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name you."
    "My biological parents. Sedge, I feel as if I was grown in a Petri dish."
    "No, my dear. You were born the usual way. Quite healthy and quite normal and quite adorable."
    "My birth parents were high school sweethearts? I saw their ages in the paperwork. Giving birth tome and then giving me away was their decision? Did you ask their lawyer whether they wished to keep me? Of course, at their ages I expect they were more interested in applying to college than marrying and raising a child."
    He said nothing. The soft whisk of our horses' hooves in the snow was the only sound. "Was I ... Sedge, was I the child of some terrible circumstance? Do you think my birth mother was raped?"
    "Oh, Kara. No, No. It was nothing like that."
    "Then what?"
    He stopped his horse, and I halted mine. I stared at his strained expression. The soft creak of fine English saddlery merged with the whoosh of our horses' breath. "Your parents were ... compromised. Unsuitable."
    "Because they were underage?"
    "Let me ask you something. There is no need for you to pursue this matter. You are a Whittenbrook, your adoption was perfectly legitimate, and there is no question that you remain your adoptive parents' heir. No one but you and I know the truth. Search your heart. Do you really want to know more?"
    "Yes." No hesitation. "There are two other people who know the truth. My biological parents. They know they gave me away. Sedge, what if I have brothers and sisters?"
    "You don't."
    "So you have researched my birth parents in the years since!"
    "When you turned twenty-one and came into your trust fund, your parents asked me to find them. To ascertain their ... fate."
    My heart squeezed and released in tight knots. "You discovered that my birth parents turned out to be awful human beings?"
    "No, not awful. Just unexpected."
    "Unexpected? Please, the look on your face is terrifying in its sympathy. Please, just tell me what was wrong with them."
    He exhaled slowly. "My dear, by all accounts they were and are lovely, gentle souls, and, to their credit, they have remained together as a devoted couple all these years. But I cannot tell you how they felt about giving birth to you, or whether you would matter to them now. And I cannot encourage you to seek them out. There's always the risk that they-or the people surrounding them-might try to take advantage ofyour status and wealth. There's also the risk that the sheer heartache might be more than you can bear. And more than they can bear."
    "I may not be an iron-willed Whittenbrook, but I believe I can fend off a few familial parasites and gold diggers. Tell me tivhat's tivrong tivith my birth parents."
    He shut his eyes for a moment, then met my gaze. "To coin one of the kinder terms, they are mentally retarded."

    I sat on the snowy ground beneath a winter oak. My gelding dozed, exhaling warm, white steam near my face. I had a somnambulant effect on horses. I spoke melodic Portuguese and native Amazonian languages to them, and they seemed to think it a secret code. South American horse whispering was my specialty.
    As a very young child I sometimes dreamed beautifully odd dreams of moonlit woodlands filled with a kind of music, like shy drawls calling to me inside a waterfall. Mother said I was remembering where I came from in heaven, and Dad, carrying me high on his privileged shoulders, again told me the story of how I, Kara Whittenbrook, had been born in their arms beneath the exotic glow of a Brazilian moon, and how no one on earth could possibly love me more than they.
    Was that much true, at least? That they'd saved me from an unloved life?
    I put my head in my hands, mourning for Mother and Dad but angry at their deception. "I'm going to Florida and see what kind of people my birth parents are," I told the gelding. "I have to find out who I really am."
    He nuzzled my hair and blew sweet vapor on me. Yes, I had a way with horses.
    At least I knew that much.
     

Chapter 3
    Ben
    The Thocco