Read Online Reality Matrix Effect (9781310151330) by Laura Remson Mitchell - Free Book Online

better. Except for one small item. They
had neglected to tell her who she really was.
    “Why does it matter so much?” Bill Kingman
had asked. “Whether you were adopted or born to us, you’re still
our daughter, and we’re still your parents.”
    “Maybe it wouldn’t matter, Dad, if you’d told
me the truth years ago.”
    After that, the talk grew increasingly
acrimonious. Rayna’s emotions wavered from anger over what she
perceived as a breach of trust to fear over losing the love she
still felt for the couple she’d always known as Mom and Dad—from a
sense of betrayal to a sense of loss. Her pain had the sharp edge
of a fine knife, but along with the pain, there was a swirling fog
of other feelings that confused and frightened her.
    Now, riding through the city on a hoverbus
tour, she found herself replaying parts of that painful
conversation in her mind. The tour was a diversion she’d used
before when she wanted to think. The movement of the vehicle was
somehow soothing, and the guide’s patter gave others on the bus
something to think about, thereby reducing chances that a
well-meaning stranger might try to intrude on her mental
solitude.
    “We couldn’t tell you,” her mother had said,
her tone almost begging for understanding. “We couldn’t tell
anyone. It was part of the deal. If we told anyone, the adoption
agreement would have been cancelled. And we didn’t want to lose
you!”
    “I came of age a long time ago,” Rayna
reminded them. “Why didn’t you tell me then?”
    Bill Kingman looked away, then at his wife,
then back at Rayna. “By that time,” he said softly, “you were so
much a part of our lives that we never thought about the adoption
anymore.”
    Kingman had been assigned to his firm’s
British division in 1985 and 1986. It wasn’t too difficult for the
couple to return to Los Angeles with a new baby that would be
accepted as their biological offspring.
     “ Not even your grandparents knew
the truth,” Ann whispered, her eyes moist.
    “Oh?  How did you manage that?” Rayna
demanded. “Grandma G must’ve been in a positive uproar. How could a
Gianelli girl give birth without letting her own mother be present
for the blessed event?  I can hear her now:  ‘Thank the
Lord your father isn’t alive to see this day.’” 
    Ann Kingman cringed at Rayna’s mocking
words.
    “And Baba and Grandpa, what about them? 
All of a sudden, you show up with a baby. No letters or phone calls
beforehand to prepare them, either, I’ll bet. Just a fait
accompli in swaddling clothes.”  Rayna was glaring at her
father by then. “You’ve always told me it took Baba and Grandpa a
long time to get over the shock that it was you and not Aunt Vickie
who married a gentile. After all, you were the bar mitzvah boy—the one who seemed so concerned about keeping the faith. And
you were always so dependable. Aunt Vickie was the wild one,
the free spirit. From her, they might have expected the unexpected.
Right?  But not from you. Or was all that a lie, too?”
    Bill Kingman’s eyes narrowed. “Stop it,
Rayna,” he demanded in a low voice. “I don’t like your tone one
little bit. I know all this has been a shock, but—”
    “A shock?  You can’t begin to
understand—”     The round-faced man with the
aquiline nose and the bald pate cleared his throat loudly and tried
to explain.
    “Please understand. We had to do things the
way we did. Your grandparents were pretty angry with us, too, but
somehow, we managed to smooth things over with them, and there was
this kind of unspoken agreement not to bring the subject up again.
They just accepted you as our natural child.”
    With long, delicate fingers, Ann Kingman
reached out to touch Rayna’s cheek. “We never meant to deceive you,
honey,” she murmured. “We loved you so much.”
    Once, when Rayna was about 5, her parents had
considered telling her the truth. She’d been with them so long, the
Kingmans had reasoned, that