A Fostered Love

Chapter One: Kyle

When I was about four years old, my father left my mother and I to fend for ourselves. I never really knew my father very well, but looking back thirteen years later I wish I had. I wish I had known where he'd went so I could ask him why he left us in the first place. It was like he disappeared off the face of the earth. As if he ceased to exist.

After he left, my mother took control of her broken heart and raised me well, it just wasn't long enough.

One average day, she was driving back from work and a truck slammed into the side of her car as she was making a right turn. The truck sped right through the red light after it had lost control of the brakes and slammed right through the driver's side, killing her on impact. When I got the call, I sat on the floor and cried, trying to figure out why this happened to me. What could I have possibly done to the world to deserve this?

I finally found the courage to start the search for my dad a week after mom's funeral. It had occurred to me that I was now broke and alone since mom didn't put anything aside for me yet. I was only nine when the accident occurred.

I know what you're thinking, how could a nine year old just start looking for his father all by himself?

The truth is, I didn't do it by myself. My next door neighbor Sandra, an elderly woman that my mom and I knew very well, watched over me for a short amount of time, before she had a stroke and died shortly after at the age of seventy five.

This just so happened to be two days before I found out my father had died of a bullet wound to the head during his deployment in Iraq. Apparently, the reason he left my mother and I was to join the military and not have us worry about him twenty-four seven. I wish he would have gotten the chance to tell my mother that. For her whole life, she thought it was her fault he left.

So by the time my tenth birthday rolled around, I had lost both of my parents and a caretaker. I had no one to go to. No relatives, no friends, no nothing. I was completely alone.

Realizing that I didn't have any other choice, I went to an orphanage. Miss Richards' Children's Home to be exact. I put myself up for adoption when I was ten. It was probably for the best though. Eventually, I ran out of food and the small amount of money I had to sustain myself while staying in my house. In addition to the lack of money, the lights shut off because I didn't pay the bills, so I just gave up. I put myself in the home for kids who ran out of places to go and people to love.

I only wish I could have done a bit better in choosing.

Miss Richards was an abusive woman in her late forties who acted extremely sweet whenever a potential adopter showed up. She practically had the entire town fooled, but behind closed doors she was a nightmare.

You'd normally find her with some type of drink in her hand and curlers in her hair. Her appearance was the least of her worries when she was around us, usually wearing an ill fitting black lace robe with very little underneath. Her dry, cracked and ugly feet always remained bare as she stomped around the wooden floors of the three story house.

In case you weren't sure yet, Miss Richards was usually drunk eighty percent of the time we saw her, the twenty percent being when she put on make up after she sobered up for a potential adoption. On those days, she would line us all up in the living room to have the parents decide on who they wanted. Those were normally the good days at MRCH where we were all hoping that we could leave this dreadful place.

One particular night, about four years ago, Miss Richards had one of those really bad nights.

"Children!" she screamed from down the stairs holding an empty bottle of whatever she was drinking. Her speech slurred a bit.