The Complete Legacy Series: Books 1 - 6

by Paula Kay

  Next question—how likely was this and could she die as a result? She smiled as she thought about the question Ms. Carlson had asked her one time when she was feeling particularly nervous about one of her track meets. Running track did have some possible physical outcomes that weren’t nice, but she didn’t really see death as being one of them—considering that she was a healthy young teenager anyway. So, the likelihood of death resulting from her forgetting her speech was zero, and the probability of her forgetting her speech was very low as well. If Isabella was anything, she was a girl who was prepared.

  And what was the best-case scenario regarding the speech she was about to give? That she’d be able to deliver a passionate speech that would move the students, the teachers, and her parents. That somehow the words that that she’d spent hours agonizing over would inspire everyone in the auditorium.

  That somehow the words that she spoke would inspire her.

  Chapter 2

  Isabella looked out at the sea of faces, most of whom she knew, but very few that she’d be able to call friends. She glanced down at her notes as she prepared to wrap up, but more out of habit than anything else. She had every word memorized and she also knew how to deliver a perfect speech. Four years on the debate team had taught her that.

  Yet today felt different. She felt like she was listening to someone else speak—that it was someone else’s voice that she heard in her ears.

  “So as we go forth on to the next phase—this next adventure of our lives—let us do so boldly and with a great passion that can’t be held back.”

  Was Harvard her great passion?

  She glanced over at her parents, their smiles wide, each the picture of what a “beaming with pride” parent should look like. For a moment, it was all worth it—the anxiety, the pressure that she’d been heaping on herself to make them proud. But then she had to muster a deep and, most likely, unnoticeable breath to finish her speech with the same bravado.

  It wasn’t that she wasn’t excited about Harvard or didn’t think that she’d excel there. She had no real reason to doubt herself, with many years of past successes behind her. But it seemed like something was missing for Isabella. She didn’t seem to have the same excitement as most of her classmates when it came to talking about her next step. For her, it was just more of the same, only probably much more intense.

  She squared her shoulders and smiled widely at the clapping audience, stepping out from behind the podium to take her seat for the remainder of the ceremony. She glanced over at her best friend, Thomas, who was sitting a few rows back. He gave her a thumbs up and mouthed the words “awesome job.” She grinned at him and thought that she might ask her parents if it was okay for Thomas to join them for their celebratory dinner afterward.

  She and Thomas had met one another in the fifth grade when they’d been paired together as lab partners in science class, and they’d been best friends ever since. Thomas would be taking a year’s deferment from entering NYU in order to travel, something which drove Isabella slightly insane on the one hand and left her a bit awestruck on the other. Isabella couldn’t imagine being as close with anyone as she was with Thomas.

  Before she knew it, it was time to move the tassel on her cap as the graduating class was officially announced. The entire auditorium erupted into shouts as she tossed her cap high into the air along with her classmates, laughing as Thomas came up behind her to swoop her up in a giant hug.

  “We did it, Iz!”

  She hugged him around the neck and whispered in his ear as she saw her parents walking toward them.

  “Don’t let my parents hear you calling me that. I’m trying to get them to stop.” She laughed and Thomas winked at her.

  “Well, you two, how does it feel to call yourselves graduates?”

  “It feels pretty great, Mr. Dawson,” Thomas was quick to reply, moving away from Isabella just a bit to give her parents room to get close to her.

  Her father leaned over to give her a kiss on the cheek. “Your speech was so good, baby.”

  “We’re so proud of you.” Her mother reached over to give her a hug, but not before Isabella saw her wipe the tears away.

  “Thanks. It does feel pretty good.”

  “And to be done with that speech, I bet.” Thomas gave her a look as if he wasn’t sure if he should mention it—she’d been stressing about it for days around him too, so she was pretty sure that he was the one who was ready for it to be behind them.

  “Yes, you can say that again.”

  “Now you won’t have anything to stress about until—hmm—next week maybe?”

  He was joking with her but she saw the disapproval on her mother’s face. Her mother didn’t like to joke around when it came to the things that Isabella felt anxious about. These were all important things in her parent’s eyes, and Isabella had to learn how to cope better with her nerves. Isabella didn’t think they really understood at all how she felt about it, but it was never really up for debate—just something that she had to continually work on until the anxiety finally went away.

  “Are you ready to go?” her mother asked her.

  Thomas and her father were chatting quietly off to the side.

  “Mom, would it be okay if Thomas joined us?”

  But she could tell by the way her mom’s face changed as soon as she’d asked the question that it was a family dinner.

  “Oh, I don’t know, honey. I think your father wants to celebrate with just us. Thomas’s parents probably want to celebrate with him as well, don’t you think?”

  Isabella nodded, disappointed, but not surprised. Her parents liked Thomas—although they had opinions about his carefree attitude—but they were big on intimate family celebrations. She didn’t bother to tell her mother that Thomas’s parents had already asked Isabella to join them for a celebration dinner tomorrow night. The two already had plans for lunch the next day also, so they’d do their celebrating together then.

