Chapter 13
Kai just shakes his head, breaks free from us, and skates toward the other end of the rink much faster than I knew he could go before he disappears into the evening.
Panic mounting, we find his sneakers. After another five minutes of searching, I hear sniffling coming from under the bakery booth table.
Lane manages to draw him out and he darts again, but with my husband being a professional athlete and the kid still wearing skates, he manages to block him from running again.
My maternal instincts come out of nowhere as I contemplate what I would’ve wanted at this age, feeling lost and confused without my mom. “That’s it,” I call, looking at my wrist as if I’m wearing a watch. “We’re going to the bakery. It’s hot chocolate o’clock.”
A long thirty seconds pass.
Kai lets out a snorty little sniffle. “That’s not a thing.”
“It is now,” I say firmly. “And it’s definitely pastime for some truth-telling.”
The Busy Bee feels much like it does early in the morning—a quiet little sanctuary. A place where secrets are safe and sweets are in abundance. Lane makes hot chocolate while Kai helps me select some toppings.
When we sit down at a table, my voice is firm when I say, “Listen carefully, you’re not being rewarded for poor behavior. But seeing as we’re a family, you need to know that if something is going on, you can come to us for help before it gets out of hand.”
Kai nods, taking a small sip.
Lane, picking up on what I’m saying, in a poor imitation of a British accent, says, “Henceforth, I declare hot chocolate o’clock the official occasion for our family to discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly.”
Kai looks up at him, eyes wide, but the tears are dry, so I count that as progress.
“So which is it?” I ask. “Good, bad, or ugly?”
“Not ugly,” Kai says in a small voice.
“So good and bad?” Lane asks.
Kai looks up at us with red-rimmed eyes and decides to trust us. Barely above a whisper, he says, “Her name is Mya and … she’s my twin sister.”
The words hit like a lightning bolt.
Lane goes completely still. “Twin sister,” he repeats carefully.
“Mya said that her dad told her that Desiree split us up when we were babies. She kept me and our father kept her. But Mya knew about me all along and has spent her whole life trying to find me. Then she saw me at the Knights versus Mustangs game on television and she just knew. She ran away and came here. She’s been living at the bakery.
I thought it would be okay. I’ve been sneaking her supplies. ”
My lips part with a soft gasp. “And that’s where the piece of Bundt cake went earlier.”
“Why I think I’ve been seeing double,” Lane says.
“And explains why the bakery has been—” I start.
“I found the spare key,” Kai admits, voice small. “It’s been really cold outside. We didn’t know what else to do. I’m sorry. I know it was wrong, but she didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
Lane runs a hand through his hair. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Because!” Kai’s voice rises desperately again. “Because adults always mess things up! She’ll be sent away and I’ll never see her again!”
“That’s not—” Lane starts, but he’s interrupted by a soft sound from the back of the bakery.
We all freeze.
“Mya?” Kai calls out hopefully.
A small figure emerges from the shadows near the storage room—a girl who looks exactly like Kai, down to the stubborn set of her jaw and the wariness in her green eyes.
“Hi,” she says quietly, looking between Lane and me with a mixture of fear and defiance. “I’m Mya.”
I say, “Nice to meet you, Mya. I’ll admit that this is an unusual situation, and I’m sorry you kids felt like you couldn’t trust us enough to come forward with the truth right away, but I imagine someone is worried sick about you.”
Mya’s shrug in response worries me.
“What about your father or—?”
She doesn’t answer.
“How’d you get here?” Lane asks.
She bites her lip. “My dad makes sure my nanny has cash in case of emergencies. After I saw myself at the hockey game on the big screen—”
Kai interrupts, “She means me.”
“You do look remarkably alike.”
“You stole the money?” Lane asks.
With a frown, Kai grumbles. “See? I knew it. I knew you’d get mad and—” Words fail him.
Lane swipes his hand across his forehead as if struggling to remain calm and patient when this situation went from complicated but manageable to something else entirely.
Mya says, “The money is for me, anyway. My dad is gone most of the time and my nanny is nice, but she doesn’t speak English. My brother is family. So are you,” she says to her uncle, then turns to me.
My heart breaks and soars at the same time.
“I took a bus and then had to transfer and—”
“She’s not going anywhere. You can’t send her back,” Kai says fiercely.
These two kids who found each other against impossible odds, who’ve been trying to protect each other the only way they know how, are practically begging us to solve a problem the other adults in their lives caused.
Shadows from my childhood could send me spiraling, but instead, I’m determined to find a solution. To show these children the kind of love and value Bibi had for me.
“Well,” I say, looking at Lane and seeing my own determination reflected in his eyes, “I guess we’d better figure out how to make this work. Because that’s what families do. We rise to the occasion. We figure it out.”
Together. We rise.