Forgotten Dreams Sneak Peak
Chapter One
Sierra
I pull up to the house I’ve grown up in my whole life and turn off the car. Getting out, I look across the street to see Mr. Jackson outside, watering his potted plants. “Hey there, Sierra,” he greets me, looking up once he hears my car door slam shut. “How are you doing?”
“I’m good.” I smile at him, holding up my hand to say hello.
“How is the new age treating you?” He turns off the water to make sure he’s not wasting any while talking to me.
“So far so good.” I shrug. Today is my twenty-fifth birthday—a quarter of a century old.
“If it makes you feel any better”—he smirks—“I don’t feel a day over seventy.”
I tuck my phone in the back pocket of my jeans and laugh. “I’ll be sure to remember that,” I say, turning and looking at the house. “I have to get in there. My parents get really upset if they aren’t the first ones to wish me a happy birthday.” He nods and turns the hose back on to continue to water his flowers.
I walk up the pathway to the five steps to the front door. I turn the doorknob, trying to push open the door, only it doesn’t budge. I touch the keypad and enter the numbers two, four, nine, one. I hear the lock turning to open before I push the door open. “Hello!” I shout. “Your favorite and only daughter is here.” I make the joke because I’m an only child. I toss my keys on the brown side table at the door before stepping into the house that holds so many memories. I walk straight past the staircase to the kitchen, where I would normally find my mother, but it’s empty and spotless, of course. “Mom!” I holler her name as I walk toward the front door and start up the steps to the bedroom.
The wall is filled with memories throughout the years. In the middle is a picture we took when my father finally became a judge. He was a lawyer for twenty years before he was elected to be a judge. I still remember how proud he was when he told us. My mother made such a big deal about it. I swear, there were never-ending parties for a good month. That’s what you get when your father is a big deal. He was friends with everyone, and it didn’t hurt that my grandparents were very wealthy and involved in politics back in the day.
It's a painted portrait that we sat posed for not just a snapshot, that would have been too easy for my mother. Nope, she wanted it like they have the royal families have it. It was something my mother had longed for, for so long. My father, being so in love with my mother, made sure she got everything her heart desired. So he did it without even a grumble. My mother sits on the chair in a pink gown. Obviously, she needed a gown. I’m surprised she didn’t insist on us getting tiaras. Her hands are on her lap while my father stands proudly beside her on one side, and I stand on the other. My own pale-blue gown drapes to the ground, hiding the fact I am wearing flip-flops. The smile on our faces lights up our eyes, and I can remember it like it was yesterday, not almost eight years ago.
Next to the grand portrait are pictures of our family through the years—from the first day they brought me home to Christmas last year. Twenty-five years of memories on one wall is crazy, yet every time I catch a glimpse of one, I’m immediately taken back to said memory.
“Mom!” I shout when I get to the top of the steps and see the four bedroom doors open. I’m about to go to their bedroom at the end of the hall when the phone rings from my back pocket.
Pulling it out, I see it’s my mother calling. “Wow,” I answer without saying hello, “I’m home, and you’re not here.”
“I know. I know. I know,” she pants, and I can hear people talking in the background as she hustles. “I had to pick up a couple of things, and my car didn’t start this morning, so I had to drag your father out with me,” she groans. “Happy birthday, my angel,” she says softly. “Am I the first to say it?” she asks eagerly.
“Um,” I start, “you texted me at midnight, like on the dot, and then at four o’clock and another one at seven thirty.”
“But those don’t count,” she retorts. “I knew I should have called you this morning, but I was going crazy, and your father said I would wake you,” she grits between clenched teeth. “Good going, dear,” she mutters to my father, who is probably walking beside her, “worst parents ever.”
I roll my eyes. “That’s a little extreme, don’t you think?” I laugh. “I mean, ever is huge.”
“We have to pick up a couple of things, and then we’ll head home,” she explains. “Don’t talk to anyone or answer the phone until I get there and wish you a proper happy birthday.”
“Got it,” I tell her. “But can you hurry up? I’m starved since you told me not to eat.”
“You can go into the kitchen and have one cupcake,” she whispers like someone is going to hear her, “but only one.”
I smile as I listen to her whispering as if it’s going to be a secret from everyone else in the world. “You are too kind.”
“Bye, angel,” she says. “I love you.”
“Love you too, Mom,” I reply, hanging up the phone. I turn to walk downstairs when I remember I wanted to get a special picture from their wedding for their anniversary coming up in a couple of months.
I walk into the spare bedroom on the side, grabbing the white stepladder from the closet before going to the attic stairs. I open the ladder and have to climb up to the third rung before I can reach the latch and pull it down. I step off the ladder and move it to the side to climb the wooden ladder built into the door.
Moving up into the attic, I duck my head until I’m standing inside. Looking at the right side, I see the Christmas decorations ready to go in four months. Taking another step in, I see blue bins stacked on the left-hand side, all with my name on them. Mom’s kept pretty much most of my outfits since I was born. I take a couple more steps in and see she has all my school stuff in white bins. It’s only three bins. Thankfully, she didn’t keep all my art projects. But they are condensed and labeled by school year. I shake my head as the phone rings again, and when I take it out, I see it’s Lilah calling.
