Farmers markets were not his thing.
And yet, there he was. Sebastian Xavier Grant slipped on sunglasses as he walked from his parking space toward Misty River High School’s athletic fields and rows of vendors shaded by pop-up canopies.
He’d come to this particular farmers market for one reason only: to support his best friend, Ben. An eleventh-grade science teacher, Ben was responsible for staffing every volunteer position at today’s market, which was one of the high school’s most lucrative fundraisers of the year.
Sebastian had offered to volunteer wherever he was needed. Apparently, he was needed in the booster club’s spaghetti lunch line, located on the far side of the market stalls, near the base of the wooded hillside.
He checked his watch. 11:45. His shift started at twelve.
Sunshine fell over beige brick buildings that had been new back when Sebastian had gone to school there. Happy shrieks rose from the area where they’d set up inflatables, a game that involved kids wearing blown-up rings around their waists, and one of those plastic balls big enough for a person to climb inside and then roll down a lane. Today, the clean mountain air held no humidity, and only a few thin strips of cloud marked the blue of the sky. The forecast for this mid-May Saturday: seventy-eight degrees.
Sebastian strode past stalls selling beef jerky, jam, soap. Organic vegetables. Candles. Canned southern staples, like black-eyed peas. Locally crafted beer. Folk pottery. A fruit stand with peaches, plums, and blueberries.
He was just making his way out of the row when he heard a voice. A female voice.
It tripped his memory, and he came to an immediate stop. Listening hard, he weeded through the noise—conversations, the whir of a generator, laughter—until he caught a snatch of that voice again.
“Sure,” he thought he heard her say. He had to strain to make it out. “You’re welcome.”
Recognition and certainty flooded him. It was her.
He spun and scanned the people in his field of vision.
He didn’t see her.
Where was she?
Last November, not far from here, he’d swerved to avoid a car that had veered into his lane. His SUV had ended up nose-down in a roadside ditch, and the impact had knocked him out. When he’d regained consciousness, a woman had been inside his car with him. The voice he’d just overheard belonged to her.
His mind tugged him back in time to the morning of the crash.
“Sir?” she’d said to him.
Sebastian heard the feminine voice as if he were at the bottom of a hole. Chuck Berry’s “Downbound Train” played on his SUV’s radio.
“Can you hear me?” she asked, sounding worried and faintly out of breath. “Are you all right?”
Her voice was smooth and sweet like honey. He didn’t want the woman with the voice like honey to be worried. Also, he didn’t want to wake up because his head ached with dull, fierce pain.
“Sir,” she said. “Can you hear me?”
“Yes,” he said hoarsely.
“He fell on his knees,” Chuck Berry sang, “on the bar room floor and prayed a prayer like never before.”
Sebastian slit his eyes open. Pinpricks punctured his vision. He was inside his car, his seat belt cutting against his chest diagonally. What had happened?
Wincing, he lifted his chin. Cracks scarred his windshield. Beyond the hood, he could see nothing but dirt and torn grass. A pair of sapling trees wedged against his driver’s side door.
He’d been in a car crash.
How long ago? Why?
He didn’t know. He’d flown to the airstrip. He . . . He remembered getting into his car and pulling out onto the road in the fog. That’s all.
He’d lost time.
Experimentally, he moved his fingers and toes. Everything was working fine except for the splitting pain in his head.
The one with the beautiful voice clicked off the radio. “Downbound Train” disappeared, leaving only a faint ringing in his ears.
“I’m relieved that you came to,” she said.
The tone of her words softened the agony inside his skull.
Slowly, he turned his chin in her direction. He’d lost his tolerance for light and the pinpricks wouldn’t go away. He squeezed his eyes shut against the disorienting sensation, then opened them and concentrated hard so that he could focus on her.
She . . . had the face of an angel.
An unforgettable face. A heartbreaking face, both hopeful and world-weary. He guessed her to be a year or two younger than he was, but she didn’t look sheltered or naïve.
