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

apparently, posting about her life for the world to see. Nor could Leah find any articles that mentioned her.

When Leah ran a search for Tracy Segura, she instantly came upon a Facebook profile that listed Magnolia Avenue Hospital under the “Work and Education” heading. A thin woman with strawberry blond hair, Tracy must have been in her early twenties when Leah was born, because she looked no older than fifty now.

Leah shook out her fingers, then composed a Facebook DM to Tracy. She explained that she’d been born at Magnolia Avenue and asked if Tracy would be willing to answer a few questions.

Finally, she entered Joyce Caffarella into the search engine. The third result appeared promising.

Joyce Caffarella—RN—St. Joseph’s | LinkedIn. Joyce’s LinkedIn profile provided a treasure trove of information. Her picture revealed a stout woman with a broad smile. Mousse and hair spray pushed her short platinum hair high. According to her page, she’d started at a pediatrician’s office, accomplished a brief stint as a surgical nurse, then moved to Magnolia Avenue for six years. Since then, she’d been working at a hospital in Peachtree City.

Leah sent her a private message identical to the one she’d sent Tracy.

Just how long, she wondered, should she expect it to take before she heard back?

Somebody gave you a gift,” Dylan called out to her the next day when Leah returned home from a hike.

“Hmm?”

She found him at the dining room table, his attention on his phone, laying waste to a box of Cheez-Its. Near his elbow sat a small gift wrapped in ivory paper and tied with an orange satin bow.

“Where did this come from?”

“Dunno. I saw it sitting on the front door mat when I got home from Braxton’s.”

“No packaging? No address?”

“Just that little card.”

She picked it up. The miniature card affixed to the bow simply read Leah.

Dylan slanted a mocking look at her. “You should probably be really careful with that. You don’t know where it came from, and it might be filled with explosives. Or poison. Explosives and poison are dangerous.”

“Quite right! I encourage you to be cautious of unidentified packages. Also, be wary of underage drinking and speeding and twerking. Never engage in any of that.”

He snorted and returned to his phone and food.

Leah slipped off the bow and raised the lid. Within, a gold necklace glimmered against a backdrop of velvet. A smattering of tiny stars and dots engraved its oval charm.

Wonder moved through her like flour through a sifter. The necklace was delicate. Classy.

She pulled the velvet backing from the bottom of the box. Beneath, she found a single piece of stationery marked with the name of a jewelry store.

The necklace shows the brightest stars in the sky on the night you were born. Some things might have gone wrong on that day, but you weren’t one of them.

-Sebastian

Since she’d received her DNA results, she’d sought to address her birthday mix-up in the way that had always served her best: with logic. Logically she knew she wasn’t the mistake.

Emotionally, that was a little harder to internalize. Across her early childhood years, she’d always felt that she didn’t fit. She’d come to accept and even own that fact. But now evidence proved that she was more than simply someone who didn’t fit. She was, without a doubt, a tremendous oddity. She’d been switched at birth when no one else she’d met or was likely to meet in her lifetime had been switched at birth.

Some things might have gone wrong on that day, but you weren’t one of them.

A heated ball glowed in the vicinity of her heart.

Glancing up, she discovered Dylan watching her smugly. “Is that from Dr. Grant?”

“Yes.”

“The guy you don’t have a crush on?”

“Correct.” She shut herself into the bathroom and tried on the necklace. The chain fell to just the right length.

She dialed Sebastian’s number.

Her call went to voice mail.

He was no doubt busy rescuing a sick child from the jaws of death.

Sebastian was going to have to take Isabella Ackerman off the heart transplant list.

Her parents, Megan and Timothy, waited nearby while he finished his examination. Megan looked like a thinner, harder version of the woman he’d first met. Timothy was as stocky and bearded as before. But his posture had started to stoop. Their expressions pleaded with Sebastian to say that he could make their daughter well.

He hated this part of his job. “Isabella has developed sepsis,” he informed them. Last week, one of his colleague’s patients had become septic and died within twenty-four hours.

Megan anxiously tucked her hair behind her ears. “How are you going to treat it?”

“Antibiotics. Additional medications for her blood pressure and cardiac function. Increased ventilation.”

“How long do you think it will take until she’s better?” Timothy asked.

“I don’t know.” There was no guarantee of “better” for Isabella. Her small body might have endured all it could take, in which case this would be the final blow. If she did recover, “better” for her would mean she’d still be so sick that she’d need this Pediatric Intensive Care Unit to keep her alive.

“Here’s what I can tell you for sure,” Sebastian said. “Those of us on staff are committed to doing everything we can to help her.” It made him furious that the best care and the best science couldn’t save them all.

“Can she remain on the transplant list?” Megan asked.

“I’m afraid that I’m going to have to remove her from the list. For now.”

Their faces fell. They knew that removing Isabella from the list meant removing her shot at survival.

“I’m sorry,” Sebastian said.

Weighted silence answered.

Isabella fidgeted.

Megan pressed a kiss to the baby’s forehead, then took hold of her daughter’s hand. “I’m worried she’s uncomfortable.”

“She’s comfortable,” Sebastian said. “We wouldn’t allow her to be otherwise.” Not many years ago, children like Isabella had simply been protected from pain with palliative care until they died, a few days after their birth, in their parents’ arms.

Treatments had come a long way in a short time, and now