Read Hold Her Heart (Words of the Heart) for Free Online

nodded. “I promise.”
    “Okay. Should I call Grandma and tell her?” Fiona asked Piper.
    Piper shook her head. The tails of her scarf fell over her shoulder, where her hair should have been, reminding me that she was very ill.
    “No. Not yet,” Piper told Fiona.
    I had a grandmother who was still alive. I wondered what other family Piper—I—had.
    “Gotcha.” Fiona turned as if she was going to run back into the house, but in the end she turned around and hugged me one more time. “I’ve waited for you my whole life, and I can wait a little longer.”
    She turned and ran back toward the house, and as she disappeared into Piper’s garden I heard her call, “But not too much longer.”
    “I have a sister,” I said out loud.
    “Yes.”
    “The video?” I asked.
    She sighed. “I didn’t tell Ned about you for a long time. I didn’t tell anyone. Not because I was embarrassed that I’d been a teen mom,” she added quickly, “but because I had so little of you that I hoarded the memory and moments. I clung to them and kept them to myself.”
    She shrugged. “I don’t know how to explain it better than that. When I finally told Ned, he went to find you. Not to interrupt your life, but to let me know you were okay. He realized that everything I’d done was part of my worry for you. I worried that you were hungry or hurting. That you needed me and I wasn’t there. He just went to check, and you were graduating so he attended the ceremony and filmed your graduation and speech.” She got choked up and stopped. Finally she whispered, “It was the most amazing gift anyone’s ever given me.”
    I remembered. And I reached to my neck and again touched the locket I’d worn since Ned’s visit.
    “I talked about you,” I said.
    She nodded. “And you wore the locket.”
    I pulled it into view now.
    “Seeing you,” she said and then stopped and took a deep breath. “Hearing that you were okay and that you didn’t blame me but thanked me instead, it made all the difference. I’d never thought I’d have other children because I worried that someday you’d find me and you’d be hurt if you discovered that after giving you away I had children that I kept, but you said . . .”
    I nodded. I’d said that when I found my birth mother, I hoped she had a large family. “I meant it. I’m so glad you had Fiona.”
    I felt awkward again. “I don’t know what to say, what to ask.”
    “Are you involved with anyone?” she asked, giving me some direction.
    “I was. For a very long time. But the day Ned came, I was in the process of throwing him out of the house. I’ve decided to take a break from men for a while.”
    “Did he do something wrong, or did you simply outgrow each other?”
    She didn’t ask if I’d done something wrong. My father and Margo—my stepmother—hadn’t, either, when I told them. They’d wanted to know what Carey had done.
    “He cheated,” I admitted. I hadn’t told anyone else that. I’d just said we’d grown apart. The fact he’d cheated was embarrassing. I didn’t want to continue this line of discussion, so I said, “Will you tell me about your illness?”
    She looked disappointed.
    “Was that the wrong thing to ask?” I asked.
    She shook her head. “It simply sometimes feels as if I’ve disappeared and all that’s left is my cancer. It eats up so much of my life. I’ve stepped down from volunteering, and I haven’t been able to write. It’s the first time since I wrote my first Belinda Mae story that I can’t write. And I resent the hell out of that. You know the first thing anyone asks me now is ‘how are you?’ I know they’re being kind and that they’re concerned, but they don’t really mean how are you ; what they mean is how is your cancer . I am more than my disease.”
    “I’m sorry, I—”
    She shook her head. “No. Don’t be. That was just ridiculous and uncalled for. Of course you want to know. You’re here to help me.”
    “I’m