“I found Sarah in 1996. She was fifteen years old. Living with a foster family in Ohio. Her adoptive parents had died in a car accident when she was eight and she’d been in the system ever since.”
My chest tightened. The system. Foster care. My granddaughter had been alone.
“Did she… did she hate me?”
Marcus shook his head slowly. “She didn’t know you existed, Robert. Emily never told her about you. The adoption records were sealed. As far as Sarah knew, she was just an unwanted baby given away by a teenage mother.”
That hurt worse than the cancer eating my lungs.
“But I told her about her mother,” Marcus said. “Told her Emily was brave and beautiful and loved her more than anything. Told her Emily didn’t want to give her up but was pressured by her family. Sarah deserved to know her mother wasn’t a monster.”
“I never said Emily was a monster. I said you were.”
“Same thing, Robert. You made Emily choose between her baby and her family. Between me and everything she’d ever known. That’s what monsters do.”
I couldn’t argue. He was right.
“What happened to Sarah?” I asked.Continue reading…
