Baked Alaska by Josi S. Kilpack Page A

were exactly what I needed. I don’t like secrets.”
    Maggie looked at her hands in her lap. She sat on the edge of the chair, as though not wanting to get too comfortable or stay too long. “I also wanted to thank you for the picture. I hadn’t even thought about getting it from the gallery, what with everything happening. I don’t have many pictures of Lorraina, and I’m glad to have this one before I leave the ship. I’m grateful for the tender mercy of the gift. Thank you.”
    Sadie felt humbled by this girl’s gratitude. She had no reason to seek out Sadie, and far less reason to apologize for anything. “I’m sorry about the way it happened, and about everything else, of course. I can imagine this has been very difficult for you.” Maggie had come aboard with her mother and was leaving without her.
    Maggie blinked quickly and looked across the deck to the city below them. “It’s all pretty intense.”
    “You’re getting off the ship in Juneau?” Sadie asked, changing the subject just a little bit. “For good?”
    “I’m going to go to the hospital, first. I’ll decide what to do from there, I guess. Thank goodness my dad talked me into getting travel insurance for both of us. This would have cost a fortune otherwise.”
    “Your dad?” Sadie asked. Her curiosity about Maggie’s life was growing.
    “He’s in Northern California—just south of Sacramento, where I live.”
    Lorraina lived in Tennessee, not California. Maggie seemed to read Sadie’s thoughts. “I didn’t grow up with Lorraina either,” she said. Sadie had suspected as much; Maggie was so comfortable with adoption terminology—birth sister; adoptive mother.
    “You were adopted too?” Sadie asked, then held up a hand. “I’m sorry, it’s really none of my business.”
    Maggie waved away Sadie’s feigned politeness. “Lorraina found me a couple months ago through an adoption reunification website.”
    Lorraina , Sadie repeated in her mind. She hadn’t broached the name confusion of Tanice versus Lorraina in her own mind yet, let alone bring it up with someone else. The wine bottle obviously wasn’t Lorraina’s. Where did Lorraina get it? Why was she drinking at all if she had a bad liver?
    “You found each other so recently,” Sadie commented.
    Maggie nodded; her smiled faded as she continued. “It’s been a gift from God to have her in my life again. No matter what happens next, I will always have that.”
    Sadie tried to keep her own smile in place, but she had to look away under the guise of scanning the shoreline of Douglas Island, which was connected via a bridge to Juneau. Did Shawn feel that the reunion with his birth mother was a gift? Sadie hated how her jealousy festered in light of this consideration.
    “I’m sorry,” Maggie said, apparently reading Sadie’s thoughts again. “I know this is difficult for you too. My dad had a hard time when I told him I was looking for my birth mom.”
    Sadie took a breath and turned her attention back to her companion. “How did your mother react?”
    Maggie looked at her pink fingernails and smoothed her hands over her thighs. “Mom passed away when I was fourteen.”
    “Oh, I’m sorry,” Sadie said. That chipped away at Sadie’s hurt more than anything else had so far.
    Maggie took a deep breath. “She was first diagnosed with cancer when I was three and fought a very good fight through a couple remissions and some surgeries until God finally called her home.”
    “I’m so sorry.”
    “Yeah, so am I,” she said, shrugging slightly. “But I can see I’m a stronger person for it, and I have faith that one day I’ll see all this as part of God’s road for me as well. There is always something to learn, right?”
    “You have beautiful faith, Maggie.” Had Sadie given Shawn the kind of foundation that would make him open to seeing things from that type of perspective? She hoped so, but then Sadie thought she’d given him the kind of foundation that