Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 86706 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 434(@200wpm)___ 347(@250wpm)___ 289(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86706 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 434(@200wpm)___ 347(@250wpm)___ 289(@300wpm)
Rick and Carol Mahoney were the nicest people, too. It brought me great comfort to know Jacob had such good parents. If I couldn’t raise him myself, that was the next best thing. The Mahoneys were twenty years older than me, so technically they were old enough to be my parents, too. And so far, they treated me more like a son than Jacob’s father. It brought me some solace to know Jacob had been their first and only child after a long battle with infertility. They’d decided to adopt in their mid-thirties.
After showing me around their property for over an hour, we sat down and had lunch together. Rick had brought in a gigantic bowl of garden tomatoes to send home with me. I wasn’t a cook, but I sure as heck could slice up a tomato and drizzle some olive oil on it.
Carol stared at me all throughout the meal, probably because she noticed a lot of Jacob in my face. When she looked at me, I was sure she saw what he might’ve looked like when he was older, had he not passed away.
As we were finishing up, she turned to Emily. “We’re so grateful for you, Em. I’d never planned to read Jacob’s journals, because I know how he felt about me butting into his business. I didn’t want to upset him even now. But I never imagined they held such meaningful information. I always thought he’d tell me if he was going to find his birth mother. But I suppose he didn’t want to upset me. He made up a story about going out of town that weekend with some friends when in reality, he’d gone to see her.” She turned to me again. “So, we’re very lucky Emily found you. You’re a part of our son. And part of our family now, too.”
My chest squeezed tight. “That means so much to me. And I can’t thank you enough for giving him a better childhood than I ever could’ve. He was truly blessed.”
“We were the blessed ones,” Rick said.
Emily smiled sadly over at me. This walk down memory lane couldn’t have been easy for her.
“And I have to thank Emily as well,” I said. “I don’t know how I could’ve gone through life not knowing I had a son.”
“Sometime I’ve got to show you the photos of Jacob and Emily when they were little. They were so cute together,” Carol said.
I turned to Emily. “You never told me how you met him.”
She smiled. “I was about seven. Jacob was flying a kite in a park, and the wind took it away. It caught on a branch and wrapped around it. I sort of laughed at him trying to free it, but then I asked if he needed help. We ended up flying the kite together, and I realized he lived down the street. I always kind of felt like that kite getting stuck was meant to be.”
It was crazy how one simple thing could change the course of someone’s life. If Jacob had never met Emily, who knew if I’d have known about him. Those journals might’ve gone unread forever.
“I love that story,” I said.
“Would you like to spend some time in Jacob’s room while you’re here?” Rick asked.
“Could I? I would love that.”
“Of course.” Carol stood. “Follow me.”
She led Emily and me to a bedroom at the end of a small hallway.
There was a Chicago Bears poster on the wall. I smiled, satisfied that my son had liked one of my favorite teams. A few pennants were also hung up.
I ran my finger along one of them. “He played baseball? He never mentioned that in the journals.”
“Little League and then through high school, yes,” Carol answered.
“I played, too.” I smiled. “But I stopped before middle school. Kind of dropped sports the more I got into music.”
An image of teaching Jacob to play ball as a little boy flashed through my mind. Imagined doing that and getting to see him grow up and play in high school. As much as that made my chest ache, I was happy Rick had gotten to share it with him.
There were a bunch of old textbooks piled on a desk.
This room felt lived in and had clearly remained untouched since his passing.
A navy comforter with a thick orange line down the middle covered his bed. And across from the bed was a closet filled with clothes. There was a pile of shoes on the closet floor.
“Someone had a sneaker addiction,” I said.
“He rarely spent his money on anything else,” Carol said.
I’d have bought him an entire house full of sneakers if I could. I’d never felt Jacob’s presence stronger than in this room. It was different from reading his diary. He felt alive here, like he could walk in at any moment.