A Daughter's Perfect Secret. Kimberly Van Meter

Louise, but she wished she had more answers than what she’d been left with.

      “I never wanted you to find out, but you need to know,” Louise had rasped from her bed, the cancer eating her from the inside out, stealing her breath along with her strength.

      “Shhh,” Darcy had urged, distressed over how Louise was exerting herself when the doctor had plainly told her to rest. “Whatever it is, it’s fine,” she said, trying to soothe her. She checked the morphine drip. Louise was dying; there was no coming back from that ledge now that the cancer had metastasized from her pancreas. All they could do was offer her comfort, which was why she was home instead of the hospital, and Darcy wanted to make sure that her mother died in peace. “You need to rest.”

      “Darcy, honey, I’m dying. We both know that,” Louise said, her shoulders shuddering on a cough. “But before I go I have to tell you something that I’ve been carrying around since the day you came into my life.”

      At that Darcy stilled, a knot settling in her stomach even as she tried to logically explain away the feeling. The doctors had warned her that the high-octane narcotics could cause erratic behavior. “What are you talking about?” she asked. “In the overall scheme of things, I’m sure it’s not as big as you think it is.”

      “Darcy, listen, damn it.”

      Her mother never cursed. “What’s wrong?” Darcy asked, settling to meet her mother’s stare.

      A single tear oozed out from the corner of Louise’s eye, and she appeared to sag into the mattress a little farther, but she rallied with a brief show of strength as she clasped Darcy’s hand. “There’s a picture in my jewelry box,” she started, and Darcy shook her head.

      “Mom, I’ve been in your jewelry box a thousand times. There’s no picture,” she said.

      “There’s a false bottom. Open it and bring it to me.”

      Darcy gaped. A false bottom? That unsettled feeling returned with a vengeance. Her mother was not the sort to hide things in secret. She’d been a PTA mom, for crying out loud. She’d baked cupcakes and cookies for bake sales and had volunteered on the safety patrol. She wasn’t the kind of woman who harbored secrets. Yet, here she was, knocking on the bottom drawer to find, yes indeed, it had a false bottom. She gave a gentle tug and the top popped up, revealing a single photograph, aged and yellowed, of a beautiful woman. She flipped it over, but there was nothing written on the back. She returned to her mother. “Is this it?” she asked quizzically, handing the photo to Louise.

      Her mother took the photo and stared, her eyes filling. She passed a shaky hand over the image of the smiling young woman, and she closed her eyes, as if seeing the photo brought back painful memories.

      “Who is she?” Darcy asked. What was going on? Wasn’t there enough tragedy in the Craven household without the added burden of some secret that she was fairly certain she didn’t want to know? She maintained a façade of calm, but inside she felt nauseous.

      “Your biological mother,” Louise answered, that single admission kicking the bottom out from Darcy’s world as if the only mother she’d ever known dying from cancer wasn’t a big enough blow. “I’m sorry … you were never supposed to find out this way but there’s power in knowledge, and my darling sweet girl, you’re going to need all the power you can muster to stand up to that man.”

      “What man?” Darcy asked hollowly, her bewilderment giving way to shock. “What are you talking about? You’re my mother. I don’t even look like her. This is crazy talk—”

      “There isn’t a lot of time,” Louise cut in, yet was stopped short as a racking cough stole the air from her lungs. Darcy helped her drink some water, but it was several moments before Louise could speak again. Darcy’s thoughts were spun out on a surreal setting. Surely this was happening to someone else, not her.

      “Darcy, your mother was a good friend of mine even though I was a bit older than she was. Her name was Catherine. She got pregnant at seventeen and entrusted you with me when she had to run. At first I thought she would return, but as the years went on, I realized she wasn’t coming back. I raised you as my own, and I couldn’t love you more than if I gave birth to you myself.” Louise’s weak grip on Darcy’s hand tightened and Darcy knew her mother wouldn’t lie. Still, it was a lot to take in and, frankly, Darcy was not above wanting to shut it all out and forget she’d ever heard it. “There’s more,” Louise said, the urgency returning to her voice. “Your mother was involved with a very dangerous man. And he’s only gotten more influential as time has passed. You might’ve heard of him. His name is Samuel Grayson.”

      Darcy startled, the name jumping out at her from a recent news story on rising cult leaders. “That’s the man who’s running that town outside Laramie? The one who claims he’s found the secret to running a perfect society? He’s a nut,” she said, horrified.

      Louise agreed with a weak nod. “The very same. He’s got a whole town of followers now, and there’s no stopping him when he’s got something in his sights. And I’m afraid for you.”

      “Why? Does he even know about me?”

      “I don’t know,” Louise admitted, a shudder wheezing from her frail chest. “But I couldn’t let you face the future without knowing. There’s a possibility … that he may have done something to Catherine.”

      “How do you know?”

      “I haven’t heard from her in a long time, years, actually.”

      Darcy swallowed. “You … had contact with her?”

      “Not truly, honey. A postcard here and there. Just something to let me know she was all right. I never had an address or a phone number. She was scared that if she was too close to you, he’d find you. She loved you so much, she wanted to make sure you were always safe. But the last postcard came years ago. I’m afraid something happened to her, and the only person who would’ve had reason to hurt her was Samuel Grayson. You have to promise me you’ll stay away from that man. He’s evil.”

      Darcy nodded. At that moment she’d have agreed to anything to ease the torment in her mother’s eyes. That was two days ago. And her mother was gone. She was alone.

      Something toxic burned in Darcy’s chest—a combustible mixture that was equal parts rage and grief with a healthy dose of insatiable need to know the truth about her mother—and she knew she’d lied to Louise.

      She had to know where her mother was, had to know if she was safe and she had to know what part Samuel Grayson played in this whole twisted drama that had somehow attached itself to her formerly happy life.

      Darcy wanted answers—and nothing was going to stop her.

      She shifted in her coach-class airplane seat, wishing she’d had the extra money to spring for at least the business class to accommodate her long legs, but pushed her discomfort aside to take in every detail of her birth mother, Catherine. Even though the picture was more than twenty-two years old, Darcy could tell her mother had been beautiful. If only she’d inherited her fine bone structure, she lamented privately. The only physical attribute she seemed to have been gifted with of her mother’s was her blue eyes. She lightly traced a finger down the curve of her mother’s cheek, wondering what she’d been thinking when the picture was taken. How had Catherine gotten mixed up with someone like Samuel Grayson? Darcy had unearthed a few news articles on the man. On the surface, he seemed legit, but the cultlike following creeped her out. According to the news clippings, Cold Plains was his utopia. Except everyone knew a utopia was an illusion, so how did Samuel keep everyone happy and playing along? It smacked of an M. Night Shyamalan movie. Where was the freaky twist?

      Darcy closed her eyes and tried not to let the grief that hovered on the edges of her sanity creep in. She couldn’t lose focus. Any semblance of a normal life had shattered when Louise had dropped her bombshell. And, if the truth were known, chasing after answers kept her from acknowledging her bone-deep grief over Louise’s death. It was too soon, too quick. They’d had no time to