Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 102620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 513(@200wpm)___ 410(@250wpm)___ 342(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 102620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 513(@200wpm)___ 410(@250wpm)___ 342(@300wpm)
I see the tears rolling down my mother’s face as she tries to take a step toward me, and I snap, “Is this true?” I hold up the paper, my heart shattering in my chest, making it hard for me to catch my breath. “Tell me.” I’m shouting, and I don’t even know it. “Is this paper true?”
“Sierra,” my father begins calmly, his arm around my mother as she sobs, making her body shake.
“I asked you a question.” My voice never wavering from before.
“Perhaps we should sit down and discuss this.” My father doesn’t raise his voice.
“Discuss this?” I shake my head from side to side. “Discuss this?” The air suddenly leaves me, and I have to fold over to catch my breath. “Discuss this?” This time, I shake my hand with the paper still in it.
“Sierra.” My father is now by my side, his hand rubbing my back. “Breathe, honey.” I look up at him and move away from his touch. The man who would make sure nothing hurt me, who used to kiss my boo-boos away. The man I said I wanted my husband to be like. The man who taught me how to ride a bike. The man who taught me how to hang up a shelf by myself so I didn’t need a man to do anything. The man who lied to me my whole life.
“I—I—” I stutter and try to breathe in and out before I literally have a full-blown panic attack. I have never had one, but I’m pretty sure I’m about to have one. “I don’t.”
“Please sit down.” My father pulls out a chair at the breakfast table, where I had breakfast my whole life, starting in a high chair. The pictures are in my baby book. From me being on my knees since I wasn’t tall enough to finally being able to sit on my behind without hitting my face on the table. “Sierra, please, we will tell you everything.”
“Why should I believe you now?” I ask, and I can see the hurt all over his face. “You’ve lied to me my whole life. Why should I believe you now?”
“We have never lied to you,” my mother says softly, coming to stand next to my father. “You were—are—loved with everything we have.”
“Don’t you think me not being your child is you lying to me?” The words come out of my mouth in anger, and my mother looks like I slapped her across the face.
“You are my child.” She puts her shoulders back. “You will always be my child.”
I shake my head and look down at the paper in my hands. “This says otherwise.” I hold it up, my voice in a whisper. “Those other papers.” I point over at the counter. “Those say otherwise also.”
“Before you say anything else you can’t take back,” my father says, “at least hear us out.”
I think about what he’s saying, and I know they are the only ones who will have the answers to my questions. I don’t even know if I’ll ever not have questions. I step toward the chair and sit down. My father looks over at my mother and motions with his chin to go to the chair in front of me. She walks over as if she’s walking the plank and will be pushed into shark-infested waters. She pulls out the chair as she sits down and my father walks over to the counter, taking the article in his hand—along with the picture that fell out—before he comes over and pulls out a chair next to my mother.
I put my hand, still clutching the paper in it, on the table, my mouth suddenly dry. “Do you want something to drink?” my father asks, and I shake my head instead of nodding. He takes a deep breath before he starts talking. “We tried for five years before we thought about going the adoption route.” I listen to him, my chest rising and falling as if I just swam for an hour without stopping. “We tried everything, even two rounds of IVF, when we found out that nothing we could do would result in us having a child. Basically, we could have children with other people, just not with each other.” I look at him, then my mother. “We just couldn’t do it together.” He puts his arm around my mother, pulling her to him and kissing her temple. “And there was no one else I wanted to share my life with, so we decided to go the adoption route.”
“Because your father was in family law, he had contacts.” My mother now takes over from my father. “We wanted to make sure that when we adopted you, it would be private.” She puts her hands on the table and fidgets nervously with her fingers. “Which is why we moved here when we had you—”