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“Do you want me to come in with you?” Ace asks, stealing my attention away from my thoughts. I stare, unblinking at the small gray house with the white picket fence, watching as Rachel moves around in the house. I have a clear view of her from the open window.
Clearly, she’s gotten comfortable as well because she used to never leave her blinds and curtains open. I’ve been sitting in front of her house for nearly twenty minutes, and she’s yet to notice.
“No, I’ll be okay. Stay here and keep watch.” I exhale a breath I wasn’t aware I was holding, then quickly lean across the middle console to steal a kiss for support. I try to pull back, but Ace wraps a hand around my head and tightens his fingers in my hair, twirling my short strands of platinum hair between his rough fingers.
“My pretty thing,” he groans against my lips, his touch calming my racing heart. “Go.” He pulls back, hits the unlock button with a click, and lets me out of the car.
I’ve barely unlatched the white gate and started walking up the driveway when the door opens, and a little blonde-haired beauty comes running full speed toward me. “Aunty Lee!” she screams, throwing herself into my arms.
I’m an only child, and I don’t have a niece. I just hope she’ll never know that.
“Oh my goodness, Olivia, look how big you are!” I can’t help but smile happily whenever I’m around the almost ten-year-old spitfire.
She looks up at me, her bright blue eyes matching mine perfectly. “Mommy is inside. Let’s go.” She grabs my hand, leading me inside the small house.
Fear and worry flash in Rachel’s brown eyes when she sees me. She quickly looks around and draws the blinds and curtains like she should’ve already fucking done.
“Aunty Lee, want to see my bedroom? Mommy got me new furniture, and it’s awesome!”
“In a minute, sweetie. Let me talk to Mommy for a little bit, okay?” I take her small hands in mine and study her features carefully. The same features that mirror my own. She may not notice it now, but I worry that as she gets older, she’ll realize she looks more like me than the woman she calls Mommy; she might ask questions. As far as she knows, Rachel is her mom. That’s how it needs to stay.
My sweet, innocent girl doesn’t know any better. She believes the lies she’s been told since birth.
For what it’s worth, Rachel is her mother. She may have grown inside my body, fed from my breast, and look exactly like me, but I’m not her mother. I’m just the woman who brought her into the world. I didn’t raise her, teach her to walk, talk, or kiss her cuts and bruises.
I may be her birth mom, but Rachel is her mother in every other sense of the word.
“Go to your room, honey,” Rachel says. Olivia sighs and nods. Turning around, she disappears into the hallway. I stand and Rachel opens her arms and pulls me in for a tight hug.
Rachel and I met during my time in foster care. I had gone to a foster kid support group, and she was one of the volunteers. She’s ten years older than me, but she took me under her wing and, in a way, became my family. We kept in touch as much as we could over the years, and when I was nine months pregnant, I showed up on her front step after setting fire to my last foster home with the family inside.
She took pity on me, gave me a place to live, and when Olivia was born, I begged her to take her and raise her, and she did. Rachel isn’t able to have children of her own, so Olivia is the only child she’ll ever have.
Thanks to Ace, Rachel Hollis has been erased from all records. She and Olivia are ghosts, and I hate that they have to live this way. Ace ensures there is always money in a bank account he set up for Rachel since she can’t have a regular job.
She gave up so much to help me and raise Olivia, but I know that she doesn’t regret it. Plus, she’s told me plenty of times that she doesn’t regret anything because I gave her the chance to be a mother.
I owe Rachel everything.
“What’s going on, Lee? You never visit anymore unless you have bad news.” Worry laces her tone. I hate how true that is, but it hasn’t been safe for me to visit. Besides, I don’t want to confuse Olivia by having me around constantly.
Plus, it’s hard for me to watch my vibrant, beautiful daughter call someone else Mommy. I don’t regret my decision to give her to Rachel, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t painful at times.
“Come, let’s go in the kitchen and talk,” she says, taking my hand and leading me into the small white kitchen. I sit at the table while she rushes through, making a new pot of coffee. We wait silently for it to brew, the bitter aroma filling the air.
Once she brings two mugs and a bottle of French vanilla creamer to the table, I hedge, “Do you remember me telling you about the last foster home I was in? With Willa and Bill and their son, Colton?”
Her eyes widen. She remains silent but nods. She knows what happened, and she knows one of them is Olivia’s biological father.
“Well, the dead has risen, and you and Olivia have been discovered. You have to move. Ace is helping me set up a safe house for the two of you.” Silently, she pours a little creamer into her coffee, then slides the bottle across to me. I happily pour nearly half of the bottle of creamer into my coffee, laughing to myself at the fact she remembered how I drank my coffee and that she gave me a nearly half-empty cup.
“Olivia has moved six times in nearly ten years. It’s not fair to uproot her life again when she’s comfortable here.” She sighs and takes my coffee to the microwave to heat up since it’s now cold from all the creamer I added. “I don’t understand how you can drink so much creamer,” she mumbles, rolling her dark brown eyes. “Is Ace with you?” she asks, returning to the table with my cup of hot creamer and a splash of coffee.
“He’s outside. He brought me here.” I sip the hot white liquid carefully. “Look, Rach, I know it’s not easy to uproot your lives again, and I’m sorry, but it’s not safe here anymore. Pack only the necessities, and I’ll be back to help you move tomorrow morning.”
She looks at me, her eyes glossy with unshed tears. “Of course, we’ll go. I’m so sorry that you have to live your life always looking over your shoulder.” She reaches across the table and takes my hands in hers.
“Who came back from the dead, and how do you know?” she asks, sipping her coffee.
