Withholding Secrets by Diana Fisher Page A

determination she had for Jordan and Sky … maybe I was wrong for thinking she couldn’t do it. No. Keri couldn’t be but twenty-one, and that was no life for her. What was she even thinking?
    “If there are signs of abuse, and you should know them, then you have to alert the proper—”
    “She’s not the one who’s abusing them. If anything, she’s the one who’s trying to give them something.” Scratching the back of my head, I studied the label on the bottle of beer. Keri was still on my mind. Every damn day. Every damn night. That look on her face when I offered a number for her to send the kids away to ... Everything about her was all …
    The best thing for those two kids were to go to someone who could afford them and give them what they needed. Keri was trying, I did have to give her credit for that, but she was a kid herself yet. How could she even think she was able to give them everything they needed?
    “What about the kids? What do they think?”
    “The boy … Jordan … he’s still guarded and angry. The girl, Skylar, she wants to really be happy, but Jordan just won’t let her.” The talks that I overheard were always Jordan telling her not to get comfortable, not to look ahead because it will never work out. And Sky, with the trust that she had in Jordan, believed him.
    “And what does the mother—”
    “That’s the thing. She’s not their mother.” If Keri was older than I thought she was, then I would kick myself in the ass. Still, I had to take cold showers since the day she barged in my office and put up a front. Having two teenage kids would dampen her life; a life that I just might be able to wiggle into … for a night or a weekend.
    “Then what is she to the kids?”
    I shrugged, picking up the bottle and taking a long drink. I still hadn’t found out what the whole issue was with Keri, and what she actually was to the kids. A sister or a cousin was what I was leaning toward, but the looks just may have been from one different parent. Keri was something to those kids with the way she acted with them, but what? “I’m not too sure yet.”
    “Does she seem like she’s good to them?” And that was purely my mother coming out, the worrier. She was the reason my adoption took place. It wasn’t that my father was up for adopting a young teen, but Mom saw something inside of me she couldn’t let go of. And to this day, I was grateful for her intuition.
    “I can tell that she’s really trying, but she has no idea what she’s getting herself into. I don’t know how she ended up with them, why she has them, or if she’s related to them. She put herself as the guardian and main contact on the rink release for them, but that was it. Nothing else.” My heart clobbered my chest as I looked at my phone. Seeing her name come up on the screen when it rang an hour ago damn near cut off my appetite and robbed the strength from my knees. I hadn’t seen her since the day I offered to help her out on finding a good home for the two. Since then, she always picked them up outside.
    “What is it that makes you think that she can’t take care of them? Is there someone else at the home who helps out?” Mom’s rational thinking, looking at the whole picture before reacting, was what I needed in this situation. That was why my issues went to her and not Dad. Dad would just say for me to make the calls myself to get those kids a better life.
    “She’s like twenty-one, Mom. She can’t possibly take care of those two herself. She’s a kid .”
    “For one thing, never underestimate a woman, Kane. Women are capable of doing something men can’t even fathom. If she is struggling too much, then she may come to realize that she can’t and she will do the right thing. But, then again, maybe she has everything under control.” She took in a deep breath as she pressed her lips together. “What is the little girl like?”
    “I don’t know. When she’s around Jordan, she shies away because