Dannika Dark - Seven Years

“I’m not going to get mad about it. I just want to know who I am and where I came from. You’ll always be my family, Mom. Please, don’t lie to me. Not now, not after everything we’ve been through.”

When she turned around, tears stained her cheeks. “I never wanted you to know. You were our baby and my little girl.”

I covered my eyes before she made me cry. I needed to keep my head straight. “Mom, please sit down.”

She quietly sniffed and took a seat, avoiding eye contact. I reached across the table and held her hand. “You’re my mom. You’ll always be my mom and nothing will change that. I promise. I just… I can’t believe this is true. How did I not know? I always thought I kind of looked like Dad, but…”

“Lexi, we never wanted you to grow up feeling separate from us—different. I was afraid that’s how kids felt in your situation, so we decided not to tell you.”

“What exactly was my situation? It’s not like you couldn’t have your own children. Why was I adopted?”

She pulled her hand away and laced her fingers together. “You weren’t.”

Just then, Maizy came bounding into the room. “Mommy! Can I please have some cookies?” She lifted her shoulder and tilted her head to the side in that innocent way kids do to turn on the charm. Few could say no to her adorable dimples.

“Just one, sweetheart. It’s almost dinner.”

Mazie skipped over to the bright yellow jar by the sink and pulled out a small chocolate-chip cookie. Seconds later, she went flying into the living room wearing her pink skirt and white shirt with all the sparkles. She was in princess mode.

I warmed my hands around my mug. “What do you mean, not adopted?”

Her voice lowered. “I don’t know where you came from. Your dad brought you home one night. He used to stay out late sometimes, and I convinced myself he was having an affair. But occasionally, he came home with—with blood on his clothes.” She pulled her hands in her lap and shook her head. “Not a lot, but spatters around the sleeves. I was afraid to ask what he was up to because he was a serious man—you know that. I don’t know what he was involved in, but we argued for weeks. All I could think about was your poor mother, worried to death about where you were. He assured me you had no mother, and that frightened me.”

“Why?”

She pulled the salt and pepper shakers to the middle of the table, lining them up neatly and never once lifting her eyes.

“I’m an adult now, and there’s no need to lie anymore. Whatever you’ve been carrying around for years, we can talk it out. Maybe it’ll help. But I can’t go on not knowing the truth. Everything.”

My heart galloped and I placed my hands on my lap to hide the fact they were shaking. Had Austin never come back into town, I would have gone on thinking my life was normal.

“The night he brought you home, there was blood on his clothes. Only this time, I found them in the trash instead of the wash, and they were just soaked in it.”

“You didn’t know what he was involved in?”

To my knowledge, my dad had worked for a shipping warehouse. He was a bossy guy, but otherwise, family life seemed as normal as it could be. He took Wes fishing in the summer and we had a barbecue every Sunday. I didn’t have a close relationship with my dad, and he was strict when it came to punishment, but this revelation came as an unexpected shock. I felt disenchanted with my life, knowing that nothing was as it seemed.

She shrugged and pulled my cup away. “Do you want something else, hon? Chocolate milk?”

God, my weakness. “Sure, Mom. That’d be great.”

The table sat in a room connected to the kitchen, but a partition wall with an opening in the center separated the two rooms. My mom put her favorite fern on it to add a sense of privacy. Light blue paint colored the top of the walls and wood panels covered the bottom. Outside the window on my left, the hummingbird feeder swung like a pendulum in the breeze. I’d never seen any hummingbirds, but Mom always kept it filled with bright red liquid.

I watched her through the divider as she stirred the chocolate into a tall glass. As calm as we were, I had a feeling I’d be in tears later on once everything sank in.

She set the glass down on the table and I took a sip, hoping the coffee wouldn’t complain. Mom eased into her chair and peered around the corner, listening for Maizy.

“When I first met your father, he was involved with some dangerous people. He used to work as a middleman, and I don’t know what exactly he did, only that it was illegal. He quit that life when he proposed, and I thought we were going to have a new start. I wouldn’t have to worry about something happening to him, or the police showing up. That’s not the kind of home I came from. He changed, or at least I thought he did. It started up again a year after Wes was born, when we were struggling financially. Suddenly, your dad paid off the bills and things were okay. How could I complain? Everything went back to normal until the night he brought you home. He was panicked that night and then for weeks, he barely slept.”

