Let It Be Me

by Becky Wade

  “Is it time for your doomed road trip to New England?”

  “It is, but I take exception to your choice of the word doomed.”

  “Right, because you’ll be taking a teenager and an Airstream trailer on a three-week-long road trip across the country. What could go wrong?”

  “Many things. But the laws of probability suggest that none of those things will come to fruition.”

  “Your trip’s as doomed as Han Solo’s trip in A New Hope, when he was supposed to transport Luke, Leia, and Obi-Wan to Alderaan.”

  She grinned. “I admire the blunt way you just shoved that Han Solo reference into the discussion.”

  “I used force instead of skill.”

  “I’ll have to think of skillful ways to reference aviation in conversation. Because of you, I read a book on the basics. Thrust, lift, drag. I was instantly enamored. I love physics.”

  “What’s not to love about physics?”

  “Nothing,” she said earnestly.

  His soap smelled so wonderful that she’d like to stockpile candles in that fragrance. All of a sudden, she could hear her pulse in her ears—

  The click of high heels intruded. Jenna broke the bubble that had enclosed Leah and Sebastian by commenting on her preference for coffee beans from Tanzania.

  The three of them made their way to the administrative offices. This time, they were shown into a boardroom. Leah’s group arranged themselves on one side of the table. Donna McKelvey and the director of medical records sat on the opposite side.

  After a brief conversation, the director produced an army green file folder containing Baby Girl Brookside’s original records. At Jenna’s request, he’d also made photocopies of the file and scanned images of it onto a flash drive—both of which Leah could take home with her.

  “On behalf of the hospital,” Donna said to Leah, “I’d like to apologize once again for what happened to you. I sincerely wish you the best.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome to stay here for as long as you’d like in order to look through the original paperwork.”

  The hospital employees and Jenna excused themselves, leaving Leah alone with Sebastian in a room that smelled of new carpeting. The only sound: air whirring through vents.

  “And you?” Leah asked Sebastian. “Do you have other commitments? If so, I don’t want you to feel obligated to stay.”

  His eyes flashed a gray as lustrous as moonstones. “I’m sticking around. I only have one commitment this afternoon. And it’s to you.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Leah pulled the original file toward her. Chest tightening with expectation, she opened it.

  The papers within had turned beige and brittle with age. A smattering of mold splayed across the top right edge. She positioned the first two sheets side by side.

  Her biological mother’s name: Trina Brookside.

  Eagerly, she read the remaining information. As far as Leah could tell, things had gone well with Trina’s labor, but after the baby had been delivered . . . She narrowed her eyes, trying to understand. “I’m following the doctor’s notes right up until the baby was born.”

  “The staff in the delivery room knew that Trina was diabetic, and they were prepared for the complications that can cause,” Sebastian explained. “As soon as the baby was delivered, they noted that she had cyanosis, which means she was bluish in color. She was taken to the nursery and given oxygen. Her condition improved quickly, and the pediatrician on staff concluded that she was healthy. Essentially, she just needed a little time to get acclimated to life outside the womb.”

  Leah’s brain constructed a chain of events. “Erica Montgomery suffered placental abruption, so they put her under and performed an emergency C-section. Her baby girl was born at 10:10 a.m. with a rapid heartbeat. They took her directly to the nursery for treatment.” Leah pointed to the paper. “It says here that Trina Brookside gave birth to her baby eighteen minutes later, at 10:28. Trina’s baby girl was also taken to the nursery. Is it likely that either a rapid heartbeat or cyanosis could have caused problems down the road for the babies?”

  “No. Both babies had issues that, once stabilized, were no longer of concern.”

  “I’m guessing it was during the interval when the babies were being treated in the nursery that they were switched.”

  “That would make sense.”

  “As soon as the babies were well, they must have been sent to the wrong mothers. Erica’s baby was taken to Trina. And I, Trina’s baby, was taken to Erica. Who do you think might have been responsible for the switch? A doctor? Nurses?”