  “Thomas, I’ll see you tomorrow then? Around one?”

  “Sounds good.”

  Thomas gave her a hug, and Isabella was left standing with her mom squeezing her arm on one side and her father already taking off toward the parking lot.

  “Let’s go. I’m sure the restaurant is going to be busy. You want Italian, right?”

  Isabella nodded her head. Italian food was always her go-to favorite when they went out—it had been ever since she was a kid—ever since she’d found out that she was at least half Italian.

  She flashed to a memory of doing a school project on ancestry. It was one of the first times that she’d had a true conversation with her parents about her adoption. She’d always known that she was adopted. They’d made sure that she knew how much they’d wanted her from the moment she was born—that she’d been special, chosen to be their daughter.

  Her mother had often commented on Isabella’s dark thick hair, unruly as a child and now one of Isabella’s favorite physical features—if she’d been forced to name one. So she’d grown up looking nothing like her mother, who was of Irish descent, or her father, who was also fair-skinned with blue eyes.

  It had never really bothered Isabella that she was adopted until years later when she’d tried to have another conversation with her mother about it. Isabella had been about thirteen at the time and for some reason, she’d started thinking about her birth mother a lot. She didn’t know exactly why, but she felt apprehensive talking to her mother about it—about asking for information. Her mother had made it clear to Isabella that it was a topic that was off limits—not so much by her words as by her strange reaction—she’d been uncomfortable, and Isabella hated seeing her mother like that.

  So, she’d put the whole thing out of her mind. She was a Dawson, daughter of Emily and Richard Dawson and that was the end of it back then.

  It was Thomas who’d gotten her thinking about it again only recently, when she’d turned eighteen a few weeks ago. She’d been looking for a good time to have the conversation wit
h her parents, but things had been so busy with the end-of-the-year madness, that she’d not had a chance yet to bring it up—and she was dreading it to a certain extent. Isabella didn’t like to rock the boat in her family and she’d done a great job of being an excellent daughter for all of her life.

  Chapter 3

  Like clockwork, Leo appeared at the door to greet the Dawsons as soon as they arrived at Angelica’s. The restaurant was named after Leo’s wife, who was also in charge of the kitchen. Isabella loved to watch the couple interact whenever her family dined at the restaurant. Their banter—which sometimes seemed to border on petty arguing—in Italian was mesmerizing to her.

  “Bella, congratulations.” Leo kissed her on each cheek as Angelica came up beside him to do the same.

  “Tonight, dessert is on us.”

  Isabella laughed and felt her face grow warm at the attention. “Thank you. You’re so sweet.”

  “Come, come. I have a nice table for you over here.”

  They followed Leo back to a corner of the dining room and settled in.

  After they placed their orders, Isabella noticed her parents giving one another a look.

  “What?” Isabella grinned at them. “Do you two have something to say?”

  “Well, yes, actually. We have a little surprise for you, honey,” said her father, motioning to her mother, who was suddenly grinning from ear to ear.

  “We’d like to contribute to a car for you. You’re going to need one for school in the fall—”

  “—so that you can easily come visit us, for one thing,” her mother cut him off.

  “We probably have close to fifteen thousand saved up,” her father finished.

  “And we figured, with what you’ve got saved, that should be enough to cover something new that would be reliable and safe for you to drive,” said her mother.

  Isabella looked at the two of them grinning at her from across the table. She’d been saving to buy a used car ever since she’d been old enough to work a summer job. She’d never in her wildest dreams thought that her parents would be able to help her buy a car. Her family was far from wealthy. They might be considered middle-class, but barely, she was sure. Her mother was a high school teacher at one of the public schools and her father was a social worker.

  “No, you can’t do that. What about your trip?”

  She knew that her parents had been saving for a trip to Europe for the past few years. Neither of them had been out of the country, and they had it in mind for their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, which was coming up in the next year. Isabella knew that they’d been able to earmark the money that they had been putting toward her expensive private high school, an expense that they’d insisted was well worth the financial sacrifices that they’d had to make as a family over the years.

  Her father glanced at her mother, reaching over to take her hand. “Mother and I’ve decided that our trip can wait a few years.”

  Isabella was shaking her head in response to his words. “No—”

  “Izzy—Isabella, you’ve worked so hard and we’re so proud of you, honey.” Her mother reached across the table for her hand. “We want to do this for you.”

  Isabella could already feel the guilt eating at her, like something ravaging her stomach. She didn’t want them to do this for her. They’d sacrificed so much as it was. For some reason, she could never shake the feeling of being undeserving. It was certainly not anything that her parents had ever put on her. They always wanted her to be happy. She knew this. But they did have expectations for her. Isabella knew that everything they’d put into her education would lead to an ultimate outcome—her success as a lawyer. They’d always wanted the best for her and for her to have much more than their modest upbringing. They’d worked tirelessly for that. And Isabella always felt that she owed them her success.

