Haunting Beauty Read Online Free Page B

me. No father. No brother missing me. No one .”
    “Your mother dropped you off ?” he repeated, unable to contain the sharp edge of incredulity. “Where?”
    “Cactus Wren Preschool,” she said. “I do remember that.”
    “I mean, here? In the States?”
    She nodded, a frown puckering the silky skin between her eyes. “Why?”
    “Why?” Sean tacitly repeated her question as the answer he both feared and desperately wanted to believe threatened to bubble to the surface. Because that meant Danni’s mother had left Ireland. And to have done that, she would’ve had to be alive.
    He cleared his throat and said gently, “Your mother vanished with you and your brother twenty years ago. What happened to her and the children all these years has been the great mystery and tragedy of our town. Until recently, we thought you were dead. All of you.”
    She stared at him, trying to see through his words. He stared back without flinching. This, at least, was the truth. But beneath the open face he presented, a raging host of conflicting emotions churned in frenzy.
    One day my mother dropped me off at preschool and she never picked me up again.
    Here, in the U.S. Not even in Ireland.
    “No one knows what happened to us?” she asked.
    “There were rumors, of course. There always are, aren’t there? People talk, especially in Ballyfionúir. And there’s always something to say about the MacGrath family.”
    “Why?”
    “Well, I could tell you stories about your people and mine, but tales are best saved for another time, I think. We’ve history, though, the MacGraths and Ballaghs, and where there’s a past there’s an account to be questioned. Sure and there are those who’d say the slate will never be clean for either family.”
    “Are you one of those who would say that?”
    “Me? It’s a messenger I am. Nothing more.”
    The look she gave him bordered on incredulous. She was smart enough to know he was more than a just a messenger.
    “I still don’t understand how my mother and two kids could just up and disappear without anyone seeing her or knowing where she went. How could she manage it?”
    “There was talk that she had help, talk about the lover she might have been keeping. Talk that she killed herself and her kids. And still more that she’d been killed by someone else. All of you, actually. They think you’re sleeping at the bottom of the sea even now. Is that what you’re after?”
    “Well, people don’t disappear without a reason.”
    “No, I don’t suppose they do.”
    She stared at him, sensing somehow that there was more to his response than the simple words.
    “Nothing was ever proven?” she pressed.
    “All of Ballyfionúir was in an uproar looking for blood. They went for the easiest target—some poor wanker who had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He offed himself before they could beat a confession out of him. Good riddance they all said.”
    “But you don’t think he was guilty?”
    “What does it matter what I think?” he asked. “Guilty, innocent—it’s all relative isn’t it? Last month, I would have said of course he did it, the bollocks. But today . . . well, here you are, obviously alive. Who’s to say he did anything to be guilty of, now?”
    “You have a point,” she said, looking troubled.
    “When was the last time you saw your mother, Danni?” he asked, leaning forward. “When did she leave you?”
    The teakettle let out a shriek, startling them both. Danni rose, moving gracefully as she poured the boiling water over tea bags and set a tray with cups and saucers. He noticed she used dainty china that looked very old and fragile. It was mismatched, as if each piece had been selected for its unique pattern rather than its status as one of a set. He suspected that, like her dog, she’d rescued the pieces from junk stores or sales tables, assembling them into a new family.
    She returned to the table and poured in silence while he