  “Most likely nurses. They’re the ones responsible for transporting babies between rooms.”

  Leah moved the pages to the side, revealing two new pages. Her eyes scanned the lines of text. Trina and Erica had stayed in the same wing of the same hospital for two days, both of them bonding with each other’s baby, before Trina had gone home.

  Trina had been twenty-seven years old at the time. Married. This pregnancy was her first. Her address: 11482 Riverchase Road, Atlanta, Georgia. Ten numbers had been written clearly and decisively onto the line beside Phone Number. Those numbers practically blinked like a neon sign. What if she dialed that number and her biological mother answered?

  Surely, her mother would not answer. This number was a landline from The Time Before Everyone Had a Cell Phone, which meant that Trina probably wasn’t using the same number now that she’d used then. It was also a stretch, but perhaps not as large of a stretch, to think Trina might still live at the house on Riverchase Road. As soon as Leah left here, she’d drive there. Just to look.

  She uncovered the next two pages. One was a birth certificate. Katrina Elizabeth Wallace Brookside and her husband, Jonathan Delaney Brookside, had named their daughter Sophie Grace.

  Trina and Sophie. Leah rolled the unfamiliar names around in her brain. She tried on Leah Brookside for size—except, she’d never have been Leah Brookside. Had things gone differently, she’d have lived her life as Sophie Grace Brookside.

  The next page divulged information about Trina’s pregnancy, including the fact that her blood type was B, which meant her husband’s blood type must be A, like Leah. It also meant that Sophie’s possible blood types—B and O—would not raise any red flags with her or her parents because those types could naturally occur from Trina and Jonathan.

  Unless Sophie did DNA testing like Leah had done, she’d have no reason to discover that she was not related to her mother and father.

  The next page showed a photo of baby Sophie. The child in this photo was Erica Montgomery’s baby. Yet Leah was looking at a face that Erica and Todd had never had the opportunity to look upon.

  The infant had slit her eyes open as if she found the light of the world to be an unwelcome assault. Her lips formed a pink rosebud. Her eyes were dark, as was her dusting of hair.

  She looked just like Dylan had when he’d been a newborn.

  Sebastian had never felt such an overwhelming pull toward a woman in his life. He knew why he felt the pull. Leah was brainy, kind, at peace with herself, challenging, funny. He loved that she said random things about flowers serving as a metaphor for life and melons shaped like rhomboids.

  What he didn’t know: Why, of all people, did the woman he felt this way about have to be the woman Ben loved?

  After leaving the hospital, they came to a stop at Leah’s car, parked in an outdoor lot.

  She dashed a piece of hair away from her face. “My head is spinning with everything I just learned.”

  “I can imagine.” He wished he had something more comforting to offer. “Are you going to contact Trina and Jonathan Brookside?”

  “I don’t know. At this point, I’m simply planning to stalk the Brooksides on the Internet . . . in a very friendly, non-creepy way—”

  “Very non-creepy.”

  “—to see what I can learn about their lives and about their daughter’s life.”

  Wh
en Sebastian was young and had asked his mom about his father, she’d told him plainly that she’d met him at a party and that they’d had a one-night stand. Later, when his mom discovered she was pregnant, she’d contacted his father as a courtesy. Sebastian suspected they’d both been relieved when they’d learned the other was happy to continue leading separate lives. His father didn’t have to be a father. His mother could be a mother without a stranger’s influence.

  Sebastian knew his father’s name, but felt nothing toward him except vague resentment. No connection. No affection. No desire to communicate with him.

  Leah held her purse strap with both hands, stacked one atop the other. “I can’t thank you enough for stepping in and helping me with all of this.”

  “Not a problem.”

  “No, really.” She regarded him steadily. “Thank you.”

  His body roared in response, and he had to lock his teeth together to keep from saying Don’t fall in love with Ben. Please don’t. “You’re welcome.”

  His awareness of the rest of the world—the noise, the cars, the colors —sucked away.