  She tried to focus on her food, but she felt the tears threatening just behind her eyelids. She turned her attention back to her parents. “Well, we’ll see. Maybe we can find something used for a good price. I don’t have to buy a new car. That way I could get my wheels and you two could still go on your trip.”

  “Okay, we’ll see, honey.”

  “Let’s talk about this summer,” her father said. “When does your internship start?”

  Isabella had been accepted to a very sought-after internship program by a local law firm. She’d mostly be filing and doing other secretarial-type tasks, but it would look very good on her resume and it was definitely a firm that she’d like to develop a relationship with—and it was a paid internship, which made it a no-brainer for her.

  “It starts in just over two weeks.” She twisted her pasta around her fork as she thought about the direction she intended the conversation to go. “And my writing class starts next week, but it’s in the evenings.”

  Her parents looked at one another, and she didn’t miss the glance. As much as they did support all of her educational endeavors, for some reason, they’d never been able to get behind anything that had to do with her writing. If Isabella had to guess, it was because her mother had majored in English and then ended up becoming a teacher. They wanted more for Isabella than to be a teacher. They didn’t have to say it in so many words. It was just a fact that she’d always known.

  “What’s the class again?” her mother asked.

  “It’s an advanced creative writing class.”

  She’d excelled in all of her writing classes at school. Her teachers had seen her talent and one of them had even entered one of her short stories into a national contest just last month. She was still waiting to hear the results, but it was really something that she’d done just for fun.

  Writing was her outlet. It was the one way that she could truly express herself, whether through a made-up character or her journal writing. She had to laugh sometimes, because she’d been called a good communicator by so many of her teachers and her debate team coach—it was one reason that she knew she’d be a good lawyer—but when it came to communicating with her parents, she was lousy at it. Mostly she just held everything in, which was probably why she had all of the anxiety issues that she did.

  She didn’t want to discuss the writing class with her parents right now. The night was supposed to be a celebration, and she didn’t want to spend another moment of it feeling like she was going to bust into tears.

  “Anyway, I’m sure it will be fine. I can handle the one class and the internship, no problem.”

  “Well, just be certain that it’s not going to interfere, because you really want to think about how the things you’re choosing to do will look on your resume one day. Just keep your focus, as you have been doing such a good job of, and there’s no doubt in our minds that you’re going to be at the top of your class next year as well.”

  Isabella nodded her head. She’d had this same conversation with her father at least twenty times in the past few months. She knew exactly what she was doing. She had to wonder sometimes if that was what had been causing her so much anxiety.

  She couldn’t help but smile as she thought about the irony of it all. She’d figure it all out. She always did.

  Chapter 4

  Thomas had that look on his face. Isabella enjoyed it when he was in one of his moods, but she also found it hard to understand at times. Thomas didn’t have to work at being relaxed. It was just his nature to not be serious.

  “Well?”

  “Sorry, what?”

  Thomas laughed and kicked her lightly under the table. They were sitting in the usual corner booth of the diner where they’d been meeting for years. The restaurant was almost exactly the same distance for each of them—.6 miles—and they’d been coming here together just as soon as they were old enough to make the walk by themselves.

  Thomas’s parents had allowed him the privilege long before Isabella’s parents had made the concession. The one time Isabella had gone against her parent’s wishes, to sneak to the diner—at Thomas’s prodding—her mother had freaked out, call
ing the police because she thought someone had snatched up ten-year-old Isabella right out of their house.

  “Iz, I was just saying that you really should meet me.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about you meeting me somewhere in Europe at the end of the summer—before you start school. Ya know, it’s called summer vacation for a reason.” He laughed.

  Thomas was leaving to start his travels in the middle of August, and Isabella felt sick when she thought about saying goodbye to him.

  “You know I’m going to be very busy this summer—with the internship and everything.”

  “And?”

  “And what? That’s the truth.”

  “But you have a few weeks before school starts. Iz, you already told me that.”

  She nodded.

  “So just admit that its not the real reason you won’t meet me.”

  “Okay, so what? I can’t help it if the idea of flying petrifies me.” She returned a light kick under the table. “Do you want me to die from a heart attack on my way to see you?”

  “Come on. You, more than anyone I know, probably can quote exactly what the statistics are, Isabella. You’ll be fine. Besides, don’t forget that I know the truth.” He reached over to grab her hand across the table, causing her to flinch at his unexpected touch.

  Thomas was the only one who really knew about her dreams—the only one who knew that she had a stack of books in her closet that covered country after country that she longed to experience one day.

  She nodded and squeezed his hand. “I know. You’re right. You are. Let me think about it, okay?”

  Seemingly satisfied with her response, Thomas let go of her hand to gesture to the table across the room. “By the way, I think you have an admirer.”