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The system was broken.No denying it. She just hoped people like her brother-in-law who actually had some power could fix it somehow. Systems designed to protect people inevitably broke down over time. When self-serving people took control. She’d seen it far too often.
Some system somewhere had broken where Denise was concerned. There had to be a record of that somewhere.
There was a pile of papers in the bottom of the tote—but they were bank statements and old bills, nothing that mattered now.
And an even older photo album. Flipping through it revealed faces Zoey would never hope to identify. There were some that were faded, but the people in them—they had to be Denise’s family.
Somehow.
There were no labels on the backs. Zoey would probably never know who they were. Buttheylooked like Zoey, too.
She held a school photo of a little girl no older than seven right now.
Her niece Keller’s slightly shy grin—one that child shared with Ariella and Zoey herself—was right there. The child’s eyes were as dark as Zoey’s own and shaped just like Penelope’s.
And Zoey would most likely never know who the little girl was.
It felt like she stood there on the edge of a foster family again, seeing the connections between all of them—and knowingshewould never belong there, no matter what she did. Like there was a wall around them all.
Or a gate.
She and Pen had lived with one family where they were baby-gated off—fosters on one side, real kids on the other. That was something she had never forgotten. And never would.
The rest of the photo albums—designed for five-by-seven photos or smaller—were more of the same, including a photo obviously clipped from a newspaper. Once again, no name. But there was part of an article about a medical discovery of some sort on the back. It wasn’t much. But maybe she could find something that way.
Enough to find the original issue? The woman in the photo would be identified there, most likely. It was a big leap. But she had a pair of scarily smart redheaded ferrets with Blessed Reunions who could dig out anything. They took it as a challenge, those two. She sat the article aside.
In the final album she found even older photos. That same little girl—it could have been Denise, Zoey didn’t know—was in a few. Another girl, a few years older, a pair of identical twin girls who looked a great deal like Keller, a woman who had to be their mother, but whose face was blurred by damage to the film. A tall, lean man of most likely Latino or South American heritage was in a few. An even older set of photos were in the back. They had to be seventy or eighty-year-old photos.
There was a folded 8x10 of a woman who looked so much likeher,Zoey had to blink.
It was a studio pose. Almost like from an old movie poster or something. The photo was brittle with age. The folds had turned white. The woman’s hair was shorter. Bobbed and waved. She wore pearls and make-up. She had her head tilted to the side in a seductive pose Zoey would have never been able to pull off—but the resemblance was uncanny. Even the cheekbones. This woman looked more like Zoey did than Ariella.
That was saying a lot. The only real difference between her and Ariella were the cheekbones and jawline. Ariella’s were softer. More romantic and sweet.
Zoey really wanted to know whothiswoman was.
This woman was someone Zoey shared DNA with. There was absolutely no denying that now. But who she was, Zoey would probably never know.
And thathurt.
Far more than she would have ever thought it would.
She cursed, then wiped her eyes. Turned the next page. A folded piece of paper fell out. She grabbed it, and flipped it open. For a moment she didn’t register what she was seeing.
A birth certificate.
With a boy child’s name.
4
Her life had takena few unexpected detours lately. But she was finding her way out of that darkness now. One of those detours was…Blessed Reunions.
Sydney Faith Beck was good at what she did. It was a matter of pride, of honor. She was aBeck.
A Beck went above and beyond.
She took pride in her family. In who she came from.
