Let It Be Me Read online

  “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 roadside ditch, and the impact had knocked him out. When he’d regained consciousness, a woman had been inside his car with him. The voice he’d just overheard belonged to her.

  His mind tugged him back in time to the morning of the crash.

  “Sir?” she’d said to him.

  Sebastian heard the feminine voice as if he were at the bottom of a hole. Chuck Berry’s “Downbound Train” played on his SUV’s radio.

  “Can you hear me?” she asked, sounding worried and faintly out of breath. “Are you all right?”

  Her voice was smooth and sweet like honey. He didn’t want the woman with the voice like honey to be worried. Also, he didn’t want to wake up because his head ached with dull, fierce pain.

  “Sir,” she said. “Can you hear me?”

  “Yes,” he said hoarsely.

  “He fell on his knees,” Chuck Berry sang, “on the bar room floor and prayed a prayer like never before.”

  Sebastian slit his eyes open. Pinpricks punctured his vision. He was inside his car, his seat belt cutting against his chest diagonally. What had happened?

  Wincing, he lifted his chin. Cracks scarred his windshield. Beyond the hood, he could see nothing but dirt and torn grass. A pair of sapling trees wedged against his driver’s side door.

  He’d been in a car crash.

  How long ago? Why?

  He didn’t know. He’d flown to the airstrip. He . . . He remembered getting into his car and pulling out onto the road in the fog. That’s all.

  He’d lost time.

  Experimentally, he moved his fingers and toes. Everything was working fine except for the splitting pain in his head.

  The one with the beautiful voice clicked off the radio. “Downbound Train” disappeared, leaving only a faint ringing in his ears.

  “I’m relieved that you came to,” she said.

  The tone of her words softened the agony inside his skull.

  Slowly, he turned his chin in her direction. He’d lost his tolerance for light and the pinpricks wouldn’t go away. He squeezed his eyes shut against the disorienting sensation, then opened them and concentrated hard so that he could focus on her.

  She . . . had the face of an angel.

  An unforgettable face. A heartbreaking face, both hopeful and world-weary. He guessed her to be a year or two younger than he was, but she didn’t look sheltered or naïve.

  Long eyelashes framed almond-shaped gray-blue eyes as deep as they were soft. A defined groove marked the center of her upper lip. Blond hair, parted on the side. Neither curly nor straight, it had a natural, faintly messy look to it. She’d cut it so that it ended halfway between her small, determined chin and her shoulders.

  Had he died? Was she an angel? She was there, which made him think he’d died. But his head hurt, which made him think he hadn’t.

  “Are you injured?” she asked.

  “I’m fine. Except for my head.”

  Concern flickered in her expression. At least, he thought it did. He struggled to see her more clearly, furious that he couldn’t look at her with his usual powers of observation.

  She knelt on the passenger seat, the door behind her gaping open. “I’ve already called 9-1-1. Hopefully they’ll be here soon.”

  “I hope not.”

  “Hmm?”

  “I don’t want them to take me away from you.”

  Her brows lifted. “I . . .” She gestured. “I was behind you on the road. I came around the bend just in time to see your car go off the edge. I pulled over and dialed 9-1-1.”

  “How long was I out?”

  “Just a few minutes. Is there anything I can do for you?”

  He extended his right hand to her. “Hold my hand?”

  “Of course.” She wrapped both of her hands around his. The heat of her touch had the same effect on him as her voice and appearance.

  He suspected he’d cracked his head on his side window, which had knocked him out and likely given him a severe concussion.

  “Would it help if I unfastened your seat belt?” she asked.

  “Yeah.” He was capable of freeing it using his left hand. But if she was offering to do it for him, he wasn’t about
to say no.

  She let go of his hand to accomplish the task, and he cursed himself for making a tactical error. But then she braced one hand against the center console and reached across him, bringing her hair within a few inches of his nose. He drew air in and registered the scent of lavender.

  Dark satisfaction curved his lips. He hadn’t made a tactical error. His brainpower remained intact, and he was going to be just fine. The constriction of his seat belt released.

  She arched back and resumed her earlier position.

  He extended his hand.

