Chapter 125 Casey cries

Chapter 125 Casey cries
Casey's POV

I remained in the chair long after Michael finished speaking. I could hear him breathing across the desk and I could hear the faint hum of the air conditioner and I could hear traffic outside the window but none of it seemed real.

The only thing that existed was the sentence repeating inside my head.

They believed their daughter was dead.

I closed my eyes. For twenty-two years, I'd carried a completely different belief. My parents were dead and they had never known me. They had never held me and they had never watched me grow. They had never had the chance to love me. I'd accepted that because there had been nothing else to accept but now Michael was telling me that somewhere in this world, two people had spent twenty-two years grieving the same child I'd spent twenty-two years wondering about.

My breath caught. "How?" Michael didn't pretend to understand what I meant. "How did this happen?"

"I don't have every answer yet." He replied.

"But someone knows." I said.

"I'm certain someone does." 

I stared at him. "Rita?" He didn't answer immediately and that was answer enough to make my stomach twist. "You think she knows?"

"I think we need to find out exactly what happened before we accuse anyone."

I nodded slowly. That was fair but there was another question I couldn't push away. "Why would she adopt me?"

Michael's expression softened. "I don't know."

I gave a small, broken laugh. "That's the question I've been asking my entire life." I looked down at my hands. "I used to think maybe I was difficult."

Michael's brows drew together.

"I thought maybe they didn't like me because I wasn't their biological child." My voice trembled. "Then I thought maybe I reminded them of my birth parents." I swallowed. "But if they knew who my parents were..." I stopped.

The thought was too painful to finish.

Michael leaned forward slightly. "Casey, none of what happened to you was because there was something wrong with you."

I looked at him. "You don't know that."

"I know enough."

"No." I shook my head. "You don't know what it was like."

He didn't argue and that made it easier to continue. "I spent twenty-two years wondering what I did." My eyes burned. "Why Rita hated me. Why Loki barely looked at me. Why Rebecca treated me like I was something disgusting that had somehow been brought into their house."

My voice became smaller. "I thought maybe I wasn't good enough."

Michael's expression tightened. "You were a child."

"I know that now." I looked away. "But when you're a child, you don't think like that."

I remembered sitting alone at the dinner table watching everyone else eat. Learning not to ask for seconds and learning not to ask for anything and learning that sometimes it was safer to stay quiet. "I thought if I behaved better, they'd love me."

A tear finally slipped down my cheek. "So I tried." I wiped it away. "I tried so hard."

Michael remained silent.

"I cleaned and I studied. I stayed out of the way and I stopped asking questions." My voice broke. "None of it changed anything."

I looked at him. "And I still thought it was my fault."

Michael's eyes filled with emotion. "Casey..."

"I know it wasn't." I shook my head. "At least, I think I know that now." I laughed softly through the tears. "But hearing that my biological parents are alive..." I pressed my palm against my chest. "It makes me wonder how different everything could have been."

Michael didn't answer because he didn't need to. I wondered too. Would I have grown up differently? Would I have been loved? Would I have known what it felt like to have a mother who wanted me? Would my father have taught me how to ride a bicycle? Would my mother have been there when I had my first heartbreak? Would someone have noticed when I went hungry?

The questions came faster than I could stop them and every one of them hurt.

I covered my face. "I don't know what I'm supposed to feel."

Michael's voice was gentle. "You don't have to decide today."

I lowered my hands. "Are they angry?"

"At you?"

I nodded.

"Why would they be?"

"Because I didn't look for them."

Michael shook his head immediately. "They know you believed they were dead."

I stared at him. "So they don't blame me?"

"No."

Something inside my chest loosened only slightly but enough to breathe. "What do they know about me?"

"Not much yet."

I looked down. "Do they know my name?"

"They know you're Casey."

I gave a small nod. "Do they know I was adopted?"

"Yes."

"Do they know who raised me?"

Michael hesitated. "They know the basics."

I didn't ask anything more. There were too many emotions tangled together already. I wasn't ready to imagine what Alexander and Victoria might think when they learned about my childhood. Maybe that was a conversation for another day. If there was another day.

