“Which says a lot about how she was treated when she found out she was pregnant,” Sully said. “The ridicule and shaming for a teenager would have been devastating…and to be facing it alone. She said my dad was never told. I wonder what he’d think if he found out about me, kind of like I found out about them?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you’ll find him one day, like you did your mom.”

“That would be the best. To know both of them.”

He started the car, then made a U-turn in the empty street and headed home, holding her hand all the way.

“Hey, honey, I’ve been thinking about my stuff back in Kansas City. After all that’s been happening, and what you’ve gone through, a road trip is not the best idea.”

“If you need to go alone, that’s fine. You won’t hurt my feelings,” Melissa said.

“Oh no, I’m not leaving you. I’m going to make a couple of calls tomorrow. I’ll make a list of what I want packed up and sent here, and I’ll donate the rest to Habitat for Humanity.”

“What if they miss some stuff you want?” Melissa said.

“The only thing I’m leaving behind is furniture and the like. Everything else will come here, and I’ll sort out what I want to keep then,” he said. “Now no more worry. It’s settled.”

Chapter 18

Marc Adamos was finally back home in Springfield, Missouri, after his long flight from the Hawaiian Islands. He’d been on Hawaii, the Big Island, for a couple of months, getting live footage of the recent activity from the Kilauea volcano, as well as the extreme flooding that had happened on one of the other islands.

He was in his office going through still shots and video. Once he’d scanned in the stills, making notes as to which ones he might use for the documentary, he moved to different footage he’d gotten earlier in the year. The first set he picked up was what he’d gotten on the California fires. He’d moved on to the extensive fires that burned the Pacific Northwest. He’d been on-site during hurricanes for footage and video during and after the storms that had hit along the southern border of Texas, as well as a later hurricane that had impacted the East Coast along the Florida and Georgia coasts.

He loaded what he wanted onto his laptop and then took it with him into the kitchen to make himself some lunch. He’d been gone so long that ready food in his place was sparse, but he did have a couple of cans of soup and some crackers in the pantry and settled on that rather than ordering in.

After having worked for National Geographic most of his adult life, he was getting ready to retire. The story he was working on now would be his last and eventually would be aired on the National Geographic Channel on cable TV. Since it was his swan song, he was determined to give it his full attention.