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

“Yes,” I replied. It took him almost fifty years and a lifetime of heartache on my part for him to come to this realization.

“And…did you…” He dropped his gaze as if he was trying to muster up the courage to finish his question. I would’ve been lying if I said I wasn’t taking a little comfort in his ill ease. “Did you have his child?”

My eyes widened. “His child?” I scoffed.

“You said you were pregnant, in this letter.” He held up the piece of paper, then placed it back on the table.

“I was pregnant with your child, Tommy. Your brother raped me while I was carrying our child.” My voice rose a little louder than I had intended as I tried desperately to ward off my emotions. “None of what I wrote in that letter was a lie. You just chose to interpret it the way that best suited you.” His eyes clouded over. I wanted to see him cry. I wanted him to feel even one ounce of the pain I had felt back then. “I was basically disowned by my family, then had to give away a part of me that I had grown to love for nine months without ever getting to touch her.” My wish had backfired. It was me who had the tears rolling down my face instead.

“You never got to meet her?”

“No. I got banished to my aunt’s house in Massachusetts, gave birth to her, came back to California, and was to never speak of it again, like it never happened. But guess what? It did happen…to me. I think about her all the time. Is she happy? What’s she doing with her life now? Every year on her birthday, I have a piece of cake, pretending she’s there with me. It’s something others may have been able to erase from their past, but it’s something I never want to forget. That baby I never got to hold, or tell I loved will always have a huge part of my heart. So now you have the whole story, forty-eight years later. I’ll spare you and myself the details of what your brother did because unlike my beautiful baby girl, that is something I do want to forget.”

He drew in a deep breath and looked around aimlessly. “I have a daughter out there somewhere.” I could hear the emotion building in his voice. “Things…my life could’ve been so different, if—”

“If you had just believed me instead of your brother. Yes, Tommy, it would’ve been a lot different for both of us.”

He raked his hands through his disheveled hair and took a deep breath. “I’m so sorry. I know that’s not going to make up for what you lost…what we lost.”

“You didn’t lose anything. You went on with your life, not caring what you or your brother did to me and not even knowing that you had a child. You were a Cavlan and that’s all that mattered. I thought you were different than the rest of them, but I guess I learned the hard way you weren’t.”

He shook his head. “That’s not true at all. You wouldn’t have wanted to be around me when I came back. Hell, I didn’t even want to be around myself. I was angry all the time. I drank too much. I did other things I had no business doing. It took me a long time to come to my senses, and when I did, I knew it was too late to ever get you back. I can’t go back and make up for all the wrong I did to you, but I can try and make it somewhat right.”

“No. You can’t,” I whispered. “It will never be right because I’ll always have a part of me that’s broken inside and can’t be fixed.”

“I can find her. Regardless if you want to meet her or not, at least you can know a little about her. Maybe answer some of the questions you’ve had all these years.”

The idea of him finding her was ludicrous, and the fact that I was actually entertaining it in my mind was even more ridiculous. If…and that was a big if, he was even able to find her, what would I do once he did? Even worse, what if she had a horrible life or what if she wasn’t even alive anymore? Anything was possible. But even with all of those different scenarios tossing around in my mind, there was still a huge piece of my heart that belonged to the daughter I had never met. If there was a chance I could get even a small glimpse into her world, I was going to take it. “You do know that obtaining information on an adoption that took place almost fifty years ago is going to be almost impossible, don’t you?”

“I have connections that make it a little easier to get that information.”

I felt like I was selling my soul to the devil by taking advantage of the Cavlan connections. “Well, I hope you succeed in finding her. If you do, I don’t think it’s wise to tell her anything. She may not even know she was adopted.”

“I’m not doing this for me. I blew my chance at ever being a part of her life when I wrote you off. I’m doing this for you, so maybe you can one day get the opportunity to finally meet her and get some closure.”

Tears pooled in my eyes just imagining what it would feel like to hug her and to look into her eyes for the very first time. It had been the one wish I’d made every year when I blew out my birthday candles or whenever I’d look at the clock when it was exactly 11:11. I had been blessed with a good life. I had the best husband and a wonderful daughter, but there always seemed to be a part of me