AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Amalie was kicked back on her sofa with a cup of coffee at hand, going through emails on her laptop, when it occurred to her that she hadn’t checked the spam file since her move, so she opened it to make sure something important hadn’t wound up in there.
As she was going through the list, she noticed a message from Ancestry.com. Thinking it was probably an advertisement, she almost deleted it and then hesitated, reminding herself there was always hope, and opened it.
And read it.
And her heart nearly stopped.
After all these years, she had a match!
Her hands were shaking. She wasn’t even sure if she remembered her password, and jumped up and ran into her home office, dug her “little black book” out of her desk, and flipped through the pages until she found it and ran back to her computer.
“Oh my God, oh my God,” Amalie whispered, as she logged in to her site, then went through the links to get to the name. There was the name. Wolfgang Amadeus Outen, with a suggested parental connection. Her heart was pounding. “Is this man my father?” There was a link to contact him via email and she clicked on it.
Her fingers were flying over the keyboard as she sent a message.
Dear Mr. Outen,
My name is Amalie Ann Lincoln. I am twenty-seven years old. I am a CPA and own my own business. I grew up in foster care. I have no background or knowledge of my family or parents, or where I came from. But Ancestry.com has just notified me that we share a familial connection. If you are interested in connecting with me, please reply to this email or call me at this number.
I look forward to your response.
Amalie
Then she hit Send, leaned back, and stared out the office window at the mountain looming in the distance.
“Holy crap, did this just happen?” she muttered.
All outside noises faded into the background. She kept telling herself he would surely welcome this news, or he would never have signed up on this kind of site. Or maybe not. Maybe it had been true ancestry he’d been looking for, not a by-blow of his youthful past. All she knew was that she wouldn’t get her hopes up until she heard a voice, and she knew how to hide expectations. It was back to business as usual.
If there was a miracle on her horizon, she would welcome it. But today, her reality was the business she was trying to grow, and it was time to head to town. The urgeto call Sean was huge, but she wasn’t talking about any of this until she knew it was a fact.
Sean was in his office early, doing a remote cleanup for a small business in Bowling Green, completely focused on how they’d been hacked. They’d already lost five thousand dollars to hackers getting into their bank account, and at the moment, they had frozen their own account until further notice.
He had been working for nearly three hours when he finally found it—malware in their online security that allowed the hackers to get into the weakened system and access the money. After that, it took Sean another hour to clean it up and reinstall the security with added antimalware.
After one last run-through and getting an all clear, he called the owners, let them know they were good to go, and sent them an invoice.
It was a good morning’s work, but it was nearing noon. He could smell something cooking and headed to the kitchen.
Shirley heard him coming up the hall.
“You finally came up for air!” she said.
“I just cleaned a whole lot of bad juju out of a businesssystem. All that hard work made me hungry, and something smells good.”
“I baked a small ham and made a corn casserole and coleslaw. Biscuits are in the oven. They’ll be done in a couple of minutes. Get yourself something to drink and then we’ll eat.”
Sean filled a glass with ice and sweet tea, then walked to the window, admiring the overnight snowfall.
“It’s beautiful out there, isn’t it?” he said.
“Yes. Too bad your Amalie isn’t here. She’d likely be outside tromping around in it,” Shirley said.
My Amalie.It had a nice ring.
“Most likely,” he said, then took a drink of his tea and set it on the table. “Be right back. I’m going to add another log to the fire.”
Wolf woke up before sunrise, momentarily startled by the unfamiliar shadows of the room until he remembered where he was and why. For a man who had always had his finger on the pulse of the world and his businesses, he was, for the moment, completely disconnected with all of it.