Tears threatened to slide down her lashes and she averted her blue eyes. “Only he knows the truth about where you came from, but I fell in love with you, Lexi. I had to buy you little gowns and booties since you were only wearing a onesie with Talulah stitched on the front. I always wanted a little girl. You were such a sweet little thing, didn’t cry much at all even though you must have known we were strangers.”

“Did you keep my clothes?”

Her voice fell to a whisper. “There was blood. I had to throw it out. Your dad somehow got a fake birth certificate; I just didn’t ask questions.”

I buried my face in my hands. “Did Wes know?”

“At first,” she said. “But he was a toddler and after a while, he forgot where you came from. We told him the stork brought you and in time, I guess he just didn’t remember. Your grandparents never knew because they were living in Seattle. We told them we had been keeping it a secret because the doctor warned us the pregnancy might not go to full term and then we said you were born premature. They didn’t come down to visit until you were five anyhow, and two years later, they moved down to San Antonio.”

I circled my finger on the smooth table. My mom had lost her parents when she was ten, and my dad’s parents never came around much—especially after he split. “Are Wes and Maizy yours, or—”

“Yes, they’re ours. Maizy is the spitting image of your great-grandma from the childhood pictures I’ve seen, and Wes looked just like Grandpa Knight. Oh, God,” she whispered, covering her eyes. “I’m so sorry.”

“Mommy?”

Maizy wandered into the room and worry filled her blue eyes. Mom discreetly wiped a tear away from her smooth cheek and smiled. “Mommy has allergies. Do you need something, sweetie pie?”

My sister might be a child, but she knew something was wrong. Mom held out her arm and Maizy walked forward until Mom hugged her tightly and kissed her on the cheek. In fact, she started kissing Maizy all over her face and it switched on her gigglebox.

“Go in the other room, Maze,” I told her. “I’ll be in there in a minute and we can watch the best part together.” I knew which part was coming up because I could hear the song playing and practically had that movie memorized. Maizy skipped out of the room and I rubbed my eyes.

“I need to get a hold of Dad. Do you know where he is?”

She shook her head adamantly. “I have no idea, honey. A friend of mine even tried searching for him on the Internet. He just… disappeared.”

“Then I’m going to find a way to make him reappear, because he has the missing piece to my puzzle.”

The next day at work, I kept popping jellybeans into my mouth. Normally I stayed away from the candy, but I deserved a few extra pounds after my unforgettable week. Instead of eating my sack lunch, I walked down the street to the deli and ordered a chef salad. While staring at the glazed sugar cookies in the display, a familiar voice called out from behind.

“Alexia Knight, is that you?”

These are the curses of living in the same town you grew up in. Either your old classmates still lived there, or they eventually returned to visit family. I was always running into someone from my past and it felt weird, like you weren’t supposed to know what happened to everyone when they grew up.

I recalled some of the most turbulent times of childhood. I got in a fight at school with a girl who called me Flatass, my brother and Austin took me to prom because no guy had asked me, and a couple of my besties either slept with my boyfriends or ended up going to college and never called me again. While I’d been avoiding class reunions, they didn’t seem to be avoiding me.

I turned around and laid eyes on Josh Holden. He now worked as a manager at a gas station. I’d run into him a few times when I lived with Beckett because the station was on my way home. Usually I just paid at the pump, but a couple of times Beckett wanted me to go in and pick up some lottery tickets.

When I was fifteen, Josh had tried to get me a little more experienced with older boys than I was ready for, but chalk it up to teenage hormones. Up to that point, my version of dating was handholding and a few French kisses. I’d never had a real boyfriend or done anything sexual. Then Josh took me out on a date and couldn’t keep his hands off me.

“Haven’t seen you in a few months,” he said. “Your hair looks different.”

“So does your face. What happened?” It was bruised up and his left cheek was green.