“You’re my hero.”

“I know what I’m getting you for your twenty-first birthday,” he whispers in my ear as his fingertips slip under my shirt and glide over my ribcage. “Besides Life Alert.”

“What are you getting me?” I ask as I try to ignore the growing gift prodding my backside.

“You’ll see.” He plants a soft kiss on the back of my neck then pulls my shirt down over my belly. “Goodnight, babydoll.”

“Goodnight.”

Breakfast with the Parker family is a huge event and I finally get to meet his mother, Margaret Parker. She has Adam’s green eyes and graceful stature combined with a gracious Southern charm. As soon as Adam and I come down for breakfast, she greets me with a warm hug and a kiss on the cheek.

“Aren’t you just the prettiest thing? Look at her, Kimmy,” she says to Uncle Harvey’s wife, Aunt Kim, who’s scooping scrambled eggs onto a long row of breakfast plates lined up on the kitchen island. “Doesn’t she remind you of Winona?”

“Good morning, Mrs. Parker,” I mutter, not certain if I should be flattered that I look like Winona.

Adam grabs two plates of scrambled eggs and thick-cut bacon as he squints at me. “She does kind of look like Winona with lighter hair. I never noticed it until now.”

“Who’s Winona?” I finally ask, taking the plate Adam hands me as we make our way to a long breakfast table stocked with a basket of blueberry muffins and a heaping plate of homemade waffles.

I grab a muffin as Margaret sits next to me. “Winona is my little sister. Or, she was. She died ‘bout twenty years ago. You would have loved her. She was such a free spirit, like you. That must have taken a lot of courage to move all the way from Raleigh to Wrightsville all on your own.”

I turn to Adam and he smiles as he keeps his eyes on his plate. “I don’t know. I’m pretty used to moving around a lot. My mother died when I was seven so I moved from one foster home to another for a very long time.”

Her eyebrows knit together as she rubs my back. “I’m so sorry to hear that, but happy to see that you’ve turned into such an independent and beautiful young woman. Some of us have more fight in us than others. Just like my Adam. You two make a fine pair.”

This woman was not subtle. Between her and her husband, I was beginning to understand why Adam was so persistent when we first met. I ate my breakfast in silence and was glad to help when it was time to start making potato salad, deviled eggs, and various other dishes while the men took their racks of ribs and slabs of meat out to the barbecue.

“Are you gonna be okay in here?” Adam asks as I chop celery for Aunt Kim.

“I’m fine. You go ahead and do your man stuff.”

“She’s fine,” Margaret says as she wraps her arm around my shoulder and gives my arm a squeeze. “You go check on your father. Make sure he’s not burning off what little hair he’s got left.”

Adam looks visibly tense at the mention of his father, but he manages to give me a quick kiss on the cheek before he scurries outside to join the men.

“A bit smaller than that, honey,” Aunt Kim says while passing me on the way to the refrigerator.

Margaret watches the door for a moment after Adam leaves then turns to me. “I know this may not be any of my business, but I want you to know that Adam is crazy about you.”

I smile as I grab another stalk of celery and set about chopping this one a bit smaller.

“I’m sure you’ve noticed the tension between him and his father.”

I look sideways at her and her face is kind and inquisitive. She’s not fishing for information; she’s hoping to impart some wisdom.

“Yes, I’ve noticed that.”

She breathes deeply and exhales a long breath; a breath that is probably filled with years of frustration and regret. “Can you promise me something, honey? Because I know he can be as stubborn as a mule on Wednesday when it comes to talking about his father and you seem like the kind of girl who can get him to open up. But I need you to promise me you’ll keep an open mind when he opens his heart?”

I smile even though I feel uncomfortable with her request. I don’t know what she means by “when he opens his heart.” What kind of secret is Adam hiding?

Margaret and I finish up the potato salad and the coleslaw. As soon as I start piping the filling into the deviled eggs, the door bursts open and Adam flies past us toward the living room. The rage rolls off him in thunderous waves as he storms out of the kitchen.

I turn to Margaret and she quickly unties the strings on the back of my apron. “Go ahead, honey. I’ll finish this up.”

I pull the apron over my head and hand it to her then set off through the swinging door into the living room. I glimpse Adam’s feet racing up the stairs and I follow quickly behind him. When I reach Jamie’s bedroom, I find him sitting on the edge of the bed with his elbows resting on the tops of his thighs and his hands clutching his hair. He’s tapping his foot impatiently and I feel as if I’m edging closer to a ticking time bomb.

I step inside and close the bedroom door behind me. “Adam, are you okay?”

He shakes his head almost imperceptibly, but he doesn’t answer.

I slowly make my way across the fluffy white rug and take a seat next to him. “I know you probably think I won’t understand because I never knew my father—I hardly knew my mother—but I have a lot of regrets, and pain, eating away at me over the separation from my last foster mother. I have a lot of things I want to say to her, but sometimes I think I could live my whole life without saying those things. And sometimes I think the secrets will kill me.”

He lifts his head and looks at me. “My dad wants me to go to Hawaii to schmooze some government officials for a new project on the naval base.”

“What’s wrong with that? Hawaii is beautiful.”

“If we get the project, I’ll have to stay there for up to two months to handle the startup.”