  “There’s something special about you, Sebastian. Something appealing. You should feel very proud of the man you’ve become.”

  Her words came as such a shock that it took him a second to compute them. She found him appealing? Pleasure collided with guilt, freezing him.

  She slid into the driver’s seat of her gray Honda Pilot, which was old but in good condition. “Good-bye.” Holding the door ajar, she waited for him to respond.

  Say something, you idiot.

  She started her car. “Good-bye,” she repeated, maybe thinking he hadn’t heard the first time.

  “Good-bye,” he said.

  She shut her door and drove away.

  As soon as she was out of sight, he swung on his heel and tunneled his hands into his hair.

  The day of the farmers market, Ben had said that Leah was rare.

  He’d been right. She was rare.

  And she wasn’t coming back.

  Had that been awkward? What she’d just said to him?

  “There’s something special about you, Sebastian. Something appealing. You should feel very proud of the man you’ve become.” Her words had seemed appropriate to her while she was speaking them, but then his face had gone strangely blank in response.

  She replayed it. Huh. The statement still seemed acceptable to her. Friendly and complimentary. Of course, it was possible that that had been an awkward thing to say and had only seemed normal to her.

  If so, it wasn’t as if she hadn’t warned him about her lackluster social skills.

  And, of course, it could have been worse. She could have confessed her fascination with his lips or, unforgivably, failed to solve a quadratic equation in his presence.

  Where was she driving?

  She’d been so preoccupied with Sebastian that she’d failed to type Trina and Jonathan’s address into her GPS before leaving the hospital. Smoothly, she pulled into a strip mall and parked. She peeked at her reflection. Even now, after the gale force winds of her parents’ identity and Sebastian’s nearness, it mollified her to see that she looked calm.

  She typed 11482 Riverchase Road into her phone.

  “Turn right at Beverly Road,” her phone’s Irish male voice instructed her. She had a closer relationship with that voice than she’d ever had with a boyfriend.

  She followed the Irishman’s directions.

  A twenty-minute drive brought her to the well-established Morningside Lenox Park neighborhood. Hilly tree-lined streets harbored homes that had been built in the first half of the twentieth century. This neighborhood would have been pricey for a young family three decades ago, just as it was now.

  Leah parked a little ways down and across the street from 11482.

  Feeling conspicuous, like a cop on a stakeout, she scoured the length of the street, then eyed Trina and Jonathan’s house. What if one of her family members walked out that door? Or spotted her from inside and came out to question her?

  Stillness encased the entire block. Nothing moved, except for gently swaying branches. Most likely, she could stay here for a short period of time without anyone noticing.

  The Dutch blue trim of the home emphasized its muted brick exterior and charming black front door. Planting beds tucked tidy shrubs against the base of the structure. The flowerpots on the front step burst with geraniums.

  When she was brought home from the hospital as a newborn, she ought to have been brought here, to this stately Americana home. It was easy to picture a baby nursery in that front right room. It would have a big window, wood floors, crown molding.

  In her earliest memories, she’d lived in an uninspiring two-bedroom apartment. Dad had had the design aesthetic of a frat boy; Mom had accessorized their hodgepodge furniture with international treasures from places she’d never had the opportunity to visit. A wall hanging from India. Art from Venezuela. A tablecloth from Thailand. Those items had been colorful, but they’d also reinforced the message Mom had communicated in a million subtle and not-so-subtle ways. Namely, I’d rather be anywhere other than here.

  How different would her childhood have been, had Leah grown up in this place?

  Very different.

  Memory-laden minutes slid past.

  She had enough familiarity with Zillow.com from when she’d been shopping for a house in Misty River to know that the site provided data on a property’s prior sales. She accessed the site on her phone and ran a search. After some scrolling and clicking, she discovered that this house had been purchased by new owners five times since the year of her birth.

  In fact, it had been sold just four years after she’d been born, ostensibly by Trina and Jonathan, if they’d been owners and not renters when they’d lived here. Either way, Trina and Jonathan hadn’t resided here in a long, long time.

