Willow Spring by Toni Blake

gather, at first probably in response to the siren, but she soon realized that apparently everyone in this town remembered her early life here, clearly far better than she did.
    “I was raised in Indianapolis,” she told them all, but really only Mike, keeping her eyes on him the whole time, “as Anna Karras. That was my mother’s name. My mother, the woman who raised me,” she said, shaking her head at the total strangeness of it, something that still hadn’t worn off. And that strangeness then made her say, more softly, “Is there somewhere we could go . . . more private?”
    That was when her newfound brother looked around and seemed to notice for the first time that they weren’t alone. “Of course. Come with me.” Then he took her hand and began to lead her away.
    A few seconds later, she found herself following him into the police station, situated conveniently next door to town hall, more people staring, and she felt a little like a criminal until they reached an open office door, and Mike said very pointedly to the older, mustached man at the desk inside, “Chief, this is my sister—Anna. Could we possibly borrow your office?”
    The chief clearly knew the magnitude of this meeting, too, as shown by the stunned look on his face as he pushed to his feet. “Good Lord. Of course. Take as long as you need.”
    He shut the door on the way out and they took seats in the two chairs sitting across from the desk. And their eyes met again. And rather than let herself fall prey to the odd emotions that threatened to overtake her, she told him what she knew he was waiting to hear—the horrifying truth.
    “My mother, Claudia Karras, died three weeks ago, from cervical cancer. And on her deathbed, she told me that . . . that she wasn’t really my mom. And that she’d . . . taken me, when I was little, from a state park, because she couldn’t have children, and the waiting list was so long she’d thought she’d never be able to adopt.” She stopped, swallowed, because these were such horrific things to say. But then she pushed on. “I had a relatively normal childhood except for the fact that . . . well, my mom had some problems. There were a couple of times when I was a teenager that she was briefly admitted to a psych ward. And that was tough.”
    “No father? She wasn’t married?” her brand new brother asked.
    She shook her head. “No, it was just the two of us. No relatives, either—she was alone in the world before me, and I guess that made it easier to suddenly have a daughter. She worked in the records department of a hospital in Cincinnati at the time, and she forged a birth certificate. And then she quit her job and we moved to Indy where no one would know I was a new addition. She was . . . a little crazy, but smart, too—at least about how to pull something like this off. She explained it all to me on the night before she died.”
    Across from her, Mike looked like he was having trouble catching his breath but trying to hide it as he said, “How did you know about us, your real family? How did you find us?”
    “She told me that part, too. Apparently she followed the story in the news after she abducted me. She found out who she’d taken me from and where you lived. She said she’d been eaten alive by guilt all these years, but that she couldn’t face all the ramifications of telling the truth until she had nothing left to lose. And so . . . here I am. Feeling pretty damn weird. And just, I guess, trying to figure out who I really am.”
    “You’re my little sister,” he said simply then. “You’re my little sister and you’re finally home. That’s all that matters.”
    A my and Logan sat in a booth at Dolly’s Main Street Café—he was buying her that piece of pie he owed her. But like everything else today, it wasn’t going exactly the way she’d envisioned. For one thing, Logan seemed . . . totally back to his old self. Which was great, but weird—as in sudden.