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

Now he didn’t want attention, didn’t require much supervision, had low energy, and was very independent. And Leah really, really missed his company.

Why was it so easy to focus on the difficulties that came with a specific phase of a relationship? As soon as that phase ended, you mourned the benefits.

“And you?” A roll in one hand, Rudy stretched his knife toward the butter dish. Tess moved the butter dish out of his reach. His attention swung to Leah. “Are you interested in dating any of the young men you know?”

“I’m not. No.”

“None of them has been tickling you?”

“Not a one.” Rudy wanted her to fall in love. Unsuccessfully, she’d explained to him that she was already married to her goal of achieving her PhD. That was the only thing she needed to keep her warm in bed on a cold night.

Tess and Rudy stayed for coffee, cookies (of which Tess allowed Rudy two), and a speed round of Scrabble (since Rudy’s bedtime was ten).

When they left, Leah waved them off from her dark front lawn, Rudy’s question echoing in her ears. “Are you interested in dating any of the young men you know?”

She’d thought about Sebastian Grant often over the past few days, because thinking about him caused delight to rumble within her like kernels of corn about to pop. At the Colemans’ party, he’d been very composed and controlled. Yet she’d felt the energy in him, pulsing under his skin. Behind his bland expressions, she sensed a tremendously sharp, alert mind. He was focused, but remote. Intelligent, but not open. Determined, but difficult for her to read.

There’d been a moment when he’d looked at her so directly that sensitivity had bloomed across her skin. When he’d told her about his mom’s death, she’d had a wayward, but powerful, urge to comfort him.

She’d been telling herself that the physical attraction she’d experienced for him when they’d met at the hospital coffee shop a week and a half ago was an outlier, a data point differing significantly from the rest of her responses to the opposite sex. But now that it had occurred again, she couldn’t classify it as such.

She returned to the house, picked up her laptop, and walked straight through to her miniature back patio. Exterior and interior light spilled illumination onto the pavers that formed a curving shape just large enough for an outdoor chair, footrest, and side table.

After lowering onto the chair, she hooked a toe beneath the footrest, pulled it into position, then settled her computer so that it formed a bridge between her thighs and abdomen.

Due to the waiver that Mom had finally submitted, Magnolia Avenue Hospital had gathered the files about her birth. She’d been born at a time when records were kept only on paper. However, she’d requested them in an electronic format, so the hospital had scanned the pages. Earlier today she’d begun reading them via an online portal.

She’d seen at once that doctors’ reputation for illegible handwriting wasn’t unfounded. For several hours she’d combed through the documents, slowly deciphering words, taking notes. Now she could revisit them and finish researching the oddities she’d found the first time through.

Immediately after birth in the delivery room, her weight had been listed as eight pounds, one ounce. Two days later, when she and her mom left the hospital, the log noted her weight as seven pounds, one ounce.

She surfed the web and discovered that it wasn’t unusual for a formula-fed newborn to lose five percent of her body weight after birth. But according to her chart, she’d lost twelve percent of her body weight.

Her mother’s biological daughter was the one who’d weighed eight pounds, one ounce. Leah had likely weighed close to seven pounds at birth.

Mom’s blood type was recorded here as type O. A Google search informed her that O was common. So was Leah’s blood type, A. Her dad had type B, which was more unusual. A few of the times he’d given blood when she was a kid, he’d taken her along. Those occasions had imprinted on her memory because . . . needles. Blood. “I’ve got to help out my fellow Bs,” he’d told her. Afterward, he’d winked and cajoled the staff into giving Leah a carton of juice and a package of saltines.

She located a chart listing how blood types descended from parents to children. Ah. It wasn’t possible for a type O mother and type B father to have a type A daughter.

She’d already known she wasn’t Erica and Todd Montgomery’s child. The DNA said so. Her improbable weight loss as an infant said so.

So why did this fresh confirmation lower onto her shoulders like a lead blanket?

She read back over every item—the doctor’s scrawl regarding the caesarean section, her mom’s blood pressure stats, the notes on the baby’s feeding times, the results of the pediatrician’s exam.

Her mother’s baby had been whisked from the delivery room to the nursery because of concerns over a rapid heartbeat. As far as Leah could tell, the baby’s heartbeat had stabilized quickly. The remainder of Mom’s stay at the hospital appeared ordinary.

Not a single detail pointed to the question of how. How had two babies been switched?

Leah tilted her head up. Trees conspired to crowd out most of the starry sky. It might not be possible to answer the question of how. But it should be possible to answer the question of who. Who were her mother and father?

She logged in at YourHeritage. Starting with the DNA matches that the site designated as her closest relatives, she’d been studying each person one by one. Many had opted to keep their information private. Some who’d made their family trees public had only used the site for genealogical purposes and therefore hadn’t included living relatives. Others had only traced one branch of their tree.

Borrowing and building on the research they’d made available, she’d been striving to assemble a master family tree for herself. It