Let It Be Me by Becky Wade (top young adult novels .TXT) 📕

Sebastian would travel to Misty River a week from today for Ben’s parents’ fortieth anniversary dinner. He’d get their friendship back on track then. If he wasn’t going to date Leah, and he wasn’t, then the trade-off had to be a good relationship with Ben.

Watch soccer, idiot.

Sebastian liked things done a certain way. He didn’t get embarrassed, and he wasn’t afraid to anger people when necessary. He was persistent. Stubborn.

Ben liked to ask him dryly if there was anything on earth Sebastian didn’t have an opinion about. The answer was no. He had strong feelings toward everything.

Ice cream flavor? Cookies and cream.

Sport? Soccer.

Indoor temperature? Seventy-two in the summer, sixty-eight in the winter.

Practicing medicine? Nothing but excellence would do.

Problem was, he could feel all his persistence and stubbornness and strong feelings funneling in one direction.

Toward Leah Montgomery.

His ability to focus, usually an asset, was becoming a flaw.

His phone’s pager system went off. Squinting, he checked his secure messages.

A baby with blockage in all four pulmonary veins had just been delivered, and he was needed immediately.

CHAPTER FIVE

Excuse me?” Mom squawked over the phone four days later. She’d finally called Leah from Guinea to inquire after the second DNA test.

“I’m not your biological daughter,” Leah repeated calmly. It was late on a Tuesday night. Dylan was sleeping over at a friend’s house, and Leah had paused Return of the Jedi to answer her phone. Beyond the walls of her house, the heavy darkness of the mountains reigned.

“Yes you are, Leah. You’re my biological daughter.”

“No, it turns out that I’m not. Which doesn’t have to change anything between us.”

Mom continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “They placed you in my arms in the hospital.”

“Yes, but you were unconscious for my delivery, so you didn’t see the face of your baby. There’s no telling what happened between the time you delivered your daughter and the moment they brought me to you. The only thing that’s certain, at this point, is that I’m not the baby girl you gave birth to.”

She’d been researching switched-at-birth cases. It was both mind-boggling and fascinating to read about people who’d been stowaways in families not their own. In every case, the children who were switched were of the same gender. They were born at the same place on the same day, often within minutes of each other. Sometimes their mothers shared the same first name.

When a person went public with their switched-at-birth story, attention covered them like a rain shower. Because of that, it seemed to Leah that those who discovered they’d been switched at birth later in life—well after they’d made their way in the world and established families of their own—weathered the storm best.

Which confirmed her initial decision not to tell Dylan, or anyone other than her mother and Sebastian, what she’d uncovered. Leah didn’t aspire to be a whistle-blower. Didn’t want money from the hospital via a court settlement. Didn’t plan to crusade for hospital reforms. She simply wanted to know who her biological parents were and—if possible—to understand how this had occurred.

As she’d read article after article, she’d wondered just how many people who’d discovered they’d been switched at birth had chosen the path she’d chosen and decided to remain silent. A fair number, possibly.

“That’s crazy,” Mom stated. “Those results are wrong.”

“Choosing denial?” Leah asked mildly.

“YourHeritage probably didn’t even bother to run the second sample you sent. I bet they just gave you the same answers as last time.”

Hopefully, Mom would remain in a state of denial. If so, she wouldn’t mount a search for her missing child. Which would make things easier for Leah.

“You haven’t told Dylan, have you?” Mom asked.

“No.”

“Good! Don’t tell him. It will just rile him up.”

“I agree.” Leah was momentarily disoriented. Were she and Mom actually in agreement?

“And there’s no sense getting him riled up over something that’s not even legitimate. You are my daughter.”

“I’m not going to tell Dylan. Will you please sign the waiver that I faxed to you?”

“Why would I?”

“Because it means a lot to me and because I’m asking nicely.”

After a taut moment, Mom said, “Fine.”

“Thank you.”

“Have you been feeding Dylan enough kale, Leah? And also chia seeds? Chia seeds provide fiber, and you both need lots of fiber in your diet.”

Leah bit her tongue, as she always did, in response to Mom’s random parenting suggestions. When Mom had chased her ambitions overseas, she’d both forfeited her right to parent and removed much of Leah’s ability to control her own life.

Leah had responded by dedicating herself to controlling what little remained—her well-being and Dylan’s well-being. Leah was the one who supported Dylan, who stocked the pantry, bought his clothes, paid for his phone and car insurance. Leah was the one who made sure he went to the doctor and did his homework and cleaned his room and avoided parties with kegs.

Because of her ingrained responsibility for her brother, every dream she’d had since taking over his care had been an anxiety dream. Her struggling to get Dylan out in time while their house burned. Her failing to watch him carefully as he stumbled into the street in front of a speeding car. Her losing Dylan in a crowd. Her remembering suddenly that Dylan lived in the bedroom next to hers and realizing that he must have starved because she hadn’t fed him anything in weeks.

Thus, if anyone had the final say on kale and chia seeds . . . it wasn’t Mom.

It was her.

The Coleman family barbecue sauce recipe was an old and closely protected secret. Very dark in color, it tasted like Georgia: southern and spicy with sweetness underneath. The smell of that sauce swamped Sebastian when he stepped out of his car into evening sunshine the night of the anniversary party for Ben’s parents.

Ben was the third of four kids. His siblings were married and had already given him four nephews and two nieces. The Colemans also had a large extended family and a huge