by Whitley Cox
I have spent several months now trying to track down your biological mother’s family but have come up fruitless. The same goes for your biological father. You may have more luck with one of those ancestry websites.
But no matter what those websites say, never forget that no matter what, blood or no blood, you are my daughter, Tessa, in every way that counts. I love you. Your mother loves you, and we are both so proud to call ourselves your parents.
I love you, Kiddo.
~Dad
She read it four times over until the ink was blurry from her tears and her body shook with each wracking sob. Forest’s head was now in her lap, and he whimpered and pawed at her, trying to figure out what was wrong.
She was adopted.
Minutes ticked by, and the sound of rush-hour traffic whizzed past outside, but none of that mattered as she allowed the information in her father’s letter to slowly sink in. It was dated—because her father was nothing if not organized—and of course, he’d written it a week before his helicopter had gone down. He’d always been crazy intuitive. Maybe he knew in some weird way that he wasn’t going to get a chance to tell her in person. Who knows? Either way, all her fears about her mother’s disease living inside her screamed at her to be released.
Wiping away the last of her tears, she folded up the letter, tucked it back into its envelope and into her pocket. “Want to go for a drive, buddy?” she asked Forest, standing up from the couch with a shudder in her chest and a lightness in her heart. She knew it was too early, but she couldn’t deny the weird fluttery feeling inside her belly or the way it made her insides warm. Her hand once again fell to her stomach, and for the first time since that stick showed two lines, she glanced down at her hand over her stomach and she smiled.
24
Atlas paced back and forth in Liam’s office, his hands twitching and gesticulating as he ran through it all with his friend.
“I just don’t know if I can be with someone who prefers to live in the fucking dark,” he said, raking his hands through his hair and then aggressively scrubbing them down his face, pulling on his chin. “I mean, knowledge is power. Facts are power. The truth is power. And she refuses to learn the truth about herself.” He paused, spun on his heels and tossed his hands in the air. “Who the fuck does that?”
“People who are scared of the truth,” Liam offered plainly.
“Yeah, but she’s a fucking therapist. Scared of the truth or not, she should know better. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“First of all, therapists are some of the more messed-up people out there. The only reason they even go into psychology or become therapists is to figure their own shit out. Which usually doesn’t work. Same reason I would never represent myself in court. Secondly, can you look at this from her perspective for just a second? That here she’s been living her whole life wondering if she was going to turn out like her mom. Manic-depressive and with Alzheimer’s. I mean, that’s had to weigh heavily on her. I don’t know if I’d be ashamed to introduce people to my mother if she was like that, but I’d certainly be selective in who I introduced to her. People can be fucking judgy fuckers.”
“Tessa’s not ashamed,” Atlas stated.
“Fuckface Skidmark McGee said she was.”
“Fuckface Skidmark McGee is also a liar.”
Liam shrugged. “So what are you going to do? Could you still be with her if she decided to terminate because she has the Alzheimer’s gene?”
Atlas didn’t fucking have a clue. Sure, he’d gone and said all the right things because he loved the woman and the idea of having a child with her made him feel happier than he’d been in a long fucking time. But even though Carlyle was the skidmark of skidmarks, he had a bit of a point. If she did in fact carry the gene, she could pass that on to their child. And if she did carry it, the likelihood of her winding up a lot like her mother was high. They maybe had ten or fifteen years before she would start to show signs. Possibly sooner.
If the roles were reversed, he certainly wouldn’t want to saddle her with the responsibility of playing nursemaid to him as well as raising their children.
Fuck, he just didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know how he felt about any of it.
He loved her. Loved the way she was with his kids. Loved the idea of having another kid with her, but … fuck!
“I should just go to her studio, open the letter myself and find out once and for all if she has the gene,” he murmured.
“Yeah, because opening someone else’s mail isn’t a federal felony.” Liam rolled his eyes. “Sit down and have a drink.” Without even getting out of his seat, he spun in his chair. The sound of glasses clinking and liquid being poured competed with the pulse thudding in Atlas’s ears. Liam turned his seat back around and handed Atlas a short, stocky tumbler with bourbon in it. Liam drank scotch, but he kept bourbon in his office for when Atlas came by. “Now, you’re going to sit your ass down in that seat, shut the fuck up for a second, drink your goddamn drink and listen to me.”
Atlas glared at Liam. Liam’s smile grew.
“Sit.”
He did as he was told, tossing back half his drink as he did. The bourbon was top-shelf and slid down his throat like melted butter.
“Now, listen up,” Liam started. “You love her. She loves you. You’re far less moody and miserable since you got with her. Your kid is in a better place since you hooked up with her. Hell, we all like her. Even Richelle likes her, and Richelle hardly likes anybody that isn’t paying her money or sticking their dick into her.” He snorted. “Sometimes I’m not even sure she likes me, she just likes my dick.”
Atlas rolled his eyes.
“Fucking go to her, man. Sort this shit out and come to a solution together. You walked away from her today when you should have stayed. She’s confused. She’s scared. I know you’re all that shit too, but you’re not the one knocked up and with possible grits for brains.”
“When the fuck did you get so pro-love, all of a sudden?” Atlas grumbled.
