Her Name Was Annie by Beth Rinyu (the little red hen read aloud txt) 📕

“Oh, boy! I’m surprised you’re not still at it with everything she had saved. I’m sure somewhere in there you’ll find your kindergarten report card filed away neatly. She saved everything.” He chuckled, and I tried my hardest to smile back, but I couldn’t. “What’s wrong?” my father pleaded, picking up on my distress right away.

“I found this.” I reached into my purse and pulled out the letter, then handed it off to him. He read it over, then rested his eyes on the piece of paper as if he was trying to come up with an explanation to give me. “Please tell me why that letter says you and Mom didn’t bring me home until December when I was born in August? Why are there no photographs of me as a newborn?” I began to pepper him with questions.

He sprang off the couch and walked back over to the Christmas tree, picking up right where he left off with his decorating. “I still remember the Christmas when you picked this one out,” Dad murmured, staring down at the ballerina ornament in his hand as if he hadn’t even read the letter. “You said she looked like you with her dark curls and painted-on eyes the color of black olives.” His voice cracked.

I stood up and took the ballerina from him. “Dad, please tell me why.” My voice was calm and gentle when I saw his hands trembling.

“Your mother never wanted you to feel as if you weren’t ours,” he muttered, lifting his head and finally looking at me.

I fought the lump in my throat and the burn in my eyes, knowing what I had feared was true. “Was I adopted?”

He didn’t have to answer my question with words; the wounded look in his eyes had already answered it. He grabbed my hand and we walked back to the couch. He was suddenly looking like the eighty-four-year-old man he was on the inside on the outside as well.

“Why didn’t you ever tell me this?” I kept my tone void of any emotion.

“We tried to have a child, but we couldn’t. Your mother beat herself up over it again and again, and it tore me apart to see her that way. When we finally decided to look into adoption, she made me promise we wouldn’t tell anyone that you weren’t our biological child.”

“Except for the woman who wrote that letter?”

“Joyce was her best friend. She shared everything with her. I even left my job in Massachusetts and took a job here after we adopted you. We had this home built, moved in with our new baby, and started a whole new life as a family.”

“Why did you feel the need to keep it such a secret?” I whispered, still trying to register everything he was saying.

“Because your mother wanted it that way. She felt so inadequate over not being able to have a baby. She was sad all the time, and then you came along. She truly wanted to believe that you were hers. She was afraid if people knew…if you knew, then you wouldn’t feel like you were.”

“But I was hers.” I shook my head, battling with the gamut of emotions building up inside of me. “So, it was all about Mom’s feelings and keeping up appearances? Did it ever occur to either of you that you lied to me my entire life?”

He reached for my hand, and even though I was angrier than I had ever been with him, I didn’t have the heart to pull it away. “It was something I didn’t take lightly throughout the years. Especially seeing patients of mine who would come in and have no idea of their medical history. There were so many times I wanted to tell you, but she begged me not to.”

“Why?” I shook my head, wiping away the teardrop that was rolling down my face with the back of my hand.

“Because then you would think she wasn’t the perfect mother she always set out to be.”

“I would’ve never thought that. You and Mom were the only parents I’ve ever known, and no one could’ve ever taken your place, biological or not.”

He nodded. “I know, but your mother could never see that.”

He was right. My mother’s need for perfection and order wouldn’t allow her to think that way. She always appeared to be so confident and have it all together, but I was slowly learning that was all a façade she masked behind her picture-perfect little world. To the outside world, she did have it all. She was a doctor’s wife with a big, beautiful house, and a daughter who she spent every waking hour of her life trying to please.

She always made sure I had a closet full of designer clothes that I never really cared about one way or the other. My birthday parties were always the biggest and the best, when most of the time I would’ve been content with just having cake and ice cream with her and my dad. She was president of the PTA during most of my time in school and ensured my wedding was something out of a storybook. The funny thing was, I never wanted that grandiose wedding most girls dreamed about. I went along with it all for her—the expensive dress and the fancy banquet facility that probably cost my father a whole year’s salary.

She did all these things because she constantly had to prove to herself that I’d always love her as my mother. As angry as I was at her for never telling me the truth, there was a big part of me that felt sorry for her. I had never given her any reason to think I didn’t love her or wouldn’t love her without all those things she gave me growing up. It finally occurred to me that the strong, self-assured woman who all the other moms envied and all the other girls wished was their mom, wasn’t so confident after all.

“I