Portia
Rafael can’t manage much distance yet, so Concetta helps us set up a blanket at the edge of the olive grove instead, close enough to the B the same notes I carried through book two without ever noticing what was sitting right in front of me the whole time.
The company was formed the same year Jayla and I were adopted.
I stare at the page, unable to breathe, unable to process the sudden possibility unfolding in front of me, sickening in its clarity, that my entire life since losing my birth parents might be connected to the very family that destroyed it in the first place.
“Dolcezza, talk to me.”
I can’t really.
…not yet.
I simply stare at the date on the page, my whole understanding of my own life quietly rewriting itself in real time.
Every FaceTime call, every holiday, every ordinary kindness my parents ever showed Jayla and me, replays behind my eyes, now with a different, uglier context attached to it, and I don’t know yet which version of my childhood was real.
The one I remember, or whatever this document is trying to tell me instead.
I have no idea how I’m supposed to face Mom and Dad.