Baked Alaska by Josi S. Kilpack

and leaned back in the chair while zipping her jacket up a little higher. It wasn’t all that cold—mid-50s—but her lack of movement made her more sensitive to the chill.
    Shawn, Breanna, and Pete were probably worried; she’d been gone for nearly an hour. There was cell service now that they were in port, but Sadie had ignored the text messages that had chimed on her phone, certain they were from the three people she really didn’t want to talk to right now. Surely there was a thought or realization on the fringe of her consciousness that would help even out her jumbled emotions. Surely if she took enough time to meditate and think things through, she’d find salvation somewhere.
    “Mrs. Hoffmiller?”
    Sadie looked at the top of the stairs where Shawn’s birth sister stood, looking at her with trepidation.
    “May I speak with you?”
    Sadie didn’t want to talk to anyone, and yet the fact that this woman had told her the truth before Sadie’s own family had counted for something. Not only had Shawn hidden the truth from her, but Breanna had known for a few months. When Pete had learned about it last night, he had agreed with Shawn that telling Sadie in the morning was a better choice. It galled her to have been the one left out when she felt as though she deserved to know more than any of the rest of them, other than Shawn. But Ms. Lewish had nothing to do with all that, and it was nice not to be angry at someone .
    Sadie smiled, patting the chair next to her. “Call me Sadie.”
    Ms. Lewish looked down the stairs and waved at someone before making her way to the chair Sadie had indicated. “I’m Maggie,” she said.
    “I assume they’re down there?” Sadie asked, nodding toward the stairs where Ms. Lewish—Maggie—had waved.
    Maggie nodded, and once again Sadie felt left out, though this time it was her fault.
    “How did you guys know I was here?”
    “I passed your family when they were heading this way looking for you. I offered to go first when they started debating who would be the best choice to send up. If you have any demands, you’re in a perfect position to get them.”
    She spoke so formally, Sadie noted, smiling politely at the attempted humor. “I’m not sure my demands are the kind that anyone can meet.” What she wanted was a do-over. She wanted Shawn to have told her the truth from the beginning. She wanted to have given him her blessing—which she totally would have done—and then process through this transition as it unfolded, rather than trying to untangle the ugly mass of feeling she had now. She wanted to feel included, not discounted simply as the woman who had raised Lorraina’s child until that child decided he wanted his birth mother back. Hot tears rose with that thought, and she quickly blinked them away. These were thoughts she could never say aloud.
    Maggie sat down in the deck chair next to Sadie, her hands in her lap. She had changed into jeans and a hooded sweatshirt, but her hair was still in a ponytail. She was a pretty girl—wholesome looking, which Sadie liked—though Sadie struggled to see the resemblance between Maggie and Shawn other than skin, eye, and hair color. Maggie was darker-skinned than Shawn, with a thinner nose and more pronounced cheekbones that gave her a leaner look than Shawn had.
    Knowing what she knew now, Sadie recognized the commonalities between Shawn and Lorraina: a similar roundness of their faces, and the same shape of their big, brown eyes. Maggie must have taken after her father; Shawn’s Polynesian heritage probably came from his father as well. Maggie and Shawn clearly didn’t share a paternal line, though Sadie hadn’t asked. She hadn’t asked anything at all following Shawn’s rushed explanation. Perhaps she should have.
    “I’m sorry to bother you,” Maggie said, shifting awkwardly and making Sadie wonder why she’d come at all, “but I wanted to apologize for what I did this morning. I was out of line.”
    “You