The Last Piece of His Heart (Lost Boys 3)

“The summer flew by, sugar pie,” Aunt Bertie said. “The next time we see you, you’ll be a high school graduate.” She regarded me in my loose-flowing pants and tight white T-shirt that showed my midriff. “So beautiful, Shiloh. And growing up so fast. Isn’t she, Marie?”

Mama made a noncommittal sound and didn’t look up from her crossword.

Stay tough, I told myself, burying the pang of pain that tried to find its way to my heart. You know better than to expect more.

And yet my stupid heart never stopped trying to reach Mama no matter how badly it hurt.

“Before I go, I have something for all of you.” I set my bag on the coffee table and pulled out four smaller giftbags stuffed with tissue paper.

“You sweet thing. You didn’t have to.” A grin grew over Bertie’s lips as she poked a finger inside one bag. “Are these, by any chance, Shiloh Barrera originals?”

I smiled. “Maybe.”

“Hot dang,” Uncle Rudy said, peeling his gaze from the football game. “Christmas come early.”

I handed out the bags, one to my aunt, uncle, and cousin, and one left over. For Mama.

Cousin Letitia took hers eagerly in her lap. Even on a Sunday, she was pure style in designer jeans, yellow heels, and a cropped top that showed off her toned abs. She’d expertly piled her braids on her head, a few trailing dow

n around gold drop earrings.

“I already love it,” she said.

I laughed. “You don’t know what it is.”

“You made it, so it’s going to be beautiful.”

I swallowed hard and risked another glance at Mama, unmoved from her spot in the kitchen.

Aunt Bertie pulled a turquoise broach from her giftbag. I’d oxidized the silver filigree to make it look antique. She rested a hand on the shelf of her bosom. “Oh my stars, baby. This is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. But why wait until the last minute to give us these treasures?”

I grinned. “So you only have to pretend to like it until I’m out the door.”

“Pfft, it’s gorgeous.” Aunt Bertie pinned the broach to her blouse and held her arms out for me to hug her. I bent over the table and was enveloped in her soft, perfumed embrace. “Such a talented girl. You’re going to have that shop you keep dreaming about. I can feel it in my bones.”

“Thanks, Auntie,” I said, basking in her faith in me. Her love that she gave so easily.

“Ain’t this something.” Uncle Rudy turned over the pewter keychain pendant of the Saints’ fleur-de-lis logo. “You made this? Wait till the fellas see. Thank you, baby girl.”

His pride made the back of my throat tighten. I nodded with a faint smile and looked away. It was so much easier selling my jewelry online to strangers who didn’t bring soft, uncomfortable emotions to the surface.

“Girl, no way,” Letitia said, pulling from her bag a set of earrings, intricate silver twined around lapis stones in bright blue. She immediately took out the earrings she’d been wearing and exchanged them for mine. “Are you kidding? You got mad skills, Shi. My mama’s right. You’re going to take this all the way.”

“Thanks, Teesh,” I said, my fingers trailing over the handles of the last gift bag.

While Letitia and Rudy compared and crowed over their gifts, Aunt Bertie smiled gently at me. Pityingly. “Marie,” she called to the kitchen. “Shiloh has something for you.”

Mama couldn’t ignore that.

She got up from her seat at the kitchen window and slowly made her way to me. My heart ached at the reluctance inhabiting her every movement.

Marie Barrera was young—only nineteen years older than me—and beautiful but heavy with sadness. Everyone said I was her spitting image, but my unknown father’s DNA lightened my skin and muted our resemblance.

“At least that’s no mystery,” Jalen Jackson—my Louisiana friend-with-benefits—had bluntly stated in his bed the night before. “Someone put cream in your mama’s coffee.”

But the obvious fact that my father was white didn’t fill the huge hole in my life where he belonged. He was a ghost, haunting the family through me. No one would speak of him. Least of all Mama. From what little I’d gleaned in seventeen years, I was the product of a one-night stand. Unexpected and unwanted. Marie had been on full scholarship to LSU with a bright future stretching in front of her until the pregnancy. Now, she worked part-time in a bank, her dreams of a job in marketing sidelined forever. Whoever my father was, she’d cut him out of her life and refused to speak of him ever again.

It made no sense. With a big family willing to help, why did Mama drop out of college? Why not put me up for adoption?