  She was glad she’d come, nonetheless. This detour had provided insight into her biological mother and father and what her upbringing might have been like had they been the ones to raise her.

  Her family life hadn’t been wretched. Her needs had been met. That said, her family life hadn’t been as pretty as the picture this house presented, either.

  Just because the house looks ideal on the outside doesn’t mean that the Brooksides’ life was ideal, Leah.

  Yes, but what if the family life on the inside did match the ideal on the outside? If so, how was she supposed to reconcile herself to that?

  When Leah arrived home from Atlanta that evening, her house welcomed her with silence and a lingering whiff of pineapple from her unlit candle. Dylan was gone, hanging out with his friend Braxton.

  She hurried to her computer the way she’d hurried to Math Olympiad contests in fifth grade and opened Facebook. She hoped the Brooksides were the type of people who, unlike her, shared their lives often and freely on social media without regard for privacy settings.

  She entered Trina Wallace Brookside into the search bar. Only one of the results looked like she could be the right fit. However, Leah opted to rule out the more unlikely candidates first. A few of them were too young. One had been born in England and lived there still.

  Finally, anticipation mounting, she brought up the most likely Trina. The woman had created a close-up profile picture from her larger cover photo. The photo captured her solo, standing on a balcony overlooking a beautiful Italian-looking town. She was half turned to the camera with a relaxed smile.

  Leah went still. Trina’s face was lined with years, but her facial structure, height, and body type were very similar to Leah’s. She’d styled her blond hair in a long bob that was slightly shorter in back than in the front. She wore a navy-and-white-striped boatneck shirt with roomy sleeves.

  Unfortunately for Leah’s purposes, Trina was indeed someone who had regard for privacy settings. She’d made zero information about herself available to people she hadn’t approved as Facebook friends.

  Leah typed Sophie Brookside into t
he search bar. Again, she knew at once, from the picture alone, who her Sophie was. Again, she eliminated the others first before visiting her Sophie’s page.

  The circular profile picture of Sophie (Brookside) Robbins revealed a lovely brunette. For her cover photo, she’d chosen an outdoor wedding shot. In it, she was beaming at the camera while holding the hand of her good-looking groom. She’d chosen a strapless wedding dress and knotted her hair into a sophisticated style at the nape of her neck. The veil attached to the top of her bun extended into the breeze in a whimsical line. Her groom regarded her with a besotted grin.

  Sophie was slender, stylish, and, judging by this photo, terrifically happy.

  Leah had never wanted to marry! Even so, a slither of jealousy snaked around her ribs and squeezed.

  Was Sophie (Brookside) Robbins living the life Leah was supposed to have lived?

  Was Leah the one who’d been intended for the gown, the veil, the groom? But instead had become, because of all the “nurture” factors in the “nature vs. nurture” equation, the one supporting her brother on a teacher’s salary?

  Like her mother, Sophie shared no personal details with those outside her circle of friends.

  Leah opened Instagram and hunted for Trina and Sophie there. She only found Sophie, who’d used the same wedding photo on Instagram as on Facebook. Here again, she maintained a private account. Leah tried the remaining social media platforms but wasn’t able to find them.

  She surfed back to Trina and Sophie’s Facebook pages and spent more time absorbing the images.

  Upon further reflection, she did not feel that she’d been intended for a gown, veil, and groom. But she did feel—very strongly—that she was intended for a PhD. It had been her dream since Ms. Santiago, her second-grade teacher, had told her about the career paths open to academics.

  If she’d gone home from the hospital with Trina and Jonathan, she might have been free to follow through on Princeton’s PhD offer. She might be teaching at a university right now. Writing papers, giving lectures, meeting with students.

  Grief sent her bolting into the kitchen. She opened a can of mixed nuts and munched while her mind churned. With one hand, she scooped up more nuts, with the other, she slid her phone from her pocket and indulged in her guilty pleasure—browsing the digital album where she kept the dozens of pictures of Princeton she’d collected over the years.