She let go of the curtain and sat on the edge of the bed. She’d met the boy the same day she’d gotten off the bus in L.A. He was a teenager fresh from an Oklahoma ranch and looking for stunt work. They’d shared a room in a fleabag hotel to save money. They’d been young and randy, hiding their fear of a dangerous city behind fumbling sex and tough talk. He’d disappeared before he knew she was pregnant.

She’d been lucky to find work waiting tables. One of the older waitresses, a woman named Becky, had taken pity on her and let her sleep on her couch. Becky had been a single mother with no patience left at the end of a long workday for the demands of her three year old child. Watching the little girl cringe from her mother’s harsh words and occasional slaps had been a cold dose of reality. Two weeks before Kevin was born, Lilly had called Maida and told her about the baby. Her sister and John Tucker immediately drove to L.A.

They’d stayed with her through Kevin’s birth and even told her she could return to Michigan with them. But she couldn’t go back, and she knew by the way they looked at each other that they didn’t want her to.

At the hospital, Lilly held her baby boy every chance she got and tried to whisper a lifetime of love to him. She watched the love blossoming on her sister’s face whenever she picked him up, and saw John’s expression soften with longing. Their absolute worthiness to raise her child couldn’t have been more apparent, and she’d loved and hated them for it. Watching them drive away with her baby boy had been the worst moment of her life. Two weeks later, she’d met Craig.

Lilly knew she’d done the right thing by giving Kevin up, but the price had still been too high. For thirty-two years she’d lived with a gaping hole in her heart that neither her career nor her marriage could fill. Even if she’d been able to have more children, that hole would still have been there. Now she wanted to heal it.