Page 5 of Riverbend Gap (Riverbend 1)

“What do you do for a living, Katelyn?”

“I’m a nurse. If I had the tools handy I could stitch up my own forehead.”

He leaned in, studying her wound. “I don’t think it’s going toneed them. You’ll have a heck of a bruise though. And probably a headache. Where were you coming from? Walnut? Marshall?”

“Asheville. My old hair salon—big mistake.”

His gaze roved over her carefully curled beach waves. “Doesn’t look like a mistake to me.”

Something fluttered in her stomach. “Well, it ended with me on the edge of a cliff so...”

“Asheville... That where your family’s from?”

“I don’t have any family to speak of.”

“No parents? Siblings?”

“I have foster parents and a lot of foster siblings.” She paused before going on. “I had a brother—we were really close.”

“Tell me about him.”

She didn’t normally talk about her brother. Then again, she didn’t normally hang on the edge of a cliff. “His name was Spencer. He was my best friend. He was a private person, kind of a loner. But once you got to know him... he was a softy on the inside. And so creative—he could just pick up an instrument and teach himself to play it.”

“Sounds like someone I could call friend.”

She smiled. That was just the right thing to say. “What about your family? Are they from around here?”

“They are. We’re close, though my siblings are a pain in the butt sometimes.”

“Where do you fall in the lineup?”

“Dead center.”

“Ah... the middle child.”

“We’re not all jealous and needy. Was your brother older or younger?”

“Younger by two years.”

“Which makes you the oldest child. Are you driven and compulsive, Katelyn? Always right?”

“I guess I bucked the trend too. My upbringing probably had something to do with that. Having a dozen or so foster siblings tends to disrupt the natural order of things. Aw, don’t look at me like that. My brother and I were loved. The Clemsons were good people—we landed there when I was eight. They run a gas station in Asheville.”

At the thought of Jill and James, her stomach twisted. She’d gone into town for a haircut and hadn’t even made time to see them. Had she ever told them how much their love and support meant to her? To Spencer?

“I’m a terrible person,” she muttered.

“What?”

She lowered her lids in a slow blink. “Can you open Notes on my phone?”

“Is this where you tell me all your dirty secrets?” He pulled the phone from his pocket, touched the screen, then looked up at her, waiting.

“I want to leave my foster parents a note.”

The humor fled his eyes. He scowled, lowering the phone. “You don’t need to leave a note. You can tell them whatever you want the next time you see them.”

She couldn’t leave things unsaid. Not after all they’d done for her. “Please.”