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

“Did your mother have gray eyes?” she asked.

“She had blue.”

“Is there anything about your appearance that resembles hers?”

“I have the same color hair that she did. Our mouths and chins have a similar shape.”

So far, she knew only what he’d told her about his mother at the Coleman family’s barbecue. Her name had been Denise, and she’d moved Sebastian from Chicago to Georgia. “Did your mom grow up in Chicago?”

“She was born and raised in Brooklyn, the youngest of five kids in a blue-collar family.” He picked up a persimmon-hued maple leaf and spun it by its stem. “She never talked to me much about that part of her life.”

“Why?”

“I’m guessing because those years were brutal for her. The summer after tenth grade, she took a job at a summer camp in upstate New York, and after that, she never returned to Brooklyn.”

“She moved out after tenth grade?”

“Yeah. At the end of that summer, she went home with a friend she’d made named Cassie who lived in Chicago.”

“Cassie’s parents were okay with that?”

“I guess so. She moved in with their family for the rest of high school.” He skimmed the leaf’s tip along the hand that she’d rested on her abdomen. It left a trail of tingles, so she pushed her sleeve up past her elbow and turned her inner arm upward.

Taking his time, he trailed the leaf up and down.

“What did she do after graduating from high school?” she asked.

“She got a job in manufacturing and moved into an apartment with a few roommates.”

“What was her personality like?”

“Stubborn, tough, willing to stand up for herself. Honest. Nothing about her personality was fake.”

“You told me that she passed away when you were eight of a terminal illness.”

“Yes.”

“But you didn’t mention which terminal illness.”

His face went blank. She supposed that a long history of self-preservation had taught him how and when to mask his feelings.

“Heart disease,” he said.

Comprehension rolled from the top of her head down to her toes. Sebastian had once been a child powerless to save his mother. He was no longer powerless, and now he worked, every single day, to do for children what he’d been unable to do for her.

“Heart disease,” Leah reiterated.

“Yes.”

“Brought on by a congenital heart defect?” she guessed. He’d told her at the barbecue that his mom had had the condition all her life.

A small motion of his head told her she was correct.

“Which congenital heart defect?”

“Tetralogy of Fallot.”

“But . . .”

“It’s treatable,” he finished, anticipating her confusion.

“Exactly.”

“It’s definitely treatable now, but it was even in those days.” He watched the leaf track down her forearm. “Patients with her condition have to be followed closely long-term. Often, they develop a leaky valve, and they might need valve replacement surgery. My mother was a terrible patient. She smoked. She drank. She didn’t take her meds. She never went to doctor’s appointments.”

“Why?”

“I think because she’d had her fill of hospitals and doctors. When she was a teenager, she basically gave the middle finger to her condition and decided to live her life as if she hadn’t been born with a heart defect. Eventually . . . tetralogy of Fallot had the last word.” A breeze whisked the maple leaf away.

Sebastian flopped onto his back and stuck a forearm behind his head. Leah rose onto her own arm and looked down at him. Grooves marked his forehead.

“How did you deal with her loss, emotionally?” she asked.

“I didn’t. I’ve since learned that trauma splits an event from its emotion. My mom’s death was the most terrible thing that could have happened to me. But when it happened, I felt cold and hard inside. That’s all.”

Sorry seemed far too trite and small a word. She picked up a waxy magnolia leaf, arranged his free arm just the way hers had been arranged moments before, and swept the leaf’s tip delicately along the inside of his strong forearm. “Did CPS try to contact her family?”

“No. She refused to accept the fact that she was dying until just a few weeks before she did. At that point, she clearly specified that she wanted me to become a ward of the state of Georgia.”

“Because?”

“Because she wasn’t going to let me anywhere near her family, and she didn’t have anybody else. She loved the mountains of northern Georgia and wanted me to grow up there.” His lips firmed. “I think she believed the odds were best for me in foster care.”

“Do you think you would have been happier with her family?”

“No. My foster parents were all good people who were fostering kids for the right reasons. They weren’t the problem. By the time I went to them, I was the problem.”

“How so?”

“My attitude.”

“Elaborate.”

“I was reclusive. Argumentative. Bitter. I hated the first family who took me in, even through they tried their best to help me.”

“You were an eight-year-old child whose only family member died. Dylan was around that same age when my mother left. I saw how that affected him. He floundered, too, and I understood why. His grief was warranted. His anger was warranted. So was yours.”

Sebastian didn’t reply.

After what she’d been through with Dylan, she had a soft spot for the kid Sebastian had been and the heartbreak he’d endured. Dr. Grant, a man who appeared to have everything, did not have everything.

“Did your foster parents ensure that you received counseling?”

“For years. I hated that, too. I mostly just sat there with my mouth shut and waited for it to be over.”

“You were a tough nut to crack.”

“Still am.”

Regret flashed within her because she wanted to be the person who cracked his hard shell.

Of all the disastrous, ill-conceived urges!

He lived like a bear in a cave, keeping those who did not have the last name of Coleman at arm’s length. He was a heart surgeon who did not understand the inner workings of his own heart. He’d determined that he didn’t want to love or be loved, and who was she to quibble with that?

She didn’t want romantic love, either. But even if she did