Long eyelashes framed almond-shaped gray-blue eyes as deep as they were soft. A defined groove marked the center of her upper lip. Blond hair, parted on the side. Neither curly nor straight, it had a natural, faintly messy look to it. She’d cut it so that it ended halfway between her small, determined chin and her shoulders.
Had he died? Was she an angel? She was there, which made him think he’d died. But his head hurt, which made him think he hadn’t.
“Are you injured?” she asked.
“I’m fine. Except for my head.”
Concern flickered in her expression. At least, he thought it did. He struggled to see her more clearly, furious that he couldn’t look at her with his usual powers of observation.
She knelt on the passenger seat, the door behind her gaping open. “I’ve already called 9-1-1. Hopefully they’ll be here soon.”
“I hope not.”
“Hmm?”
“I don’t want them to take me away from you.”
Her brows lifted. “I . . .” She gestured. “I was behind you on the road. I came around the bend just in time to see your car go off the edge. I pulled over and dialed 9-1-1.”
“How long was I out?”
“Just a few minutes. Is there anything I can do for you?”
He extended his right hand to her. “Hold my hand?”
“Of course.” She wrapped both of her hands around his. The heat of her touch had the same effect on him as her voice and appearance.
He suspected he’d cracked his head on his side window, which had knocked him out and likely given him a severe concussion.
“Would it help if I unfastened your seat belt?” she asked.
“Yeah.” He was capable of freeing it using his left hand. But if she was offering to do it for him, he wasn’t about to say no.
She let go of his hand to accomplish the task, and he cursed himself for making a tactical error. But then she braced one hand against the center console and reached across him, bringing her hair within a few inches of his nose. He drew air in and registered the scent of lavender.
Dark satisfaction curved his lips. He hadn’t made a tactical error. His brainpower remained intact, and he was going to be just fine. The constriction of his seat belt released.
She arched back and resumed her earlier position.
He extended his hand.
She took it. “Better?”
“Much.”
The sound of sirens reached him. In response, resistance sharpened inside him. He didn’t want to be parted from her.
Twice before in his life, he hadn’t wanted to be parted from people. When he was eight. When he was thirteen. Both times, his desires hadn’t mattered.
“Is there anything else I can do for you?” she asked. “I’d be happy to call someone.”
“No. I’m not the type . . . to alarm people . . . before I have solid facts.” He paused for a moment to gather his strength. The pinpricks still wouldn’t go away.
The sirens drew nearer. Louder.
He rested the back of his skull against his headrest but kept his face turned fully to the right, his concentration trained on her. “After I speak with the doctors . . . I’ll make calls. To tell people what’s happened.”
“Okay.”
The sirens grew so loud that they made conversation impossible.
She craned her neck to look toward the road.
Idiot sirens. Violently, he wished he could take back her 9-1-1 call.
He had to remember that he was a stranger to her. He couldn’t expect her to feel about him the way he felt about her. She hadn’t been in a crash. Her head was clear.
The noise of the ambulance cut away. Its lights continued to revolve, sending rays of red and blue against her face. She gave him a small, encouraging smile. “They’ll be here in just a second.”
He gripped her hand more tightly, holding her with him. He memorized the curves and lines of her forehead, cheeks, hair, neck, arms.
Men’s voices neared.
She moved to exit his car.
He didn’t release her hand. “Don’t go,” he said.
She leveled a bemused look on him. “I need to get out of their way. It’s all right. They’re going to take great care of you.” Gently, she slipped her hand from his and scooted away.
All he could think was, No. Don’t go. But he’d already said that, and it hadn’t worked. He couldn’t force her to remain with him.
“You’re going to be just fine,” she said.
He was not going to be just fine without her.
Two men in EMT uniforms filled the passenger-side doorway. They were leaning in, talking to him.
