Page 114 of Time to Bounce

And I started going through them all.

Mary Beth.

Mary Beth.

Mary Beth.

“What is this?” I breathed, looking over toward my mother.

My mother had this guarded oh shit look on her face that clearly told me everything I needed to know without saying a word.

I glanced at the date of the one in my hands.

Last year.

Thanksgiving.

Mary Beth had dated them all.

The one that’d been sitting out on the table was dated yesterday.

“What the fuck is this?” I whirled toward my mother.

My mother flinched.

I was numb.

I wasn’t sure what I was seeing, either.

Letters.

Hundreds of letters from my mom to Mary Beth. Mary Beth to my mom.

“Mary Beth,” she answered simply.

“Mary Beth?” I asked. “The same Mary Beth who was kidnapped when I was a child? That same Mary Beth?”

I wasn’t making sense.

I knew it.

But I couldn’t get my thoughts and my mouth to coordinate.

My brain was just whirling a thousand miles an hour.

“Yes,” she shrugged as if it wasn’t anything new. “She writes me instead of emailing me because we don’t want to have a trace.”

“You don’t want to have a trace,” I mused. “As in, you know where she is?”

“I’ve always known,” she whispered.

My mouth opened and closed, and I stared at her in shock. “What do you mean you’ve always known?”

“Mary Beth wasn’t adopted.” She looked sheepish. “Mary Beth was my biological child. I met Mary Beth’s father back home, and one thing led to another, and it just happened. She just happened.” She winced. “I had her back home and left her with her dad until I could convince Patel that we should adopt her. Her dad and I decided that we would trade off time spent with her. I’d have her for the first five years, and he’d have her the next five. Only, by the time it was my time again, she didn’t want to come. So she’s stayed with her dad ever since.”

“You… are you telling me that you staged her kidnapping?” I blurted out.

She winced. “You weren’t supposed to be dragged into it.”

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