Let It Be Me (A Misty River Romance #2) - Becky Wade Page 0,3
questions about her birth and herself as a baby. “The placenta had pulled away from your uterus,” Leah said.
“Right, which is dangerous. They worried that you might not be getting enough oxygen, so they put me under and performed an emergency C-section. I have the scar to prove it!”
“I’ve seen the scar.”
“Of course you have.”
“I’m trying to reconcile all of that with the only logical explanation for my DNA results, which is that you adopted me.”
“You can’t always trust logic.”
“On the contrary, the wonderful thing about logic is that you can always trust it. So I began to wonder . . . What if your baby didn’t survive the placental abruption? And, in your grief, you adopted me?”
“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