I looked at the white envelope on the desk. "What is that?"

Michael followed my gaze. "The official result."

My stomach twisted again. "You have a copy?"

"I do." He picked it up and for a moment, he held it between us and then he slid it across the desk. I stared at it but I didn't touch it.

"Do I have to read it?"

"No." I looked at him.  "You can take it with you."

My fingers slowly reached for the paper. The page was surprisingly light almost weightless, yet holding it felt like carrying my entire life. I looked at the names.

Alexander Sterling.

Victoria Sterling.

My biological parents. I had never seen those names connected to me before. I'd heard of them, I'd heard about the Sterling family but never like this. Not as strangers and not as people who belonged somewhere far away.

As my parents.

My vision blurred and I whispered, "That's them."

Michael nodded. "Yes."

I traced the edge of the paper with my fingertip. "They have names."

A sad smile touched his face. "Yes."

"I know that sounds stupid."

"It doesn't."

I shook my head. "I've spent my whole life calling them Mom and Dad in my head without knowing who they were." My voice cracked. "Now I know." I looked at the names again. "And they're real."

Michael nodded. "They're very real."

I swallowed. "Do they want to meet me?" I asked again although he already told me they did.

"Yes." The answer came so quickly that I looked up.

"How do you know?" I asked him again. I wanted to make sure they wanted to meet me.

"Because they've been waiting twenty-two years to know what happened to their daughter."

I looked away and the tears came harder now. I tried to stop them but I couldn't. "I don't know if I can meet them."

"You don't have to today."

"What if I don't know what to say?" I asked.

"You don't have to say anything."

"What if they hug me?"

Michael gave me a small smile. "You can decide whether you want them to."

I laughed weakly. "I don't even know if I want to be hugged."

"Then don't."

I looked at him. "You're really not going to tell me what I should do?"

"No."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because you've had enough people deciding things for you."

The words hit me harder than he probably intended. I looked down at the report. He was right because for most of my life, other people had decided what I was allowed to know. Where I belonged. What questions I could ask. What answers I received.

Now I had a choice and it terrified me but it also felt strangely powerful. I folded the report carefully. "I need time."

"You can have it."

"I don't want to meet them yet." I wasn’t sure why I didn’t want to meet them yet. Maybe it was fear. 

"Then you won't."

I nodded. "But..." I hesitated. "Maybe eventually."

Michael smiled gently. "Whenever you're ready."

I stood slowly but my legs felt weak as I held the report against my chest. Before reaching the door, I stopped. "Michael?"

"Yes?"

I turned around. "If they really loved me..." My voice cracked. "...why did I spend twenty-two years thinking nobody wanted me?"

Michael looked at me for a long moment and then he stood. "Because someone made sure you believed that."

My heart stopped. He didn't elaborate. Maybe he couldn't or maybe he didn't know but suddenly, the question that had haunted me since childhood didn't feel quite the same.

Why didn't they want me?

Maybe that had never been the truth. Maybe the truth was that someone had wanted to keep us apart. I opened the door and then I looked back at Michael. "All this time..." I swallowed hard. "I thought there was something wrong with me."

His voice was firm. "There was never anything wrong with you, Casey."

The tears finally fell freely and I nodded once and then I walked out. The hallway looked exactly as it had when I'd arrived, same walls and same lights and same people walking past but I wasn't the same woman who had entered that office.

I had spent twenty-two years believing I was the unwanted child of two dead people and now I knew they were alive. They had loved me and they had mourned me and somewhere in this city, my mother and father were waiting to meet the daughter they had believed they'd lost forever.

I stepped outside. The sunlight hit my face and I stood there without moving. I should have felt happy and maybe one day I would but right now, all I could think about was the little girl I'd been.

The little girl who had spent years wondering why she wasn't enough. Why the people who raised her hated her. Why she had been given away. Why nobody seemed to want her.

I closed my eyes and  tears slipped down my cheek. For the first time, I wanted to go back and tell that little girl something. Something I wished someone had told her twenty-two years ago.

It was never you.

And somehow, that realization hurt more than anything because if it wasn't me then someone else had taken twenty-two years from all of us.