Adopted.

My breath was stuck in my throat.

Adopted? But…I couldn’t be.

My eyes raked my so called parents’ faces.

No…I won’t believe it.

She pulls out a birth certificate…without her name on it.

Oh God…

My ability to speak joined me once again as I muttered the words, “But…I can’t be.”
Her eyes were slightly teary as I looked up into them. Her voice didn’t come out but she spoke the words I’m sorry with her eyes.
I didn’t know what happened next. But I remember finding myself in my room a few minutes later, tears streaking my face. My body was huddled in the corner with my arms around my knees and the door was locked behind me. I crawled over to my bed and threw myself on the pillow. The sobs that escaped my mouth were my lullaby that night.

~

“Mary Beth?”

Her voice was quiet from the other side of my bedroom door. Sunlight hit my eyes as I pried them open, remembering what happened. A tear rolled down my cheek.

“I know you don’t want to talk but we didn’t get the chance to tell you something last night.”

Like what? I thought. I’m a princess too? Oh yeah, that’d be icing on the cake.
Reluctantly, I pulled my slender frame out of bed to open the door.

“What?” I said bitterly. I really wasn’t in the mood to talk to the woman who I thought was my mother for a whole eighteen years. Her eyes took in my tear stained face. Her hand reached out to wipe them away like when I was little. I slapped her hand away.

She got the messege and pulled her hand back. “They want you back.”

~

The taxi driver stopped in front of a nicely sized house. It was about two floors, maybe three if there was a basement or attic, with a yard that had shrubbery surrounding it like a fence. A two-door garage was at the end of the driveway that I was now standing in with my bags. A BMW was visible through the open garage door.
My feet carried my body to the door and my finger pressed against the doorbell. I waited nervously for someone to answer. My waiting was cut short thankfully by a woman of the same stature of myself.
Her light brown hair was tied up into a ponytail and she was dressed in jeans and a flowery shirt. Her eyes raked me before she said,

“Mary?”

“Mary Beth,” I mumbled, my shoes catching my attention.

Her excited squeal caused me to look up. Her smile was across her face like a crescent moon. She turned back into the house to call to, I guessed, the rest of her family because soon there were four more people in front of me.
She introduced the middle-aged man as her husband, Mike; the little girl with flaming red hair was Tanya, her daughter; the toddler boy with a dinosaur shirt on was Peter; and she introduced the last person to me as Nathan.
He was the one who caught my attention. Brown hair fell around his round face. His eyes were a deep green, framed with those long lashes girls would kill for but guys always seem to have. His cheeks were dotted with just enough freckles to bring out his eyes and his lips were thin but looked like they would feel like heaven under someone else's.
His eyes held curiosity and a gleam I saw in my best friend’s eyes when she met her boyfriend of two years.
Wait—did she just say he was my brother?