“But it’s vague and fuzzy.Impressions more than anything.”
“Maxie and Lexie must have forgotten her, though.”
She went still.“How do you know that?”
It was an obvious deduction.They’d both moved on to new lives with new families.At that young of an age, how could they have remembered where they’d started?
“That’s what you have,” he whispered.She’d had two years with her mother, and nobody had really stepped in to replace her.The memory had taken.He knew how that worked.He’d been separated from his mom when he’d been nine.He had more memories than Roxie did.
He frowned.Not all of them were bad.
“What are you going to do if you get your answers?”he asked.Knowing her, she hadn’t thought that far ahead, but she needed to.He didn’t want her to go into this unprepared.Unarmed.They weren’t just pecking around on websites.There was a goal here.“What if your parents are alive?”
Her eyes turned stormy.“Do you keep in touch with your mom?Are you all buddy-buddy?”
“No,” he confessed.He shifted on the cushions, feeling unfamiliar guilt.He’d gotten his mother into a facility, but then he’d pretty much walked away.
Like she had when he was a kid.
A muscle in his jaw worked.Roxie was the only person who’d asked him how things had gone with his mother.Everyone at the shop had automatically assumed the reunion had gone down like a fairy tale.It hadn’t.
But thinking back, he remembered the joy in his mom’s eyes when he’d told her his name.It had gotten through the haze of drugs that had clouded her mind.
He cleared his throat.“Are you going to rip into them?Is that what you need?To vent your anger?”
“It’s not anger,” she said under her breath.
Not all of it, anyway.
She hooked her hair behind her ear, her hand shaking almost imperceptibly.
Whatever the results, she didn’t want to let them close.That much Billy knew.If she showed her anger, they’d know how much they’d hurt her.
That had been his crucial error.
Once Roxie was hurt, she barricaded herself against the person who’d caused the pain.He’d seen her do it time and again.There was the foster mother who’d told her to stop whining because she’d had a nightmare.A clergyman who’d visited the group home had told her she needed to pray for forgiveness.Then there was the teacher who’d done nothing to stop the bullying when other kids had found out that Roxie didn’t have parents—and then had sent her to the principal for fighting when she’d kicked their butts.
Life had been tough on her.She never forgot, and she never forgave.Her parents, the system… him.
“Lexie and Maxie want to meet them, if they can,” she said.“I just want to know why.”
She wanted a hell of a lot more than that.
He just didn’t think she knew it yet.
“Okay,” he said, putting his coffee cup on a coaster.“Let’s see what we can do.”
They worked for over an hour, testing Roxie’s ability to focus.The deeper they dug; the more confused Billy got.They didn’t have much to go on.She had the records she’d been given when she left the foster care system.They contained school and medical reports, but not much from her youngest years.More helpful were Maxie’s adoption papers and the letter she’d found from her grandmother, but they didn’t give away any information on birth parents.
Even the info they had was questionable.Roxie’s surname had been Jones before they’d gotten married, but they had no way of knowing if that had been her true last name or something somebody had slapped on some paperwork.With as common a name as it was, it wasn’t all that helpful.
Billy even took over the keyboard for a while.The search he’d conducted had been difficult, but nothing like this.They were coming up with jack squat.
There were no birth announcements or news articles that they could find.Identical triplets were rare.There should have been something.Businesses generally like to donate products to generate good will.Charities like to help out.Volunteers want to babysit.
But there was no mention of people flocking to help a family of three identical little girls.
They widened their search outside of Cobalt City, even though Lexie and Maxie had both been adopted there.Every time Billy thought about that story, his teeth gritted a little tighter.
