FRIDAY MORNING, THEY set off to meet Julie Daniels and her family, who were staying in Tacoma. Shallie was familiar with the town, about half an hour from her neighborhood.

Cord appreciated her handling the transportation, since he felt he would’ve been too nervous to drive. He was going to meet his mother. Just that knowledge brought his thoughts—but not his feelings—to a complete halt once again. His mother. A woman he had no memory of. Not only that, he was meeting her new (well, not so new) family.

He hadn’t wanted to see any pictures of Julie, old or current, although he certainly could have requested some from her or checked online. He didn’t really understand why he felt that way. To create a completely new start? To avoid expectations? To avoid prejudgment?

He was thankful that Shallie and Carly would be there to act as buffers, if that was the right term. Or perhaps as distractions… He knew he’d value their observations, and he’d be interested to hear Carly’s opinion of his new half sister, a girl close to twenty years younger than he was.

“What should I say when I meet Julie?” he asked. He’d run through a number of possibilities in his head, but nothing seemed quite fitting.

“How about hello?” Carly said, and glancing into the backseat, he couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic.

“Carly!” Shallie objected. “This is serious.”

“I know, and I am being serious. What’s the other option—goodbye?”

Cord laughed before Shallie could remonstrate with her again. “She has a point,” he said. “This is either going to be another beginning or another end.”

“See?” Carly said in a snippy voice. “But to go with that hello, why don’t we pick up some flowers for her?”

They did, at the first plant shop they saw. He wondered why he and Shallie hadn’t thought of that. But instead of a bouquet, he chose three elegant orchids, one a soft pink, one a lilac color, the third a pale yellow.

They reached the motel soon after, a well-kept low-slung building painted white with dark green trim. It featured a patio and a garden lush with ferns; Cord wasn’t a gardener, but he could appreciate its beauty.

As they reached the unit’s entrance, the door opened wide before he had a chance to knock. A slim woman, maybe five foot six, wearing her brown hair loose and straight, stood before them.

Cord couldn’t stop staring at her. Eyes the same blue as his, hair lighter, the same cheekbones. She’d be in her midfifties. He knew she’d been twenty when he was born, and after he turned two, they hadn’t been part of each other’s lives.