AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“That was the best burrito,” Ryder admitted, as he wiped his smooth jawline and mouth with his white cotton napkin, “and that chef needs to teach our cook at home how to make that salsa,” he added.
We were all stuffed with food and had postponed dessert for that moment. The waitstaff transferred our drinks into the great room for us. The moon was high in the sky, casting a perfect reflection of it in the lake outside the window. It looked picture perfect.
Erin moved her red wine to an end table next to the couch and sat down. “Would it be okay if I put my feet up?” she asked James.
“Make yourself at home.”
Erin curled her legs under her bottom on the couch and sighed. “This is so peaceful. I never get tired of having nothing to do.” Turning to me she smiled. “When James suggested spending a few days away with you, I racked my brain for what I should bring. I thought it may be good to see some of my past, so I brought my hard drive. It has all the old photographs my parents kept over the years. No pressure, but I wondered whether you’d like to see some of my major milestones.”
“I’m glad you said that because I have something I need to share with you, too,” I told her, following her lead. I was glad she had prompted us sharing after my discussion with James about the letters Dad found.
“Shall I show you the pool and the gym, Ryder? Do you work out much?” James prompted, giving them both an excuse to leave us alone.
“That would be great. Yeah, I have to work out most days. I have a gym in my apartment, but sometimes my schedule doesn’t let me do much.”
Standing up, James gestured with his arm to which of the three sets of double doors in the room they should take. “We’ll leave you two to talk and catch up for a couple of hours.”
After they’d left the room, Erin gave me a serious look. “I hate that James thinks he needs to run off all the time. If it wasn’t for him, we wouldn’t be here together.”
“He’s polite to a fault, but he understands how delicate this situation is for us both. I’ve never known a man who is so considerate. He only wants us to be happy.”
“I am happy. Very happy. Meeting you has been an amazing experience, I’m so glad I found you.”
My heart squeezed with words I had never dared dream I’d hear. “You have no idea what it means to me to hear you say that. I never thought this day would ever come. In the few fleeting moments I’d ever dared to think of you finding me, those scenarios never brought such a positive result.”
We both stopped and stared at one another again, like we were trying to absorb how we felt, and I figured that neither of us had the words to express how surreal our situation was.
“Before you say what you have to say, there is something you need to know,” I said, seriously. “Last week, Marnie was cleaning out my parents’ attic and my dad joined her. He found a locked box of my mother’s. It was full of letters … from your mom to mine … he doesn’t know what they mean yet.” Erin’s jaw dropped in shock. I instantly reached over and took her hand in mine, wanting to comfort her. “That came as much of a shock to me as it obviously has to you.”
“I had no idea my mom wrote to yours. What did they say?”
“I have them here, on the laptop. As you know, my dad has no clue I had a baby, but now with the letters... I don’t know what he’ll think. I was going to tell him anyway, but we just need to give him some—”
“It’s fine. I’m sorry for your loss,” she replied quickly.
I ignored her comment because the more I thought about my mom the angrier I felt. “Thankfully, James thought on his feet and quickly scanned the letters before Marnie returned them to the house. James put everything in his cloud for me. Do you want to see them?”
“Of course, I do. My whole childhood I thought I knew exactly who my parents were, what they stood for… all those lectures about honesty and being true to myself, and there they were spinning the biggest single lie of my life to me.”
“I had expected you to be so angry with me.”
“No, curious about my story. My mom told me how young you were, and I was a sixteen-year-old girl once, too. I’d have died going through what you had to at any age. But then having to live with it afterward, that must have been horrific for you. I admire your strength. Despite all that heartache you went on with your life, and look at you now. James is an amazing man and you totally deserve him.”
“You are so gracious, Erin. I’m not sure I’d have felt as benevolent toward my birth mother if I’d been adopted. As for James … there are times when I feel I don’t deserve him, but I fight that feeling because not having him in my life isn’t an option anymore.”
“That man adores you, and you him. You complement each other beautifully.”
Hearing someone who hardly knew me, who should have been angry with me, tell me she approved of the man I loved, was the greatest gift I could have ever been given.
“So where are these pictures?” Erin asked eagerly. James had already pre-empted our conversation and had left his laptop on the large cabinet by the window.
Sitting next to her, I opened the laptop, and the nervous anxiety I felt returned in the form of another adrenaline burst, because Erin could fill in the gaps to what wasn’t in the letters.
“These are from shortly after you were born, and they date roughly every six months until a couple of years ago, we think.”
“That would have been around the time my mom fell ill for the last time, she couldn’t do much for the last year or so.” Erin began to read and with each letter she read, I carefully studied her reaction. A smile spread on her lips when she held a picture of herself in a Snow White dress. “This was during a weekend at Disney World.”
With another she frowned when she told me the puppy she was holding had died when she was eleven. She cringed, embarrassed at one of her in a high school picture wearing braces. There were times when she cried, and I noted she had reacted much in the same way as I had toward some of the images.
