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“We wanted to be here to celebrate Vincent coming home and his clean bill of health,” Charles replied.
“We wanted the family to all be together for this special day,” Brenda added.
Family. I would never grow sick of hearing them say that word. Which reminded me...
“The results!”
Charles and Brenda beamed at me, their faces glowing.
“You already looked at them, didn’t you?” I asked.
“On the way over, I couldn’t wait any longer,” Brenda admitted. “As soon as I got the notification, I just had to.”
Seeing their faces, I knew that the results were what we had hoped for, but I had to read them for myself. Since my phone was still in my hand, I quickly opened my email and found the message. My hands were shaking as I clicked on it.
My DNA was a match with both Charles and Brenda.
I was their daughter.
My knees felt weak and I had to grab ahold of the doorframe to steady myself as the news sunk in. The woman who I had thought was my mother, the woman who acted as if she never once cared for me, was not my mom.
Brenda was.
My dad wasn’t in prison for forging documents and stealing identities.
He was standing in front of me in a pair of khaki golf shorts and a baby blue linen polo shirt.
Tears streamed down my cheeks as my family enveloped me.
I could now stop calling them Charles and Brenda, they were Mom and Dad.
We were all crying as we hugged, and my parents told me that they loved me, that they never stopped loving me.
“I love you guys too,” I said, wiping my eyes and trying to pull myself together. “Are you ready to meet your grandsons?”
“Absolutely,” my mom quickly replied.
They walked alongside me further into the house, and when we stepped into the living room, my parents immediately greeted their grandchildren. They oohed and aahed at them. My mom was holding a baby within seconds, managing to take Eli from Roman who seemed ready for a break. Ava handed Lucy over to Charles, and Harper got her hands on Ari.
I took my baby boy, Vincent, the one we were worried about all these months, and held him in my arms, sitting down between my mom and dad.
“So I have some more news to share with everyone too, while we’re all gathered here,” I announced.
My mom raised an eyebrow. “You’re not pregnant again, are you?”
“Oh no,” I said with a laugh. “No, that’s not it. One day maybe but not right now, we have our hands full. It’s that I accepted a job writing articles forPeoplemagazine!”
“Oh wow,” my mom’s eyes grew wide. “I’m so proud of you, sweetheart. How did that come about? I want all the details.”
“Thank you! Well, as you know, our story has reached the national news, with me being kidnapped, then having my own children kidnapped, so I decided to tell our story and submitted an article toPeoplemagazine about it. It was accepted, and they asked if I would be interested in writing about other missing children cases that had gone cold. They thought it would make for an important series, and that I was just the person to do it.”
“That is amazing, honey,” Charles said.
Vincent’s fingers wrapped around one of mine, and the tears welled in my eyes again. Everything was so perfect, it felt surreal to me. My babies were home. My family was with me. I was writing professionally and had a career that I’d always dreamt of having, and I was able to write about something that truly mattered to not only me, but other victims as well.
“Also, I was approached about writing a book about my experience,” I said. “And, I was wondering, Mom, if you would like to work on that together? I know you started a book about it already, and your side of the story is so important in all of this.”
“Oh, I don’t know, sweetie. Would they even be interested in that?” she asked.
