Free Fifteen Years by Kendra Norman-Bellamy

before. He wasn’t feeling so much like a monster anymore. That was how he’d felt for years knowing that he hadn’t loved Reeva the way a son should. Even still, the void was there. The same emptiness that he felt when he had no one rooting for him at his high school graduation, his college graduation, nor at his promotion dinner last night, was still there.
    Josiah gave his pastor a pitiful smile and pointed in the general area of where he knew the bishop’s leg rested behind the desk. “You think they make those things for families? If I could buy a prosthetic family, I would.”
    Bishop Lumpkin laughed, then said, “Give technology and medicine just a little longer, and who knows?
    Josiah laughed too. It felt good to laugh.
    “What about the Smiths? Are you still in contact with them? Did you form any real bonds there?”
    Josiah looked perturbed. “The Smiths?” How did he know about them?
    “Yes,” Bishop said. “You indicated a moment ago that you wish your mother would have left you with the Smiths. I assume that’s the surname of one of the families that took you in. Tell me about them.”
    Josiah must have been talking faster than his brain could keep up. He hadn’t realized he’d mentioned them, but it was apparent he had. “I stayed in a number of homes, but only for a few weeks or months at a time. It was different with the Smiths. I stayed with them from the time I was eight until the time I was fifteen.”
    “Were they the last ones you stayed with before going home for the final time?”
    Josiah nodded and stared off as he spoke. “I wasn’t the only one though. They kept quite a few foster kids, so I saw many come and go. But there were two—a special-needs boy named Sammy and a girl named Peaches—who were there just as long as I was. We were together so long that I felt like I had a little brother and an older sister.”
    “Peaches?” the reverend asked with an amused face. “I would expect a name like that to rise out of a southern area that’s a lot more rural than metropolitan Atlanta.”
    Josiah shrugged. “It was a nickname. Long story. Her real name was Patrice.”
    “I see.”
    Josiah smiled as he brought his eyes back to the place where his pastor sat at his desk. It felt good to talk about a time when life was more pleasant. “Thomas and Joanne Smith were great,” he concluded. “Those were my parents … my foster parents, that is.”
    Bishop Lumpkin leaned forward in his seat and repeated the question he’d asked earlier. “Are you still in contact with them?”
    Shaking his head, Josiah said, “No. Unfortunately not. It was my fault. They were getting ready to move into a new house at the time I was being returned to my mother, and the new house was gonna have a private phone number. They gave it to me on a piece of paper and told me to call them often. I lost it somewhere in the move from Atlanta to Chicago. They didn’t have a number for me ’cause … well, my mom didn’t have a phone in the house where she was living when she regained custody.”
    “You never went back to see them?” Bishop Lumpkin sounded baffled.
    “How could I? They lived in Atlanta and I lived in Chicago. I didn’t have any money for a flight, and that wasn’t exactly walking distance. Mama had no life insurance, so even when she died, I had no extra money to use for travel. It took all of my little paycheck to keep the bills paid until I moved into my dorm on campus that fall.”
    The bishop nodded. “I understand that, but what about after you graduated from college? Did you ever try to get in touch with them?”
    “I told you, I didn’t have their phone number.”
    “You could have called information, and—”
    “The number was private.”
    “Or maybe gotten back in touch with your old social worker, or even searched the Internet. There were ways—”
    “I went straight to work after graduation.” Josiah folded his arms and shuffled his feet. “There were new employer