CHAPTER 5 The Brother

(Sabrina’s POV)

I woke up because there was someone in the room.

Not in the room—in the next room. Through the door I could hear the soft give of a couch and the slow constant noise of someone breathing. I tried to sit up, but my chest hurt. My throat felt as if I had swallowed gravel.

My hand went to my stomach.

Still there. Still flat. Still a secret.

I breathed out.

A suite with high ceiling and cream curtains, and a vase of white peonies on the dresser I could smell from the bed.

My peony.

I had told Aunt Nancy once, two summers ago, that I wished I could have peonies in the kitchen. Aunt Nancy did not have the money for white peonies and a suite like this.

Someone else had paid for these.

Suddenly, I remembered. That deep voice from the hospital bed. I’d thought it was a dream.

Sister. My name is Eric Atwood. I have been looking for you for a very long time.

I sat up so fast my vision went black.

When it cleared, I was looking at a man standing in the doorway between the rooms.

He was a tall man in an expensive shirt with the sleeves rolled, and the moment my eyes landed on him he stood up straighter, like he had been caught at something. He was looking at me without blinking, and there was something terrified in the looking.

“You’re awake,” he said.

He did not come into the room.

“You’re the one from the hospital,” I croaked.

“Eric.” He said his own name gently. “Eric Atwood. We didn’t—I didn’t get to explain anything. You went out again almost as soon as you woke up.”

He gestured at the room without quite finishing the gesture, then pressed his palms together between his knees.

“This is a hotel. The Carlisle. I didn’t think—after a fire, I didn’t think a hospital ward was the right place for you. I’m sorry if that was the wrong call.”

I pushed myself up against the headboard, slowly this time, and reached for the glass of water I hadn’t known was there. My hand was steadier than the rest of me. I drank, and my eyes never left him.

“I don’t know you,” I said.

“No. You don’t. I know.” He nodded too many times. “There’s clothes, by the way. In the wardrobe and the bags by the door. Yours all—there wasn’t anything left, after. So I had someone pick up—I don’t know your sizes, so they bought a range, you can send back whatever’s wrong, it doesn’t matter.”

He stopped himself and swallowed, like he could hear how fast he was talking.

“Sorry. I’m doing this badly. I had a whole—I practiced this in the car and I’ve forgotten all of it.”

I set the glass down. “Where’s my husband?”

The warmth went out of his face for a second, his eyes going stony, then he smiled.

“Not here,” he said evenly. “And not coming. I made sure of that.”

I frowned.

I didn’t trust the way this stranger had called me sister like it cost him something. People didn’t do things for me. People hadn’t done things for me in three years, not once, not without a ledger open underneath.

“What do you want?” I asked flatly. “Just tell me what this is. Because right now a man I’ve never met has put me in a hotel room and told me my husband can’t come, and that doesn’t make me feel safe, it makes me feel like I’ve been moved.”

Eric flinched. He actually flinched, and dropped his eyes to his own hands.

“That’s fair,” he said quietly. “God. That’s completely fair.” He breathed out. “Sabrina, you were—twenty-six years ago, a child was taken from a hospital in Bellmont. A girl. Three days old.”

He looked up at me, and his eyes had gone wet and bright, and his mouth was shaking now in a way the rest of him was fighting.

“We’ve been looking for her—for you—since we realized. My mother never stopped. There’s a private firm, and eleven days ago they matched a DNA record from a fertility hospital, and it’s you. It’s you!”

The room had gone very still around his voice.

I stared at him. None of it would fit anywhere inside me.

Twenty-six years. A mother who never stopped. What was he talking about? I had grown up in a walk-up apartment with an aunt who pinched pennies, and there had never, ever been anyone looking for me.

A knock came at the door.

Eric was up before I could speak. He crossed the room and opened it, and there in the hallway, clutching a battered handbag against her chest, stood a small grey-haired woman with her face already crumpling.

“Aunt Nancy,” I breathed.

“Oh, baby. Oh, my girl.”

Aunt Nancy was crying before she’d even cleared the doorway, one hand pressed flat to her own mouth, the other reaching. She crossed to the bed and took my bandaged hand in both of hers and held on like she’d be torn away if she let go.

I looked from the weeping woman who had raised me to the tall stranger by the door, and the floor I had stood on for twenty-six years quietly came apart underneath me.

And then one piece of it snagged.

“Atwood,” I said slowly. My fingers tightened on the edge of the blanket. “You said Atwood.”

“Yes,” said Eric. “Our family name.”

“Alexis.” The name came out rough through my burned throat, startling him. “Alexis Atwood. Isn't she your sister?”

“What? Of course not.”