Split Love

CHAPTER 24

SATURDAY, May 11, 2019.

The sound of Debra climbing the wooden stairs sounded like a distant memory in the back of Jamie's mind. At that moment, she felt out of place and couldn't think of anything. Her mind was a complete void.

Nothing made sense. Nothing that happened made sense in her mind, the pieces didn't fit together.

Or maybe she was the one who didn't wanna understand?

And so Jamie remained in the same spot where her uncle had held her shoulders as he spoke. How long ago? When she looked back slowly, she didn't know how much time had passed, but the stairs her grandmother had climbed were also empty.

Suddenly that place, that house, the furniture, the smell, everything was strange and Jamie felt like she didn't belong there. Her eyes roved over the picture frames above the fireplace and a feeling of suffocation began to creep up her neck.

She tugged at the collar of her t-shirt trying to somehow release the air from inflating her lungs as hot tears ran down her face.

"You raised her, don't you trust your own work?"

"We raised her. You and me."

"What's done is done."

"You always let her loose."

"I tried to be tough on her, you eased up."

"I trust her. You should do the same."

The dialogue eavesdropped at Christmas returned like a ghost from the past. A ghost that in reality always existed for Jamie, and the conversation heard before and that discussion only made it clearer to her that there really was something she didn't know about her own life. Her grandma and uncle Richard were hiding something, but what?

What if they aren't my parents? She thought with her eyes fixed on one of the photos. It was a possibility, right?

But there was another possibility. What if she was taken from her family? What if my grandmother was never my grandmother and my real family always looked for me?

That strange thought flooded her mind and made her feel sick. Jamie ran into the bathroom next to the kitchen and threw her body on the floor before throwing up into the toilet. Her heart was racing and her skin was sweating cold.

They stole me? Did they take me from my family and raise me? Was that why I couldn't hide anything from them? Were they afraid someone would find me?

It was the theory that made the most sense when Jamie put everything together. But then, who was the girl in the photos? Because they looked a lot alike.

Jamie got up, flushed the toilet, and rinsed her mouth. With the strength she had at that moment, she went to her room and picked up the small black notebook she kept on her dresser. On the first few pages, there were random things written, a list she made when she broke up with Jordan of the reasons for moving or not to Hartford, there was some information about Micah that she found on the internet, some torn pages and in the middle, the list she made after Christmas, with everything she found strange about her life.

With a pencil in hand, Jamie wrote about what happened that day. She was gathering information. She remembered all the times Jordan helped her by looking for something strange in the photos, or even in old newspapers. Instantly she reached for her phone, in the back pocket of her jeans, she found his name - still marked as a favorite contact - and she almost called him.

Her finger hovered over his name. Jordan JJ, it said.

Her gaze remained fixed on that name for a moment, but she gave up and entered the messages. The last message sent was from him, on the first day of the year.