When Snow Falls (Whiskey Creek #2)(42)
Author: Brenda Novak

“I know you will.”

After they hung up, Dylan almost called Cheyenne. He’d been tempted to do so all day, just to hear her voice, to ask if maybe she’d like to grab a bite to eat with him later.

But if she didn’t even want her sister or his brothers to know they were seeing each other, he doubted she’d be willing to go out in public. So he ignored the impulse and got back to work.

15

“Mom?” Cheyenne leaned close to her mother’s bed.

Anita opened her eyes. The painkiller Cheyenne had given her a few minutes earlier had taken effect but hadn’t yet dragged her into a sleepy stupor. For the moment, she could think and speak almost normally.

Cheyenne wanted to take advantage of that opportunity. “Can we talk?”

“I don’t like the tone of your voice,” Anita responded, but she sounded more strident than she had in a few days.

“Why not?”

“Because I can tell you’re gonna badger me about the same old stuff. It’s getting old, Chey. There isn’t anything more I can tell you.”

“I don’t believe that, Mom. I want you to try, once again, to remember where I was born. That isn’t asking too much. You know Presley was born in San Diego, right? She could track down her birth certificate, couldn’t she?”

Lines of impatience created deep grooves in Anita’s forehead. “Where is Presley?”

“It’s midnight. She’s at work. You know that. She won’t be home until morning.”

“She’s left me to your mercies?”

“She always leaves you to my mercies. So don’t act as if that’s unusual. Anyway, it doesn’t have to be this hard,” Cheyenne said. “Just answer the question.”

“Your friends are already on the cruise. It’s too late for you to go. So why are you at me for your damn birth certificate again?”

Cheyenne examined the face of the woman who’d raised her, searching for some sign of weakening resolve or evidence that she was hiding something. “Because I want to find out before it’s too late to ask!”

Her mother’s eyelids slid closed. Fading out was her way of avoiding a confrontation. Cheyenne had tried to talk to her about this again and again, especially after Anita got sick. Tonight it felt as futile as ever. She was defeated before she even started. But time was getting short. She couldn’t continue to let Anita put her off or she might never learn the answers.

The problem was, she couldn’t force Anita to talk. Particularly since her memories of the blonde woman and the canopy bed and the pretty dolls could be merely the wishful imaginings of a girl desperate to escape a harsher reality. Maybe she’d made up the place where she had nice clothes and plenty of food, where she felt loved and safe and happy. It was possible. Anita had accused her of that before. And Presley didn’t remember anyone like the woman she described.

“Mom! You’re still awake. You can answer me.”

“I have answered you!” Her eyes flew open. “I’ve told you time and time again, you were born in Wyoming. Where do you think I got your name?”

She might have gotten the name from Wyoming. But Cheyenne wasn’t born there. She’d written to every county in the state. Each clerk had responded with a letter stating that no female Caucasian child of her age, with the name Cheyenne Christensen, was on the rolls. “It wasn’t Wyoming. I’ve checked.”

Anita didn’t have her false teeth in today. Unless she was eating, she hardly ever wore them anymore. The dentist who’d created them had done a decent job—he donated one afternoon a week to pro bono work for the poor—but she’d had them a long time and hadn’t taken any better care of them than her real teeth. Because of her sunken mouth and the ravages of cancer, she looked seventy-five instead of fifty-five. “Someone else knows more than your own mother does?”

“Wyoming shows no record of me having been born there.”

“Then the records are screwed up. That happens sometimes.”

“Or you were too drunk to realize where you were when you went into labor.” That had happened, too—monumental events occurring when her mother wasn’t in a position to remember them.

“I’ve never pretended to be a saint.” She shrugged. “If you’d rather blame it on me, go ahead. I’m too sick to stand up for myself.”

Cheyenne curved her fingernails into her palms. “Don’t start playing the martyr. I just want the truth. Please.”

“I’d tell you if I could, but I can’t, so you might as well accept it. I don’t know what else to say, except that we don’t always get what we want.”

Cheyenne came to her feet. “I deserve a few basic facts about my own life. Wanting to know where I was born is not being selfish.”

“It isn’t? What about your sister?”

“What about her?” They were nearly shouting, but Cheyenne couldn’t bring herself to care.

“All you can talk about is some blonde woman and a fancy house where you had a fancy bedroom and all kinds of toys. She isn’t part of that picture. Neither am I. It’s like you’ve imagined a place where we don’t exist. How do you think that makes us feel? I know you don’t care about me, but what about her?”

Her mother had hit her where she was most vulnerable, disarming her, as intended. That was how Anita always won these arguments—by making Cheyenne feel as if she was being egotistical, or delusional, or callous toward her sister.

Maybe Anita was right. Maybe she was all those things and worse. She’d spent the past two nights having sex with Dylan Amos, hadn’t she? She knew he wasn’t the type of man she wanted, that she could never settle for someone who reminded her so much of everything she’d rather forget. Yet she was eager to go back to him, to let him convince her that her happiness wasn’t as immaterial as it sometimes felt.

“Never mind,” she said, and stalked out of the room. She shouldn’t leave her mother alone in the house. But she couldn’t force herself to stay. Dylan had given her a taste of freedom, a way to cope with the hurt and anger. She couldn’t wait to see him again.

Promising her usual responsible self that she wouldn’t be gone long, she grabbed her coat and hurried out the door.

Fortunately, he lived just down the street.

* * *

After Cheyenne called his cell phone, Dylan met her at his front door. He did so quietly, without speaking, because his brothers were at home asleep. It was the middle of the week. She felt bad about waking him. He got up early and worked hard and, thanks to her, he hadn’t had a proper night’s sleep in three days. But when she whispered that she could go back home if he was too tired to see her, he simply hooked his arm around her neck and guided her into his bedroom. It wasn’t until they’d made desperate, frantic love that he asked her if something was wrong.