  She took it. “Better?”

  “Much.”

  The sound of sirens reached him. In response, resistance sharpened inside him. He didn’t want to be parted from her.

  Twice before in his life, he hadn’t wanted to be parted from people. When he was eight. When he was thirteen. Both times, his desires hadn’t mattered.

  “Is there anything else I can do for you?” she asked. “I’d be happy to call someone.”

  “No. I’m not the type . . . to alarm people . . . before I have solid facts.” He paused for a moment to gather his strength. The pinpricks still wouldn’t go away.

  The sirens drew nearer. Louder.

  He rested the back of his skull against his headrest but kept his face turned fully to the right, his concentration trained on her. “After I speak with the doctors . . . I’ll make calls. To tell people what’s happened.”

  “Okay.”

  The sirens grew so loud that they made conversation impossible.

  She craned her neck to look toward the road.

  Idiot sirens. Violently, he wished he could take back her 9-1-1 call.

  He had to remember that he was a stranger to her. He couldn’t expect her to feel about him the way he felt about her. She hadn’t been in a crash. Her head was clear.

  The noise of the ambulance cut away. Its lights continued to revolve, sending rays of red and blue against her face. She gave him a small, encouraging smile. “They’ll be here in just a second.”

  He gripped her hand more tightly, holding her with him. He memorized the curves and lines of her forehead, cheeks, hair, neck, arms.

  Men’s voices neared.

  She moved to exit his car.

  He didn’t release her hand. “Don’t go,” he said.

  She leveled a bemused look on him. “I need to get out of their way. It’s all right. They’re going to take great care of you.” Gently, she slipped her hand from his and scooted away.

  All he could think was, No. Don’t go. But he’d already said that, and it hadn’t worked. He couldn’t force her to remain with him.

  “You’re going to be just fine,” she said.

  He was not going to be just fine without her.

  Two men in EMT uniforms filled the passenger-side doorway. They were leaning in, talking to him.

  Sebastian had twisted, trying to keep sight of her, but in an instant, the fog had stolen her from view.

  The book and movie character Jason Bourne had been hit on the head, woken up with amnesia, realized he was extremely talented at killing people, and gone on a series of high-adrenaline adventures.

  Sebastian had been hit on the head, experienced short-term amnesia, and been so out of it when he’d come to that it hadn’t occurred to him to ask for the woman’s name.

  He’d gotten only one thing right on the morning of his accident. He’d correctly understood that he was not going to be fine without her.

  Instead of high-adrenaline adventures, his world had been muted and dull since his concussion. It was like he’d been walking through time in a space suit that kept out joy.Which he didn’t understand, because he’d finally achieved the goal he’d been chasing for years. He’d become a pediatric heart surgeon, and his job was supposed to have righted the wrong that had happened to him when he was a kid. It was supposed to have brought him security, fulfillment, happiness.

  To be fair, his job did bring him some of that. But not enough to free him from the space suit. Which made him mad.

  Also, Jason Bourne sucked.

  Sebastian jerked off his sunglasses and pushed them into the chest pocket of his lightweight gray-and-white-checked button-down. He wore the shirt untucked over jeans, the sleeves rolled up.

  He saw all ages and shapes of people. But not her.

  For weeks after his encounter with her, he’d racked his brain, trying to think how he could learn her identity. He’d never seen her car. She’d been wearing nothing distinctive that would have allowed him to track her down. She’d left no trace behind.

  He’d contacted Misty River’s 9-1-1 dispatcher and the EMTs to ask who she was. Neither had been willing to share her name. Privacy, they’d said. He’d hunted the social media feeds of his Misty River friends for a photo that included her. No success. He’d looked through old high school yearbooks, trying to find her picture in one of Misty River High’s graduating classes. No success.

  After a month of making himself crazy with frustration, he’d forced himself to quit searching. He’d told himself she could not be as appealing in real life as he’d made her in his imagination.

  Unfortunately, his brain hadn’t listened. His body might have stopped the search, but he’d continued to brood over her for the past six months.

  To his left, he registered movement at one of the stalls. He glanced toward it in time to see a blond head rise from behind buckets of flowers on risers. The woman extended a hand and poured change into a customer’s palm.

