you met Hazel?”

“Sort of. I guess you could call her our caretaker.” Or guardian angel. “It’s all ancient history now.” I took the photos from his hands and put them back in the box. Mentally replaying my upbringing was difficult enough. I didn’t want to explain it to Logan, at least not tonight.

“Thea—”

“Charlie has soccer practice tomorrow at four. Hazel was going to take her since I need to work, but I’m sure you could go if you’d like.”

He frowned and took my face in his hands. “We’ll play it your way tonight. But sooner or later, you’re going to let me in, baby. I?

??ll break down the door if I have to.”

“Talking about the past isn’t easy for me,” I whispered.

“Because you don’t believe I’m a safe place yet.” He dropped his head to mine. “You can believe it, Thea. Always believe.”