My Forbidden Love

The Girls

Sasha and Ariana Switzer lived in Idabel. They had been living there for the past eight years. Sascha celebrated her eighth birthday shortly before they all left Paris, TX. They had spent their entire childhood in and around the Paris, TX, area. The girls had a younger sister named Lisa Ann. Lisa was born about three years after their mom and dad started dating.

Their mother, Trisha, and Daniel Abrahams, their adoptive father, had decided to move everyone to Idabel right after the girls' baby brother, Brayden, turned a year old. It was an unexpected surprise that Trisha and Daniel had made the decision to move back to Oklahoma. When Daniel met Trisha, he had promised her that they would stay in Paris for good. She made him promise that they wouldn't be moving around a lot. Trisha didn't want the girls getting moved around too much. She didn't want the girls getting behind in their schooling.

Trisha had a very hard pregnancy with Braden. When Brayden was born, he was two months premature. As a result, their parents had to make biweekly visits to his doctor. Braden was in the hospital for almost five months before he was able to come home. He had a lot of problems from being born so early. To make matters worse, he had to be put on a sleep apnea monitor shortly after he came home from the hospital.

A big reason for the move to Texas was because of Braden's doctor was in Idabel. When the girls moved to Idabel, a few months before their parents with their baby brother in tow, they felt like it made all the sense in the world. Braden's doctor was there. Their mom and dad said the move would be good for them all. Sascha, Ariana and Lisa Ann were excited about the move, although they were all sad about having to leave their friends and familiar surroundings behind. But like their parents said, they would make new friends.

One day, Daniel found Ariana crying in the bathroom. She told him she was sad about having to leave her best friend, Gabby Lewis, behind in Texas. Daniel told her as she cried on his shoulder, "Baby girl, you'll make other friends. And we made sure that you will be able to stay in contact with Gabby. Your mom and I even discussed her coming here to Idabel for a month this summer. Will that make you happy, sweetheart?"

She looked at her dad, nodding her head, and said, "Daddy, that's great! This is going to be the best summer ever! Will we be able to go camping for the two weeks that she'll be here? I want to be able to go camping like we did when we were in Texas."

Daniel dried the tears from Ariana's face and said, "We sure can, honey. And it will be just as much fun as it was to go camping in Texas. Who knows, it might be even more fun. Are you okay now, love?"

Ariana nodded her head as she hugged him, telling him, "Daddy, that's more than okay. That is just wonderful."

As she finished hugging his neck, Daniel patted her on the back and told her dinner would be on the table soon. Knowing that Trisha would be wondering what had upset Ariana so badly, Daniel encouraged her to put on a smile before she sat down at the table for dinner.

It had been a good idea to move to Idabel. Larson told Daniel there was a job opening at the lumber company. The girls' dad, Daniel, was Larson's half brother. Larson was able to get him on at the lumber company in Idabel since he'd been working there for a couple of years. Trisha got a job working in the bakery at the Piggly Wiggly to help make ends meet. Daniel had also drawn an army pension from his days in the National Guard. He'd served in the armed forces since he  served as a reserve in the Oklahoma National Guard since the day he graduated high school at eighteen. For the first couple months in Idabel, Larson and Jennifer helped them with their bills after Larson helped them find a house big enough for the three girls, the baby and their parents.

Daniel was, by all rights, the girls' dad. Four years after their mom met their Daniel, he had taken them under his wing. He was mo more of a father to them than their biological father ever was. Shortly after meeting Trisha, he decided to adopt the girls. With the girls being adopted by Daniel, everything was official with their growing little family.

It was common knowledge that Brice Switzer was a deadbeat daddy. Brice had walked out and left left them in Texas when the girls were toddlers.  There was only a year and a half difference in the girls' ages and Sascha was the oldest.

Brice was nonexistent in the girls lives which was a fact that made Trisha sick. She always told Sascha and Ariana that their dad would come back. There was no way in the world that she would allow herself to believe that Brice could've just walked out on her and their little girls. Eventually, it started sinking in that Brice wasn't ever coming back.

It took a while for Trisha to even think about dating. She really believed that Brice would come back, at least for the girls' sake. By the time Sascha was five and had started kindergarten, Trisha had come to the conclusion that Brice wasn't coming back and had, most likely, already moved on with his life and had started another family.

On the fourth of July the year Sascha turned three, their mom met Daniel. From that day on, Daniel was the father figure that had been missing from their lives. Shortly after their baby brother was born and two years after he adopted the girls, Daniel asked their mom to marry him. The girls knew she was going to say yes. Shortly after that was when Trisha and Daniel decided to move back to Oklahoma.

Not long after Daniel proposed to their mom, there was a night when Sascha overheard them discussing the move back to Oklahoma. She knew it'd been her dad's dream to move back to Oklahoma one day. There was always a part of her that knew they'd be moving back one day. The move back to Oklahoma just made sense. A brand new start was what everyone needed.

Their dad's brother and sister-in-law lived there in Idabel where they were moving. The girls spent every summer with their Aunt Jennifer and Uncle Larson since their mom met their dad. The yearly tradition was for the girls to go to Idabel and spend the entire summer with their aunt and uncle. The girls always went back to Paris during the last week of summer, right before the new school year started.

Trisha had decided on moving the girls and their baby sister to Idabel during the summer of '96. At the end of the summer, she made the trip back to Idabel and enrolled them into the Oklahoma school system. They were to stay with their Aunt Jennifer and Uncle Larson until their mom and dad moved there with their baby brother.

When the girls went to stay in Idabel, there was just two days before their enrollment. Their mom and dad weren't planning to leave Texas until the end of the school year. That way, they could take care of things in Texas. Trisha had asked Larson to look for a rental property for them, which he did.

Although the girls knew they did not have a choice in the matter, the day  they moved to Idabel was one of the worse days of their lives. That was the day they had to leave their friends and everything they'd known their entire lives behind in Texas.

At the beginning of the following school year, Sascha starting catching onto the school work. Shortly before the end of the school year, she was informed that she'd be in fourth grade until the end of the school year. By the end of the first year that they were in Idabel, Sascha was the smartest in her class. Sascha excelled in her classes, despite being moved around to different schools.

Ariana was a year behind her. She'd always had trouble in school, especially since she had trouble with her school work going all the way back to kindergarten. Halfway through her year in kindergarten, Ariana was put in speech therapy. She also had to be put in special education classes because she was so far behind all the other students.

The thought of being yanked away from the friends that they had made and being forced to go to yet another school was always in the back of their minds. Things weren't ever good for the girls except when they were at school with their friends. The last time the girls got comfortable in school, started making friends and were caught up with their classmates they were moved to yet another school. The last move was really hard on Ariana because she had to leave her best friend behind. But little did she know that their lives in Oklahoma would only get better with the passage of time.