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She was listening to hi for hily at the house in Paradise Valley She needed him to move forward so she could She needed him to be one of her boys
His throat ached as he touched her nairlish script “It’s okay,” he told her “It’s okay”
I promise
His heart beat hard He wanted to help her, wanted to protect her She’d been through so much
You have to know I love you I’ve loved you every day of my life
One day we’ll be together and we’ll talk it out One day we’ll have all the tiht
So rest easy, Moood
And it was true
He was good Everything was good And maybe that hy he cried He was free Free to love, free to move forward
He closed the Bible, put it on the table, and rapped on Jet’s bedroo I want to tell you”
Jet sat down on the cabin’s small couch next to Shane It was a s else, and she could see he was upset His long black lashes were damp and his eyes weren’t quite dry
She sed and waited, hands folded in her lap
He picked up the scuffed, black leather Bible and flipped it open to a page near the beginning and handed it to her “That,” he said quietly, “is me”
Jet followed his finger, saw the list of dates and the corresponding naer tapped the blank spot next to 1982
“That’s you?” she repeated, looking up at hi so hard to hide
“Or at least that’s where I should be I was the baby born in 1982”
She’d been right She’d got it right “You are a Sheenan! I knew it, I knew—” She broke off seeing Shane’s expression “I’ reveal”
His brow furrowed “You knew?”
“I figured it out today”
“How?”
“You look so ht like Trey…you’re witty like Troy…” Her voice faded “Should I not have figured it out?”
He didn’t answer that, instead asking, “Do you think the others know?”
“No” Her shoulders twisted “I don’t think they’ve spent enough time with you I have And I’ve watched you with them You have many of the same mannerisms—”
“Even though I wasn’t raised with them?”
“Must be in your DNA” She paused, ht he seeely coination and that he really was a Sheenan…
“Have you known this entire time?” she asked
He left the couch and crossed to the fireplace where he picked up one of the pinecones on the stone mantel “Yes”
“Did you know before you leased the house?”
“Yes”
She slowly exhaled, beginning to see the bigger picture “That’s why you wanted to lease their house Not because it was close to the Douglas ranch, but because it was the Sheenans’”
He took a second to answer “From the book perspective, I could have lived anywhere in Paradise Valley—maybe even in town, in Marietta—but as someone who alondered what it was like to be a Sheenan, yes, I wanted to be there, in the home I never had”
She winced inwardly He hadn’t spoken coldly or sarcastically, and yet the words were painful to hear He’d grown up so very alone, while the rest of theether, a family “How did you find out you were a Sheenan?”
“When I discovered there were two birth certificates The original and the amended one”
“Sheenan was the nainal”