MADDY
The last letter fluttered out of my hand and landed in the pile of the rest of them. A thousand emotions toiled inside me. There were so many thoughts and feelings swirling inside me that I couldn’t even keep track of them as they crashed through my mind and heart. Anger and sadness were the two that seemed to be fighting for top billing.
So many more questions. It was like every time I thought I was going to get some answers, more questions sprang out of the darkness. Until a few months ago, I’d always thought my life was basic and boring. Now it seemed like all I could do was wait for the next mystery. This wasn’t fucking fun. I wished I could go back to having a dull life.
Eleven years. I couldn’t even comprehend it. Over a decade of letters, and every single letter tucked away safe and sound. It looked like Mom and Dad had planned on giving them to me at one point. When? I’d probably never know. The fact that they’d kept them safe took some of the sting away. If I’d found out they’d thrown them away, I wasn’t sure how I’d ever forgive them. The woman who wrote these letters deserved to have them read. So much love and heartache had been put into thethousands and thousands of words she’d written. At least now they could be read. Maybe I’d read them all on the drive back home.
I picked the last letter back up and reread it, going over the same section several times. She told me to practice restraint, that bad people would find me, I was stronger than other females, and that she’d do her best to protect me. What had she meant by that? If she’d been trying to protect me for all the years since this last letter had been written, she’d done a good job staying hidden. What the hell did she mean?
“Maddy!” Nico’s voice came echoing down the hallway, and I jumped, surprised that he was gone. I’d never noticed him leave.
“Yeah?” I called back.
Nico hurried down the hall, holding something. It looked like a bunch of slips of paper. He nodded toward the letter in my hand. “What was the signature on that letter?” He looked spooked.
“Uh.” I glanced down. “It’s not a name really, just initials. M and S.”
“Holy shit,” he hissed.
“What? You’re freaking me out, Nico.”
He handed me the stack of papers. Some were yellowed with age and had curled edges. I took them and frowned. “What are these? Where were they?”
Nico ran a hand through his hair. “I was giving you a minute alone. I thought you might want to go through the letters. I came back to your parents' room to do more searching. I found these in a plastic container under their bathroom sink. Look at it. The signature on those.”
Glancing down, I saw what he was talking about. The papers were all old prescription receipts. Each one had a photocopy of the original prescription with it. At the bottom of each was asimple scrawled signature. MS. My jaw dropped. I could feel my heart beginning to race.
“Do you have any memory of who your pediatrician was when you were a kid? What did she look like?” Nico asked.
It had been years and years since I’d seen my pediatrician. My memory was fuzzy, but it definitelyhadbeen a woman. The problem was, even with all the time that had passed, I knew one thing for certain. I shook my head. “I know what you’re thinking, but that doctor looked nothing, absolutely nothing, like the pictures in the yearbook.”
Nico nodded and rubbed at the stubble on his cheeks. “What if she had plastic surgery to make her unrecognizable? If she was on the run from the royals, then maybe that was one more step she and Kenneth decided on to keep her safe. It makes sense.”
I looked at the last letter again. Another sentence jumped out at me.Watching you grow all these years has been one of the few joys I’ve had in life.Watching me grow? The words hit me like a fist. Had my childhood doctor been my birth mother? I’d seen her at least once a year, usually three or four times a year. All those visits and I’d never known.
Nico and I went straight back to work, tearing through the office again. We moved from there to the garage, then the bedroom, grabbing every box or envelope we could find and digging through them. We searched for anything that might have the doctor’s full name on it. School absence notes, vaccination records, anything that could give us a hint as to who she was.
Hours later, we’d still found nothing. All that was left was a small shoebox in the closet. I pulled it down, certain we’d run into another dead end. At first glance, it looked like the box was full of my parent’s medical records. There were several cholesterol tests for Dad. OB/GYN paperwork for Mom. At the bottom, beneath all that, we hit pay dirt.
Nico swore. There were several records from doctor’s visits when I was very little. From the dates on them, I’d been three years old. They were blood tests that showed my red blood cell count matched those typically found in shifters. I ignored all that—I already knew I was a shifter. What I wanted was what was at the bottom. Beside a messy scribble of a signature was the printed name of the person who those pen marks belonged to. Malia Stanford. That was most definitely not the name Gabriella Karson had gone by in high school. Could this woman be the person who gave birth to me?
Nico had his phone out and was already dialing before I’d completely come to grips with what we’d found. I knew he must have been calling Luis, and it didn’t take long for him to answer.
“Luis? It’s Nico. We found something… Yeah, at Maddy’s parents’ place… Better than that. I need you to search for a doctor. A pediatrician named Malia Stanford.”
Nico spelled the name for Luis and gave him the address of the office out of which she’d practiced. The whole time they talked, I tried to conjure her face from my memories. I’d been so little that it was hard to pull up any specific moments I’d shared with her. I did remember that she’d been really nice. I wasn’t sure if it was my own mind shading the memories or not, but I kind of thought I remembered her always having a huge smile on her face when I came in. Maybe shewasmy birth mother, or maybe she’d just been a really nice woman who liked children.
“I’m gonna put you on speaker,” Nico said, then set the phone down on the table.
“Hey, Maddy,” Luis said.
“Hi.” It was all I could manage at the moment.
“I told Nico I’m going to do a quick search. With this being a doctor, they’ll be much easier to find than most people. They have to be licensed and carry all kinds of additional liabilityand malpractice insurance. I should have something in a few minutes.”
“Cool,” I muttered. Nico moved closer to me and put an arm around my shoulders.
There were several moments of silence. All Nico or I could hear was Luis typing on his laptop. When he finally spoke again, he sounded pleased with himself. “Holy shit. I think I’ve found an address. It’s the one from her employment paperwork. It’s an insurance renewal form from about the same time Maddy turned eleven. It shows it as this Malia chick’s home address. No way of knowing if it’s where she still lives, but it’s the best lead we’ve got so far.”
