Books by Becky Wade
My Stubborn Heart
THE PORTER FAMILY NOVELS
Undeniably Yours
Meant to Be Mine
A Love Like Ours
Her One and Only
A BRADFORD SISTERS ROMANCE
True to You
Falling for You
Sweet on You
A MISTY RIVER ROMANCE
Stay with Me
Let It Be Me
© 2021 by Rebecca C. Wade
Published by Bethany House Publishers
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
www.bethanyhouse.com
Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan
www.bakerpublishinggroup.com
Ebook edition created 2021
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4934-2522-8
Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. ESV Text Edition: 2016
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover design by Jennifer Parker
Cover photography by Aimee Christenson
Author represented by Linda Kruger
For the Lord God Almighty.
You have faithfully called and equipped me
to write year after year. Thank you for allowing me,
with each novel, a fresh chance to “fix my eyes
on the author and perfecter of my faith.”
Partnering with you in this work
has been one of the greatest joys
and privileges of my life.
Contents
Cover
Half Title Page
Books by Becky Wade
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
Discussion Questions
About the Author
Back Ads
Back Cover
CHAPTER ONE
Mom and Dad are not my biological parents.
Leah Joanna Montgomery blinked slowly, then squinted at the DNA test results displayed on her computer screen, straining to digest the information displayed there. But no. She couldn’t digest it. The very fast brain she’d relied on all her life was currently sitting in the corner, immobilized by shock, sucking its thumb.
Mom and Dad are not my parents? A metaphorical ghost reached past her skin and squeezed her organs in a cold, tight fist.
How could Mom and Dad not be her parents? She was twenty-eight years old, and this was the first time that any entity, human or computer, had given her a reason to think that they weren’t—
“Do we have any snacks?”
Leah startled at the question and jerked her head up. Her seventeen-year-old brother, Dylan, had made an unusual excursion from his room and was standing very near the dining room table where she sat.
“Earth to Leah.” It was what he said every time he discovered that she’d gotten lost in her own mind.
Subtly, she angled her laptop’s screen away from him. She typically got lost in her own mind while navigating labyrinths of pure math. This was the first time she’d become lost in the rubble of a genealogical bomb. “Snacks?” She was finding it hard to switch from a life-altering revelation to the mundanity of food.
“Do we have any?” He’d dressed his six-foot-tall, thin, slouch-shouldered body in a Misty River High Football T-shirt and narrow joggers that hugged his calves. He had a mop of artful brown curls, expressive eyebrows, big and dark Bambi eyes, and a pale complexion. He resembled a poet who specialized in morose verse.
“We have whatever snacks are in the pantry,” she said.
“Oh,” he responded, as if this had not occurred to him. “Do we have Cheez-Its?”
“I think so.”
Scintillating conversation concluded, he slunk toward the kitchen.
Almost cautiously, Leah looked around herself. If Mom and Dad weren’t her parents, then could she trust these walls not to melt? The roof not to vanish? Another dimension not to suck her away?
“Father God,” she whispered, those simple words asking for things she couldn’t even name.
She gazed out the expanse of windows on the front side of her rectangular box of a home. The large panes of glass overlooked a steep, wooded valley with a creek at its base. On this seventh day of May, the crisp, vivid green of the trees blanketing the north Georgia Blue Ridge Mountains contrasted with the cheerful orange azaleas blooming in her front planting bed. She’d painted the interior walls of the house a calming off-white and stained the wood floor ashy beige. No clutter marred her simple mid-century modern furniture.
Her Friday afternoon had been following an entirely predictable routine. She worked as a math teacher at Misty River High, where Dylan was finishing up his junior year. They’d both returned home from school less than thirty minutes ago. She’d cracked open her computer and spotted an email from YourHeritage.com with a subject line proclaiming Your DNA results are in! Discover your heritage!
A balloon of interest inflating within her, she’d logged onto the YourHeritage site and clicked the button to reveal the results of the saliva sample she’d mailed in six weeks before.
Then she’d been walloped with the information that she was not biologically related to her mom or her dad. And her ordinary Friday had jumped its track and careened into a gorge.
“Where are the Cheez-Its?” Dylan called.
Leah joined him in front of the pantry. “I never fail to marvel over your assumption that my two X chromosomes function as GPS locational devices for household items.” She plucked out the Cheez-Its and handed them to him.
“But they do.” He held up the box. “See?” Popping the top, he made for his room.
“Nope,” she said. “That box can’t migrate to your room.”
His sigh was so melodramatic that it would have been comedic had an adult attempted it. He leaned against their small square breakfast table and rattled Cheez-Its into his mouth.
Leah didn’t let him eat in his room because she didn’t want mess. But much more than that, if she let him eat in his room, he’d never come out. She’d have no one to socialize with except Han Solo . . . in her daydreams.
“What’s for dinner?”
