Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 117820 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 589(@200wpm)___ 471(@250wpm)___ 393(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 117820 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 589(@200wpm)___ 471(@250wpm)___ 393(@300wpm)
My breath catches in my throat.
They’re all there. Every single one, month after month for the past eight years.
Delaware moves so I can scroll through them faster. Every update has my heart clenching but it’s the first one that has me dying inside.
“Oh my God,” I breathe and look at the email, in response to Mee-maw who sent one first asking for information on my child. It’s very impersonal and informal. Is she speaking with an official or an adopted relative? It doesn’t say which makes this more confusing. “She never left Texas.”
She was in Paducah, a small town in Cottle County after being abandoned at four months old. Who the fuck did she live with for those four months before she was abandoned?
Did nobody notice that their family members had a kid one day and not the next?
I forward every email to Webber as I read and we all crowd around the screen.
Felicia searches on her phone and sure enough there’s an article, just a small one, in Paducah News about a baby abandoned at the church. She was unharmed and well-dressed, but nobody ever came forward for her.
“That would have been when Righteous Hill was burned to the fucking ground,” I say, jaw trembling. I don’t clarify that it was me who burned it. Kane knows for the most part. I didn’t know how else to get the authorities there to crack that place wide open. “Webber said it might happen and said that would be best-case scenario because any kids reported abandoned at that time were DNA matched to potential parents. But she was abandoned in a town too small to make the mainstream media.” I wipe away my tears on my wrist. “She could have been with me this entire time!”
“This isn’t your fault,” Kane promises.
“How did Mee-maw know? How did she know this was my kid? How?”
“There’s a picture,” Felicia says so softly I almost don’t hear her. “She’s so beautiful.”
I rip the phone from her hand and stare at the grainy news article photo. A sob gets stuck in my throat as I finally get to lay my eyes on the being that has always carried the biggest part of me. The photo quality is shockingly bad but I can tell she’s smiling. She has the biggest cheeks, just like I did when I was a baby. This gives me hope that she was loved, and they abandoned her because they were scared of going to prison and not because they didn’t want her.
How could anybody not want her?
“Mee-maw has been in touch with whoever this is for years.” I can’t handle this truth. “Why did she get to know all of this and I didn’t? How did she know?”
Kane stares ferociously at the screen as he continues forwarding the emails. It’s not until he gets to one dated two years ago that he stops. It’s the last email. “What do we do now? We know what city she is likely in; it won’t be hard to find her adoptive parents.”
“Where is she?” West asks, leaning closer so he can see. “Austin? She’s been on our fucking doorstep this entire time?”
“I need a minute,” I say, pushing my seat back and walking away. I feel like my insides are twisting and turning. I want to vomit but I also want to collapse. This is too much.
“We found her,” Kane whispers, coming up behind me. “We found her. It’s over. She’ll be with us soon.”
“No she won’t,” I breathe, soaking my wrist with more tears.
“She will.”
“No she won’t!” I yell, turning on him so fast my head keeps spinning for long after I’ve stopped. “She won’t, because she was probably legally adopted by a family who likely loves her and it won’t be in her best interests to be taken from them. Mee-maw was right, Webber was right. That child will never be anything more than our biological fucking daughter and we won’t be allowed even a fraction of her.”
“That’s not true,” Kane argues, and Felicia opens her mouth, probably to agree.
“I’m not tearing her from the only family she has ever known to come and live with the likes of me.” I hug myself, feeling defeated and devastated. “Those emails tell me one thing, she’s happy. Why would I want to destroy that? Why would you?”
“Because she’s my daughter that I never got to know.”
“That’s probably for the best.”
“Hey,” West barks. “You’re upset, no need to start gettin’ nasty. Not with each other.”
“I can’t deal with this,” I admit, turning away again. “I just… I need to go for a walk.”
“She’s kinda right though,” I hear Felicia mutter as I walk towards the exit. “Can you imagine being that kid in this situation?”
I don’t wait to hear their answers, I shove open the heavy wooden door and step into the ridiculously hot summer air.