The Secret Sin (3 page)

“My father told me.”

Lindsey swiped strands of her long hair out of her face and sat up straighter, an eager light in her eyes. “Is Uncle Frank back? Did you ask him if I could stay?”

Annie’s fingers clenched into fists. How could her father not have told her about Lindsey? She’d confided in him when she got pregnant and trusted him to handle the adoption arrangements. Her faith in him had been so absolute that she’d signed the papers severing her parental rights without reading them. She’d never dreamed he’d give her baby to someone Annie might possibly know.

“I talked to him on the phone,” Annie said. “He’ll be in Poland for at least another month.”

Lindsey’s head dropped again. “What else did he tell you about me?”

“Not much,” Annie said. If she was alone, she’d call her father back and demand answers, the six-hour time difference be damned. “I don’t even know what grade you’re in.”

Or if Lindsey knew she was adopted.

“I’ll be in eighth grade in September,” Lindsey said. “I’m almost fourteen, you know.”

Her birth date was in mid-March, which meant Lindsey wasn’t yet thirteen and a half. She wondered if
Lindsey had written down her true birthday on the medical form or whether she’d tried to preserve the fiction that she was fifteen.

She also wondered how closely Ryan had looked at the form.

“And you live in Pittsburgh?” Annie asked.

“Not
in
Pittsburgh exactly,” Lindsey said. “We live in Fox Chapel. It’s near Pittsburgh.”

“Any brothers or sisters?”

Lindsey narrowed her eyes. “Are you going to ask my phone number next?”

Annie had been attempting to fill a desperate need to find out more about Lindsey, but that wasn’t what the girl had asked. “I already called your parents.”

“But…but how did you get the number?”

“The form in Dr. Whitmore’s office.”

From the shocked expression on Lindsey’s face, she hadn’t considered that possibility.

“I left your parents a message,” Annie continued. “They’re probably worried sick about you.”

“They don’t even know I’m gone,” Lindsey said. “Dad took Timmy and Teddy to Kennywood, and Gretchel’s working. She’s supposed to pick me up at a friend’s house at five o’clock.”

Kennywood, Annie knew, was a popular amusement park near Pittsburgh that was one of the oldest in the nation. “Who’s Gretchel?”

“My stepmother.”

“Are Timmy and Teddy your brothers?” Annie asked.

“Sort of,” Lindsey said. “I’m adopted. They’re not.”

Annie bit her lower lip to find it trembling. Lindsey had been matter-of-fact in stating she was adopted, but she considered Annie’s father to be her uncle and not her grandfather. Lindsey obviously didn’t know the truth about her birth, and it wasn’t Annie’s place to tell her.

“That doesn’t make them any less your brothers,” Annie said.

Lindsey blew air out her nose, but stayed quiet. Neither did it seem as though she planned to eat any more of her sandwich. Yet she needed nourishment. She was too thin and still pale enough that she looked as though she might topple off the stool.

“You could have another dizzy spell if you don’t eat,” Annie said. “You don’t want to go back to the doctor, do you?”

Lindsey’s blue eyes flashed. “At least Dr. Whitmore was nice to me. If I came to visit
his
father, he wouldn’t make me go back to Pittsburgh.”

Her words were like blows. Annie had tried to forget about the daughter she’d given up, but now that she’d met Lindsey she realized how miserably she’d failed. The clawing need to know the girl was as fierce as the unconditional love that nearly overwhelmed her. She couldn’t give in to that love without risking that somebody would figure out Lindsey was her birth daughter. If only the girl knew how desperately Annie wanted to keep her around. Annie swallowed, pushing words past the lump in her throat. “It’s for your own good.”

“Annie Sublinski,” a deep male voice announced from behind them. “What brings you off the river?”

Annie swiveled on her stool to see Michael Donahue moving toward them, his tall frame dressed in jeans and a work shirt, his thick, dark hair slightly sweaty. Since moving back to Indigo Springs earlier in the summer, he’d gone into business with the Pollocks, who owned a local construction company.

She’d always felt a certain kinship toward Michael because he’d been another of the outcasts of Indigo Springs High. An incident at this very snack counter had landed him in juvenile detention. Fathers, including hers, had warned their daughters to stay away from him.