“Since I saw what love has done for the people I love. I’m not saying that shit is for me, but it’s made you all a hell of a lot happier. But like I told Scott when he and Eva got together, if you and Tessa go sideways and she hires Richelle again, I can’t represent you. We have a pact to never be on opposite sides in the courtroom.”
Atlas rolled his eyes again. “You’re a dick.”
“No, I’m not. I’m your best friend, and I’m also right.”
He was. And he was.
Atlas narrowed his eyes. “Fuck you.”
Now he wanted to punch his friend in his big cocky smile. “No thanks. But I will take a rain check on a steak dinner as payment for my pro bono services today.”
He hadn’t told Tessa, but he’d made Liam waive his fees, and Richelle was only charging Tessa twenty percent of what she normally charged. Atlas, of course, was doing it for free. Though now he owed both Liam and Richelle some hefty favors that he knew they would both cash in down the road.
“I also want to suggest you extend your sabbatical until September,” Liam said, tipping up his scotch.
“What?” Atlas’s drink paused midair. “No.”
“Just listen to me. Take the summer with your family. Figure out your shit with Tessa. Take the kids camping. Go see your parents for a week. You have the money to do it, so do it. They’re only this little once. Before you know it, they’ll be teenagers and want nothing but money from you. We can all cover for you. We’ll give the associates your cases, and name partner isn’t going anywhere. It’ll be here when you get back.” He finished his drink. “It is yours, Atlas. You’ve earned it by working your ass off. Now it’s time to reward your ass with a little bit of a break. I’ve already talked it over with Rocky and Jerrika. They totally support it.”
“There you go again—”
“Having my friend’s back.”
“I was going to say making decisions for me … but yes.”
Liam grinned.
“I knew you’d see it my way. Now finish your drink and get the fuck out of here. I have work to do, and you have a woman to win back, or whatever.” He made a dismissing movement with his hand like Atlas was some school-age delinquent who had just been given demerits by the principal and was now being sent to detention hall.
Rolling his eyes again, Atlas finished his drink and turned to go.
“Oh, and, Atlas?” Liam called from his desk, already with a case file open in front of him.
Atlas grunted.
“Congratulations on the baby.”
“There’s your old bed, buddy. Did you miss it?” Tessa swung open the door to her studio, and Forest bolted for his dog bed in the corner. He sniffed and scratched at it, then proceeded to wander the perimeter of the room and sniff that too.
Her desk sat in one corner, and inside it lay the envelope. Her DNA. A map of her past, her present and most definitely her future.
Just because Lily wasn’t her biological mother didn’t mean Tessa couldn’t still carry the gene. Perhaps her birth parents carried the gene as well, and if her biological mother had lived longer, she would have succumbed to the same disease. But now that she knew Lily and Bruno Copeland had adopted her, she couldn’t stop there in finding out the truth of things. Not when she had a little peanut growing inside her. She deserved to find out the answers for the baby. For Atlas. And for herself.
With cautious but determined strides, she made it across the room to her desk, fished her keys out of her purse and opened the drawer.
Even in just the span of a week, the envelope had meandered its way to the bottom of the drawer, so she had to do a bit of digging, but eventually she found it, crumpled but still sealed. Still holding all the answers.
Standing up to her full height, she slid her finger beneath the seal and opened the envelope.
A throat cleared across the room before she could open up the folded papers making her jump. Normally she locked the door behind her if she wasn’t expecting clients, but she must have forgot to. Baby brain? With wild heart palpitations, she lifted her head only to find Atlas standing there with pain in his eyes and fear dragging down the lines of his face. He approached her slowly.
“She was diagnosed with invasive ductal carcinoma, a very aggressive form of breast cancer.”
Tessa’s eyes widened.
“She’d felt a lump in her breast shortly after Aria was born, but when she brought it to the doctor’s attention, he said it was a clogged duct and that it would eventually sort itself out. He said this to her three times over the course of six months. We sought a second opinion, but as you know, the medical system in this country is broken, and it took weeks to get in to see another doctor for an assessment. By the time we did get a second opinion, the cancer had spread. She underwent a double mastectomy, but even that wasn’t enough. It had spread to her lymph nodes. Her liver. Her pancreas. After a year of chemo and radiation that made her sicker than the cancer ever did, she finally decided enough was enough.” His words were coming out tighter and tighter, and his lips trembled as he fought to power through the emotions. She could tell he was clenching his teeth as muscles on either side of his jaw pulsed with each squeeze. He was standing only a foot or so away from her now, and she could see just how hard it was for him to talk about his late wife. But she also knew that he wouldn’t do it if he didn’t want to, and she needed to let him finish.
So she took his hand in hers and squeezed. He closed his eyes and shook his head before opening them again, showing an agony so deep that it even hurt her.
“She died a week after Aria turned two. On a cold, rainy October night in my arms. I was angry. So … angry. At the world, at the doctors, at myself, at Samantha. I hated so much, so hard.”
He hated so much and so hard because he’d loved so much and so hard. His heart had been ripped from his chest, and all he had left was pain. That rage was completely understandable, and she probably would have felt the exact same way.