“Hello,” I answer, putting the phone to my ear and smiling. Lilah and I became friends when we were both sixteen years old, and we joined a fan fiction group for our favorite author, Cooper Parker, who writes cozy mysteries. We would comment on the same post and then quickly started chatting in private messages. To this day, the minute Cooper Parker puts out a book, we take the day off work and read it cover to cover on FaceTime, discussing it chapter by chapter. It once took us fourteen hours, but it cemented our friendship, and when she got kidnapped last year, I rushed to be by her side. Even though our friendship is mostly online, she’s my best friend.
“Happy birthday!” she shouts out with happiness as she proceeds to sing to me.
I laugh. “Thank you,” I say, taking a couple more steps in and trying to spot the box I’m looking for. I see things that are my dad’s when I spot a box with wedding written on it.
“What exciting things are you doing today?” she asks as I stop in front of the box.
“Right now, I’m”—I look around the attic—“in my parents’ attic, looking for a picture from their wedding day so I can get it painted to match the other portrait.”
“I love looking at old photos. Okay, I have to go, but I just wanted to make sure I called you and told you I love you.”
“Love you more,” I tell her. “And tell Lucy I got her birthday video this morning, and it’s the best video I’ve ever gotten in my whole life.”
“She wanted to call you this morning first thing when she looked at the calendar on the fridge, but I pushed her off by filming her singing to you. She’ll force me to call you tonight.” She laughs. “I’ll speak to you then.”
“I can’t wait.” I smile, thinking of Lucy, her stepdaughter, and the infectious happiness she brings into your life with just one conversation. “I’ll talk to you then.”
I hang up, putting the phone back in my pocket, when I get on my knees and pull open the brown box. The white book on the top has my mother’s and father’s names, Marian and Joseph, on the cover in elegant cursive writing in the middle.
I smile, taking it out and opening to the first page, where my mother’s writing appears. She wrote their names and the wedding date as if they would forget such a momentous occasion like that. I flip the page and start reading the well-wishes people had written. Some are just the names; others are advice for a marriage. I laugh out loud when I see one of my uncles wrote, “If she asks you what twice, don’t repeat it the third time.”
I close the book and put it beside me on the floor, taking the newspaper from that day with their wedding announcement in it and placing it on the other side of me. I grab the next item in the box, a white envelope. I open the flap, seeing it’s little flower petals. Putting it aside, I grab the brown envelope under it that has wedding vows written on the top. I put it with the newspaper article before I go back and see the photo album and mumble, “Yes.” I pick it up and spot a gray lockbox under it. I pick up the silver handle, and it weighs almost nothing. I look and see it needs a key and wonder why the fuck it would be in this box. Putting it aside, I open the photo album, taking out the picture I was looking for. It’s the one where she’s facing the camera, but my father is looking at her. The expression on his face is between he’s the luckiest guy in the world and he would die for her. It was always one of my favorite pictures. She always took it out of the album when I was younger, and we would flip through it. I place everything back in the box except for the newspaper clipping, their vows, and the gray metal box. I hold everything in one hand as I grasp the ladder with the other.
I walk down the steps to the kitchen and the drawer where my father keeps all the keys. The ring of keys has about twenty keys on it from the padlocks around the house to extra keys for the shed and then the pool house. There is even a couple for the garage door and the two side doors to the garage. I look on the key ring, searching for a small key. When I see it, I slide it in and turn it to the left before pulling the top up.
The first thing on the top is a newspaper article. I open the folded paper that was once white and is now tinted a soft yellow. “Hours-old Newborn Left on Fire Station Steps.” I gasp out as my eyes scan the article, putting it to the side. My heart speeds up faster than it should, as if my body knows something is about to happen, but my head doesn’t.
Two pictures are in the article. One is of a fireman squatting down in front of a cardboard box with a baby wrapped in a white blanket sleeping inside of it. The other is with a nurse in a rocking chair giving the same baby a bottle. I put it to the side, seeing two Polaroid pictures that must be the same baby in a wicker basket. I lay them down softly and only then do I see a white folded paper. I pick it up at the same time I hear the sound of car doors shutting. I look at the side door leading to the mudroom right off the garage.
Turning back, I’m about to unfold the paper when another Polaroid picture slips out and lands on the counter in front of me. It’s of my mother sitting in the same chair the nurse was sitting in, with the baby in her arms. The wicker basket sits on the hospital bed beside her as she looks down at the baby in the blanket. My hands tremble when I unfold the triple-folded white paper.
Both of my hands shake when I see the top of the paper. “Certificate of Adoption.”
I don’t know why it feels like the room is spinning around me like it does in movies. My eyes scan the paper when I see the name Jane Doe, and the birthday is today’s date, just twenty-five years ago. The gasp that comes out of my mouth echoes in the room. My hand goes to my mouth as I see teardrops falling onto the paper, not realizing they are coming from me. My eyes scan down to the next line where it says Birth Mother’s Name: Unknown and the same for birth father’s name.
I move down and see the line for the child’s name after adoption. There, in bold letters, is my name:
Sierra Rose Davidson.
I hear my mother’s and father’s voices coming into the mudroom. “You are going to tangle the balloons,” she scolds him as they walk into the room.
The smile on her face falls when her eyes go from me to the box. My father takes a step toward me. “Is this true?” I hold up the paper, my heart shattering in my chest, making it hard for me to catch my breath. “Tell me.” My voice rises. “Is this paper true?”
Forgotten Dreams