I flip the page and smile at the photo of the redbrick two-story home, two smiling teenagers standing on the step. Nobody wants to adopt a fourteen-year-old kid, even a rather beautiful one. I stare at my teenage self, trace the lines of my face. Lucky for me, my friend Sally’s family felt sorry for me. They gave me a bedroom, and a semblance of family. And Sally’s mom helped me through my first wave of panic attacks. She sewed the sequins on my pageant dresses and drove me to competitions. It’s too bad I never really fit in with my adopted family. Maybe things could have turned out differently. As it was, I know we all felt a big sense of relief when I told them I was off to Hollywood. Nothing terrible happened—no, it was more of a visceral distaste. They were there when I needed them, a means to an end.

David used to smile adoringly and add, “Her real name is Delilah Jane. Isn’t that adorable?”

No, it’s not. But it was a fact I had to reveal when we applied for our marriage license and needed our social security cards. Sally and I had a big falling-out when she came to visit me in LA, against her parents’ wishes, a few months before I met David. She made the mistake of calling me Delilah Jane in front of my date du jour. His face froze in disgust.

“You really are a little Southern hick, aren’t you?” he’d said as my face flushed and Sally mouthed, “Sorry.”

I never spoke to Sally again but I’m not mad at her anymore. Anger is so bad for your health: your own and your target’s. Ha. I’ve discovered it’s good to let the little things go.

Sally would have liked David, but they never met. David came along shortly after and it was love at first sight, on that romantic date that could be made into a movie. Starring me. I know it doesn’t seem that way now, with the way we are together since the accident, but we were magic together at first. Just ask his parents. They loved me when we met, said I was a breath of fresh air compared to his shy, boring dates. They expected a normal courtship, a relationship they could control like they had controlled everything their only son had done his entire life.

Nobody can stand in the way of true love, though. Not even the in-laws.