Page 129 of Where Broken Wings Fly

“That doesn’t mean he lied to me!”

She implores me with her eyes. “You remember her scar, don’t you? He attacked her with a smashed vodka bottle one night when she threatened to leave with you.”

I rub my temples as my headache explodes. “I… don’t remember how she got it.”

“Without you, he wouldn’t receive any child support payments from the government,” Lola continues. “How else would he pay for the drugs? You were his source of income.”

More anguished tears spill down my cheeks. “If this is true, why didn’t she look for me? He was a shit dad, and she just left me with him.”

“She never once gave up hope of finding you.”

“That means nothing to me! Why didn’t she come?”

Lola’s face crumples. “Your father took you and ran. She searched and searched, but you were gone. That’s when she tracked me down, hoping that I knew where he was.”

I angrily scrub my tears. “You sat in that cabin on my very first day here and lied to my face when you asked me to trust you. What’s your excuse for that?”

Wringing her hands together, Lola focuses on the golden wedding band she still wears on her ring finger. The strength that shined through her wizened appearance from the day we met has gone.

Now, she looks like an old, broken woman, unable to fix the mistakes of a lifetime. Not even the scores of lives she’s saved in the years since have redeemed her of this sin.

“I’m sorry that I lied to you. No excuses, Willow.”

“Just tell me why. That’s all I want to know.”

“I didn’t know what else to say. I did what I thought was the kindest thing.”

“But you knew where I was when my father died. Why didn’t Katie come then?” I choke on a sob and fall to my knees. “Why didn’t my mum come and save me?”

Leaving her perch on the bench, Lola joins me kneeling in the grass. I don’t fight back as she pulls me into her arms. Pressed against her cookie-scented chest, I lose all sense of control. Her gentle whispers fail to keep me together.

“I didn’t write that letter,” she admits tearfully.

“You d-didn’t?”

“Your mother wanted to reach out. She came to look for you when the police called me, but you’d slipped through her fingers again. She wrote that letter in desperation.”

“It h-had your name on it.”

Lola rubs my back in slow, comforting circles. “She didn’t want to scare you after so many years apart. We didn’t know what your father had told you. It felt safer to pretend it was me reaching out instead.”

Shoving her away with a snarl, I scramble to my feet and back away from her. Lola is staring up at me with such raw agony, it hurts to see the pain festering deep inside of her. There’s a bottomless pit reflected in her eyes, threatening to drown me.

“Mummy!”

The door to the cabin has opened, and Arianna now stands on the wraparound porch. I panic, scrubbing my tears out of sight. Zach and Micah bustle her back inside, hanging back on the porch as Killian jumps into action.

I glance back at Lola, needing to know the truth. “You’re telling me that all this time, after everything that’s happened to me, Katie was alive and well.”

Lola simply nods. “Yes.”

“When that monster took me to a strange country, stuck a ring on my finger and… and… when he forced me to… she wasn’t there!”

Her face crumples, and she can’t respond.

“I needed someone to save me, and nobody did. Nobody, Lola!”

Vaulting over the porch railings in a rush to get to us, Killian lands on the lawn with a loud thud. He leaves Zach and Micah behind, both of them stuck together and watching the unfolding disaster with horrified expressions.

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