Sebastian had twisted, trying to keep sight of her, but in an instant, the fog had stolen her from view.
The book and movie character Jason Bourne had been hit on the head, woken up with amnesia, realized he was extremely talented at killing people, and gone on a series of high-adrenaline adventures.
Sebastian had been hit on the head, experienced short-term amnesia, and been so out of it when he’d come to that it hadn’t occurred to him to ask for the woman’s name.
He’d gotten only one thing right on the morning of his accident. He’d correctly understood that he was not going to be fine without her.
Instead of high-adrenaline adventures, his world had been muted and dull since his concussion. It was like he’d been walking through time in a space suit that kept out joy.Which he didn’t understand, because he’d finally achieved the goal he’d been chasing for years. He’d become a pediatric heart surgeon, and his job was supposed to have righted the wrong that had happened to him when he was a kid. It was supposed to have brought him security, fulfillment, happiness.
To be fair, his job did bring him some of that. But not enough to free him from the space suit. Which made him mad.
Also, Jason Bourne sucked.
Sebastian jerked off his sunglasses and pushed them into the chest pocket of his lightweight gray-and-white-checked button-down. He wore the shirt untucked over jeans, the sleeves rolled up.
He saw all ages and shapes of people. But not her.
For weeks after his encounter with her, he’d racked his brain, trying to think how he could learn her identity. He’d never seen her car. She’d been wearing nothing distinctive that would have allowed him to track her down. She’d left no trace behind.
He’d contacted Misty River’s 9-1-1 dispatcher and the EMTs to ask who she was. Neither had been willing to share her name. Privacy, they’d said. He’d hunted the social media feeds of his Misty River friends for a photo that included her. No success. He’d looked through old high school yearbooks, trying to find her picture in one of Misty River High’s graduating classes. No success.
After a month of making himself crazy with frustration, he’d forced himself to quit searching. He’d told himself she could not be as appealing in real life as he’d made her in his imagination.
Unfortunately, his brain hadn’t listened. His body might have stopped the search, but he’d continued to brood over her for the past six months.
To his left, he registered movement at one of the stalls. He glanced toward it in time to see a blond head rise from behind buckets of flowers on risers. The woman extended a hand and poured change into a customer’s palm.
He could only see her profile, but that was enough.
It was the woman from the day of the crash.
His breath left him.
Finally. Amazingly, there she was.
His awareness centered on her, he moved forward. She turned to chat with the two acne-prone teenagers helping her sell flowers. A piece of butcher paper reading Support the Misty River High Math Club! hung in front of their folding table.
He’d been wrong when he’d decided she could not be as appealing in real life as he’d made her in his imagination. She was ridiculously appealing. More so than he’d remembered.
She had on a bright pink short-sleeved sweater. The rounded collar of the snowy white shirt underneath folded over the neckline. Her jeans were beige. No wedding ring. Very little makeup. Hardly any jewelry at all, just tiny earrings and a classic metal watch.
He stopped at her booth. She looked in his direction, and their eyes met.
“I don’t know if you remember me,” he said. “I was in a car accident last November. You were behind me on the road, and when you saw what happened, you came to help.”
Realization lit her expression. “That’s right.” She smiled and crossed to him. “I’m pleased to see you again. I’ve thought about you often and wondered how you were.”
“I’ve thought about you often, too.”
“Did you sustain any injuries in the crash?”
“A concussion.”
“And how are you now?”
“Fully recovered.” He couldn’t believe he’d found her, was talking to her.
“Excellent. You look impressively healthy.”
“I am.”
“And exceedingly handsome.”
“You think I’m handsome?”
She tilted her head a few millimeters. “Most females must find you handsome,” she said matter of factly, with zero flirtatiousness. “Do they not?”
A grin tugged at his mouth.
An elderly couple arrived, capturing her attention.
Hers wasn’t the lean, hard beauty of a model. She had a more interesting, more subtle, more layered beauty. Her face projected many things at the same time: intelligence, kindness, confidence, and perceptiveness.
