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

“Dylan. He was struggling in Gainesville. His grades were terrible, and his friends were rough. She decided it would be best to give him a fresh start.”

“How’s that worked out?”

“Well, for the most part. I think he still gives her plenty of reasons to worry, but he’s doing much better than he was.”

A frazzled-looking gray-haired woman whistled and flagged Ben down by waving both arms.

“Got to go,” Ben said. “I’ll catch up with you later.”

As Sebastian approached the man who appeared to be in charge of the spaghetti line, he allowed himself one last look in Leah’s direction. He could only make out her bright sweater.

Disappointment snarled inside him, prowling for an outlet.

Math prodigy Leah Montgomery could not be his.

Your DNA results are in! Discover your heritage! popped up in Leah’s email inbox two weeks after submitting her second sample.

Immediately upon seeing that subject line, her blood pressure escalated in a rush.

This time the message found her while she was sitting on the bleachers at a track and field meet, cheering for her students. During a long break between events, she’d checked her phone.

She clicked the link in the email, then asked God for His peace and strength as she typed in her username and password.

The screen populated, and Leah stared at the same ethnicity pie chart YourHeritage had served her the first time. She brought up the screen showing her genetic matches. The same unfamiliar pictures and names appeared in a long line. Haskins, Brookside, Schloss.

Sorrow crept over her.

Her mother believed Leah to be the child she’d given birth to.

This second test proved, unequivocally, that she was not.

She wasn’t related by blood to her brother, her mom, or her dad. By blood, she was related to these people she did not know.

The starting gun signaled another race had begun. She raised her face and watched the runners dart off the blocks, pumping their arms and legs. Inside, her emotions were as chaotic as those churning, straining limbs.

Dylan.

For the past two weeks, her thoughts had been drawn to her DNA over and over again. It wasn’t as if she’d had no warning about the potential loss of her biological connection to her brother. Yet this confirmation sliced her with a grief so new and painful, it felt like a personal insult.

For many, many years prior to Dylan’s birth, she’d wanted a little sister of her own. Leah had been lonely, shy, uncoordinated, self-conscious—a solitary girl with a reservoir of love to give. She’d imagined that her little sister would look just like she did, love to graph parabolas like she did, appreciate tea parties with stuffed animals like she did.

Around the time she’d turned ten, she’d resigned herself to the truth. She was never going to get a sibling. Just like she was never going to get the Apple computer she asked for every Christmas.

A fifth grader going on the age of fifty, she’d put her longing for a sister on the shelf. There hadn’t been time to mourn. She’d had her hands full with the miserable social aspects of her latter elementary years and an academic workload that would have challenged Einstein. Her parents had moved from town to town every few years, forever chasing and never catching new dreams, better jobs, greener grass.

And then, out of the blue, her mom and dad—never the masters of birth control—had experienced their second unplanned pregnancy. At first when they told her they were expecting a baby, she’d responded like any self-respecting preteen: with mortification. But after she’d had time to get used to the idea, the old yearning for a blond little sister had stirred back to life.

Her parents had waited to find out the sex of their baby. And so, when Leah had finally entered her mom’s hospital room to meet her new sibling, excitement had bounced around inside her body like a pinball. Dad informed her that if the baby was wearing pink, it was a girl. If the baby was wearing blue, it was a boy.

Leah approached the little plastic box on wheels where the baby was sleeping. Long before she was close enough to determine the color of the baby’s clothing beneath the blankets, she read the sign stuck to the inside of the baby’s bed. It’s a boy!

Mom and Dad’s gender reveal plan had been spoiled by an obvious sign they’d failed to notice.

Benevolently, she acted surprised when she pulled the baby’s blanket down and revealed blue.

Leah sat in the room’s window seat, and Dad rested her tiny brother in her lap.

He was beautiful. A mini nose, a perfect doll mouth, slightly bulgy closed eyes. She peeked under his cap and found lots of dark, silky hair.

Overtaken with wonder, she’d hugged him against herself. In that moment, it hadn’t mattered that he wasn’t a girl or that he wasn’t blond.

He was hers.

She was no longer alone with her erratic parents.

She’d found her person.

Love had vibrated through every cell of her adolescent self. And over the seventeen years since, that love had proven deep and staunch, the most unchanging aspect of her life.

Her relationship with Dylan was forged of much stronger stuff than blood. She’d been there for every important moment of his life. For the last decade, she’d been his caregiver.

Shared history. Love in action. Those are the things that family relationships are made of. She would, forever and always, continue to be Dylan’s sister. But until this DNA test, she’d trusted in the fact that she was Dylan’s biological sister. She’d wanted, very much, to continue to be Dylan’s biological sister.

Now it felt as though Dylan, Mom, and Dad were on one side of a river, a party of three. And she was on the other side by herself.

A sheen of tears misted her eyes.

She was not who she’d always thought she was. Which begged the question . . . who was she?

Your identity has not changed, she told herself firmly. She was the