AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Nope.”
“Mom, Dad, baby,” she mused aloud.
When I didn’t respond, she reached out her arm encased by a black leather jacket with silver spikes around the cuff and lifted one of the tubes.
I noticed Ruen’s appearance had changed in the months since I last saw her. Her colorful wigs were nowhere to be found, and she now wore her long, natural hair in a French braid that stopped between her shoulder blades. The darkness of her hair called attention to the freckles on her light brown skin.
“Here is Dad’s,” she said, returning Rowdy’s sample to the box on the table.
He’d collected it and left it for me to find on the table without ever saying a word. I didn’t know if it meant he still wanted to be together or if he just wanted to know if he was a father.
Ruen picked up the next sample—the one with my name on it—and studied it for a long while. Long enough for the brownie and milk that I’d eaten to threaten to come back up. “I don’t see a baby around, and you don’t look pregnant to me, so I’m guessing you’re Baby?” I gulped but didn’t say a word. “That just leaves Mom,” Ruen pressed on.
I could feel her assessing gaze on me, but I kept mine on my textbook, the small black words blurring together.
“Do you know who she is?” Ruen asked. I couldn’t detect any judgment in her tone, but I was still on edge. I’d already told her that I was adopted shortly after we met, but I’d left out the part about coming here to find my birth parents. At the time, I hadn’t known that it was the closure I’d been looking for when I came to Idlewild.
I cleared my throat before I spoke. “I have an idea.”
“Do you know where she lives?”
“Yeah.”
Ruen tossed my sample inside the box before grabbing the empty tube and unopened mouth swab from inside and standing. “So let’s go.”
I finally looked up at her out of surprise. “What?”
“We’re going to get Mama Dearest’s DNA, and if she gives us any trouble, we can stick this swab up her cooch instead.”
“Ruen, we can’t just show up at her house.”
She perked a brow. “Why not?”
“Because…” I struggled to find a reason why.
I knew Jada still hadn’t come clean to Joren about her affair with Rowdy or the baby she’d hidden for twenty years, but so what? Jada had no problem showing up here and turningmyworld and relationship upside down. It had been a month since she told Rowdy, but Jada still hadn’t made any attempts to reach out to me. Her true intentions couldn’t have been any clearer if she’d shouted them through a megaphone.
“You know what?” I set my textbook aside, grabbed my keys from the table, and stood. “Let’s go.”
“Whoop!” Ruen cheered. “There’s the bitch I know and love. And if your egg donor pops shit, we can always jump her ass and get it anyway.”
“Really, Ruen?” I shook my head as I slipped my feet inside the fresh Jordan A1s Rowdy had bought me to match his pair. Since he wasn’t talking to me, he’d left them on the bed for me to find. They had a blue and green colorway—his and my favorite colors. I’d been in love at first sight.
“Yup,” Ruen said as we headed out the door, her arm slung over my shoulder. “Anything for my girl bestie.”
I shoved her arm off me. “Don’t push it.”
This was a huge mistake.
I was glad to finally get this part over with, but I really wished I’d made Ruen stay in the car.
Ding-dong! Ding-dong! Ding-dong! Ding-dong!
“I don’t think anyone is home, Ruen.” She’d been ringing the doorbell nonstop for the past five minutes.
“Bullshit. I saw the curtains moving upstairs when we pulled up.” Ruen pressed the doorbell harder and faster as if that would make Jada answer.
“Let’s just go,” I said, feeling defeated.