  He could only see her profile, but that was enough.

  It was the woman from the day of the crash.

  His breath left him.

  Finally. Amazingly, there she was.

  His awareness centered on her, he moved forward. She turned to chat with the two acne-prone teenagers helping her sell flowers. A piece of butcher paper reading Support the Misty River High Math Club! hung in front of their folding table.

  He’d been wrong when he’d decided she could not be as appealing in real life as he’d made her in his imagination. She was ridiculously appealing. More so than he’d remembered.

  She had on a bright pink short-sleeved sweater. The rounded collar of the snowy white shirt underneath folded over the neckline. Her jeans were beige. No wedding ring. Very little makeup. Hardly any jewelry at all, just tiny earrings and a classic metal watch.

  He stopped at her booth. She looked in his direction, and their eyes met.

  Finally. Her.

  “I don’t know if you remember me,” he said. “I was in a car accident last November. You were behind me on the road, and when you saw what happened, you came to help.”

  Realization lit her expression. “That’s right.” She smiled and crossed to him. “I’m pleased to see you again. I’ve thought about you often and wondered how you were.”

  “I’ve thought about you often, too.”

  “Did you sustain any injuries in the crash?”

  “A concussion.”

  “And how are you now?”

  “Fully recovered.” He couldn’t believe he’d found her, was talking to her.

  “Excellent. You look impressively healthy.”

  “I am.”

  “And exceedingly handsome.”

  “You think I’m handsome?”

  She tilted her head a few millimeters. “Most females must find you handsome,” she said matter of factly, with zero flirtatiousness. “Do they not?”

  A grin tugged at his mouth.

  An elderly couple arrived, capturing her attention.

  Hers wasn’t the lean, hard beauty of a model. She had a more interesting, more subtle, more layered beauty. Her face projected many things at the same time: intelligence, kindness, confidence, and perceptiveness.

  She stood at a height of maybe five foot six. Delicate, but not skinny.

  Those eyes of hers made him want to protect her, which was ridiculous. She was clearly volunteering her time, just like he was. She didn’t need his protection
or the rush of emotions she was making made him feel. After existing in a gray haze for months, everything was suddenly sharper than it should be—his determination not to let her go again, sounds, the color of her sweater.

  What was it about her that drew him? Her calm? The strength he sensed in her? He wasn’t sure, but there was definitely something powerful about her presence. He’d never reacted to a woman this way before.

  “I’ve been waiting for the chance to thank you,” he told her once the elderly couple moved away. “For stopping that day.”

  “You’re welcome. Glad to have been of assistance.”

  He grabbed the nearest bouquet from its bucket and passed it to her. “I’ll take this one, please.” At the least, he needed enough time with her to learn who she was. At the most, to convince her to go out with him.

  “Outstanding choice.” She considered the dripping arrangement. “Hmm. Two metaphors, right here.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, flowers are already a metaphor for life in and of themselves. But your bouquet is also gently spherical on top. It starts here, at birth, so to speak.” She coasted her pointer finger from the lower edge of one side toward the center rise of the flowers. “Then expands to the fullest days of life. Then ends very much where it began on the other side, with death.” Her finger continued its arc to the bottom edge on the opposite side. Her hands were pale and graceful, her short nails unpainted.

  He was about as interested in metaphors as he was in farmers markets. But she could talk to him about metaphors for days, and he’d drink every word.

  She turned toward the table to wrap the flowers in wax paper.

  He could be too straightforward, he knew. He’d had to work on that when interacting with the parents of his patients. If he told her “I need for you to go on a date with me,” she’d think he was crazy.

  Maybe he was crazy.

  She tied an orange bow around the bouquet—

  “Hey!” Ben’s familiar voice cut through Sebastian’s thoughts.

  “Hey.” He and Ben exchanged their usual side arm hug.

  He was always glad to see Ben. Only, Ben’s arrival at this particular moment wasn’t ideal.

  A smile moved across Ben’s mouth, his teeth gleaming white against his dark brown skin. “I saw you guys talking and came over to introduce you.”