Not able to force down another bite, I set the yogurt aside and drew up my knees to my chest, curling in on myself without thinking about it.
Evander glanced at me, just long enough to check to make sure I wasn’t slipping too far, before he tapped the file open.
And just like I expected, the very first thing that appeared on the screen was a picture of me.
The image filled the screen.
It was me. But not the version Evander had shown me before. That early photo, the one he’d kept, had been soft. A little boy with messy hair, dirt on his cheeks and alive. Happy.
This one wasn’t.
In the Lockswell photo, I was eight, and all of me was there. Messy wavey hair that was in my eyes. A scratch on my chin. And tears streak down my cheeks.
But my eyes.
God. My eyes were empty and that made my stomach twist. They weren’t just sad or scared. They were blank. Like whatever I had been told right before this photo took life out of me.
I didn’t look like that boy. But I could seemein just as much as I did the ones that Evander had stashed away.
I would never remember what was spoken or done to me that day, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
Evander stared at the photo for a long time, his jaw tightening and something dark flickered behind his eyes.
Then, he exhaled and clicked the tablet off.
No second guesses. No more looking. Like he decided for me that we didn’t need to know what was in the file
“I’ve seen what I needed. I don’t…. I don’t want to see the rest. All it’ll do is make you revisit a part of your life that doesn’t need to be visited. And I’m not doing that. I want the Kasey that’s right beside me today. Not the one from this file.”
He nudged the tablet further away, as if distance alone would protect me.
“But…he’sme.” Wasn’t that the point of Evander getting the file in the first place? To show me that I was the boy he wanted me to be? To see my past all right there in black and white?
“I don’t love you because of who you were. I care about you because of who you are now. Right now. Today. The past is the past. The version of you in that file is just that. A version created by a place that wanted you to be broken and beaten. But in a matter of days, you’re already coming out of that mindset. Whatever happens from here on out is up to you. Who do you want to be? Whatever it is, I’ll still care about you. I’ll love you no matter what.”
Love.
Did he mean to say that? Or had it slipped twice in one moment?
“Okay.” I breathed; my mind wrapped around the words. A feeling I couldn’t ever remember. Not since I arrived at Lockswell. Not a single moment there was everloveorcareorcherish.
The silence stretched between us, warm and heavy, like the air before a storm. Evander’s words still lingered, and they settled somewhere deep, somewhere I wasn’t sure I could reach.
“Evander…” My voice came out smaller than I meant. I also almost called himEvy.The fear of the DNA test sat heavy on my chest. “What if I’m not him?”
He blinked, slow, and steady, giving me full attention without crowding me.
“What if I’m the boy from before? The one you lost? The one you’ve been looking for all these years?”
I looked down at my hands in my lap, fingers twisted against one another. “What if I’m just…me? What if I’m not who you think I am?”
The possibility that these memories I had weren’t of this Evander. It was possible my parents were, in fact, killed in a car crash and I was sent to Lockswell as an orphan.
It was also possible that Iwasthis Evander’s Kasey. And right at that moment, I really hoped I was.
He shifted closer, wrapping an arm around my back and pulling me to his side.
“Kasey, if you’re not that boy…then you’re not that boy.” He paused for a breath. “I still want you either way. I’ll still care; I still love you. I still choose you. Will I stop looking for him? No. But I won’t give all my free time chasing a ghost anymore. No matter what the DNA results are. You come first. If you turn out to be him, then nothing changes. I’ll treat you the same. I just won’t chase the shadows anymore. Either way, you’re part of this family. And when you’re ready, you’ll get to meet the rest of them.”