“Oh.” I stare at the rug on the floor because I don’t want him to see the disappointment in my eyes any more than he can see it in the slump of my shoulders.

“I’ve been trying to quit for years, but my dad won’t let me.” He gently turns my face toward him and the anguish in his eyes makes my chest ache. “Claire, there’s something you need to know about me.”

I draw in a slow breath, wishing I were at home so I could meditate. Wishing I were anywhere but here where I am about to hear a secret that may tear us apart. His mother’s words repeat in my mind: Try to keep an open mind when he opens his heart.

“When I was seventeen, my friend Myles and I went to California for a surf competition. I had been competing since I was fourteen, but it was his first competition. He was so stoked because he placed eighth, which is really good for a first-timer. Anyway, to celebrate we decided to go fuck around at a beach in Laguna. It was one of the best looking beaches I’ve ever surfed at.” He closes his eyes as if he’s picturing it in his mind. “We found a spot that looked good for diving and we took turns doing cannonballs and belly flops. Then I had the brilliant idea of jumping off backwards.”

A chill sprouts across my arms as I realize where this is going.

“He got scared and I started teasing him about it. Then we started wrestling, pretending we were gonna toss each other off the cliff. Myles foot slipped. He was so startled when he began to fall backwards that he reached for my feet and hit his head on the rocky cliffside.” He buries his face in his hands again, burying the shame. “It was my fault, but I panicked and called my dad before I called 9-1-1. My dad convinced me to say it was an accident.”

If there is one thing that will comfort Adam right now it’s for me to share my secret. It’s so obvious, but I can’t. I can’t judge him after what I’ve done, but I also can’t expect him not to judge me.

I put my hand under his chin and lift his face. His face is red and his eyes are brimming with unreleased tears. “Adam, it wasn’t your fault. It was an accident. It’s not as if you pushed him off.”

“That’s not the point. The point is my father refused to let me tell the truth about Myles’ death. And now that I’m finally getting my life back together, now that I have you, he wants to take it all away.”

“You have your degree. You’re young. You’re smart. You’re good looking. You can probably work anywhere. Why do you stay there?”

He shakes his head. “Don’t you get it? The company has been in the family for more than a hundred years; started by my great-great-grandfather. Nothing is more important to my dad than the company. I can’t leave. My dad has been holding what happened with Myles over my head for more than four years.”

The bedroom door opens and a girl with dark-blonde hair is standing there crying with an expression of rage contorting her dainty features.

“Jamie?” Adam says as he stands from the bed.

“You’re the reason he died?” she says, glaring at him. “I’ve been blaming myself for four years because I was the one who told him to enter that fucking competition and now I find out you’re the one who pushed him off.”

“I didn’t push him off, Jamie. You didn’t hear everything.”

“I heard enough. Get the fuck out of my room!” She opens the door wide and doesn’t look at me as she says, “And take your next victim with you.” Adam moves toward her and she pushes him hard in the chest. “Get out!”

Only Margaret questions why Adam and I aren’t staying for the picnic, but she seems fine with Adam’s explanation that he’ll tell her later. The three-hour drive back to Wrightsville is filled with a silence so heavy I can barely breathe under the weight of it. I don’t think anything can make this weekend worse, until I walk into my apartment and find the certified letter on the breakfast bar.

Chapter Fourteen

Relentless Demands

“THE DEPOSITS HAVE BEEN COMING for almost seventeen years, plus interest.”

“How much?” I demand.

“Two hundred and seventeen thousand, two hundred twenty-nine dollars… and eight cents.”

I stare at the letter on the counter sent from Northstar Bank in Raleigh notifying me of a trust account I will gain access to on my twenty-first birthday. Adam stands behind me rubbing my shoulders as I sit at the breakfast bar with my phone clutched to my ear.

After he carried the suitcase into my apartment and left me with nothing but a quick kiss on the cheek yesterday, I opened this letter and immediately called him to come back. He stayed up with me until three in the morning, though we didn’t really have much to say and the curse of having a roommate-ready bedroom meant we had to sleep in separate twin beds. But right now, the sensation of his hands kneading the tension in my shoulders is enough to make me forget everything that happened at his uncle’s ranch yesterday.

“My mother was not rich. This doesn’t make sense. Who deposited the money into that account?”

“I can’t disclose personal information about the beneficiaries, donors, or trustees over the phone. You’re going to have to come in and show two forms of photo identification.”

I curse myself as I think of all the times Senia begged me to renew my driver’s license. “I don’t have two forms of ID, unless you’ll accept an expired college ID and an expired driver’s license.”

Henry, the bank manager, lets out an exasperated sigh. “Claire, only because I knew your mother and how much she loved you will I allow this. Come in on your birthday with both your expired IDs and another person with two valid forms of ID and I’ll give you what you need.”

I hang up the phone feeling lost. I grew up in a tiny rundown trailer on a lot surrounded by acres of forest. Our nearest neighbor must have been at least a quarter mile away because it felt like it took a million years to get there on foot every time we visited “Grandma” Patty. Nothing about the way we lived gave me any indication that my mother had money, but what Henry just said to me didn’t imply that she did. He said the deposits had been coming in for almost seventeen years. My mother has been dead for more than thirteen years. Someone else was making those deposits.