It's Never too Late

Sari had a diabetic child. Addy could feel the walls closing in on her.

Will named a sum for the donation.

“That’s way too much, Will.”

“It should be enough to cover your mortgage, rent and give you something to live off for the next year.”

“You expect this to take a year?”

“You’re going to need money to tide you over when you get back to your real life.”

He’d certainly thought everything through. Her head throbbed. From the back of her neck forward. And she had another thought.

“Your folks know who I am. And Randi will.”

“They know you, of course, as is substantiated by the number of invitations they’ve issued over the years for you to come visit, but they haven’t seen you in more than twenty years.”

Twenty-five years. Since social services had awarded permanent custody of her to a grandmother she’d never met, rather than to the family she’d known since she was born.

Back in those days the elder Mrs. Parsons wouldn’t entertain without Addy’s mother catering the event. She’d been known to schedule her social events around Ann Keller’s availability. And Addy, who’d been welcome to accompany her mother while she create

d her masterpieces, had learned to walk standing at a cooking counter in the Parsonses’ enormous kitchen.

“Gran wouldn’t let me go back,” Addy told Will what he already knew. And didn’t add that later, after Gran was dead and Addy was the boss of her own life, she still hadn’t returned to the town where she’d been born.

She couldn’t...

“Greg is arranging an assumed identity for you.” Will rescued her mind from the pit she avoided at all costs, getting her back on track.

Becca and Will had already been married when fire left Addy orphaned and Mr. and Mrs. Parsons had taken her in. Seen her through long months of painful treatments for the third-degree burns all the way down her back.

Promised her that they’d love her forever. That she was a part of their family. That she could depend on them because they loved her as one of their own.

They’d meant the words. Addy believed that. Even as a kid she’d known how hard they fought for custody of her.

But Addy hadn’t really wanted to live in that big mansion in the desert. She’d wanted to live with Becca and Will. She had hoped, with childish naïveté, that they’d swoop in and adopt her away from the older folks who were fighting over her.

Becca had lost a couple of babies by then. Which might be why the couple had taken to her as they had.

And she had so hoped...

But no, those roads didn’t bear traveling.

“It helps that you never sent pictures in spite of Mom and Dad’s repeated requests.”

Glancing at the framed photo on her wall, Addy didn’t respond. Admitting the truth, that she avoided being photographed whenever she could—as though she could somehow keep her mother and brother closer by not doing so, not getting older, not moving on—would make her sound a bit off.

Gran had never figured out that her yearly bouts with flu had coincided with school picture day.

“You want me there under an assumed name?”

“Greg will help us arrange all of the details. I know it’s asking a lot, Addy, but I don’t know what else to do. With this second threat, I can’t just lie in wait...”

“I haven’t been back.”

“I know.”

He was asking, anyway. Which told Addy he really believed he had no other choice.