She stood at a height of maybe five foot six. Delicate, but not skinny.
Those eyes of hers made him want to protect her, which was ridiculous. She was clearly volunteering her time, just like he was. She didn’t need his protection or the rush of emotions she was making made him feel. After existing in a gray haze for months, everything was suddenly sharper than it should be—his determination not to let her go again, sounds, the color of her sweater.
What was it about her that drew him? Her calm? The strength he sensed in her? He wasn’t sure, but there was definitely something powerful about her presence. He’d never reacted to a woman this way before.
“I’ve been waiting for the chance to thank you,” he told her once the elderly couple moved away. “For stopping that day.”
“You’re welcome. Glad to have been of assistance.”
He grabbed the nearest bouquet from its bucket and passed it to her. “I’ll take this one, please.” At the least, he needed enough time with her to learn who she was. At the most, to convince her to go out with him.
“Outstanding choice.” She considered the dripping arrangement. “Hmm. Two metaphors, right here.”
“How so?”
“Well, flowers are already a metaphor for life in and of themselves. But your bouquet is also gently spherical on top. It starts here, at birth, so to speak.” She coasted her pointer finger from the lower edge of one side toward the center rise of the flowers. “Then expands to the fullest days of life. Then ends very much where it began on the other side, with death.” Her finger continued its arc to the bottom edge on the opposite side. Her hands were pale and graceful, her short nails unpainted.
He was about as interested in metaphors as he was in farmers markets. But she could talk to him about metaphors for days, and he’d drink every word.
She turned toward the table to wrap the flowers in wax paper.
He could be too straightforward, he knew. He’d had to work on that when interacting with the parents of his patients. If he told her “I need for you to go on a date with me,” she’d think he was crazy.
Maybe he was crazy.
She tied an orange bow around the bouquet—
“Hey!” Ben’s familiar voice cut through Sebastian’s thoughts.
“Hey.” He and Ben exchanged their usual side arm hug.
He was always glad to see Ben. Only, Ben’s arrival at this particular moment wasn’t ideal.
A smile moved across Ben’s mouth, his teeth gleaming white against his dark brown skin. “I saw you guys talking and came over to introduce you.”
She stepped toward them with the flowers. “Do you two know each other?”
“This is my best friend, Dr. Sebastian Grant,” Ben told her.
“Ah!” she said. “You’re one of the Miracle Five, like Ben.”
“Yes.”
“Ben’s told me all about you.”
“And this,” Ben said to Sebastian, “is my friend Leah Montgomery.”
For a terrible, disorienting second, Sebastian’s mind blanked. Then denial filled it—red and loud.
No.
“I’ve told him all about you,” Ben said to Leah.
“I hope you’ve been emphasizing my most sterling qualities.”
“I have,” Ben assured her with a dopey, infatuated look.
No!
Ever since Leah came to Misty River High to teach math more than a year and a half ago, Ben had had a crush on her. Ben was taking his time, content to build a wide base of friendship with Leah, in hopes that it would one day lead to more.
Last fall, Ben had told Sebastian that he loved Leah. Sebastian had given him a hard time for claiming to love a woman he wasn’t even dating. But Ben had stood behind his statement.
Ben believed himself to be in love with her.
Which meant that Sebastian could never ask her out. Ben had found her first, and in the code of brothers, that meant that she was off-limits to Sebastian.
No.
“Small world,” Leah said lightly to Ben. “Last fall I was driving behind Sebastian here when his car went off the side of the road. I kept him company until the ambulance got there.”
“Oh?” Ben said. Then, “Oh.” Understanding was no doubt filling his brain.
Just as Ben had told Sebastian about Leah, Sebastian had told Ben about the woman who’d been in his car with him when he’d regained consciousness. Ben knew about Sebastian’s search for her and just how consumed by her Sebastian had been.
