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should have just been honest about it.”
    “That’s not it at all.” Her next words sucked the air from the room. “I’ve come to tell you your mother’s not dead.”

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 6
     
    Rita Sinclaire’s words pushed him into a black hole, sucking the air from his lungs. He’d imagined these words thousands of times, feared the reality of them, and fought them for years. “My mother’s dead.”  
    “No.” Rita Sinclaire shook her salt and pepper head. “She’s alive. I can prove it.”
    “She died eighteen years ago.” He willed her dead, wanted it with a fierceness that hurt.
    “She didn’t die, Quinn. She’s very much alive.”
    Obviously, the woman knew something. Alive or dead, he still hated his mother. “Okay, she’s not dead. Let me guess, she’s dying and wants to reconcile.”
    Rita Sinclaire shook her head again. “No, that’s not it.”
    “Of course not.” Memories flooded his brain, crashing together, spinning apart. “Let me tell you about the last time I saw my mother. It was hot that day, miserable really, with a heat that sucks the life out of you, where you step out of the shower and you’re already sweating.” He fixed his gaze on one of the woman’s hoop earrings. “I didn’t even know she was gone until dinnertime. There was a pan of potatoes on the stove. I guess we were having mashed that night, and green beans in a colander on the counter. I remember the angel food cake, because it was my favorite. My father was the first one to go looking for her but it was already too late. She drove to the grocery store and disappeared.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “We never had a funeral for her.”
    “She loved you very much.”
    He ignored her. “I wanted the funeral but my father wouldn’t hear of it. He made us set a place at the table every night, leave the light on above the stove, even sign her name on Christmas cards.”
    “He knew she wasn’t dead?”
    “He didn’t know. He just couldn’t accept her being dead. I knew the truth though.”
    “How did you know?”
    A cold smile slipped across his face. “I found her notebooks.”
    “Notebooks?”
    Why had the woman’s face turned from tan to paste? “They were the black and white composition ones, the kind kids use in school. She found one of my old ones and started spilling her guts in it.”
    Rita Sinclaire gripped the edge of the chair and said, “I’m sure she never meant for anyone to read them.”
    “Certainly not her family,” Quinn added. “They wouldn’t necessarily like to hear about how she didn’t fit in, how she was living a lie, how she didn’t know who she was and nobody really knew her. She filled eight of them.”
    “I see.”
    “That’s a hell of a lot of discontent, don’t you think?” The pages were there in front of him now, as though they’d never been torched, line after line of despair, all in his mother’s cramped writing, words strung together, questioning existence, mourning a past, yearning for a future that was anywhere but Corville.
    “It must have been very painful for you to live with that knowledge.”
    “It would have been worse if my father had found out.”
    “I’m sure she never meant to hurt any of you.”
    As if this woman would know. “Yeah. I’m sure.”
    “She loved you.”
    “She left me.”
    “Did you ever consider the possibility that maybe she had no choice? Maybe she couldn’t stay.”
    Anger festered in his gut but he tamped it down. He didn’t want to feel anything. Evie Burnes didn’t deserve it. “Everybody has a choice. She chose to leave.” Why was he having this conversation anyway? He’d never told anyone about the notebooks. “If she walked in this room right now and stood in front of me I wouldn’t acknowledge her.”
    “You have a right to be angry.”
    “I’m not angry.” He drew in a calming breath. “I’m not anything.”
    “Don’t you want to hear her side of it?”
    “ Her side? Are you her