Let It Be Me, Becky Wade [beautiful books to read .TXT] 📗

The site says this woman’s my second cousin. But how? Through whom? Who are her parents, siblings, and kids?

Given more time, however, she had faith that she’d be able to crack the code.

Two days later, she did.

Maybe.

She’d taken her computer on a breakfast date to The Grind Coffee Shop and was just finishing up a chai latte when she suddenly located a jackpot of a family tree.

It had not come from one of her closest DNA matches. It had come from a distant relation named Cheryl Brookside Patterson. An obvious overachiever and a woman after Leah’s own heart, Cheryl had made public the most thrillingly thorough family tree Leah had ever seen.

Section by section, Leah compared her fledgling tree with Cheryl’s enormous tree until—finally—she found the place where her tree overlaid with Cheryl’s tree exactly. If she slotted a man named Jonathan Brookside into her tree as her father, then the few matches she’d been able to determine fell into place.

Many of the people on Cheryl’s tree had been born in Connecticut. However, Jonathan had been born in Atlanta. He had no siblings. At the age of fifty-seven, he was certainly of the right generation to be her father.

It seemed she was . . . a Brookside.

No information beyond his birthdate and place of birth had been given. She ran a search for him at YourHeritage, then on Google, then on social media sites.

No hits, which frustrated her curiosity but did not detract from the fact that she now, very likely, had enough DNA data to justify a court order for Baby Girl Brookside’s records.

Leah wouldn’t presume to call her knowledge of music well rounded. When she was young, her parents had introduced her to the 1980s soundtrack of their high school years, and she’d never found songs she liked better.

However, she was familiar enough with TLC’s hit “Don’t Go Chasing Waterfalls” to know the lyrics suggested that you shouldn’t go chasing waterfalls, but instead stick to the rivers and lakes you were used to.

Which was preposterous.

Case in point: She’d spent a glorious Friday morning chasing a waterfall at Tallulah Gorge State Park. She’d hiked from the rim down to the floor. From her current spot on a shaded rock, the river tumbled past, crystal blue and frothing white. A hundred or so yards away, Hurricane Falls cascaded over ancient rock and filled the air with an underlying drone of nature’s power.

She’d have missed all this if she’d stuck to the rivers and the lakes she was used to.

After unpacking the lunch she’d brought in her backpack, she checked her phone and found a new email from Sebastian’s attorney, Jenna Miles. Leah had called Jenna immediately after deducing that Jonathan Brookside was her father, and Jenna had wasted no time.

Leah opened the email, a smile growing as she read the contents.

Then she spent far too long formulating and proofreading a text message to Sebastian. She was determined that no person would ever, ever, receive an email or text from her riddled with typos.

Jenna just informed me that she was granted a court order. She’ll deliver it to Donna McKelvey at Magnolia Avenue Hospital within the hour and request that Baby Girl Brookside’s documents be made ready for my perusal on Tuesday. You’d asked me to keep you informed about upcoming meetings, and I’m upholding my end of the bargain. Thank you very much for securing Jenna’s services on my behalf.

She could only hope that the detective work she’d done to pinpoint the identity of her father had been sound. If it hadn’t been, the effort to secure a court order pertaining to a baby girl with the surname Brookside would be wasted when Magnolia Avenue Hospital informed them that said records did not exist.

She completed her hike and was backing out of the parking lot when her phone dinged. She pressed the brake as if on the verge of flattening a pedestrian, even though no one was nearby. Bobbled her phone. Then plucked it up and checked her texts.

Sure enough. From Sebastian.

Let me know when to meet you at the hospital on Tuesday. I’ll do my best to be there.

Please don’t feel duty-bound to attend.

I want to be there.

I’m sure your schedule is full, and I’m sure Jenna and I can handle it.

I’ll see you Tuesday.

Sebastian sent his text and swiveled his office chair so that his vision landed on the pictures that his patients’ parents had sent him. Smiling babies.

He understood hospital politics and procedures better than Leah and Jenna. It was justified, generous even, for him to attend the meeting in order to provide backup.

So why did he feel guilty?

He pressed from his office chair and headed toward the stairs that led to the PICU, one floor below.

He felt guilty because he didn’t know how much his desire to see her again was influencing his certainty that she needed him at the meeting. Did his desire to see her again account for twenty percent of his motivation to be present at the meeting? Fifty? Eighty?

At exactly what point did helping Leah cross the line into betraying Ben? Had he already crossed that line?

No.

During his meeting with Leah at the hospital coffee shop, he’d encouraged her to date Ben. At the Colemans’, he’d talked Ben up. When he saw Leah this next time, he’d advocate for Ben again.

If Leah found the information she needed on Tuesday, that meeting would likely be their last. She’d no longer need his help with her search into her past, and so he’d see her again only through Ben. If he went out with Ben’s friend group in Misty River. Or if Leah became Ben’s girlfriend.

His stomach churned.

He strode toward Josiah Douglas’s room. Sebastian had performed a successful arterial switch operation on him a few weeks ago. Since then, they’d been monitoring him around the clock and administering medicine to improve his blood flow.

When Sebastian entered, Josiah’s mom and dad pushed to their feet to greet him. Josiah, awake