Not My Mother, Miranda Smith [smart books to read txt] 📗

She stole me. She wanted a child so badly—she wanted me so extremely—she abandoned all sense of right and wrong. When Bruce Parker tried to interfere, my father, she murdered him. And even though she did her best to repent for those sins by giving me a decent life, it can’t make up for everything she’s taken away. If it weren’t for this decision, my entire life could have been different. I could have been a Parker. With a fancy house and an enviable education. I could have had two parents who loved me, and not just one who wanted to hoard that love for herself.

I tear open the envelope and unfold the paper inside. I scan the words until I reach the results.

Positive match.

I drop the paper, letting it float to the floor.

The patchwork of my life as I knew it is gone. I’m bare. Confronted by cold, unforgiving truth.

It’s a positive match.

But I didn’t use Amelia’s DNA. I submitted Eileen’s.

That means Eileen is my real mother.

32 EileenThen

I’ve waited until now to tell you this part because I wanted you to see me as a complete person, not solely as your mother.

The world doesn’t do that, does it? Once you’re a mother, you are bound to a certain set of standards. Wear this, not that. Go here, not there. A mother would never act that way, say that word, do that thing. You’re held to an almost impossible set of guidelines, something you might well understand one day, if you choose to become a parent.

And I say choose because motherhood is a choice. And sometimes you’re acting as a mother even when you are choosing to let that child go. When you realize that your situation isn’t one this child deserves. When you realize all the indecision you’ve felt up until this point is a mound no bigger than an anthill compared to the decisions you’ll face afterward.

Don’t ever think you weren’t loved. Don’t ever think you weren’t wanted. Letting you go doesn’t make me any less of a mother. Some might say it makes me a stronger one. I had more responsibility than simply granting you life. I wanted your life to prosper, and if I couldn’t do that for you, the most brave and honest thing I could do was admit it. People wouldn’t know I was already a mother, living without you. They wouldn’t know that their comments, even the unintentional ones, would hurt me. It would become my private pain to carry but suffering in secret doesn’t lessen the sting.

I am your mother. Cliff is your father. You grew inside my body, and I gave birth to you. I was four months pregnant when Cliff died. We were on the cusp of having the family we’d wanted, before my entire world changed.

It took fourteen hours of labor to bring you into this world. They wrapped you in a thin blanket and put you on my chest. The young girl inside me was terrified of seeing you. I’d never held anything so small, so fragile, so important. The most miraculous thing happened: you stopped crying instantly, snuggled into my chest, and became calm. We did it, you seemed to say. We can get through this together. That’s my first memory of you. It was the most amazing experience of my life, our reaction to each other.

I think back to that moment. To feeling your flesh against mine. That burst of love that seemed to travel at lightning speed throughout my body, pulsing all the more with each second I looked at you. Which made it all so heartbreaking that I had to let you go.

I was your mother. I am your mother. But I had to choose what was best for you, and that’s what I did.

If you can think back on what I’ve told you to this point. All the problems and issues I had to overcome. It seemed difficult for any young woman, but impossible for a pregnant one. I thought I could give motherhood a shot, but that was before Cliff died, taking with him any hope and confidence I’d harvested.

That’s why Amelia gravitated toward me. She saw a young girl drowning in her own misfortune, overwhelmed by the choices in front of her. Jamie was gone. Your father was dead. And I was left to make all these difficult decisions on my own. Amelia stepped in. Those numerous visits to the horse stables became the only thing that ever gave me any optimism.

On our fourth trip to the track, Amelia told me she’d lost her baby. Despite all the sacrifices—the bed rest and the doctors, quitting her job—her body wasn’t capable of carrying a baby to term. I listened to her cry and vent, all the while thinking of a way I could help her, ease her pain and fix my broken situation all at the same time.

Although I loved you more than I even knew how to express, I wasn’t capable of giving you the life you deserved. Of giving you the life I’d always hoped my little girl might have. Amelia, on the other hand, was more than capable. And she had already told me of her struggles to conceive. The treatments that didn’t work. The pregnancies that never made it past the second trimester. It took a while for me to connect the dots, but when I did, I knew I could solve both our problems.

“Would you consider adopting her?” I asked Amelia. We were at the track, eating Key lime pie to celebrate the beginning of my third trimester. Amelia had never made it that far.

She froze, her eyes drifting to my growing stomach.

“You want me to adopt your baby?”

“Why not?”

“Sarah, we’ve already contacted agencies. We’re supposed to be meeting with families this month.”

In addition to my counseling, Amelia had helped me seek out adoption services. Those were the options Amelia had presented that day back at her office.