Page 3 of Chasing Abby (Shattered Hearts 6)

“Will we?”

“Don’t say that.”

He takes a step forward, his bulky frame towering over me as my back is pressed into the counter. “I don’t want to lose either of you,” he says gruffly as he lifts my chin. “But it looks like that’s exactly what’s happening. And you’re the only one with the power to stop it. It’s not too late to make the right decision, Lynette.”

He lets go of my chin and leans over. I close my eyes as I anticipate his lips on mine, but the kiss never comes. When I open my eyes, he’s gone.

If I give in to Brian, Abby will find out her birth parents are young, rich, and famous: a rock star and an author. How can a middle-class electrical contractor and stay-at-home mom ever hope to compete with that? I know we’re not competing for Abby’s love, but that’s exactly what it will feel like once Abby finds out their identities. Every time she speaks of them excitedly, I’ll wonder if she speaks about us like that to Chris and Claire. And she will speak of them that way.

They’re practically perfect. They donate millions to charity; they’re in their mid-thirties and still look like they’re in their twenties; and they’re still madly in love. You can see it in every photo of them ever taken. And the worst part: They live twenty minutes away. She’ll be able to see them whenever she wants.

I push off the counter and head upstairs. As I reach the second floor, I hear a sound coming from Abby’s bedroom. I tiptoe toward her room then I close my eyes as I listen. She’s playing her guitar and my eyes instantly well up with tears when I realize she’s singing “Blackbird” by The Beatles, a song about learning to fly with broken wings.

It’s the first time I’ve heard her voice in four days. I want to go in there and hold her and tell her everything will be okay. But if I can’t tell her everything, then that will just be a lie. I can’t tell her the reason she feels like a caged songbird. I can’t let her fly away.

CHAPTER FIVE

I LAY MY GUITAR on top of my bed and grab my laptop off the nightstand. I sit cross-legged as I set the computer on the bed in front of me. Flipping open the screen, I type in my password then open my browser to my bookmarks. I stare at the name of the website for a moment before I click on it: birthrecords.com.

I know my dad’s credit-card number. I have it saved in a text file because my dad was tired of giving it to me every time I wanted to download a new movie. But my parents will definitely notice a charge on their account made to birthrecords.com. Then I’ll lose my credit-card privileges and they’ll probably move us to a remote island in the South Pacific with no Internet access. Well, my dad will probably protest for a couple of days before he gives into my mom, as always.

I open up my “Saved Orders” page and stare at the “Submit” button. Just a few more clicks and I can have the name of the agency that handled my adoption. That doesn’t mean they’ll give me the names of my birth parents, or that the agency still exists. All it means is that I’ll have one more piece of the puzzle. One tiny piece of a puzzle that’s missing half its pieces. It may seem insignificant and pointless, but it means the world to me.

Why can’t my mother see that?

If I knew what hospital I was born in, or what time I was born, I could go to the county courthouse and search the birth records myself. But my parents have already admitted to lying about this information when I asked them about it years ago in casual conversation.

“Mommy, where was I born?”

“In a hospital, of course.”

“What hospital?”

Mom and Dad exchanged shifty looks as they used their ESP to come up with a lie. Always covering their tracks. God forbid I should want to know anything about my true identity.

I wonder if I look more like my biological mom or dad. I wonder if they play music like me. I wonder if they live here in North Carolina or somewhere cool like New York or Hollywood. I wonder if they broke up or if they had more kids after they gave me up. Maybe I was the only one they didn’t want.

Most of all, I just wonder if they ever think of me.

I open up a new tab on my browser and begin a new search: abigail jensen adoption decree. I hit go and, of course, nothing related to me or my parents comes up. But that hasn’t stopped me from repeating this same search string a billion times over the past three days. Since he gave me the idea.

I open my email next to check for new messages and I’m relieved to find I have two. I already feel like a ghost in this house. I don’t think I could handle being invisible to my friends.

I check Amy’s message first.

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: Lameness

Vanessa’s party isn’t gonna be a sleepover anymore. Her parents flipped out when they heard boys were coming. Her parents are the worst.

I chuckle at the last sentence in my best friend’s email. She doesn’t know what I found out a few days ago. If she knew, she would have to agree that my parents are the worst. At least, my mom is.

I type a reply to Amy telling her I’m not sure I’ll be able to go to the party anyway. My parents only let me go back to school today because they think it will get me talking to them again. They’re afraid of me being around a lot of germs while my body is adjusting to the new meds. I hit send then my finger trembles as I click on the next email in the queue.

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: homework

did you take down the page numbers for warner?

I smile at the obvious ploy to start up a conversation. Caleb Everett is the last guy I would expect to email me. He’s been sitting next to me in Mr. Warner’s algebra class for four months and he hasn’t spoken to me all year. Though, I have caught him sneaking glances at me once in a while. I just figured that was the way he was with all girls.

I’ve never actually had a boyfriend. Not that this is terribly uncommon for girls my age. But I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t imagined w

alking the halls hand-in-hand with Caleb ever since we ran into each other in the hospital four days ago.

I was getting ready to leave my hospital room, but I was still waiting for my parents to bring my street clothes. They were settling the financial stuff down the hall from my room and I was getting pretty impatient. Grabbing the back of my hospital gown to hold it closed, I slid out of bed and tiptoed to the doorway to peer down the corridor. That’s when I saw him.

Caleb was running his hand over his messy light-brown hair, his gaze pointed at the floor in front of him. He looked worried and this intrigued me enough that I actually forgot where I was for a moment. When he looked up and straight at me, I didn’t look away fast enough. His green eyes locked on mine, then that frown on his face turned into a warm half smile that could literally give me a heart attack if I weren’t on my new meds.

“You’re in Warner’s class with me,” he stated. It wasn’t a question. There was no way I could mistake sitting next to him for an hour a day for the past four months.

I nodded, tightening my grip on the back of my hospital gown and hoping he didn’t look down at my feet. My mom didn’t bother painting my toenails while I was in a coma. It didn’t seem important at the time.

He stopped just a couple of feet away, close enough for me to smell the warm, fresh scent of his black T-shirt, which bore the logo of a band I’d never heard of. God, why was he smiling at me like that?

“I heard you were in the hospital.”

“You did?” I replied, my voice a bit shrill as I wondered what exactly he heard and who he heard it from. He probably thought I was totally lame and sickly.