Only $5.95 Dean Wexler has
always felt as if he never belonged. When his father tells him that he is
adopted on his eighteenth birthday, his life takes a turn that he never
expected. Nine years later, he is polished and successful, but no closer
to finding his biological family. Jessica Shizuoka
has settled for an unhappy life, one that stifles all of her most
treasured dreams. When her world collides with Dean’s, she dares to
imagine something more than the unchallenging path she has followed for
too long. Meredith Dias
takes you on an emotional journey of prejudice and acceptance, rejection
and love, and a connection between two people that defies explanation. Excerpt from Prologue“You’re not my son.” His words slurred together, forming such an unintelligible amalgam of sound that I nearly missed them entirely. Later, I would alternately wish I had never heard them and be immensely grateful that he finally spoke them. It was a moment simultaneously catastrophic and liberating, the most devastating vindication fathomable for the years of abuse I had endured.
He sat there in his armchair, his eyes following the closing credits of a sitcom lazily as he detonated the grenade that would bring more fallout to my life than I could have possibly anticipated on that day, my eighteenth birthday. “What are you talking about?” I demanded, my mind detecting a lie while my heart sank intuitively. “A-dop-ted,” he enunciated, strangely lucid despite his drunken stupor. “You were adopted, Dean Wexler.” He chuckled. “‘Wexler’ isn’t even your real name. Ask the Howe orphanage...they might know something.” I pushed a hand through my hair, desperate to detect some telltale genetic sign in his face that this was a twisted, alcohol-induced lie. Back then, I hadn’t known the omnipotence of alcohol as a truth serum, and I found my eyes studying him frantically for some sort of resemblance between us. It was the first time I had scrutinized him this way, and the first time I realized that I bore no resemblance to him whatsoever. “You’re a liar.” My wavering voice betrayed my total lack of conviction. “You go and ask that mother of yours. If your brother could answer you, you could ask him and he’d tell you the same. You’re not part of this family.” I stumbled backward. “When I go to Mom and she exposes you for the filthy liar you are, I hope that she finally has the courage to leave you, you heartless shell of a human being.” An inopportune laugh track erupted from the television as I tried to make sense of what he had just told me. He stood unsteadily, but summoned enough fortitude and presence of mind to slap me soundly across the face. “You ungrateful little parasite,” he said coldly, his pores opening up and releasing the nauseating stench of unchecked alcoholism. “You were nothing to your real mother, and you are nothing to me.” I resisted the urge to touch my stinging face, though I could feel a small stream of blood begin to trickle from my nose. Instead, I walked away from him and waited for my mother to return from her second shift at the factory. That night, she confirmed gently what my father had disclosed so harshly, averting her eyes skillfully from the fresh bruise on my face. Had she acted out of love then, had she forsaken my so-called father for hitting me or at least acknowledged my pain, I might have stayed. However, she acted as she always did, siding with him over me and using the alcohol as an excuse for whatever terror he unleashed on our lives. I knew then that I had never belonged to her, either. That night, I tucked some clothing and perishable food items into a suitcase and said goodbye only to my younger brother, Hugh, whose severe mental retardation prevented him from understanding me. I never returned to that house, but it had left a permanent, debilitating scar on my psyche. I contacted my mother once shortly after I left, asking her to send all of my legal documents to a rented post office box. Over time, I forgot the ugly, two-toned brown carpet and peeling, yellowing wallpaper, but I never forgot the way my so-called parents—who had, I assume, chosen me as a baby—turned me away that night, my mother with her silence and my father with his violence. I never forgot the newfound knowledge that I had never belonged, that the reason Hugh had always received all of their love and attention was not only his disability, but also because he was their real son. Later, despite everything that happened to me in the wake of truth revealed, I would ultimately be grateful that he told me. Not only did it propel me to leave a lifetime of pain behind that night, but it meant that none of his vitriol, his drunkenness, or his complete inability to love coursed through my own veins. At that point, however, I was little more than numb, my fingers barely feeling the cotton fibers of my clothing as I crammed as many articles as possible into a suitcase. I had never been loved. As
I shut the front door behind me, without so much as a plan in my head or a
family to turn to, I simultaneously opened the door to the world of pain
that faced a boy who had never belonged anywhere.
