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

was great, too. His mellow nature immediately put everyone at ease. He was the same age as Leah but more mature than most of the other men she knew in their late twenties. Simply put, he was good, through and through.

Connor’s kind gaze settled on Leah. “I’m glad I ran into you today.”

“Likewise.”

“I’ll see you Monday.” Then, to Tess and Rudy, “Really nice to have met you.” He threaded toward the exit.

“Leah,” Rudy stage-whispered loudly. “Have you been on any dates with that young man?”

“Rudy!” Tess rushed to say. “Of all the inappropriate questions.”

“Sorry.” Impishness sparked behind his glasses. “Well? Have you?”

“No, nor will I. We’re just friends.”

“Friendship can lead to love,” Rudy said.

“Connor’s interested in someone else, a woman he’s liked since middle school.”

“Oh?” Rudy asked. “That’s a long time to like someone.”

“A very long time.” So long that Leah had a hard time imagining it. She’d formed zero attachments to the boys at her middle school. “Connor’s steadfast.”

“Has the woman he likes given him a chance?”

“She’s had a boyfriend for years. They recently broke up, so she’s currently in mourning over that. I’m hopeful that once she comes out of mourning, she’ll give Connor a chance.”

“Have you been on any dates with any young men recently?” Rudy pressed.

“It’s not nice to pry,” Tess said.

“I went on one date back in August, and I was asked out on another date two days ago. However, nothing came of the date in August, and nothing will come of the offer from two days ago.” An image of Sebastian arriving in his office the day of the hospital tour, with disordered dark hair and a tragic past, coalesced in her memory—

She shook herself. She’d always pitied man-crazy women. She had no intention of becoming one of them.

Rudy’s shoulders slumped.

“Sorry to disappoint,” Leah said.

“You’ve never disappointed us.” Tess spoke staunchly. “Not in any way.”

“That’s very true,” Rudy told her. “You’re perfect.”

“I’m not the slightest bit perfect!”

“So perfect,” Rudy insisted, “that I want you to end up with a man who appreciates you.”

“And I want to end up with a PhD that I can appreciate.”

“Of course you do,” Tess said. “Rightly so.”

“May I have that?” Rudy reached for the mini muffin that sat next to fruit slices on Tess’s plate.

Adroitly, she intercepted his hand with a defensive maneuver. “Borderline diabetes,” she reminded him. Resigned sigh. She checked her watch. “Finish up because I need to take you to your water aerobics class at the Y.”

“Do I have to go today?”

“Absolutely. You made a commitment when you signed up for the series of classes—”

“Really, it was you who made me sign up.”

“—and now we have to follow through.”

“I don’t like water aerobics,” Rudy confessed to Leah.

Ten minutes later, the older couple headed out the door.

Leah slipped her laptop from her messenger bag and settled it on the table. Here, away from Dylan’s prying eyes, she could turn her attention to the pursuit of answers regarding the events that had occurred the day of her birth.

Since she’d followed the Brooksides to church almost two weeks ago, she’d been combing through more and more accounts of real life switched-at-birth cases.

The majority occurred because of an accident. Two sets of twins were inadvertently mixed up so that the pairs of brothers grew up thinking they were fraternal twins when they were identical. Hospital staffers lost ID bracelets. Girls born five minutes apart were confused with each other.

However, some switches derived from even more obvious negligence. A drunk nurse set two babies in the same incubator to treat them for jaundice, and then returned them to the wrong mothers. Twins placed in foster care were reunited with their parents, who later learned that only one of the boys returned to them was their biological child.

In at least one case—the most famous of them all—babies had been switched on purpose out of a misguided sense of compassion. A couple had been trying for years to conceive a child. When they finally gave birth to a baby, it was discovered that the girl had a grave heart condition. Allegedly, a doctor instructed employees to give the sick baby to a family that already had five children, and to give the healthy baby to the couple who’d struggled to conceive.

In carefully going back over the paperwork from her mother’s delivery and hospital stay, Leah had taken extra notice of a detail she’d previously skimmed past.

The names of the nurses.

Sebastian had mentioned that he thought it more likely that a nurse had been responsible for the switch than a doctor. Between the labor and delivery room and the neonatal nursery, four nurses had handled her care in the first hour after her birth.

Lois Simpson

Bonnie O’Reilly

Tracy Segura

Joyce Caffarella

The nurses represented a potential source of new information. If she could locate where they were now, she could ask them questions.

She typed Lois Simpson nurse Atlanta, Georgia into Google.

The very first link that popped up read Lois Simpson Obituary—Milledgeville, Georgia | Legacy.com.

A sense of gravity settled over her as she followed the link and read the obituary. Lois had passed away two years before, at the age of eighty-six. Thus, she would have been sixty when Leah was born. The obituary mentioned that she’d worked as a nurse at Emory University Hospital and Magnolia Avenue Hospital for a combined total of thirty years. Lois, a mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, had been famous for her homemade lemon pound cake and singing in her church’s choir.

Leah would not be able to contact Lois.

She began again with the name Bonnie O’Reilly.

Several hits came up—websites, more obits, images. She scrolled through them, clicked on a few. It didn’t take long to determine that none of these Bonnie O’Reillys were the one she sought. She visited the most prominent social media sites without luck. Returning to Google, she combed through four more pages of results.

She hadn’t found an obituary for a Bonnie O’Reilly who’d been a nurse in Atlanta, which meant Bonnie might still be living. If so, Bonnie was not,