Chapter 12: Meet Your Cousin

Hattie's POV

I saw the photograph in his hand, and I knew my promise had run out.

"Finbar," I said.

He didn't turn around.

"Last night you told me you didn't know her family," he said.

"I told you she never talked about them. That was true."

"It was an answer built to be true."

I couldn't argue with that.

I came into the kitchen in my socks and my mother's oversized sweater and stood across the table from him.

"Your grandmother is her mother," I said. "I found out on Sunday. I had tea with her."

His eyes came up at last.

They were very steady and very cold, and I wished he would shout.

"On Sunday."

"She asked me not to tell you. She wants to do it herself."

"Why?"

"She said your father spent eleven years looking, and she's afraid of what you'll think of her."

"And you agreed."

"I agreed to give her time. I didn't agree to lie. If you'd asked me straight, I'd have told you."

"I did ask you straight," Finbar said. "Last night."

"You asked who her family was. I didn't say I wouldn't answer. I said I didn't know what to say."

It sounded like an excuse even to me.

He set the photograph down on the table, carefully.

"My aunt raised you," he said.

"She raised me."

"You're not a Hulme."

"No." I made myself say all of it. "I'm not related to you by blood."

"Go on."

"The hospital mixed up two babies. I'm an Ashgrove, and she raised me by mistake, and loved me anyway."

"Then whose child did she give birth to?"

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