us. I thought of how they gained my trust. Soothed my sorrow. Accepted me as I was, not knowing what my past had been. There was no way they could have guessed.
Tears stung my eyes.
I had the missing pieces. I had the truth. I had my story.
“Lexie?” James stood in the doorway. Behind him were Ella and then Marta. In a moment they were crowded around me, hugging me. Holding me.
THIRTY-ONE
By the time we were ready to go, I was so weary I asked James to drive.
“Sure, but you’ll have to navigate,” he said, taking the keys from my hand as he walked to the passenger door, unlocked it, and held it open for me. “Or maybe Zed can point the way.”
Zed hesitated, gesturing toward Marta’s car. “I thought I would ride back with Mom.”
“No problem. Go ahead,” I said tiredly. “James can just follow you guys.”
Nearly collapsing onto the seat with exhaustion, I closed my eyes and leaned back against the headrest. James started up the car, and for a while we drove along in silence. I was grateful that he seemed to sense my need for a little space and quiet. I so appreciated all he had done today, but my head was spinning and my heart was too full for mere words. Would I ever be able to process everything I had learned? Would I ever be able to thank James for his part in making it happen?
The silence continued, but finally I forced my eyes open and looked around to get my bearings. We were just another few minutes from Marta’s home. I knew that despite his enormous self-control, James was desperate to talk, to probe my psyche. I reached out and put a hand on his shoulder and gave it a loving squeeze.
“Go ahead.”
“Go ahead what?” he asked, glancing my way.
“Go ahead and talk. I know you’re dying to ask me some deep, psychological questions.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because your silence is so loud it’s practically shouting.”
We both laughed.
“Fine,” he said. “How are you feeling?”
“Overwhelmed. Confused. Exhausted.”
“Good. And?”
I looked away, a single tear sliding down my cheek before I wiped it away.
“Complete,” I added. “Very, incredibly, strangely complete.”
He reached out and took my hand and gave it a squeeze.
“It’s no wonder. You wanted your story, Lex. Now you have it.”
Nodding, I squeezed his hand even more tightly in return.
“You do have your story now, right?” he added. “I mean, you’re not planning to go traipsing across Europe in search of Giselle or anything, are you?”
I smiled. Oddly enough, though I wouldn’t rule out a visit with my birth mother in the future, I had no burning desire to find her any time soon. I had finally gotten the truth. For now, that felt sufficient.
“What about you, James?” I asked, releasing his hand and shifting in my seat. “Now that you know the whole ugly truth about my birth family, are you sure you still want me?”
“Are you kidding?”
“It’s just that now that I’ve heard my story, well, what can I say but it makes families in country western songs look functional. After all we learned today, I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to hit the hills running.”
James shook his head sadly and reached out to again take my hand. “There is no shame in this, Lex. God ordained the days of your life, just like it says in Psalm 139. The story you so desperately wanted to hear was written by Him.”
“Surely, this wasn’t His will.”
“He allowed you to be created in the first place.”
I couldn’t argue with that. For as easy as it was for some people to get pregnant, each baby was still a miracle.
“He knew your numbers,” James added.
“My numbers?”
James nodded. “God ordained that you would be with your birth mother for two years, and with your mama until your were eight, and He knew that you would have your father until you were twenty-six.”
Tears again threatened at the back of my eyes. James was right. God knew my numbers. I didn’t want to think about what else He knew, but that was for another day. Giselle and Burke Bauer and everyone else in the broken world we lived in had free will. If they used it in all the wrong ways, well, as Mammi had said, ultimately that was between them and God.
James slowed to steer around a large pothole and then sped up and kept going. “Look at you and Ada. Look at what God redeemed there.”
I was quiet