Page 73 of Forgotten Dreams

“I will email you right now, and we can go over the tracing at the same time,” he states, and a ping shows me a new email has come in.

My hand hovers shakily over the mouse as I click on it and open the attachment. The top of the tree has my eyes hovering over it. “I have traced your ancestors back to the eighteen hundreds.” The names are totally new to me and not at all the ones I have on the whiteboard, which is weird.

“These aren’t the names I have on my board,” I tell him.

“That would probably be your paternal side, which is what I’ll be working on next, but I did your maternal side.” If I thought I was going to throw up before, it’s nothing like how I feel right now.

“If you go down the tree, you’ll see that you have a parent relation with one of two people.” My eyes roam to the bottom of the tree. “Chester had five sons,” he starts to talk about my great-great-grandfather as he works his way down the tree, but my finger is already moving the document down to the bottom. “Frederick had three kids, two sons and a daughter.” He is just talking, and I’m not even following him at this point. “Your grandfather’s name is Rob Dyson.” I think I gasp out, or maybe it’s in my head. The only thing I can hear is the way my heart is thumping in my ears. “Rob had three children: Peter, Fiona, and Sonia.” My eyes blink a couple of times as I look at the names at the bottom. “Now, you are either Fiona’s or Sonia’s daughter.”

“Oh my God,” I whisper, putting both hands on my cheeks, “are you sure?”

He laughs. “I am. None of them have anything in the system, but their cousin did, so that is how I started tracing it back.”

“I’m—” I try to catch my breath. “I don’t know what to say. Thank you so much.”

“You are very welcome. I’ll be starting on the other side tomorrow.”

“I don’t know how to thank you,” I say.

“Well, I have even more news for you,” he replies, and I laugh.

“I don’t know how much more you can possibly have.”

“I reached out to Tina, who is the second cousin, and she gave me both phone numbers. She also said if it comes out she gave it to me, she’s going to deny it.”

I think I stop breathing when he says that. “The information is in the email that you probably didn’t read.”

I belly laugh now, out of nerves, out of happiness, out of everything. “Guilty.”

“Figured you wanted to get to the end of the story and not read the beginning.”

“Next time, I’ll start at the beginning,” I assure him.

“Sounds good. I’ll call you once I finish on the other side.”

“Thank you so, so much,” I say as he hangs up the phone. I stare down at the phone and then go to the email and see the numbers there. I don’t know how long I sit at my desk; I don’t even feel the tears that run down my face. I don’t feel the way my body shakes. I feel nothing.

I pick up my phone and dial his number. “Oh, now you want to call me because I pointed out the obvious.”

“They found her,” I whisper, and then the sob rips out of me. “He found her.”

“Baby,” he soothes, and I can hear him running on his end, “breathe for me, yeah?” I hear the sound of his truck door slamming shut and then turning on. “I’m going to be there in four minutes.”

“He found her.” It’s the only thing I can say over and over again until I hear the front door swing open and his boots on the floor. He finds me in my office, the phone to his ear now moving down. “He found my mother.” I can see the exact moment he registers what I just said. “He found who my mother is.” I get up, and his hands are there to hold me up because my knees give out. I bury my face in his neck as he wraps his arms around me.

“That’s amazing,” he murmurs in my ear. “It’s going to be okay.” He kisses the side of my head. “Tell me everything.”

I tell Caleb everything that Brendan found. “So now it’s either Fiona or Sonia who is my mother.”

He holds my face in his hands. “Well, what are you waiting for?” He smiles as his thumbs dry my cheeks. “You’ve been waiting for this for a while.”

“I know.” I look down. “I’m scared.”

“There is no need for you to be scared, baby,” he assures me softly. “You got this.”

“I got this,” I repeat his words. “Who should I call first?”

“Sonia,” he says, “start there.”

---