Free Finding Me: Book 1: All I've Ever Wanted (A New Adult Romance Series) by Unknown

childhood birthdays, none of which she could really remember beyond the age of eight, large Christmases in which the entire family was in attendance, a few childhood pets. Had it not been for her father’s perfect and meticulous handwriting that adorned the back of each photo, she was sure the task would have been impossible. Yet, he had marked every single one with a date and the name of the certain occasion.
     
       “Maggie: Pre-School graduation, I’m so proud of you darling,” the blue ink read.
     
       She caressed her fingers against the indents of the pen point. She cherished the thought that this was where her father’s fingers had been at one point, when he was alive and well. She wondered if she had been standing next to him, clenching onto his ripped jean pants he always wore, even though her family was well-off enough to buy another pair. There was a small break in the writing that indicated something or someone had interrupted him. She thought that maybe it had been her, asking him some inane question, which he always took time to answer, or perhaps it had been her mother, telling him to make more of that lemonade that everyone loved so much. It was never a family event or celebration without her father’s lemonade.
     
       She flipped the picture over and saw a grainy image of herself; She was sitting on a large log, squinting with the sun in her eyes, a homemade paper graduation cap with crayon doodles on it topping her long, untamed red hair. She was wearing a chiffon pink dress with a bow on the front, white tights and shiny black shoes. The green of the swaying pine trees behind her only served to highlight her red hair and porcelain skin, which was splattered with freckles that, in her adulthood, would only show up on her face when she spent a day at the beach.
     
        She tried to remember that day, but could only make out small parts; the songs she refused to sing, and how her mother had scolded her after the ceremony, her brother throwing a fit in the crowd as she took her diploma, and her father’s lemonade. She chuckled to herself, thinking about how pointless it was to have a graduation for such young children, but as she flipped the picture over and saw her father’s perfect penmanship, she knew it was not for the children that they did this; it was for the parents. Her father had taken the time to find a place on the playground, away from the other children and take a portrait of her on her special day, and she knew she must have made him proud.
     
       Maggie placed the photo back in its respective pile and pulled herself up from the floor. She walked into the bathroom and splashed some cold water on her face, trying to wake herself up. It had been six months since her father had died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 75, and she had just started to do the task of going through his personal belongings, a chore Maggie had put off for months. She had hoped that her brother could have found it in his heart to do it. He had known how close Maggie and their father’s relationship had been, as opposed to his relationship with their father which was surrounded by turmoil since they were children. Maggie had talked with him at the funeral, and told him that she didn’t think she had it in her to go through all of those memories, to relive her life without her parents there. Her brother had held her in her arms and reassured her that he would take care of everything, that he had gotten his life back on track after a long rough patch of gambling and falling in with the wrong crowd. He reassured Maggie that he had found a good job and was finding help, Maggie cried into his arms, thanking him, and told him how proud she was of him, and to be his big sister.
     
       When she showed up to the house earlier that day, she had expected to see the house literally packed into boxes. Through conversation with her brother she had been under the impression that moving was going along