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“Are you coming over Sunday?” Mom asked.
“Of course. Have fun and be safe driving home.” She said goodbye to her parents and dropped her phone onto the sofa beside her.
Her eyes moved to her laptop sitting on the coffee table, and she considered her conversation with her doctor from earlier in the morning about the organization that could help her find her biological mother. She popped up from the sofa, then located her purse on the counter and the note with the website written on it.
She returned to the sofa and pulled her computer onto her lap. A familiar guilt clutched at her as she looked down at the piece of paper. She adored her parents. They were the most loving, giving, supportive people she knew, and she was beyond blessed that they had chosen her.
Yet the questions that had haunted her since childhood continued to echo in her mind. Where had she come from? Who were her biological parents? What would her life have been like if her biological parents had kept her?
And then the most urgent question of all: Did kidney disease run in her family? Darcy hoped to be a mom one day, and she needed to know if there was a chance she would pass the illness on to her future children.
Although Darcy felt like it was time to find her biological mother, fear mixed with her guilt. What if her birth mother didn’t want to be found? Or what if her birth mother struggled with kidney disease and was no longer alive?
But most importantly, what if she hurt her adoptive parents—the ones who had raised her and loved her for all of her twenty-seven years?
Sagging against the sofa pillows, she studied the website name and then dropped the piece of paper on her laptop.
Darcy yawned as she turned off the lights and climbed the stairs to her bedroom. She’d tortured herself enough for one evening. She’d figure this out another day.
***
Two weeks later, Darcy lifted her cup of Diet Coke and forced a smile to her lips. “Do you like the beach?” she asked, peering across the table at Mason Haines, Haven and Derek’s latest blind date.
Mason looked up from his pulled pork barbecue special at the Barbecue Pit, a restaurant located on Main Street in Flowering Grove. “Not really. I’m more of a mountains kind of guy.”
With dark hair, gray eyes, and a strong jaw, Mason was fit, and his broad shoulders and muscular arms led Darcy to believe he enjoyed going to the gym. Sure, he was attractive, but his near-constant frown seemed to be a sign of an unhappy or unimpressed person.
Or perhaps he was just as delighted as she was to be spending his Saturday on a blind date.
Darcy took a long drink and glanced down at her watch. It had been thirty minutes, and she hadn’t found anything she and Mason could discuss. She snuck a gaze over at Haven beside her, and her best friend gave her an encouraging expression before clearing her throat.
Oh no.
“Mason is a software engineer who works with Derek at Byrum Consultants,” Haven said a little too brightly.
Darcy licked her lips. “Oh, that’s—that’s great. So interesting.”
Mason and Darcy shared an awkward look.
“And Darcy works in public relations,” Haven added.
Mason swallowed a hush puppy. “Uh-huh.” Then he glanced around the restaurant. “So this is supposed to be the best barbecue place in North Carolina, huh?” He snorted. “Could’ve fooled me.”
Derek’s honey-brown eyes flared with something that looked like annoyance as his mouth formed a thin line. Derek was a native of Flowering Grove, and it was obvious that his friend had hit a nerve.
Darcy popped a hush puppy into her mouth and wondered how Derek and Mason could be such good friends.
Haven reached across the table to rub her boyfriend’s shoulder as if to calm him, then turned her blue eyes on Mason once again. “Are you a car fan?”
Mason shrugged and checked his cell phone.
“I think the car show is going to be fun tonight,” Haven added. “Don’t you, Derek?”
Her boyfriend pushed his hand through his dark hair and nodded. “Yeah. I saw a lot of cool cars out there.”
Darcy had the same thought when they drove down Main Street and parked behind the restaurant. She had scanned the area for the big black Suburban that had come to her rescue two weeks ago, but she hadn’t seen the vehicle or its owner.
She had tried to forget about Carter, but he still lingered in the back of her thoughts. She couldn’t help but think of him every time she started her car. A small part of her had also hoped Carter might text her, but why would he? The idea that he might want to see her again was ridiculous. A man as handsome, kind, and thoughtful as Carter most likely had a steady girlfriend or a wife.
