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“And me and Kurtis have never been the same. We used to be so close, like best friends. Then when Mom and Dad told him about my real mom, he acted like I was different. Like I was a freak that didn’t belong. Now, our rift is too big to fix.”
“You shouldn’t be made to feel like the black sheep just because you have a different mom.”
“I have a good family,” he says. “Like, I know this. I’m just different from everyone else.”
I plant my hand on his thigh. “You’re not abnormal. You didn’t choose how you were born.”
“I know. It’s just this thing, hovering over our family, that no one wants to talk about.” He drops his foot off the bed and leans forward, pulling two more framed photos out from underneath. “I just wish it was easy to see her face.”
“Oh my gosh.” It tumbles out of me, shattered. “Downstairs, they have all those photos on the wall, and you have to store these under your bed.”
I trace a finger down the side of a photo. Between two golden retrievers, sits his bio mom. I sniff hard, fighting the bulging sob lodged in my throat. With a grunt, the urge breaks and my throat clears.
“You said you had a golden retriever because your mom had them,” I murmur, fixated on the dogs. “But it wasn’t your mom who’s downstairs.”
He rubs the back of his neck, frowning. “I just remember being so confused and upset when I found out I had a different mom. It was hard, dealing with who I am. So, my dad would tell me stories about my bio mom, like how she was dog-obsessed. Those were the stories I liked the most, so Mom and Dad agreed to get me a dog of my own. It was like having a piece of her with me once we got Gus.”
“Oh my gosh,” I rush. “That’s what Kurtis meant about a ‘pity dog.’ Ugh. He’s such a jerk!”
Parker smirks. “That’s what I’ve been telling you all along.” He pushes the photos away. “Ugh. It hurt so bad when Gus died.”
My soul crushes, now knowing how linked his pet was to the memory of his mother.
I wrap my arms around him and rest my head on his shoulder. “Thank you for sharing this with me. It couldn’t have been easy.”
He rests his head by mine. “It’s actually nice to finally tell someone.”
“No one knows about your bio mom outside of your family?”
He smirks, lifting his head. “Except you.”
“But how is that possible? The gossip trains run fast in this town.”
He sits back, putting a gap between us. “It’s because I wasn’t born here. Mom and Dad got together after my bio mom died.” He swallows hard, staring at the opposite corner of the room. “A year later, Kurtis was born, and news about them was already running hot. They didn’t want our lives to be overshadowed by scandal, so we moved here to Victoria Falls to start over.”
“Oh.”
“I just didn’t know why we moved until I found out about the adoption.”
“Makes sense as to why this was all hidden so well.”
“Yeah. Mom couldn’t exactly keep her job at her old hospital after falling in love with a man whose wife had just died.”
“Was your mom a nurse at the hospital where you were born?”
He nods. “She was in the room when I was delivered.”
“Whoa.”
“I almost died,” he whispers. “I wasn’t supposed to make it.”
My teeth clench and my hands bundle into fists, bracing myself as I listen to his words.
“There’s this thing mothers do with premature babies to help them gain strength,” he says. “They put them on their chests so they can hear their mother’s heartbeats, because it’s the only thing a newborn will recognize. Anyway, my birth mom was already gone, but as a nurse, Mom couldn’t give up on me. She sat for hours with me lying on her chest, and that’s how she saved my life.”
I clutch the space over my heart. “And that’s when your parents fell in love?”
Parker smiles and nods.
