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“Hey, baby, there you are,” James cooed softly. “You checked out on us for a few minutes. Are you okay?” I stared at him, feeling glazed for a few moments, before my eyes began to move and I found Erin standing in Ryder’s arms looking distressed.
“What happened?” I asked groggily.
“You passed out,” James informed me. Instantly the memory of the picture Erin had shown me came flooding back.”
“Thank goodness you’re all right. You gave me a heck of a fright. One minute we were looking at photographs and the next you’d rolled forward, knocked the laptop off my knees, and kept falling forward until you hit the floor,” Erin added, and I heard how shaken up she sounded.
“You’re not hurting anywhere, are you?” James asked, touching various points on my body from my shoulders and wrists to my knees.
I shook my head and a wave of nausea made me inhale a deep breath. “That photo?” I muttered, my heart pounding in my chest when I remembered what had caused me to faint in the first place.
“It’s okay we don’t have to look—”
“I need to see it again,” I snapped gruffly, cutting Erin off. Glancing from me to James, I saw concern flash in the silent communication which passed between them, and I knew they were both considering whether she should show it to me again.
James crouched in front of me.
“What did you see?” he asked, concerned. Neither he nor Erin had any idea what had shocked me so badly I had passed out. Grabbing the laptop from the floor, James sat next to me. When he opened the screen the same photo I’d been staring at became visible again.
“I’m lost … no … idea what … to think,” I stuttered, staring at the picture as the immeasurable weight of betrayal stole my thoughts. James leaned forward and took a long look at the image. Dragging his eyes from the screen he looked at me and shook his head.
“Can you fill me in, because I’m not sure what I’m seeing?” James said.
I knew he saw me and my parents, but he had no idea who the others were. Wrapping his arms around me, he held me close and cradled my head.
“What? What is it?” Erin asked.
All I could do in that moment was sit and blink, my mind in a total meltdown as I tried to get my head around the people in the picture.
James leaned back and stared me with a pleading look, and I knew neither he nor Erin understood what I saw in its entirety.
“That’s me and my parents.” I choked as soon as the words were out, and I sobbed into my hands.
“Yeah …” I see that.” James replied.
Erin had already taken the laptop and was staring into the picture, her index finger and thumb tugging worriedly at her bottom lip.
“This is Erin’s photograph.” I announced. James blinked, assimilating that information.
“That’s Elizabeth, my mom’s cousin I told you about. She came to visit that one time with her husband, Les, and her daughter, Patty. All I have of her is this photograph, but I was too young to remember them … she’s the cousin of my mom’s that I told you about, who died—” Erin explained.
“Wait that’s you and your parents in the picture… Patty?” James blurted,
His arms tightened further around me when the penny suddenly dropped. Tension immediately steeled his arms when he repeated the nickname my mom used for me.
“You and your parents?” Erin asked, sounding confused. Would someone please tell me what’s going on?” she urged and I felt her insecurity radiate from her.
James pulled out of our embrace and slid his hand into mine. He gave it a small squeeze. “Erin, come and sit here, sweetheart,” he told her, gesturing for her to come from where she stood at my side to sit at his. She sat down beside him. I glanced over at her new boyfriend, Ryder, and wondered what the hell he must have been making of it all. James turned the laptop for Erin to see clearly.
“That’s Elizabeth and Les as you know them, Betty and Lester as I know them. They’re Tricia’s parents—your grandma and granddad.”
“That’s you?” Erin gasped and sucked in a breath, her eyes huge and round in shock that both her adoptive parents and mine had deceived us both. Memories from that day came flooding back, and my heart squeezed tight because it had felt tortuous being in that home in Ohio, in the company of that little girl.”
“You must remember being there—Tricia?” James prompted when I hadn’t replied.
“I do, and I hated every minute of that visit. All day long I thought how cruel my mother had been to have taken me there, when their daughter was the same age as mine would have been.” I began to shake again when I relived how I’d felt in my mind. A tight feeling gripped my head and my chest, and I wanted to scream.
“Your father knows? Surely he couldn’t have known all along and said nothing? Not a word in all those years?” James interjected when the full weight of the implication hit him. Not only was I struggling with that revelation, I also felt degraded by my parents’ betrayal. I had sat in the same room as my child and had tried to avoid her. It felt sickening to think her parents and mine had colluded in this fucked-up battery of deceit and lies.