He’d since redeemed himself in dramatic fashion, although very few people knew he was the hero who’d rescued a child from drowning during an Indigo River Rafters trip earlier that summer. “Hey, Michael,” Annie said, then turned to Lindsey, preparing to introduce her.

“Wait a minute. Don’t tell me why you’re here. Let me guess.” Michael placed three fingers on his forehead and closed his eyes before snapping them open. “It has something to do with a young brunette.”

Lindsey giggled at Michael’s antics, but Annie’s breath caught. Did he know about the child she’d given up for adoption? Could he? Surely there’d been talk when Annie had abruptly left town before her senior year of high school. Had somebody figured out that the real reason she’d moved in with her ailing grandparents was because she was pregnant?

“I’m Michael Donahue.” He jumped in with an introduction before Annie could untie her tongue. “And you are?”

“Lindsey Thompson,” she supplied. “I came to visit my uncle Frank, but he’s in Poland.”

“I heard something about that,” Michael said. “You took over your dad’s business, right, Annie?”

His question stopped Annie from denying her father’s relationship to Lindsey. “Actually, I didn’t. I’m just filling in while he’s gone.”

“My bad. Some people in this town like to talk even when they don’t know what they’re talking about.” He spoke from experience, Annie thought. At one point town gossip about him had been rampant. He winked at Lindsey. “Pretty soon they’ll be spreading stories about you.”

Annie willed her heartbeat to slow down. It had been an innocent remark.

She and Lindsey didn’t share a strong resemblance, and Annie was barely old enough to be the mother of a teenager.

“There’s nothing to talk about.” She forced her voice to sound normal. “Lindsey’s a family friend.”

Michael pulled open the glass door of the refrigerated unit beside the counter, then paused. “I thought she was your Dad’s niece.”

“We’re not really related,” Lindsey interjected before Annie could panic. “I just call him uncle.”

Michael nodded, accepting the answer. Some of the pressure inside Annie’s chest eased as he removed four bottles of water from the refrigerator.

“We’re finishing up a remodel job down the street and the crew is getting thirsty,” he explained. “Good seeing you, Annie. And a pleasure meeting you, Miss Lindsey.”

“He was nice,” Lindsey said as he walked away.

“Most people in Indigo Springs are,” Annie said.

Lindsey looked unhappy. “Then why can’t I stay here?”

So far three people who’d known Annie as a sixteen-year-old had seen her with Lindsey and none of them had put the pieces together. In all probability, nobody would, ensuring that Lindsey wouldn’t have her world inadvertently turned upside down.

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Annie said slowly. “Maybe you don’t have to go back just yet.”

“You mean I can stay?” Lindsey asked excitedly.

The thought of letting the girl go without spending at least a little time with her was like a dagger through Annie’s heart. Staying in Indigo Springs was clearly what Lindsey wanted, too. Annie simply wasn’t strong enough to fight fate and what she so desperately wanted anyway.

“Only if your parents say yes,” Annie said.

“They’ll say yes.” Lindsey smiled and took a big bite of her sandwich, unaware she’d agreed to a visit with her birth mother.

That was exactly the way Annie intended to keep it.

M
AYBE SHE’D
messed up in coming to Indigo Springs, Lindsey thought.

Uncle Frank had made it sound really cool, but the downtown was nothing but a bunch of old buildings. Once she and Annie had gotten back in her truck and headed out of town, all she’d seen was trees.

The parking lot they’d pulled into wasn’t even paved, and the building they were approaching looked like a
grungy warehouse. A couple of dozen sturdy-looking bikes were parked in neat rows off to one side. On the other were nine or ten faded picnic tables.

Lindsey read the sign over the door: Indigo River Rafters.

“
This
is your father’s business?” she asked Annie.

“This is it,” Annie said.

Lindsey slowed down but didn’t dare stop. If she did, the gnats that were flying around her hair might attack her eyes. She supposed the setting was okay, although there weren’t a lot of trees close to this part of the river and the grass around the shop was trampled down dirt. The water was maybe fifty yards away, with a flatbed trailer blocking part of the view.

“All our trips end here at base camp. That spot over by the flatbed trailer is the take-out point,” Annie said. “We load the boats so we can transport them to the put-in for the next trip.”

