Free Sister, Missing by Sophie McKenzie Page A

for any future conversations, just an attempt to offer some clarity. I hope you
     will understand.
    As you now know, you are not my biological daughter.
    I stopped reading. What? It couldn’t be true. Every cell in my body screamed out against the words on the page.
    Sam wasn’t my birth dad?
    How could that possibly be true? Everything I’d done two years ago to find Annie and Sam had been based on needing to know who my real parents were. And I had found them. It had
taken a flight to America and a bus ride through Vermont after which I’d been lied to, kidnapped and left for dead in a desolate, snow-laden forest . . . but I had found them. My birth mum
and dad.
    And now, my father . . . my second father was telling me he wasn’t my birth dad either ?
    Still barely able to take it in, I read on.
    I was unable to have my own children. Annie and I knew this three years into our marriage, after a year of trying for a baby and a series of fertility tests. The sperm
     donor did not legally have to give his name and Annie and I know nothing about him, other than that he was a medical student with colouring as close to mine as we could manage. We had to
     explain this to the police and the FBI, of course, when we were required to undergo DNA testing to prove we were your parents. It was easy to produce the sperm donor paperwork to show the true
     circumstances of your conception and those involved were extremely sympathetic. More than anything, we didn’t want to overload you with information when you were already having to adjust
     to us as your birth parents.
    I stopped reading again. Annie and Sam had lied over my DNA test? It felt like the world as I knew it had been turned on its head.
    Shelby’s father is another story. By now I imagine you girls will have confided in each other and she will know her heritage as you know yours. I know you will do
     your best to help her with the inevitable pain she will experience. Hers is a heavy burden to carry.
    Madison is still very young and I’m not sure she is ready to learn that she was conceived through the same sperm donor as you. Perhaps we could discuss that? I’m happy to give
     you any further information I can, though I have to stress the donor sperm we used was from an anonymous hospital source. He has no idea of your existence and we know nothing about him.
    Please believe that I could not love you more if you had been born from my blood. I hope you will feel able to talk to me and Annie about all this but, however you respond, we will always
     be your loving parents.
    Sam
    My mind reeled. This was too much . . . too overwhelming to cope with. I shoved the letter in my pocket. How could Sam and Annie have kept this huge piece of information from
me?
    Not just me. Shelby’s letter, lying unopened on the bed, caught my eye. I picked it up and glanced towards the bedroom opposite. I could hear her in there, banging drawers and cursing.
    I stared down at the envelope in my hand. If Sam couldn’t have his own kids and Madison and I were the product of a sperm donor then who on earth was Shelby’s dad?
    I know you will do your best to help her with the inevitable pain she will experience. Hers is a heavy burden to carry.
    Sam’s words careered around my head. The way things were between Shelby and me, I couldn’t see her asking for my help over anything.
    Which meant Shelby dealing with whatever was in this letter on her own.
    That wasn’t right.
    And it wasn’t what Sam wanted.
    No, if I was really going to help Shelby I needed to know what ‘heavy burden’ Sam had been talking about.
    I hesitated for only a second, then I took out Shelby’s letter.
    What I read shocked me to the core.

 
11
    The Boy
    I was so caught up in what I was reading that I didn’t hear Jam come into the room until he sat down on the other side of the bed.
    I looked up. ‘Oh, Jam.’
    ‘I haven’t found anything,’ he said. ‘What are you doing?’
    ‘You’re not going to