Free Awakening (Children of Angels) by Jessica Gibson Page B

to the questioning faces of her parents.
    “ That ’ s true, it does also mean ‘ my ’ in Italian. I suppose in a way we were honouring your birth mother in that way too. You are hers , but at the same time, you are very much our longed for daughter ” smiled her mother.

    Mia nodded slowly, digesting this. Oddly, it helped to know that her adoptive parents had not been the ones who had named her. She felt as though a small piece of the puzzle that was the very beginning of her life had fallen neatly into place. She was Mia, and she always had been. It was as good a starting point as any, and having just that one little answer and piece of knowledge helped her to know this was not a complete wild goose chase. There was information out there, there were things she could learn about herself. She only hoped that she would not find out anything worse than she already had.

    There was nothing else in the box, and nothing else her parents could tell her. She scrutinized all of the newspaper clippings, paying particularly close attention to the pictures, for any signs of the boy lurking in the background, but no - he was gone. Or more likely had never been there in the first place, her mind had simply played tricks on her. She wished she could shake off the memory of that ridiculous dream, and in truth was beginning to fear for her sanity. Seeing that woman everywhere was starting to freak her out, and now she was seeing the Dream Boy in old photographs? It did not look good, and if someone had told her they were experiencing things like this, she would have likely directed them to the nearest mental health care facility.

    Something was still bothering her though, something at the back of her mind. Something the woman had said. Or was it something her mother had said? Or was it both? That night, she took a long time to fall asleep, after seemingly endless hours of semi-awkward silence and small talk with her parents which, for some reason, tonight felt forced and artificial. It never usually bothered any of them to be sitting in silence, but tonight it seemed as though everyone felt they ought to make a special effort to chat about “normal” things, the way they might do on any other night. As she slipped into a restless and dreamless sleep, she was grateful on some semi-conscious level, to just have silence and not have to think any more.

    CHAPTER EIGHT

    T he night ’ s sleep, although broken and restless, seemed to allow her mind time to work through the details and process the information she had. The moment she awoke in the morning, she instantly sat upright and realized what had been bothering her the night before, as she tried to drift off to sleep. Of all things, it had been the note. She had known about the note, before she had seen it – even though it wasn't mentioned in the articles. Why that thought had not occurred to her the previous night, she didn‘t know. Now, she could scarcely think of anything else. How had she known?

    She snatched up the clippings from where she had left them the night before, on her bedside lamp table. Had she seen them before? Did they mention the note after all? Maybe she had seen them when she was younger, and just forgotten? She felt no jolt of recognition beyond knowing she had looked at these the night before. She instead began to study the tiny fragments of other stories in the parts of the clippings surrounding her story. These she had not looked at last night, so if they seemed familiar, then she must have seen these clippings before. But she did not recognize any of them, or the smiling half-face of a man whose story was adjacent to her own in one clipping. At any rate, there was no mention of a note.

    Someone must have told her then, or else how could she have known? And if not her parents, then who ? “Leonara” her mind whispered to her, but again she tried to squash that thought back down. It was not possible. Her resolve was wavering though, her logical mind was