“I was raped by a ranch hand when I was a teenager. Brutally.” The words stabbed at Stella’s heart. “The doctors said I would never have children. And they were right.”

Time seemed suspended in the moment as she tried to think of something, anything, she could say to console her mother.

“I’m so sorry, Mama,” was the best she could do. Shock and confusion had a stranglehold on her thoughts and tossed them back and forth recklessly to oblivion.

Her mother just nodded, and Stella realized the woman was a stranger sitting before her. Both of her parents were. Her mouth gaped uncontrollably and she did her best to keep it closed and just listen. Her mother seemed to be waiting for her to gather her composure to continue. Once the faraway ringing in her ears lessened, Stella nodded for her to continue.

“Your father was the one who found me. He saved me. That day and many times since then.”

Stella struggled to hear the words over her own breathing and the questions rising rapidly in her mind.

“I put it behind me. My family wasn’t the type to seek counseling. They were the ‘suck it up and get back to work’ type. They worked themselves and me to the bone until the day they retired. Once they both passed, the ranch was given to me. I wanted nothing to do with it, as you can probably imagine and empathize with.”

Stella swallowed hard, hearing the pop in her ears as she did.

“But Hugh reminded me that we had met here, that we could have a beautiful life, make our own memories here, and let go of the painful ones. He was right. So we got married here and began trying every possible way to conceive imaginable.”

Stella’s stomach tightened as she listened. She’d never been told much about her parents’ life before her. She wanted to know their story, but she was beginning to see why they hadn’t shared it.

“Nothing worked,” her mother told her with tear-filled eyes. “I’d nearly bankrupted us and driven your father away with my frantic need to have a child.”

Stella watched as her father murmured something in her mother’s ear that seemed to calm her.

Her mother’s shoulders straightened. “Then Grace Whitman showed up on our doorstep. She was the young woman who’d agreed to be our surrogate. She was pregnant and had an abusive boyfriend who knew her baby wasn’t his.”

Stella bolted upright without having meant to.

“Please,” her mother pleaded. “Please just let me finish.”

Stella eased herself shakily back onto the couch. Her stomach pitched and rolled. Wherever this was going, it was somewhere fucked up and ugly. She could feel it.

“I thought she was a gift from God, and in many ways, she was.” Candace sniffled. “But she hadn’t gotten pregnant by her boyfriend, nor had she gotten pregnant by herself, or by using the In Vitro methods we’d been trying.”

Stella tried to make sense of what she was being told. “I don’t understand, I mean, if she was—”

“Your mother was out of her mind with the need to have a child. I just wanted to make her happy. To protect her from the pain of feeling less than whole. I wanted to take care of her, give her what she deserved.”

The shock at hearing her father saying so many words all at once rendered her speechless.

“I’d nearly destroyed him, destroyed us. I can’t begin to tell you how badly I wanted you, Stella Jo. Wanted to be a mother, the perfect mother. The kind I’d spent my life wishing I had.”

She just shook her head. This was all so convoluted and messed up. The story was out of order and missing the most important parts. Nothing made sense. “So whose daughter am I then?”

“Ours,” her mother said, while her father answered, “Mine.”

“I am so lost,” she whispered helplessly. The world she’d thought she knew swirled out of her reach and disintegrated.

Her father stood and began to pace like a caged beast. She watched him, waiting for him to clarify.

“Grace wanted to be a part of our family. She’d never had one. We took her in and…” He paused to take a loud breath. “Your mother wanted a child. Grace wanted to give her that in exchange for helping her escape her abusive boyfriend.”

“Did you?”

“Yes and no.” Her father stopped pacing. “The IVF worked the first time. Her boyfriend pushed her down a flight of stairs and she lost the baby. After that, none of the procedures took.”

Stella heard her mother’s sobs, but she couldn’t look away from the authoritative man who’d remained silent for so many years. “So then how am I here?”

“I asked him to do it.”

Stella slid her gaze over to her mother. “To do what?” she asked slowly.

“Your mother asked me to go get Grace and bring her here where she’d be safe. To move her in with us and try to…get her pregnant the old-fashioned way.”

“Oh my God.”

“Grace was willing. She had a… crush I guess you could call it on your father. He said no, at first,” her mother cut in. “He was adamant that he would not do that with another woman. But I didn’t see it as cheating or betrayal. I saw it as a means to an end.”

Bile rose in her throat. A means to an end? Jesus.

“I can’t explain it. Or what I was thinking and feeling. But the night he finally gave in and went to get her, I’d realized how crazy and reprehensible it was to ask such a thing of him. Of anyone.”

“I think I’m going to be sick.” Stella dropped her head in her hands, choosing to hear the rest without looking at either of them.

Her father cleared his throat. “She was beat to hell and back by the time I got there. The boyfriend had found out we’d been giving her money and she hadn’t been sharing it. I…I…”

Stella clenched her hair in her hands, pulling just enough until she could only focus on the pain. It anchored her, kept her from losing all sense of her sanity completely.

“I did it for your mother, mostly. But maybe I did it for me too. Maybe I did it for Grace. Even after all these years…I still don’t know. It just happened. Maybe I couldn’t stand seeing her like that and I wanted to be a damned hero. I don’t… But I’m sorry. God, I’m so sorry, sweetheart.”

Stella looked up to see her father on his knees before her mother. It was familiar. That worshipful gaze, the wonder in his eyes as he stared up at her. The love that passed so fiercely between them.

Her skin tingled. This was majorly fucked up. Her parents had brought her into the world under some seriously bizarre circumstances. But that was in the past. She wanted to move forward, toward the future. The future with a man she loved. Who she was pretty sure loved her too. But she did want to know what had become of her biological mother. Her story as tragic, like Van’s sister’s. She wondered if it had a happier ending.

“Whatever happened to Grace?” she asked quietly, hating to interrupt the private moment they were sharing.

Her mother looked over her father’s head with surprise in her eyes, almost as if she’d forgotten Stella was still in the room with them.

“She stayed with us for a while. Until you were born. But then she left. She left us a note saying she was happy that you would have a much more beautiful life than she had.”

Her father cleared his throat and rose up onto the couch. “We checked up on her from time to time. She held down a few jobs in the area. But just after your second birthday, she reconciled with the old boyfriend. He hadn’t changed much, unfortunately. They were involved in an accident. He was drinking and driving. Neither of them survived.”

An odd sensation of grief and loss for a woman she never knew settled into Stella’s stomach.

“Stella? Honey?” Her mother stood and moved toward her. “I know this is a lot. But you were right. It was always tense here. The secrets. The lies. The fear that you’d find out the truth somehow and hate us. It made this a hard place to be sometimes.”

She just nodded. It was so much to process. Too much.