Breakwater Bay Read Online Free PDF Page B

sweatshirt lying over the back of her desk chair. She curled up, unwilling to face the day. Face her new status.
    Damn Alden and his “switched at birth” nonsense. But it wasn’t nonsense. Her mother had taken a baby that wasn’t hers and raised it as her own.
    It would be laughable if it hadn’t been her. And she tried to imagine what she would think if she heard the story of someone else in that situation. Would she shrug it off and think so what? Laugh and say lucky kid? Or dismiss it as a fabrication since it would be impossible to pull off something like that in twentieth-century Rhode Island? Of course that proved not to be the case.
    She groaned, then stopped herself, remembering Alden’s other words. They love you even when you hurt them. And she was not going to hurt them again. They had been good to her all her life. Whether she deserved it or not. She wouldn’t repay them by throwing that love in their faces.
    Meri dressed in jeans, scrubbed her face, held a cold washcloth over her swollen eyes, covered the worst of the blotches with makeup, pulled her hair, a bit unwieldy from sleeping with it wet, into a ponytail, and went downstairs to face her new life.
    Her father sat at the kitchen table, nursing a mug of steaming coffee. Gran was standing at the stove. “What would you like for breakfast?”
    Meri didn’t think she could eat, but she’d taken Alden’s words to heart about hurting them so she said, “Do you still have some of that farm bacon from Scully’s?”
    Gran’s face and body lightened about ten years. “Of course I do. It’s your birthday.”
    Meri poured herself coffee and went to sit at the kitchen table with her father. She slowed down as she passed the hutch and noticed that the cardboard box from the night before was gone.
    Had that been a part of their disclosure last night? Would they have shown her the contents if she hadn’t run away? Had they changed their minds about showing her the rest? Or was it just a box that had made its way to recycling this morning? Either way, Meri wasn’t ready to face anything more today. And really, what more could there be?
    “Do the boys know?”
    Her dad looked up from his coffee cup. “Not yet, but it won’t make any difference to them. They’re your brothers. You’re their sister. Period.”
    “Will you tell them, or should I?”
    “I will, and I’m sure they’ll be calling you.”
    And what would she say to them when they did?
    After a hearty breakfast, which everyone forced down with a smile, Dan collected his gear and threw it in the trunk of his car, along with a plastic container of cioppino.
    “Sorry I have to run out on you like this.”
    “That’s okay. I’m going to have to leave pretty early myself. Dinner with Peter tonight.”
    “How’s that going?”
    “He’s decided to go back to law school.”
    “Smart move, but how do you feel about it? It’s a long haul, law school.”
    “Yeah, but he won’t go until the fall, so we’ll have a few months to figure out what we want to do. If—”
    “Don’t even worry about the other thing. If he loves you, he won’t care.”
    She smiled and wondered if that was true. She thought about it. Would she love Peter if he told her he wasn’t who he said he was? Of course she would. Her dad was right.
    It wouldn’t matter to her. So why did the circumstance of her own birth matter so much?
    “Love you.” Dan kissed her forehead and gave her grandmother a hug. “You two take care. I’ll call you.”
    They stood together and watched him drive away. Stood there until he reached the road and drove out of sight.
    “Let’s get the dishes done,” Meri said. “And then I want to go over and say good-bye to Alden and thank him for letting me drip all over his floor.”
    “I’m sure he didn’t mind a bit.”
    “He’s always there, isn’t he? I don’t mean at home, but . . .”
    “Ever since he was a boy. Reliable. Good man. His father was a good man.”
    They