“Sebastian called me the day of the accident.” The usual optimism was draining from Ben’s expression. “He told me about the woman who stopped to help, but I had no idea that woman was you.”
A high schooler approached the stall. “I’m heading out,” he said to Leah. The newcomer was a few inches shorter than Sebastian with a soft, smooth face.
“Hello to you, too,” Leah said to the teen. “I’m in the middle of a conversation.” She indicated him and Ben.
“Cool,” the kid said. “So . . . I’m leaving.”
Leah regarded the boy with scolding affection. “I’m fine with you leaving, my darlingest of darlings, but before you go, I insist you make a stab at politeness by greeting these adults and then introducing yourself.”
“Hello,” the kid said in a monotone. “I’m Dylan.”
“Sebastian.”
“Good to see you, Dylan,” Ben said warmly.
“Yup.” Dylan loped off, flicking the fingers of one hand upward in a parting gesture.
Leah watched him leave, then handed the bouquet to Sebastian.
“How much do I owe you?” His voice sounded rusty. He was cool under pressure. Always. It was one of the things he was known for. At the moment, though, he didn’t feel cool. He felt crushed and angry. The only positive part of this situation was that Ben had joined them before Sebastian had hit on Leah.
Unfortunately, it didn’t make things better to acknowledge that things could’ve been worse.
“Twenty dollars,” she told Sebastian.
Sebastian handed over cash. He also passed the bouquet he’d purchased back to her.
She gave him a questioning look.
“For you,” he told her. “I appreciate what you did for me last fall.”
“That’s kind of you, but you don’t need to give me flowers.” She extended them back in his direction.
“They’re yours,” he insisted. “Thank you again.” After nodding at her politely, he stalked toward the spaghetti line.
Behind him, he could hear Ben and Leah exchanging good-byes.
Ben caught up and fell in step next to him. They walked in silence for several strides until Ben said, “Hold up a minute.”
They both came to a stop.
Ben stuck his hands into his jeans. “Leah was the woman who was with you in your car after your accident?”
“Yeah.”
“I can’t believe it.”
“Me neither. I passed her table just now and recognized her.”
Ben shifted uncomfortably, looking toward one of the gigantic human-filled balls. It revolved slowly down its course.
Sebastian held himself motionless, still struggling to absorb the fact that he’d found Leah and lost Leah in the space of less than ten minutes.
“I really care about her, man,” Ben said. “We . . . we don’t typically have the same taste in women. But this time we do.”
“Obviously I’m not going to get in your way.”
“Look, I’m sorry about this. I know how much you liked her.”
“I don’t even know her. I talked with her six months ago for a short period of time. That’s it.” Sebastian set his body in motion again, finding it too hard to stand still.
The situation made him feel guilty, which it had no right to do. Until now, he hadn’t known the woman in his SUV was the Leah Ben had a crush on. The situation also made him feel resentful toward Ben. It had no right to do that either. “Who’s Dylan?” he asked.
“He’s Leah’s younger brother. She has custody of him.”
“Why does she have custody?”
“Their parents divorced when Dylan was young. After the divorce, Leah’s mom forced Leah’s dad out of the kids’ lives, little by little.”
“And her dad accepted that?”
“Yeah. Over time he let the kids go. So then Leah and Dylan were left with just Leah’s mom. Ten years ago, she accepted a job overseas and voluntarily relinquished Dylan’s custody to Leah.”
“How old was Leah ten years ago?”
“Eighteen. Dylan was seven.”
Sebastian’s eyebrows shot up.
“Until I met Leah,” Ben said, “I didn’t even realize that eighteen-year-olds could be granted custody of younger siblings.”
Sebastian was no stranger to issues pertaining to orphans. “In most states, including Georgia, eighteen-year-olds can gain custody of a younger sibling so long as they’re able to show that they have the means to support them both, somewhere safe to live, and so on. How did Leah have the means to support herself and her brother at that age?”
