“Yes.” More sure than he’d been about anything in a long time. Except for getting Carrie.
“Why?”
“You really want me to answer that?”
“I asked, didn’t I?”
It was like they were dancing. Only they were using words to circle each other. To feel each other out.
Because there was more here than a foster mother and a potential adoptive parent.
You’ re losing it, Kraynick. You’ve met her twice.
But he answered her anyway. “My niece aside, you intrigue me. It’s been a long time since I met a woman I didn’t immediately forget two minutes after I left her…. That didn’t come out as I meant it to sound.”
Rick moaned inwardly. He really had been out of the singles scene a long time.
“Maybe not, but it might be the nicest thing anyone’s said to me in quite a while.” Her voice dropped. “This isn’t going to sway my opinion regarding Carrie.”
“I understand.”
“I mean that.”
“I’m enjoying a conversation with a woman I’ve met,” he said, bemused as he looked out over a city that, recently, had seemed to go on without him. “Not with a foster parent.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yep.”
“Okay then, my mom was adopted,” she blurted, before going on to tell him about her mother’s relationship with her older brother, the biological son of her adoptive parents. And that wasn’t all. There were two uncles involved, too. And a couple of cousins.
“And you guys just found out all of this?”
“Pretty amazing, huh?” Silence hung between them until she said, “Had enough?”
“Not by a long shot.”
“What are we doing here?”
“Talking.”
“Yeah, but we don’t really even know each other and…Strangely enough, this feels…good.”
“So talk. This feels…good.” He repeated her words back to her.
“It’s been a tough couple of weeks all around, huh?”
“That it has.”
“It’s kind of like we were meant to meet. To talk.”
He was glad to hear she thought so, too. “We’ve been through similar experiences,” he said. “Both finding out about family we didn’t know we had. It’s good to talk to someone who understands.”
“Especially since we aren’t going to get a chance to have relationships with some of them. Your sister. My biological grandmother. And even some I did spend time with weren’t who I thought they were. My whole life I thought my grandfather was this somewhat quiet, very loyal, hardworking family man who adored my grandmother. And then I hear that he was not only unfaithful to her, that he’d had a mistress on the side for years, but that he’d also had babies by her? He had both women pregnant at the same time with his two sons!”
“But they never knew they were half brothers.”
“No! We didn’t even know this other woman existed, and she was my mom’s mother! This woman raised her two sons—the second, younger than my mother, was fathered by the man she eventually married—and a grandson. So why in the hell did she give my mother away?”