Total pages in book: 108
Estimated words: 103010 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 515(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103010 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 515(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
Maybe she would turn him away.
Maybe she would welcome him with open arms.
Maybe she would take him away from me.
I rubbed a hand over my face and sighed. Fuck, this was hard, but it needed to be done. I was glad he hadn’t wanted anything to do with it until he knew that any relatives I might have found wanted to get to know him. I would carry the burden, any burden, if it lightened the load for my boy.
Not wanting to risk the possibility of him coming home early from his afternoon out with Jordan and Ian, I picked up the phone and dialed.
“Hello?” a woman answered a couple of moments later.
“Hi, is this Jennifer Douglas?”
“Speaking. May I ask who’s calling?” There was a slight twang to her words. “Jeff, can you get the girls? Oh, no, sweetie, don’t climb on that,” she said to her kids and her husband, whom she’d married at twenty.
“My name is Aidan Kingsley. I’m from Los Angeles, and I… There’s no easy way to say this, but your nephew, Finley, he’s my partner. We’ve been researching his family and came upon your name.”
“Nephew?” she asked, the confusion in her voice palpable.
“Your sister, was she Amanda Moss?”
“Oh God…just a second. Jeff, I’m going to go to the other room for a minute. I’ll be right back.” A shuffling followed, and then a door closed. “Mandy had a son?” There was no hint of deception, nothing but sincerity and the soft sound of surprise.
Her parents never told her? “Yes, she did. From what Finley had gotten from his mother, she got pregnant with him at sixteen. We’re not sure who his father is. She tried to hide it for as long as she could, but of course your parents found out. Your mother took her to California. There was an arranged adoption, but Amanda changed her mind. She couldn’t give him up, and they wouldn’t allow her home with him. She and Finley stayed in California, and your mother went back to Texas.”
There was a long pause on the line. If I couldn’t hear her breathing, I would have thought she was gone. “I… They told me she ran away. I never knew about the baby. They said she ran away with a man… I remember my mom leaving with her beforehand, though, but I just… How could I ever have thought something like that happened? They were my parents, and I believed them—oh God, where has he been since her death?”
“He was in foster care and then on his own. He ran away from the last one. He’s been in my home since he was nineteen.”
“He was alone all this time… He’s been out there, and I didn’t even know he existed. He has me and my girls. He was alone.”
“Yes, he was, but he’s not alone anymore, nor will he ever be if I have anything to say about it.”
And then…then she started crying, loud, aching cries, and my heart went out to her. For the time lost, for the lies and betrayal. The minutes stretched on as she mourned—maybe her sister, maybe her parents and who she thought they were compared to the truth, and for the boy, my boy, who had grown up without the love of family because of it.
“I’m sorry, I just…”
“You don’t need to apologize to me.”
“Who are you to him again?”
“I’m his life partner. Boyfriend, for lack of a better word,” I added to ensure she knew and understood. I wouldn’t have him hurt by her if she was ignorant.
“I’m not my parents. If they were alive, I…I can’t even think of them. It makes me too angry, but I’m not surprised they behaved the way they did. Mandy was young. My father was a beloved Baptist minister, very deeply rooted in his faith. We had our own issues as I got older. I don’t care that he’s gay. I love him. I don’t even know him and I love him. Poor Mandy…poor…”
“Finley,” I supplied.
“I like it. Is he there with you? Can I speak to him?”
“He’s not home right now. He knows I was looking for his family, but he wanted me to deal with it. He only wanted to know if there were people out there who would accept him. He can’t take any more heartache.”
“I do. I would love nothing more than to get to know him. I missed my sister so much over the years. I was so angry with her because I thought she left me, but she didn’t…they forced her to go, her and Finley.”
“She did her best by him. From everything he’s told me, his mother loved him very much.”
“That was Mandy. She had the biggest heart.”
“He does too.” He’d had enough heart to break mine free from the chains I’d locked it in.