Beulah smiled at me. Not her bright happy smile. A smile that was reassuring and she placed her hand on my face. “She can’t make me stop loving you.”

God, I hoped so.

We walked inside and found Portia in the great room. She had a shoebox on the table and a glass with at least two shots of bourbon in it.

She turned to us and took a drink. “You both need to sit. A drink could also help.”

We didn’t take a drink or sit.

“Just tell us. Get this shit over with,” I said, my anxiety still clawing at me.

She raised her eyebrows as if she didn’t appreciate my speaking to her that way, then reached down into the box and took out a folded piece of paper. I watched her as she walked over to me and handed it to me. I stared at it as she held it out for me to take.

“Look at it. Then I’ll explain.”

Reluctantly, I took the paper and unfolded a birth certificate.

Reading, my first question was why did my mother have Heidi’s birth certificate? But the sickness that grabbed me after I read Portia Edwards name as the mother almost knocked me to my knees.

I shook my head and moved away from her. “No. This, this isn’t real.” My world was spinning. So many questions I didn’t want answers to. This was worse. Worse than my fears earlier.

“I was young and engaged to your father. I’d lived in a small two-bedroom home that didn’t even have central heating and air. My parents were strict, religious people, and I hated the world I’d grown up in. Luckily, I had beauty. I used my beauty to get away from it all. I was about to have my fairy tale. The life I wanted. When a man that I considered an uncle, a deacon in the church, someone that everyone admired, raped me. I had been sent to take him a meal from my mother. She said he’d been feeling sick and she wanted to do the Christian thing, and send over a meal. I wanted my sister to take it but she was sick as well. She had been throwing up that week. No one knew why. Not yet.

“I took the meal, he wasn’t sick. He was drunk and a big man. He was over sixty years old, but he was tall and kept in shape. He said things to me. Tried to get me to have sex with him willingly. I tried to fight him, to leave, but in the end, he won. I told no one.”

“Two days later, my sister found out that her sickness was morning sickness. She was pregnant by the best-looking guy in town. He rode a motorcycle, lived for the moment, but he was going nowhere in life. My sister had fallen in love with him. He left town the moment she told him. My parents were going to send her away to have the baby then force her to give it up for adoption. Two days later, my sister was gone, leaving only a note apologizing. It was a scandal. One I hated her for.” Portia stopped for a moment, thinking.

“Our family was now the talk of the town and I was sure I’d lose my fairy tale. I didn’t though. He still wanted me. He didn’t care about my sister or my religious, insane parents. We were engaged, and it wasn’t until I was gaining weight I shouldn’t have been that I realized I was pregnant. I thought it was ours. We’d been having sex for a while. We rushed the wedding and didn’t tell anyone about the pregnancy. We went to Paris instead. I finished my pregnancy there. Away from his friends and our world. We’d return home after some time had passed, and take our baby with us. But she . . . wasn’t okay. She had Trisomy 21, also known as Down syndrome.”

“No!” Beulah’s loud outcry sliced through me. She was backing away shaking her head. “That’s . . . No!” she pointed at the birth certificate in my hand. “That is not Heidi. No. That is not Heidi’s.”

My mother looked at her then. Pity was in her eyes. She was destroying Beulah and that was all she felt. Pity.

“We couldn’t keep a child like that. I was young. We had society and this life to live. Travel, and well . . . she would be impossible. We discussed putting her in a home. But I couldn’t. She was a baby. She needed a mother. So, I found the mother I knew would love her. Care for her. Take care of her. Treat her like she was her own. I found my sister.

Slowly, that one word took my heart and shattered it while disbelief and despair consumed me.

Sister.

“Pamela was my sister. She was younger than me. More beautiful than me, but she’d had eyes for the worst boy in town. She’d thought she could save him. She had been saving animals and nursing them our entire life. It was her way. I found her and her infant daughter in a trailer park living in poverty in Alabama. I gave her my daughter and two hundred thousand dollars. Then I walked away and never contacted her again. That was nineteen years ago.”

This desperation was a nightmare that I’d wake up from any moment was all I could think right then.

“You left her. How could you leave her?” Beulah said in a whisper.

Portia took the remaining items from the box. A hospital bracelet, photos and a few letters. “Pamela still sent me letters with photos over the years. I never responded. But I kept them. You’re welcome to read them.”

Beulah stared down at the items in her hand, and I wanted to grab her and run. We should have gone to California. We should have left.

Beulah shook her head, and then backed away as if Portia were dangerous.

“I can’t. I can’t be here.” She shook her head again and started to leave.

“He’s your first cousin. I didn’t want to tell you, but y’all forced my hand by doing whatever it was you did. I’m not sorry for what I did. I’d have never been the mother Pam was. Never. Heidi had a better life with her.”

Beulah stopped, and without looking back she replied. “I agree. She escaped life with a monster, and got to live with an angel instead. You’re a horrible, horrible woman.”

Then Beulah walked away.

I watched her go.

“You can’t love her that way. It’s incest. Disgusting.”

I was too broken to respond.

I followed her, my entire body and mind numb knowing that the small joy I had was gone. Any hope I had was gone.

“Beulah,” I called out and she paused. “We can run away.”

She faced me then. Tears streaming down her face. “You can’t run from this. It’s ours to face,” she let out a short sob. “Goodbye, Jasper.”

My soul went with her as she turned and left.