The things she’d learned today didn’t have to mean that Sophie had been the beneficiary of the switch and Leah the loser . . . because Leah had gotten Dylan, and she wouldn’t relinquish him for anything. She’d chosen his well-being above Princeton, and she’d chosen rightly. She didn’t regret it. Given the same set of circumstances, she’d make the same decision.

It would serve her well to remember that none of the ramifications of the switch were Sophie’s fault. She and Sophie had been minutes old when the mistake had occurred. Both of them helpless newborns. Victims. Sophie had been robbed of the opportunity to grow up with her biological family just like Leah had.

She should feel kinship with Sophie. And she did. . . .

It’s just that she felt a bit of hostility toward her, too.

How many nuts had she just eaten? Hopefully not half the can. She set them back on the shelf and returned to the dining room to Google Jonathan Brookside.

She hadn’t been able to find anything on him last week, but she’d given up after the first three or four pages of hits. This time, she’d dig deeper.

Sure enough, on the eleventh page of hits, she came upon two future-casting articles attributed to Jonathan Brookside, Founder, Gridwork Communications Corporation. The pieces were both well written. One article had appeared six years ago, the other eight. She had no way of confirming if this was her Jonathan, because no information was given about his age or family status.

She went to Gridwork Communications Corporation’s website and learned that they were a computer services company located in Atlanta. It made sense that a man who’d lived in Atlanta in young adulthood might have founded a business in the same city.

Carefully, she deleted her browser history in case Dylan attempted to snoop.

She and her brother were about to leave on their epic road trip. Her goal for their time away: to rest and to fill her days with new places and experiences. She refused to let this thing with her past distract her so much that she couldn’t enjoy the vacation she’d spent six months planning.

Fate, destiny, paternity were weighty issues. Twenty-eight years had gone by without her knowing anything about the Brooksides. It wouldn’t hurt to give herself time to strategize her next move.

One afternoon in mid-July, Sebastian assessed the couple who’d just taken the seats across from him in his office at Beckett Memorial.

Timothy and Megan Ackerman, both around his age, were sitting in the two chairs no parent wanted to sit in. All the parents who sat in those chairs were forced to face one of the worst things that can happen to a person—the life-threatening sickness of their child.