The cottage door clicked shut behind me, and I could hear his mother already yelling at Brooke again. Shade had found his own way to punish them by turning them loose on each other. Whatever pretend civility his mother once showed had vanished. The mask had slipped, and Brooke was finally getting the full dose of the truth she used to be shielded from.
Shade had convinced himself that once Brooke's child came into the world, it would fade to background noise. I knew better.
The role of a stepmom carried no simple definition. It rose in dawn lullabies, in late nights spent rocking a restless body, in the careful mapping of two lives that would slip into one another. Could he face a child whose blood also ran in his veins and feel nothing? And what of me? Our days would weave together whet