Tessa hiccupped a sob, unable to stop the tears that spilled down her cheeks and along the crease of her nose. “I’m so sorry, Atlas.”
His own eyes had finally turned glassy and damp, and with his free hand, he wiped beneath them.
“Did you sue that doctor for malpractice?” she asked. “I mean, had he not dismissed the lump, maybe they would have caught it in time.”
“I sued him for everything I could. Had his license revoked. He left town, was forced to sell his practice because I dragged his reputation through the mud. I didn’t just go for his jugular, I went after every vein, every artery. I went after everything in his life.” His tone was so deadpan, so lacking inflection that it actually scared her a little bit, just how ruthless he could get. But then it also made her love him all the more that he was able to love that hard. Samantha had been his life, his first everything, his whole world, and one man’s negligence had cost Atlas his wife, Aria her mother and the Stark family their future. Tessa would have probably gone for the doctor’s everything too.
“What did you do with the money? Donate it?”
“Half of it went into a trust for Aria that she can’t touch until she’s twenty-one. The other half went into an education fund for her. I didn’t touch a dime of it. It wasn’t about the money, never was. I make more than enough. It was about the fact that he dismissed my wife’s concerns and she ultimately paid for it with her life. Aria paid for it—she lost her mother. I paid for it—I lost my wife. He needed to lose things too, know just a fraction of what it felt to lose something you cherished more than anything in the world.”
“Did he have a wife and kids?” She didn’t know why she was asking him that, but for some reason, she knew that his response would change the way she looked at him.
“No. I wouldn’t have gone after so much if he had. Trickle-down effect is not how I do things. He fucked up. He needed to pay. Not the innocents in his life. He was a rich, selfish bastard who should have fucking retired a long time ago. He was divorced, and he and his ex-wife never had any children. The only person that paid when I went after him was the doctor that killed my wife.”
She released the breath she’d been holding and went to him, wrapping her arms around his waist and absorbing just a fraction of his pain. “You’re a good man, Atlas Stark. An incredible man.”
He shrugged off her praise. “I don’t like to talk about my wife because it still hurts. But you deserve to know my truth. You deserve to know what’s in my heart, my aches, pains and scars and why I am the way I am. Why I believe that knowledge is power. Had we known sooner that Samantha had breast cancer, had they caught it earlier, she might have survived.”
“Thank you,” she whispered, knowing that he deserved just as much from her, and yet she’d been dishonest with him—she’d been dishonest with herself.
“I know this is your choice, but I can’t live my life in the dark. Are you here to finally find out the truth?” he asked, his voice husky and strained.
She nodded and blinked away the remaining tears in her eyes. “In a way, yes. Though I found another envelope at home that revealed even more than this envelope will.” She reached into the back pocket of her jeans, pulled out the letter from her father and handed it to him.
With a slight shake to his limbs and a stutter to his breathing for a moment, Atlas broke their embrace, took the letter from her and opened it.
She waited for him to read it before she spoke again.
When he got to the part about her being adopted, his eyes flew up off the page to her. “She’s not your birth mother.”
Tessa shook her head. “She’s not. So her genes aren’t my genes.”
“Holy shit. So then you don’t even have to open this.” He flicked the other letter in her hand.
“But I want to,” she replied. “I want to know the truth. When I found that letter from my dad and read it, I realized then and there how foolish I’ve been all these years living in ignorance. I don’t want to live in the dark anymore e
ither. Knowledge is power. The truth is power. And if I have the ability to know the truth, then why not find out?”
“Do you want me to leave so you can open it in private?” he asked, handing her back the letter from her father.
She shook her head. She never wanted him to leave again.
“I shouldn’t have left you in the first place,” he said, moving back into her, his touch sending tingles down her arms and warmth into her belly. “I’m sorry for the things I said. I will support you in whatever decision you make, and whether you keep the baby or not, have the Alzheimer’s gene or not, I want to be with you. You’re not my do-over, you’re my fresh start. And even if I only get ten or fifteen years with you, we’ll make sure that they are the best ten or fifteen years possible.”
Fresh, hot tears burned the backs and corners of her eyes as she fought back a sob. “I want this baby, Atlas. I want this baby so bad. I also want to know the truth about myself, but I’m scared. What if my birth parents were even more messed up than my adoptive parents?”
He took the folded papers from her and opened them. “Only one way to find out.”
“Well, that was quite the read,” Atlas said after they made their way through the four pieces of paper that outlined Tessa’s genetic makeup. “I will say, I am awfully glad to know that the likelihood of us being related in any way is pretty nil.”
Half-laughing, half-crying, she swatted him on the chest with the back of her hand. He’d taken a seat on one of the beanbag chairs over in her therapy corner and pulled her into his lap. He needed her close, to feel her breath against his cheek, her pulse beneath his fingertips.
She nodded. “And no predisposition to Alzheimer’s, diabetes or any of the really scary cancers that hit women.”
“I’d say you kind of hit the jackpot when it comes to genes.”
Her sigh came out as more of a shudder, and she nestled into his chest, still holding the papers in her hand. “Yeah, I mean as much as this test can tell us, I guess I did.”
