The Secret Sin. Darlene Gardner

didn’t look up from her food. “Fifteen.”

      Now that Annie knew the truth, it was easy to see through the lie. “Is fifteen how old you need to be to travel alone on the train?”

      “I don’t know,” Lindsey mumbled.

      “I think you do know,” Annie said. “That’s why you said you were fifteen when you’re only thirteen.”

      Lindsey’s head jerked up. “How do you know I’m thirteen?”

      “My father told me.”

      Lindsey swiped strands of her long hair out of her face and sat up straighter, an eager light in her eyes. “Is Uncle Frank back? Did you ask him if I could stay?”

      Annie’s fingers clenched into fists. How could her father not have told her about Lindsey? She’d confided in him when she got pregnant and trusted him to handle the adoption arrangements. Her faith in him had been so absolute that she’d signed the papers severing her parental rights without reading them. She’d never dreamed he’d give her baby to someone Annie might possibly know.

      “I talked to him on the phone,” Annie said. “He’ll be in Poland for at least another month.”

      Lindsey’s head dropped again. “What else did he tell you about me?”

      “Not much,” Annie said. If she was alone, she’d call her father back and demand answers, the six-hour time difference be damned. “I don’t even know what grade you’re in.”

      Or if Lindsey knew she was adopted.

      “I’ll be in eighth grade in September,” Lindsey said. “I’m almost fourteen, you know.”

      Her birth date was in mid-March, which meant Lindsey wasn’t yet thirteen and a half. She wondered if Lindsey had written down her true birthday on the medical form or whether she’d tried to preserve the fiction that she was fifteen.

      She also wondered how closely Ryan had looked at the form.

      “And you live in Pittsburgh?” Annie asked.

      “Not in Pittsburgh exactly,” Lindsey said. “We live in Fox Chapel. It’s near Pittsburgh.”

      “Any brothers or sisters?”

      Lindsey narrowed her eyes. “Are you going to ask my phone number next?”

      Annie had been attempting to fill a desperate need to find out more about Lindsey, but that wasn’t what the girl had asked. “I already called your parents.”

      “But…but how did you get the number?”

      “The form in Dr. Whitmore’s office.”

      From the shocked expression on Lindsey’s face, she hadn’t considered that possibility.

      “I left your parents a message,” Annie continued. “They’re probably worried sick about you.”

      “They don’t even know I’m gone,” Lindsey said. “Dad took Timmy and Teddy to Kennywood, and Gretchel’s working. She’s supposed to pick me up at a friend’s house at five o’clock.”

      Kennywood, Annie knew, was a popular amusement park near Pittsburgh that was one of the oldest in the nation. “Who’s Gretchel?”

      “My stepmother.”

      “Are Timmy and Teddy your brothers?” Annie asked.

      “Sort of,” Lindsey said. “I’m adopted. They’re not.”

      Annie bit her lower lip to find it trembling. Lindsey had been matter-of-fact in stating she was adopted, but she considered Annie’s father to be her uncle and not her grandfather. Lindsey obviously didn’t know the truth about her birth, and it wasn’t Annie’s place to tell her.

      “That doesn’t make them any less your brothers,” Annie said.

      Lindsey blew air out her nose, but stayed quiet. Neither did it seem as though she planned to eat any more of her sandwich. Yet she needed nourishment. She was too thin and still pale enough that she looked as though she might topple off the stool.

      “You could have another dizzy spell if you don’t eat,” Annie said. “You don’t want to go back to the doctor, do you?”

      Lindsey’s blue eyes flashed. “At least Dr. Whitmore was nice to me. If I came to visit his father, he wouldn’t make me go back to Pittsburgh.”

      Her words were like blows. Annie had tried to forget about the daughter she’d given up, but now that she’d met Lindsey she realized how miserably she’d failed. The clawing need to know the girl was as fierce as the unconditional love that nearly overwhelmed her. She couldn’t give in to that love without risking that somebody would figure out Lindsey was her birth daughter. If only the girl knew how desperately Annie wanted to keep her around. Annie swallowed, pushing words past the lump in her throat. “It’s for your own good.”

      “Annie Sublinski,” a deep male voice announced from behind them. “What brings you off the river?”

      Annie swiveled on her stool to see Michael Donahue moving toward them, his tall frame dressed in jeans and a work shirt, his thick, dark hair slightly sweaty. Since moving back to Indigo Springs earlier in the summer, he’d gone into business with the Pollocks, who owned a local construction company.

      She’d always felt a certain kinship toward Michael because he’d been another of the outcasts of Indigo Springs High. An incident at this very snack counter had landed him in juvenile detention. Fathers, including hers, had warned their daughters to stay away from him.

      He’d since redeemed himself in dramatic fashion, although very few people knew he was the hero who’d rescued a child from drowning during an Indigo River Rafters trip earlier that summer. “Hey, Michael,” Annie said, then turned to Lindsey, preparing to introduce her.

      “Wait a minute. Don’t tell me why you’re here. Let me guess.” Michael placed three fingers on his forehead and closed his eyes before snapping them open. “It has something to do with a young brunette.”

      Lindsey giggled at Michael’s antics, but Annie’s breath caught. Did he know about the child she’d given up for adoption? Could he? Surely there’d been talk when Annie had abruptly left town before her senior year of high school. Had somebody figured out that the real reason she’d moved in with her ailing grandparents was because she was pregnant?

      “I’m Michael Donahue.” He jumped in with an introduction before Annie could untie her tongue. “And you are?”

      “Lindsey Thompson,” she supplied. “I came to visit my uncle Frank, but he’s in Poland.”

      “I heard something about that,” Michael said. “You took over your dad’s business, right, Annie?”

      His question stopped Annie from denying her father’s relationship to Lindsey. “Actually, I didn’t. I’m just filling in while he’s gone.”

      “My bad. Some people in this town like to talk even when they don’t know what they’re talking about.” He spoke from experience, Annie thought. At one point town gossip about him had been rampant. He winked at Lindsey. “Pretty soon they’ll be spreading stories about you.”

      Annie willed her heartbeat to slow down. It had been an innocent remark.

      She and Lindsey didn’t share a strong resemblance, and Annie was barely old enough to be the mother of a teenager.

      “There’s nothing to talk about.” She forced her voice to sound normal. “Lindsey’s a family friend.”

      Michael pulled open the glass door of the refrigerated unit beside the counter, then paused. “I thought she was your Dad’s niece.”

      “We’re not really related,” Lindsey interjected before Annie could panic. “I just call him uncle.”

      Michael