“Boats?” Lindsey asked.

“Rafts, kayaks, tubes.” She pointed to a pair of yellow school buses so old you couldn’t pay Lindsey to get in them. “We shuttle the customers in those.”

Annie acted like it was really important to her that Lindsey like it here, which was totally different from her attitude at the train station. Earlier, Annie’s main goal had been sending Lindsey home.

“Can’t you just drag a raft down to the river and go?” Lindsey asked, although there was no way she’d do that. The bugs wouldn’t be as bad out on the river, but she shuddered just thinking about the mud and the cold water.

“You could,” Annie said, “except the river’s like a one-way street. It only flows in a single direction.”

Whatever,
Lindsey thought. That hadn’t been what sounded so cool when she’d heard about the business. “Uncle Frank said there was a store.”

“It’s more like a gift shop,” Annie said. “We sell T-shirts, waterproof sandals, sunglasses—that kind of thing. It supplements the income from the river trips and the mountain-bike rentals.”

Great,
Lindsey thought with a sinking heart.
Just great.

“Where does your dad live?” Lindsey asked.

Annie pointed to a tiny building behind the shop. “Back there. That’s where we’re going.”

Lindsey stopped walking. “Are you serious?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

Lindsey thought of the big, five-bedroom, two-story house she’d woken up in that morning. “I guess I just expected something different when Uncle Frank talked about all this.”

Lindsey made a face when she spotted the rocking chairs on the wooden porch, but the inside of the house turned out to be not so bad. A decent-sized room with a really old TV opened into a kitchen. The furniture was simple—a navy blue sofa and wood chairs. Beyond the kitchen was a smaller space with a washer and dryer.

Annie indicated the left side of the house. “There are two bedrooms with separate baths over here. You can sleep in my dad’s room.”

“Cool,” Lindsey said. She could stay here, she
decided, which was a good thing because she had nowhere else to go.

“I need to finish up a couple of things at the shop,” Annie said. “Will you be okay for an hour or so?”

“Yeah, sure,” Lindsey said, but she ran out of things to do after putting her clothes in an empty drawer and checking her e-mail on the computer with an ancient modem.

She was flipping through a magazine from a nearby rack when Annie showed up. No way was she going to read
Field and Stream, Outdoor Life
and
Backpacker.

“Don’t you have anything good?” Lindsey asked. “Like
Vogue
or
Elle
?”

“Afraid not,” Annie said.

Lindsey held up an issue of something called
Outdoor Women
. On the cover was a picture of three women with fishing poles standing in river water up to their thighs, with mountains rising behind them.

“Who reads this lame stuff?” Lindsey wrinkled her nose.

“Enough people to keep me employed,” Annie said. Lindsey must have looked puzzled, because Annie added, “I wrote the cover story.”

“Get out!” Lindsey eagerly turned the glossy pages until she found the article. It was about something called heli-fishing, where helicopters flew fishermen to remote areas that couldn’t be reached any other way. “Oh, my gosh. Your name’s on this story. That’s really awesome.”

“Didn’t you just say the magazine was lame?”

“Well, yeah. But getting your name in a magazine is
cool.” Lindsey rethought her lukewarm opinion of Annie. “Maybe one day you can write about something better.”

Annie looked doubtful. “The outdoors is pretty much my thing.”

“Not mine.” Lindsey rolled her eyes. “I’d take a mall over a river any day.”

Annie perched on the edge of the sofa near where Lindsey sat on the floor. “Then why did you come to visit my father? There aren’t any malls in Indigo Springs.”

Lindsey stuffed the magazines back in the rack. “I didn’t know that. I thought there were malls everywhere.”

“Is something wrong at home?” Annie seemed to be deciding what to say. “You can tell me if you don’t feel…safe.”

Lindsey had sat through films in health class about the different types of abuse. She knew what Annie was really asking. Wow. Was she way off!

“There’s nothing like that going on,” Lindsey said.

Annie seemed to relax. “Something must have happened to make you leave home. Your parents will be calling back soon. It would help if I knew what it was.”

Lindsey stood up. “I just needed to get away, that’s all.”

“Away from what?” Annie asked.