Thursday morning, Rhy and Mason hung out at the cabin. They were planning to go to Mason’s house in the afternoon, but they were both enjoying the quiet. Upstairs in the office, while Mason was busy with work, Rhy emailed some contacts for leads on new contract jobs.

Luis Mendoza had responded to Rhy’s email with interest, and Rhy had sent a link to his portfolio. Rhy would wait another few days before following up. He didn’t want to seem too eager. Still, he wanted it. The Azalea Meadows project aligned with his background and interests perfectly.

Maybe Maggie could put in a good word for him. She’d know how to do that without sounding pushy. She was a savvy marketer, and never seemed like she was selling you anything—just being a friend. And really, that’s how she saw it.

She loved people. She had won over Heather and Travis in her first visit. And it hadn’t been her last. Mason’s parents had taken a real interest in Rhy’s brother and sister, checking in to see if they needed anything and generally offering support—

The doorbell rang, which was odd. Rhy wasn’t expecting anyone, and it was rare for anyone to happen by in such a secluded location. Warily, Rhy headed downstairs. Mason’s footsteps followed a few beats behind.

When he got to the front door, he looked out the sidelights to see a woman of about fifty with graying blond hair. Her arms were crossed tight, and she was hunched over herself.

She didn’t look dangerous—maybe her car had broken down?—but his grandparents had taught him not to open the door for strangers. It could be a trap.

“Can I help you?” he said through the window.

“I vant to see Travis and Heather. You know vhere dey are.”

His blood turned to ice. He knew that voice, that accent. How was it possible that he hadn’t even recognized his own mother’s face?

He froze, his mind floating as if disconnected from the physical world. After nine years, the woman who had given him life had become a stranger to him. There was no going back—the mother he knew didn’t exist anymore. This woman on his doorstep meant nothing to him.

Mason’s voice behind him beckoned him back. “Please send the police,” Mason said into the phone. “There’s a trespasser on the front porch.”

“I can’t help you,” Rhy said to Elena. “You need to leave now, unless you want to be charged with trespassing.”

“Dey’re my children! I have a right to see dem.”

“You don’t, actually. They’re adults. And you also don’t have the right to be here on my property. I’m warning you to leave now.”

“Should I get the shotgun?” Mason asked in a loud voice.

Rhy forced down a laugh. He did have a shotgun, but Mason didn’t know that. Rhy kept it locked up in a case behind the grandfather clock in the great room.

Also, he wasn’t going to shoot his mother, even if he didn’t know her anymore. She didn’t deserve his time or consideration or anything else, but he had no desire to harm her. To be honest, he’d never seen anything more pathetic in his life.

She looked old, her face lined with the harshness of an austere existence. She had loved Rhy once, but was willing to give him up out of loyalty to an idea, an idea founded on hate and prejudice. How could such a life offer joy or contentment? She probably hadn’t experienced as much happiness in the past nine years as Rhy had felt in just the four months he had known Mason.

And that’s what it came down to. Happiness came from love. And his parents had rejected love, rejected their own child.

Living with so much hate in their hearts had to be a special kind of hell.

And now, they had lost their other children, too. Heather seemed determined never to see them again. She especially had suffered under the restrictions her parents had put her under because she was a girl. The restrictions seemed to bother her less than the fact that Travis was exempt. Her own parents were treating her like a second-class citizen.

And they had treated Rhy like he didn’t exist.

Until this moment. His mother, who hadn’t even come to the funerals of her husband’s parents because she didn’t want to see the son she had abandoned, was looking at him through the sidelights, her eyes a silent plea.

The same eyes he and his siblings shared. They had come from her.

He wished he could pity her, wished he could feel pain. He couldn’t. The only word for the feeling in his chest was indifference.

This woman he didn’t know, who had once been his mother, was in an anguish of her own making. He didn’t wish it on her, but she had reaped what she’d sown. She taught her children that her love was conditional. How could they ever trust her after that?

Trusting her was the worst mistake Rhy had ever made. It had cost him literally everything—everything except his grandparents and the friends who stood by him.

He lost all his worldly possessions except the clothes on his back and the shoes on his feet. His family. His sense of security and permanence. His childhood. His peace of mind.

He looked back at Elena on the porch. “I can’t help you,” he said again. “The police will be here soon. I don’t want to press charges against you, but I will if I have to. Don’t come here again.”

Say you love me. Say you made a mistake. Ask for forgiveness. Just ask. I’m your child, too.

Her eyes narrowed with contempt. She turned and walked to her car.

Rhy’s chest hollowed. He wasn’t surprised, and he wasn’t even sad. He hadn’t hoped for more from her. At least not for himself. She should have fought harder for Heather and Travis. Should have stayed on his porch begging until the police forced her to leave. Instead, like a coward, she walked away.

But then, she was a coward. Her principles were built on hate and pride, on the absolute certainty that she was right. She had stuck by them at all costs, and the costs had been her children.

He hated that she wasn’t a better, stronger person. He wanted her to be the mother she should have been. Wanted the family he had once had to be whole again.

As she pulled out of the driveway, Mason gingerly touched Rhy’s arm. “You okay?”

A sob rose unbidden from Rhy’s center. But it wasn’t a cry for the woman who had just left. It was a cry for the woman who had baked his favorite cake on his birthdays, who had bandaged his skinned knees. For the woman who had held him after a nightmare, who had watched him get on the bus on his first day of school, waving with tears in her eyes.

That woman was gone, and she was never coming back.

He sank to the floor, body wracked with pain. The faint glimmer of hope inside him died. He hadn’t known it still existed after all these years, but he missed it now that it was gone.

Mason straddled him and covered him with kisses. Rhy sank into the comfort of his arms. He looked into Mason’s sweet, brown eyes and that baby face, a new hope growing stronger than ever.

Mason was his family now. They were building a life together. And no one would take that away from him.