Ben tapped him on the arm, stilling him again because they’d almost reached the food line. “So, I’ve told you, right, that Leah was a math prodigy?”
Sebastian gave a short nod.
“By the age of four she could do algebraic and quadratic equations. One of her elementary school teachers took her under her wing and made sure she was challenged, gave her all kinds of resources and opportunities. By ten, she was into complex numbers and math theories.”
At ten, Sebastian had been into skipping school and hating the world.
“She stayed in public school through eighth grade,” Ben continued, “then was offered a scholarship to the Program for the Exceptionally Gifted at the Clemmons School.”
“I’m not familiar with it.”
“It’s basically a boarding school for girls who are off-the-charts smart in math. She graduated from there at eighteen with both a high school diploma and her bachelor’s degree in math. Can you relate to any of that?”
Ben knew he could. Sebastian, too, had graduated from college at eighteen.
Ben scratched the hair behind his ear that he kept shaved close to his skull. “She didn’t tell me this part, but I’ve read articles about her, so I know that she was then offered a chance to pursue her PhD free of charge at several of the best mathematics programs in the country. She chose Princeton and was all set to go when her mom took off. Leah ended up turning down Princeton’s offer and looking for jobs as a math teacher.”
“She wouldn’t have had the certifications to teach, though. Would she?”
“No. But she immediately enrolled in an online master’s program. If you have a BA in a subject and can show that you’re pursuing a master’s degree that will lead to certification, you can teach . . . assuming you can convince a principal and a school board to hire you.”
“Which is the route she took?”
“Exactly. She was hired as a middle school math teacher in Gainesville while she was getting her master’s. I’ve never heard of anyone else becoming a teacher so young. It’s rare. But then, she’s rare. Her math mind is one in a million. She should be working as a professor at a university, but instead she’s here, teaching our most advanced math students. It’s a shame for her, but it’s been awesome for the kids. She’s an excellent teacher.”
Sebastian’s mouth tightened. He’d never considered his lack of siblings to be fortunate. But because he hadn’t been saddled with family responsibilities, he’d been free to accept the medical school offers that had come his way. “Why did she move to Misty River?”
“Dylan. He was struggling in Gainesville. His grades were terrible, and his friends were rough. She decided it would be best to give him a fresh start.”
“How’s that worked out?”
“Well, for the most part. I think he still gives her plenty of reasons to worry, but he’s doing much better than he was.”
A frazzled-looking gray-haired woman whistled and flagged Ben down by waving both arms.
“Got to go,” Ben said. “I’ll catch up with you later.”
As Sebastian approached the man who appeared to be in charge of the spaghetti line, he allowed himself one last look in Leah’s direction. He could only make out her bright sweater.
Disappointment snarled inside him, prowling for an outlet.
Math prodigy Leah Montgomery could not be his.
Your DNA results are in! Discover your heritage! popped up in Leah’s email inbox two weeks after submitting her second sample.
Immediately upon seeing that subject line, her blood pressure escalated in a rush.
This time the message found her while she was sitting on the bleachers at a track and field meet, cheering for her students. During a long break between events, she’d checked her phone.
She clicked the link in the email, then asked God for His peace and strength as she typed in her username and password.
The screen populated, and Leah stared at the same ethnicity pie chart YourHeritage had served her the first time. She brought up the screen showing her genetic matches. The same unfamiliar pictures and names appeared in a long line. Haskins, Brookside, Schloss.
Sorrow crept over her.
Her mother believed Leah to be the child she’d given birth to.
This second test proved, unequivocally, that she was not.
She wasn’t related by blood to her brother, her mom, or her dad. By blood, she was related to these people she did not know.
The starting gun signaled another race had begun. She raised her face and watched the runners dart off the blocks, pumping their arms and legs. Inside, her emotions were as chaotic as those churning, straining limbs.
