My Fiancé and Brothers Left Me at the Altar for My Adopted Sister novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: Dad's Letters

Nobody said anything for several seconds.

Then Kent laughed, a short, ugly bark of a laugh.

"Her brother? She's an only child. Her mother died when she was twelve."

"Her mother died when she was twelve," Rafe said. "Mine too."

"That's absurd."

"I was twenty-three." Rafe's voice stayed level.

"The county wouldn't give me guardianship."

"I'd had a fight at nineteen and a record that went with it. I didn't have a house."

"They put her with a family who had a spare room."

He looked at me.

"Your father was on the board that placed her."

I felt the floor tilt.

"My father fostered her," I said. "He told us a friend had asked him."

"He told me he was her friend," Rafe said. "The first year he wrote me every month."

"No," said Victoria.

It came out small and flat.

"No, that's not true."

"Vic."

"You're lying. You're a stalker, you've been following me for years, you've made all of it up."

Rafe reached into his back pocket.

It was a worn leather wallet, and from the fold behind his license he drew a photograph, soft with handling.

He held it out to me, because I was the nearest.

It was the picture from the porch swing.

A skinny boy of thirteen with dark hair and a stern face, and a blond girl of about two sitting in his lap, squinting at the sun.

On the back, in faded pencil, someone had written "Rafe and Vicky, 2004."

I turned it over twice.

"I taught her to ride a bike in the lot behind our building," Rafe said. "She was twelve when the county took her, and by then she was sure I was the one who had let them."

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