“I most certainly did not adopt you, Leah. The emergency C-section saved you. They placed you in my arms shortly after I regained consciousness.”
Leah remained quiet.
“Why in the world would I have adopted a baby?” Mom demanded, gathering steam. “I was trying to finish college at the time that I had you. I wanted to see the world! I wanted to travel. I was not ready for children. You know this about me.”
“I do.”
“I did not adopt you.”
“And yet we’re not related by blood. How do you propose to explain this?”
“Clearly the lab made a mistake.”
“My DNA matches include people with surnames like Brookside and Donnell and May. Do you recognize any of those?”
“I don’t. Listen, humans are involved in the process of DNA testing. If humans are involved, there’s the possibility of human error. I’m guessing that your test tube was mistaken for someone else’s test tube. Will YourHeritage let you retest?”
“They will.”
“Good. Make sure they expedite your retest since this was their mistake.”
Leah swallowed a sigh. Her intuition did not think this was the lab’s mistake. “A new test kit is already en route to me. Once I send it in, I should hear back in less than two weeks.”
“Tell them to give us our money back for both tests. They owe us that after the trouble they’ve caused.” She didn’t wait for Leah to reply before saying,“I’m off!”
Mom’s words hung in Leah’s ear as the line went dead.
If Mom had not adopted her, then only one theory remained that honored both her mom’s version of events and the DNA test.
That theory: her mother’s biological child had been switched at birth with someone else’s baby.
CHAPTER TWO
Farmers markets were not his thing.
And yet, there he was. Sebastian Xavier Grant slipped on sunglasses as he walked from his parking space toward Misty River High School’s athletic fields and rows of vendors shaded by pop-up canopies.
He’d come to this particular farmers market for one reason only: to support his best friend, Ben. An eleventh-grade science teacher, Ben was responsible for staffing every volunteer position at today’s market, which was one of the high school’s most lucrative fundraisers of the year.
Sebastian had offered to volunteer wherever he was needed. Apparently, he was needed in the booster club’s spaghetti lunch line, located on the far side of the market stalls, near the base of the wooded hillside.
He checked his watch. 11:45. His shift started at twelve.
Sunshine fell over beige brick buildings that had been new back when Sebastian had gone to school there. Happy shrieks rose from the area where they’d set up inflatables, a game that involved kids wearing blown-up rings around their waists, and one of those plastic balls big enough for a person to climb inside and then roll down a lane. Today, the clean mountain air held no humidity, and only a few thin strips of cloud marked the blue of the sky. The forecast for this mid-May Saturday: seventy-eight degrees.
Sebastian strode past stalls selling beef jerky, jam, soap. Organic vegetables. Candles. Canned southern staples, like black-eyed peas. Locally crafted beer. Folk pottery. A fruit stand with peaches, plums, and blueberries.
He was just making his way out of the row when he heard a voice. A female voice.
It tripped his memory, and he came to an immediate stop. Listening hard, he weeded through the noise—conversations, the whir of a generator, laughter—until he caught a snatch of that voice again.
“Sure,” he thought he heard her say. He had to strain to make it out. “You’re welcome.”
Recognition and certainty flooded him. It was her.
He spun and scanned the people in his field of vision.
He didn’t see her.
Where was she?
Last November, not far from here, he’d swerved to avoid a car that had veered into his lane. His SUV had ended up nose-down in a roadside ditch, and the impact had knocked him out. When he’d regained consciousness, a woman had been inside his car with him. The voice he’d just overheard belonged to her.
His mind tugged him back in time to the morning of the crash.
“Sir?” she’d said to him.
Sebastian heard the feminine voice as if he were at the bottom of a hole. Chuck Berry’s “Downbound Train” played on his SUV’s radio.
“Can you hear me?” she asked, sounding worried and faintly out of breath. “Are you all right?”
Her voice was smooth and sweet like honey. He didn’t want the woman with the voice like honey to be worried. Also, he didn’t want to wake up because his head ached with dull, fierce pain.
“Sir,” she said. “Can you hear me?”
“Yes,” he said hoarsely.
“He fell on his knees,” Chuck Berry sang, “on the bar room floor and prayed a prayer like never before.”
Sebastian slit his eyes open. Pinpricks punctured his vision. He was inside his car, his seat belt cutting against his chest diagonally. What had happened?
Wincing, he lifted his chin. Cracks scarred his windshield. Beyond the hood, he could see nothing but dirt and torn grass. A pair of sapling trees wedged against his driver’s side door.
He’d been in a car crash.
How long ago? Why?
He didn’t know. He’d flown to the airstrip. He . . . He remembered getting into his car and pulling out onto the road in the fog. That’s all.
He’d lost time.
Experimentally, he moved his fingers and toes. Everything was working fine except for the splitting pain in his head.
The one with the beautiful voice clicked off the radio. “Downbound Train” disappeared, leaving only a faint ringing in his ears.
“I’m relieved that you came to,” she said.
The tone of her words softened the agony inside his skull.
Slowly, he turned his chin in her direction. He’d lost his tolerance for light and the pinpricks wouldn’t go away. He squeezed his eyes shut against the disorienting sensation, then opened them and concentrated hard so that he could focus on her.
She . . . had the face of an angel.
An unforgettable face. A heartbreaking face, both hopeful and world-weary. He guessed her to be a year or two younger than he was, but she didn’t look sheltered or naïve.
Long eyelashes framed almond-shaped gray-blue eyes as deep as they were soft. A defined groove marked the center of her upper lip. Blond hair, parted on the side. Neither curly nor straight, it had a natural, faintly messy look to it. She’d cut it so that it ended halfway between her small, determined chin and her shoulders.
Had he died? Was she an angel? She was there, which made him think he’d died. But his head hurt, which made him think he hadn’t.
“Are you injured?” she asked.
“I’m fine. Except for my head.”
Concern flickered in her expression. At least, he thought it did. He struggled to see her more clearly, furious that he couldn’t look at her with his usual powers of observation.
She knelt on the passenger seat, the door behind her gaping open. “I’ve already called 9-1-1. Hopefully they’ll be here soon.”
“I hope not.”