Truth Undressed (Exposed Series, #3) by Hazel Kelly Page A

shrugged.
“I think she would’ve kept you if she’d seen any way to make it work.”
    “But she didn’t.”
    “No.”
    “When did you find out she picked you guys?”
    Her face lifted and her eyes smiled. “I remember exactly,” she
said. “Dawn was in the seventh month of her pregnancy, and I’d been by her side
since the beginning. Because she was my sister, and I didn’t think any of her
friends could look after her as well as I could.”
    “Shocker.”
    Carol rolled her eyes. “Anyway, she had this crazy craving for
Dairy Queen ice cream cones when she was pregnant-”
    “The chocolate dipped ones?”
    “Yeah.”
    “We went for one recently,” I said. “Just before she died.”
    Carol smiled. “Well that’s what we were doing when she told me.
We were eating chocolate dipped cones at the picnic table outside the DQ, and
the bottom of her cone sprang a leak and started dripping all over the place.”
    I nodded.
    “At first I laughed at her, especially when she held the cone up
and tried to plug the bottom with her mouth.”
    I leaned forward and put my elbows on the table.
    “But then I pulled some napkins out of my bag and made her
switch cones with me. And she started eating mine, while I wrapped the napkins
around the bottom of hers so I could finish it without getting sticky.”
    I rested my chin in my hands.
    “And I’ll never forget it.”
    I swallowed.
    “She said I think you’ll be a good Mom, Carol . And I said
thanks.” She took a deep breath. “And then she said, you will be won’t you? And she put her hand on her tummy and her eyes filled with tears, and when I
realized what she was saying my eyes filled with tears, too.”
    I smiled. “That must have been a sight. Two grown women crying
into their ice cream cones.”
    “I think we probably got some looks alright,” she said. “Of
course, Fred and I were ecstatic. We’d been trying to have a baby for two
years, for as long as we’d been married at the time. All we ever wanted was a
family of our own. So you were a dream come true for us, Kate. You really
were.”
    I watched Carol try to keep it together on the other side of the
table. I didn’t know what to say. All this time I had been thinking I was an
accident, a reject, that nobody wanted me. But that wasn’t the case at all. I
was wanted. Desperately. Just not by the woman who gave birth to me.
    “After that I continued to spend every second with Dawn. We
hadn’t spent that much time together since we were kids.”
    I nodded.
    “I didn’t want to miss a kick, a cramp, a bout of morning
sickness.”
    “Cause you wished you were pregnant.”
    She shrugged. “That’s part of it, I suppose. But I was also so
eager to know you. I didn’t want to wait until you came out.”
    “Wow.”
    “But I did my best to look after her, especially after Scott left?”
    “Scott?”
    “Your biological father.”
    “When did he leave?”
    “Before you were born.” She shook her head. “I don’t know,
exactly. I know it was around the time Dawn couldn’t hide the fact that she was
pregnant anymore.”
    “What a jerk.”
    Carol shrugged. “He had other nice qualities-”
    “Like?”
    “Like he was really handsome. And funny. A great
conversationalist, too. Dawn used to say she could take him anywhere and he
could get along with anyone.”
    “But he didn’t want to get along with me.”
    “It wasn’t that,” she said. “He was just too young and selfish.
He wouldn’t have been a good dad.”
    “How do you know?”
    “Because he didn’t want to be one.”
    “Right.”
    “It’s hard work taking care of a baby. Your heart really has to
be in it.” She took a deep breath. “If you want to do a good job anyway.”
    “And he never wanted to see me after I was born?”
    She locked her eyes on mine and didn’t say anything for a
moment.
    I could see it was hurting her to tell me this stuff, but
keeping secrets is like building a damn. Once the damn is broken, the