For the past two weeks, her thoughts had been drawn to her DNA over and over again. It wasn’t as if she’d had no warning about the potential loss of her biological connection to her brother. Yet this confirmation sliced her with a grief so new and painful, it felt like a personal insult.
For many, many years prior to Dylan’s birth, she’d wanted a little sister of her own. Leah had been lonely, shy, uncoordinated, self-conscious—a solitary girl with a reservoir of love to give. She’d imagined that her little sister would look just like she did, love to graph parabolas like she did, appreciate tea parties with stuffed animals like she did.
Around the time she’d turned ten, she’d resigned herself to the truth. She was never going to get a sibling. Just like she was never going to get the Apple computer she asked for every Christmas.
A fifth grader going on the age of fifty, she’d put her longing for a sister on the shelf. There hadn’t been time to mourn. She’d had her hands full with the miserable social aspects of her latter elementary years and an academic workload that would have challenged Einstein. Her parents had moved from town to town every few years, forever chasing and never catching new dreams, better jobs, greener grass.
And then, out of the blue, her mom and dad—never the masters of birth control—had experienced their second unplanned pregnancy. At first when they told her they were expecting a baby, she’d responded like any self-respecting preteen: with mortification. But after she’d had time to get used to the idea, the old yearning for a blond little sister had stirred back to life.
Her parents had waited to find out the sex of their baby. And so, when Leah had finally entered her mom’s hospital room to meet her new sibling, excitement had bounced around inside her body like a pinball. Dad informed her that if the baby was wearing pink, it was a girl. If the baby was wearing blue, it was a boy.
Leah approached the little plastic box on wheels where the baby was sleeping. Long before she was close enough to determine the color of the baby’s clothing beneath the blankets, she read the sign stuck to the inside of the baby’s bed. It’s a boy!
Mom and Dad’s gender reveal plan had been spoiled by an obvious sign they’d failed to notice.
Benevolently, she acted surprised when she pulled the baby’s blanket down and revealed blue.
Leah sat in the room’s window seat, and Dad rested her tiny brother in her lap.
He was beautiful. A mini nose, a perfect doll mouth, slightly bulgy closed eyes. She peeked under his cap and found lots of dark, silky hair.
Overtaken with wonder, she’d hugged him against herself. In that moment, it hadn’t mattered that he wasn’t a girl or that he wasn’t blond.
He was hers.
She was no longer alone with her erratic parents.
She’d found her person.
Love had vibrated through every cell of her adolescent self. And over the seventeen years since, that love had proven deep and staunch, the most unchanging aspect of her life.
Her relationship with Dylan was forged of much stronger stuff than blood. She’d been there for every important moment of his life. For the last decade, she’d been his caregiver.
Shared history. Love in action. Those are the things that family relationships are made of. She would, forever and always, continue to be Dylan’s sister. But until this DNA test, she’d trusted in the fact that she was Dylan’s biological sister. She’d wanted, very much, to continue to be Dylan’s biological sister.
Now it felt as though Dylan, Mom, and Dad were on one side of a river, a party of three. And she was on the other side by herself.
A sheen of tears misted her eyes.
She was not who she’d always thought she was. Which begged the question . . . who was she?
Your identity has not changed, she told herself firmly. She was the very same person she’d been before the DNA results. Her truest identity, the only one that would last, was anchored in Christ and no one could take that from her. She’d spent hours preaching that truth to herself these past weeks. . . .
She only wished it had sunk in better.
She inclined her head, closed her eyes, and determinedly prayed the words she clung to every time bad news confronted her. I’m going to trust in you with all my heart and lean not on my understanding. In all my ways, I’ll acknowledge you. Please make my paths straight.
Lifting her head, she consciously relaxed the muscles tension had seized.
Who were the parents she should have been given to on the day of her birth? What had happened to the baby who should have been given to Leah’s mom and dad? And what chain of events had sent two babies home with the wrong parents?