Chapter
One Nine
Years Later… I sat back in my squeaking, shiny leather office chair and stared blankly at my computer screen for a long time. Jensen, our resident computer technician, had just set up my E-mail and connected me to the company server. As the door closed behind him on his way out, the sudden silence was jarring. I conjured up a few abortive yawns to pop my eardrums, responding to a visceral instinct to clear my ears of whatever might be obstructing them, but there was nothing obstructing my hearing. All of the distracting office noise was a thing of the past now that I occupied one of the most coveted offices in the building, on the periphery of the executive wing. I swiveled around in my chair to face the window and twisted the cord of the white, dust-free Venetian blinds. The late afternoon sunlight filtered into the office. My office. At the age of twenty-seven, I had just become the youngest marketing director ever to represent the Bergman, Jenner, & Briggs firm. My factory uniforms of yore were replaced with expensive suits; my shaggy, dirty blond hair was now short, sculpted, and gelled; and my non-prescription, discount store glasses had been replaced by an optometrist. These concessions on my part, these deliberate misrepresentations of the scrappy underling who lurked beneath, were all a necessary evil, a means to my end. They were living, breathing proof that my father had been wrong about me. I wasn’t a smart aleck. I was smart, smart enough to recognize him for the abusive ruin he had become, smart enough to extricate myself from that toxic house, and smart enough to make a life for myself. When I was certain that I would not be interrupted, I opened my E-mail and found exactly what I was seeking: a response from the private investigator I had contacted the night I had won the promotion: To:
“Dean Wexler” From:
Ernest Lawlor, Private Investigator, The Grand Inquisitor, Inc. Subject:
Re: Investigation Query Dear
Mr. Wexler: I
have reviewed your request and will accept your case. Payment will be due
upon the discovery of your biological mother (or other close
consanguineous relative). Please fill out the attached forms and return
them to me as soon as possible so that the investigation can begin in a
timely manner. Please
note that, in many cases, the biological parent does not want to reinstate
contact with a child, and that our firm is not responsible for any ensuing
distress. Thank
you very much for choosing The Grand Inquisitor to pursue your case. We
will do our best to find the person(s) in question. Sincerely, Ernest
Lawlor, P.I. I stared at my reflection for a moment on the polished, mahogany surface of my desk. Whose blue eyes were these? Whose sandy-colored hair? Whose square jawbone? Was I really ready to find out? My cursor hovered over the link to the PDF file, which contained the contract and informational questionnaires. Opening the file would mean opening a veritable Pandora’s box, and who was to say what I might find? My biological parents might just be worse than the ones who raised me. They might have died. Or they might have been two people who never encountered one another again after the night they made me, two people who wanted nothing to do with me. Was I prepared for the possibility that I might just be perennially unwanted? Still, I knew that there was no turning back now; it was time to finish what I had started nine years ago, the night I had walked out on my adoptive parents. Without giving it another thought, I printed out the attached file and spent the rest of the afternoon filling in what limited knowledge I had of myself. My hand shook as, line by line, I realized how little I knew about my own identity and how difficult it would be for me to find my mother based on next to nothing. Still, I scrawled my signature onto the contract and hoped for the best. It was the culmination of eight long years of carving out a niche for myself in a world that felt both foreign and unaccepting. After
leaving my parents’ house, I had moved into a cheap motel one state
over, in western During my first year away from home, which I spent working as a machine operator at a local cookware factory, my anger at my adoptive parents dissolved into a sense of fervent purpose. Even though I mattered to no one, I was going to make something of myself. I was going to be as successful as my father was abusive, as respected as my mother was weak. I knew what I wanted to do: I wanted to go to school. I wanted to gain the credentials necessary to land a prestigious career, one that would pay enough to hire the detective I would need to find my biological family and, subsequently, make them respect me in all the ways my adoptive family hadn’t. Somewhere out there, the woman who had given birth to me might still wonder about me, and I wanted her to be proud of me when I finally found her. In my youthful idealism, I imagined the warm reunion that we would share, the family I would gain. My
foray into the academic world began with a two-year stint at the local
community college, where I earned my associate’s degree in business
while working at the factory. Thanks to my 4.0 grade point average and my
weekend involvement in the campus chapter of Habitat for Humanity, I
earned a scholarship worth 75% of the cost of tuition, room, and board at However, even if I was the quintessential self-made man, I didn’t feel particularly special. I had worked hard. I knew what I needed to do to travel from square one to the cushy office I now called home. Sure, the Herculean effort left little time for forging actual connections with people, but how could I mourn something that had never been mine in the first place? There was a knock at the door, and I called, “Come in.” It was quite the victorious feeling to have a swinging wooden barrier keeping out intruders and annoying coworkers alike (though, often, they were one and the same). My only connection to the outside world was an interior window, which came complete with a set of blinds for privacy. Brian, one of our interns, entered the office timidly. “I have three copies of the Arcana contract for you to sign. They have to go out with the express mail in 20 minutes.” I minimized the window containing the life-altering E-mail and reached for a pen. As always, I felt like a fraud as I signed a name that was legally mine, but not at all my own. Ever since I had learned the truth, my signature had taken on a tiny wobble, imperceptible to most, but still evidence of my total lack of conviction about who I was. “Thanks,” Brian said quietly, checking off that I had signed the contracts on his contract log. He paused at the door, and then looked up at me with uncharacteristic boldness. “How did you do it?” I looked up at him. “Do what?” He hesitated. “You’re twenty-seven years old. It takes most people a decade to get where you are. I’m twenty-one, and I feel like I’m going to be pushing paper for the rest of my life.” I
was glad for the distraction from my workload, which would probably keep
me locked in my new office long after the sun set over the “I worked hard, honestly. More than hard—I guess you could say I sold my life to it. I didn’t have anything to lose, so I was willing to work the crazy hours and handle the clients that no one else wanted to deal with.” I admired his courage, and almost told him so, but he had already plunged into his next question. “Do you think it was worth it?” I thought of the hefty paycheck that direct-deposited into my checking account every week, of the life I had made for myself with no help whatsoever. If I were a different man, one who was innately materialistic or proud, I might have valued these things more, valued myself more. However, as I weighed his question carefully, I realized that I didn’t know the answer. I thought of my friends, most of who were either married or embroiled in serious relationships. One of them had had his first child last year. That was what I had sacrificed to attain the life I had now. The question was, was it worth it? Nine years of my life to prove my adopted father wrong and chase the specter of a family that may or may not exist? Dreaming of the family that might await me was my one vice, my one boyish indulgence. In fact, it might just have been the only real thing in my entire life. “Yes, it was worth it,” I finally answered, my chest seeming to cave in with the impact of what I suddenly knew to be a lie. “I knew that this was what I wanted to do for a long time and was prepared for the hard work necessary to get there.” Brian seemed to like that answer. I suppressed a sigh of relief as his hand touched the doorknob, but something about the look of acceptance on his face sent a chill down my spine. I said quietly, “Hey, Brian?” He turned. “Yeah?” “If you ever find someone, you’re going to have to make a choice: are you going to be married to her, or are you going to be married to this job? You’re probably going to fail miserably if you try to do both.” Order
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