He lifted Lovey’s hands and kissed the back of each of them with such tenderness that it brought tears to Melissa’s eyes. She was dumbstruck by the revelation and so overjoyed for both of them and grateful she was here when it happened.

“Thank you for coming to look for me,” Lovey said. “I’d made peace with not being able to raise you, but I never gave you up in my heart. I loved every tiny inch of your perfect little self for the time I got to be with you. The grief of giving you up so suddenly after all that time was heart-wrenching. I’m so glad you found me. And you deserve answers.” She took a deep breath. “Lord, help me get through this,” she said softly, then began to talk.

“I grew up with a boy named Marc Adamos, and the year we turned fifteen, we suddenly saw each other in a different light. We fell in love…so much love. And even though we knew the consequences, we made love, too. I want you to know you were conceived in love. I didn’t know I was pregnant until Marc and his family had moved away. I told my parents, and they were horrified. They were very religious and so angry with me. I wanted to keep you… I begged to keep you, and they refused. I was only fifteen. Then I told them it didn’t matter what they thought because I was going to find Marc and we’d get married. They said if I did, they’d file charges against him for rape, and I was young and scared and I believed them.”

Lovey shook her head, trying to gather her thoughts.

“I’m so sorry,” Sully said. “I can’t imagine how afraid you were, and how confused.”

Lovey sighed. “I think I was in a daze after the initial confrontation. I’d go to sleep and wake up hoping it was all a bad dream. You didn’t become real to me until the day I felt you kick.”

Melissa handed Lovey some tissues and then quietly moved away.

Lovey wiped her eyes and took another deep breath.

“I was still living in our house, but my parents basically shunned me. I was reaping the consequences of my free will. When I began showing and everyone found out, I was banished from school on the grounds that I might contaminate the innocence of the kids in my class.”

“Oh my lord! That was the mid-seventies. Hippies and free love all over the place,” Melissa muttered.

“Exactly,” Lovey said. “I was praying to God nonstop for answers, and they came. Painfully, but they were answers to a hopeless situation, which is where Joe and Dolly Raines came in.”

Sully was nervous. He didn’t know whether they were going to turn out to be kind and helpful to her, or part of the problem.

“They approached my parents,” Lovey said. “They’d been trying to have a baby for years and couldn’t, and Joe had a heart murmur which kept eliminating them from adoption lists.