Read Online A Second Chance by Bernadette Marie - Free Book Online

giving it some thought. “When I was about twenty, one of
my friends from college got married. They set free white
doves.”
    “ Doves? What ever happened
to rice?”
    “ So you’re more
old-fashioned? Shoe polish on car windows and tin cans strung to
the back of the car?”
    “ Oh, yeah.” He laughed.
“When I was little, though, I do remember going to a wedding with
my parents in Puerto Rico.” He focused on the road as Kathy gave
his hand a squeeze. It wasn’t often that he thought of his birth
parents or their family home in Puerto Rico.
    They’d brought him to the States when
he was nearly six. They’d become part of the community they lived
in quickly, thanks to the church they’d belonged to. That was where
he met the Keller family for the first time. Regan was his age. The
Kellers had adopted her and Arianna, her older sister, after having
been their foster parents for years. He could still see Regan with
ponytails in a white dress for church the first time he’d ever laid
eyes on her. Mrs. Keller had a little boy in her arms, and he was
sleeping. It was so vivid in his mind.
    Emily Keller owned a small bakery with
her parents. She’d given his mother work there. Alan Keller had
helped to employ his father as a handyman. On that snowy December
night, when his parents were killed, it was Emily Keller they
called to the hospital to sit with him. By then, he was seven. The
Kellers immediately took him in. Like Regan and Arianna, he never
left.
    The Kellers had only one child that
they’d given birth to, and that was Curtis. But he was not favored
or loved more than the three children that God had given them
through other means.
    Carlos gave Kathy’s hand a squeeze
back. He hadn’t had to explain what he was thinking, she
knew.
    “ What do you remember about
that wedding?” she asked softly.
    “ I remember a plate of
money. The priest would bless it and give it to the husband to give
to the wife. Or something like that. And there was a doll.” He
shook his head. “I don’t really remember why they had a doll
dressed like the bride. First of all, it was a girl thing. Second,
it was a little freaky.” He laughed. “But it had charms on it, and
they gave me one.”
    “ Tradition?”
    “ I guess so. I was probably
five, so I don’t really remember it very well.”
    “ Are most of your memories
of you living with your mom and dad? I mean the
Kellers?”
    “ Yeah. I had a grandmother
in Puerto Rico, but I only remember her being old. She was too old
to take care of me. So, when my parents died there wasn’t the
option of her taking me. She’d write to me, and my mom—Emily—would
read them to me. But my grandmother died by the time I was
nine.”
    She scooted closer to him so she could
rest her head on his shoulder. “I love your parents. I’m very lucky
to have them for future in-laws.”
    “ I couldn’t have gotten any
luckier under the circumstances.”
    “ What about Regan and
Arianna. What about their birth parents?”
    He gave a shrug of his other shoulder.
“A young couple is all I know. The state took them away from them
when Arianna was two and Regan was only a few months old. So Mom is
really the only mom Regan has ever known, and Arianna doesn’t
remember her birth parents at all.”
    “ Do you think Zach and Regan
will have more kids?”
    “ Oh, yeah. At least one
more. Regan knows the joy of having siblings.” He shook his head
with a laugh. “Okay, maybe not the joys, but we’re a team. When one
of us needs anything, the other ones are there. We all support
Arianna’s acting dreams. We all helped get Curtis though med
school. When Regan lived in Hawaii with that guy ”—he couldn’t even say his
name—”we supported her. And when she came back and needed support
physically, mentally, and financially, we were there for
her.”
    “ So she would want Tyler to
have that.”
    “ I think so. And Zach sees
the importance in it, having been an only child. He was shipped