Tangled Lies Read Online Free PDF

alive. I want to meet him. I want to know he is healthy and happy.”
    “But-but that was—” Sasha scrambled to do the math, never her strong suit.
    “Twenty-three years ago,” Pop said.
    Sasha leaped to her feet and paced. “You should hire another investigator, someone who finds people for a living, someone who knows how to do this stuff.”
    Eve moved to stand beside her, stopping her momentum. “I agree. While I understand why you want to do this, truly, we’re not the people who can help you. You need professionals.”
    The whole time her daughters spoke, Mama simply shook her head. “You are family. Outsiders could not find him. I want you. My girls will find my boy for me. It is my final wish.”
    “Don’t say things like that!” Sasha hissed, but Mama’s eyes were closed, and she pretended to be asleep. Discussion over.
    Oh, Mama had strong-armed them into things before, innocent requests like helping around the house or keeping little secrets from Pop, but this—this was nuts.
    Eve plopped down on the couch and covered her face with her hands. Cat wore a shell-shocked look Sasha understood. She had to get outside. The walls were closing in.
    Her flip-flops smacked the knotty pine floor as she marched from the room and across the porch. She stomped across the soggy grass and onto the docks at the marina. She didn’t stop until she reached the farthest point. She stood, hands on hips, trying to catch her breath as Bella sidled up beside her.
    By all that was holy, how on earth were they going to give Mama what she wanted?

Chapter 2
    Sasha wasn’t surprised when she heard footsteps on the dock behind her. But she was surprised to see Pop. She’d been expecting Eve to chew her out for running away. Again. But her emotions and all that internal churning were why she’d stayed away to begin with.
    Pop came and stood beside her, slipped his arm around her waist, and tucked her against his side. “It is good you are here, my Sasha. Mama has missed having you girls around.”
    Sasha smiled at him, feeling warm all the way inside for the first time in years. “You were just glad to be rid of me.”
    He pulled off his fisherman’s cap and pointed to his bald head and the wispy bit of fringe around the edges. “When you girls were young, you turned my hair gray. Then you left and it all fell out.”
    “Hey, I can’t take all the credit. That you can blame Blaze for, I’m guessing.”
    He settled the cap back on his head and laughed. “She is a handful, that one.” He paused, speared her with his dark eyes. “She reminds me of you.”
    Sasha leaned in and rested her head against the reassuring beat of his heart. Pop’s easy affection had been the one constant in Sasha’s young life. Mama could be laughing one minute and screaming in Italian the next, but Pop . . . he was steady. Her anchor.
    “You hanging in there, Pop?” Sasha felt him stiffen at the question, but he didn’t answer. She raised her head. “Pop? Is there more? Is it worse than you’ve said?”
    He shook his head. “No, Sasha. It is bad enough, no? There is no more.”
    She looked directly into his dark eyes, noticing how deeply the crow’s-feet had etched his skin, how worry had aged him. “I wish you had told me.”
    He studied her face, then looked away. “I did not want to leave the news on your answering machine. I figured you would call—and come home—when you were ready.”
    She started to say she would have come immediately, but didn’t. She wasn’t sure she would have, and the knowledge shamed her. She’d run long and hard to escape Safe Harbor. Instead she asked, “How bad is it really?”
    “Your mama, she never gives up hope. Never. She is sure that this new experimental regimen will work, even though the others did not.”
    She heard what he didn’t say. “You have doubts.” It hurt to even say the words.
    He nodded once and looked out at the Gulf, calm as glass now after the storm had passed