I took over for Mom with the horse care and she was able to move on to fixing up the house and preparing to reopen the B and B. After a week, I’d called Heath to let him know I was staying in Anza for a while. He packed up my apartment for me. He was the best friend ever—but I also suspect that part of it had been done out of guilt for his part in what had happened between Adam and me.
My days fell into a mundane but comforting routine of waking up early, feeding the horses and cleaning out stalls, doing all the outside work, turning them out and exercising them during the cool hours of the morning.
Then, after a shower, I worked on the blog for several hours. Even with the crappy Internet connection on the ranch and my old box barely squeaking by, I still managed to put up some content every day.
But I was guarded in my posts. Much more guarded than before. I’d always been careful not to reveal geographical or personal information about myself but even so, whenever I sat down to write, I had the specter of Adam peering over my shoulder. I knew he was reading. Or maybe he no longer cared. Maybe he was too busy embarking on his new fulfilling relationship with “real woman” Lindsay.
Daily, my mom and I would congregate for lunch and swap stories, share news, both local and national, and grow closer than we’d been in a long time.
The hottest hours of the afternoon were for sitting next to the swamp cooler in the kitchen with my medical books around me, studying.
Yep. That was my exciting life in Anza, but I found myself, as the weeks passed and the date of my big test approached, feeling stronger, more self-sufficient and discovering new things about myself that I’d never explored before. I also found myself Googling alternatives for people with premed majors who didn’t go to medical school. They weren’t all bad—research, nursing, consulting—but they weren’t my dream. And I knew I was going to have to dig in deep to find the courage to take that damn test again and face another possible failure, or else say good-bye to my dream forever.
The most surprising thing was, out of the blue one night, I wrote a letter to the Biological Sperm Donor—Gerard, I corrected myself. From now on, I was going to refer to him by his name. I knew I’d never mail it. But I’d researched and found out more about him from the information that my mom had given me. I also tried to find anything I could about my three half siblings that were almost two decades older than me. I had one half-brother, Glen, who was thirteen years older than me and two half-sisters in their late thirties.
I wrote this letter to Gerard, my father, and in it I poured out all my grief at the loss of a parent I never knew. I resented him but I also wanted to know him. And at last I let myself admit that. I wanted it, but not enough. I wanted my hatred for him to melt away so I would be free. Because my entire life I’d seen those feelings as a fortress protecting me from potential hurts and damages. Instead of a fortress, they had been a cage, holding me back.
And maybe someday, somewhere along the line, I’d finally be able to open my heart to someone, once it had healed.
Heath came up the following weekend and stayed in his old room. He’d lived with us during the last three years of high school when his own parents had thrown him out after he came out to them.
We went out at certain times of the day to catch the light just right for his photos. It was during his sunset shoot that he broached the forbidden subject.
“You heard from Drake?” he asked casually as he pivoted his camera on its tripod to get a better angle of the homestead house and the three cabins all lined up nicely alongside it.
I shook my head, following his vantage point down the long slope of our drive.
“You haven’t logged in to the game in weeks. I keep looking for you. You going to quit?”
I shrugged. “There’re lots of games out there. I can play something he didn’t design.”
“It sucks that you are going to let him drive you away from a game that you love and all your online friends. I’ve gotten messages from both Persephone and FallenOne saying they were worried about you.”
My insides tightened and I swallowed. “Oh really? Fallen asked about me?”
“Yeah, couple nights ago. Said he was worried. Told him you were at your mom’s.”
“Shit,” I said, squeezing my eyes closed and turning away from him to rest my arms on the ranch fence that surrounded our property. “That’s all he told you? He didn’t tell you his name or anything like that?”
Heath hesitated. “Why would he? He’s never told us his real name.”
I clenched my teeth, staring toward the dying sun. “Yeah, he had a reason for that.”