Page 5 of Keeping it Real

“My dad and mom are dead,” she heard him say.

“Finn!”she cried as she yanked the door all the way open to find him huddled beneath his mother’s dresses, still hanging neatly from the rod.He had a cell phone pressed to his ear.“Where did you get that phone?And who in the world are you talking to?”

God, she sounded like the worst kind of shrew.Not exactly how her interactions with her nephew usually went.She was supposed to be Finn’s favorite aunt.Never mind that she was his only aunt.But she had no idea who he was telling such delicate and personal information to.She’d watched enoughDatelineto know how easily someone sinister could prey on a grieving little boy.

“It’s Dad’s phone,” Finn replied, his tone defensive.“The policeman brought it back this morning while you were at the funeral home.”

She swallowed roughly.Finn had begged to go with her.To not be left among a house full of mourners.But picking out caskets was not something an eight-year-old boy should ever have to do.She knew that firsthand.Her father had been too distraught to do it when her mother died eighteen years ago.She and Jamie had done it for him.

Sheridan forced her features to relax so as not to scare Finn any more than he probably already was.

“Okay.Why are you hiding in a closet?And who are you talking to?”Those were fair questions.He couldn’t hate her for asking, could he?

“It’s Alek Bergeron.”

His curt answer had her reaching out to steady herself with a hand on the doorjamb.She pressed the other hand to her roiling belly.

Alek Bergeron.

He’d been such a fixture in her life during Jamie’s college years.She’d had such a crazy crush on the guy.More than a crush.She believed he was her forever love—right up until he became the source of her greatest humiliation.

She hated how much she still missed those penetrating light blue eyes of his, and how, when he focused them on her, Sheridan used to feel like she was the center of the universe.

At least his universe.

And how many times since their mortifying last encounter had she longed for that easy smile of his?The one that always seemed to make everything better.She was a little bit ashamed, thinking what she wouldn’t give to have it aimed at her right now.To have him help shoulder the grief and the pain of this unbearable loss.Always the steady one, Alek would know how to navigate through the tough days and months ahead with more certainty than she could muster.

Except that wasn’t ever going to happen.The friendship they once shared had dissolved beneath the weight of some very bad decisions made nearly a decade earlier.Guilt for the part she played in the drama gnawed at her chest.

“He wants to talk to you,” Finn said, refocusing her attention on the here and now.

A painful lump formed in her throat as she took the phone from Finn’s outstretched hand and pressed it to her ear.

“Hello?”she croaked.

“Sher.”

Hearing the deep timbre of his voice again made her knees buckle.She slid down the wall to the floor, landing beside the dog.

“Christ, Sheridan.Is it true?Are they ...are they gone?”

Tears burned the back of her eyes.She nodded forcefully before realizing he couldn’t see her.

“Yes,” she managed to utter.“It’s true.”

Alek’s sigh sounded tortured.She could picture him running his fingers through his thick hair like he always did when he tried to come to grips with a difficult situation.

“When?How?”he asked.

She cleared her throat, but the pain remained.“Thursday evening.They were coming home from Finn’s back-to-school night.”

He gasped.“Finn wasn’t with them, was he?Is he injured?”he demanded.

The concern for her nephew, a boy he’d never met, was so like Alek that the knot strangling Sheridan began to loosen.She was thankful the man she knew and adored was still there.Even after everything that had happened.

“No.He was with a babysitter.”

She glanced at Finn, still sitting in the closet, his arms wrapped around his knees as he listened intently.