Read Online The Secret Daughter by Kelly Rimmer - Free Book Online Page A

– things happened very fast. I heard that a girl had been born and there were no families ready to place her with. Then I went and saw you and I suggested to Dad that we take you.’
    ‘But once we saw you, we knew that this was just meant to be,’ Dad added. ‘So we made it work.’
    ‘So . . . you weren’t —’ I stopped and frowned, trying to understand. ‘Are you telling me that you weren’t even going to adopt until I came along?’
    Mum and Dad stared at each other. I could see that they were communicating with their gazes, but it was like the meaning was encrypted somehow – I had no idea how to interpret their expressions.
    ‘We would have, eventually,’ Dad said slowly. ‘We were still coming to terms with our infertility. You brought healing to us. You were ours from the first moment you entered our lives, and we never, ever looked back.’
    There was something almost romantic about it. I could easily picture my parents in their youth, feeling the ache of loss at the family they would be unable to have. And then, just like that, I was there, alone too, and as soon as they saw me they realised I could be theirs . I felt a warm glow start to grow inside me after the confusion and ache of the previous days. Just as I let the beginnings of a smile creep toward my face, Dad glanced my way and I saw the shutters come down in his gaze. ‘Okay, Sabina? That’s pretty much the whole story. I hope that helps.’
    And there it was, the finality again, and in spite of the more complete picture they’d just given me, I still had a million questions that he was trying to prevent me from even asking. My father still thought he could just cut this chat off with a shrug and wave of a hand. I’d seen him do this a million times when he and Mum were disagreeing about something. When I was very young, I’d thought of it as his way of preventing me from seeing or overhearing their arguments – I’d somehow assumed that the discussions had continued at a later time, when I wasn’t around to witness the tension.
    But Dad had no intention of continuing this chat with me later. This was not a break in the conversation to cool our heads or to give me time to process what they’d told me; it was an attempt at an enforced end to the discussion. I thought about Ted’s comments about my parents being controlling. It was as if the rose coloured lenses he’d accused me of wearing shattered in an instant.
    ‘You are not getting off that easily. Those breadcrumbs give me an idea of the first part of the story. But what about from then? What right did you have to hide this from me?’
    ‘We honestly believed that it was best that we never told you. Wouldn’t you rather have never had to feel like you’re feeling right now? All of this confusion and turmoil?’ Dad said. I heard the rising frustration in his voice, and I could see it in his posture. He always sat up straight and tall, but in that moment, there was a visible tension in the way he held his hands against his thighs and in the set of his jaw.
    The simplicity of his view was astounding.
    ‘But Dad . . . I don’t know who I am now ! ’
    ‘You’re the same person you were before we told you.’
    ‘But my heritage—’
    ‘Your heritage is us .’ Mum’s voice broke, and her eyes were filled with tears. ‘Sabina, you are my daughter.’
    I loved my mother, with the passionate zeal that comes from having fought a long-term battle of wills and walking out the other side feeling that we understood one another. Things had been simpler with Dad; in spite of his flaws, he had always been a hero to me. But Mum and I had worked out our relationship by grinding one another down, often in all-out brawls as she forced me to attend speech therapy or do my school work. We had worked damned hard for the close bond we shared.
    I knew that I had every right to insist that they tell me more about my own past, and I had no intention of backing down – but it was utterly