Wanted: A Family Read Online Free Page A

survived.
    As he pounded shingles into place, his mind drifted back to the winter he was seven. He’d fallen from a tree on the orphanage grounds. With pain searing his broken arm and emptiness branding his heart, he’d lain on the frozen earth staring at the bare branches, silhouetted against a cloudless sky. A boy surrounded by people, yet starving for love, he’d cried out for his mother. No one came.
    From that moment, Jake dropped the pretense he’d clung to and faced the truth. He had only those postcards. Postcards couldn’t hold him. Postcards couldn’t wipe away his tears. Postcards couldn’t atone for her abandonment.
    At last he’d quieted, then struggled to his feet. Cradling his broken arm against his chest, he’d shuffled toward the orphanage, a vow on his lips.
    Never again would he care about that woman. Never again would he deceive himself into believing that one day she’d come for him. Never again would he hold on to hope for a family.
    His arm had mended. But in the sixteen years since that day, nothing had proved him wrong.
    Even as an adult, when he knew circumstances might’ve made her coming for him difficult, even impossible, he couldn’t find it in his heart to excuse her.
    The postcards had been postmarked Indianapolis. Once, just once, a card had come from Peaceful. He’d kept all those postcards. Just to remember the town names. Not that they meant anything to him.
    As he hammered another nail home, his stomachclenched. In truth, he’d studied each stroke of the pen, compared the handwriting to his own, searching those pitifully few words for some connection. Never finding one.
    After his exoneration and release from prison, he’d spent a month in Indianapolis, searching birth records, locating every Smith he could find, but he hadn’t turned up a clue. For some reason, he had the strong feeling she’d sent the postcards from there to throw him off her trail and he’d find her in Peaceful.
    Well, if she’d found peace in this town, perhaps he would, too. Once he’d given her a huge hunk of his opinion. Not charitable of him, but the best he could do with all the bitterness burning inside him.
    He didn’t wish her harm. He didn’t even want to disgrace her. He merely needed her to know the penalty he’d paid when she’d swept him under the rug of her life.
    The beat of his heart pounded in his temples with the rhythm of his hammer. If there was a God and He was the Author of Life, as some claimed, He hadn’t gone out of His way to lend a hand to Jake’s life story.
    Not in the circumstances of his birth.
    Not in those years in the orphanage.
    Not in the injustice exacted in that courtroom.
    He sighed. Why not admit it? He wanted to see his mother with a desperation he couldn’t fathom, yet couldn’t deny. He wanted to meet her. See if they shared a resemblance. Learn the identity of his father. Maybe then he could move on with his life. If only he had a way to make his search easier, a sign with an arrow pointing in the direction to turn. He huffed at such absurdity. What would the sign say? This way leads to Jake Smith’s mother?
    â€œHow’s it going?”
    Whirling around, Jake scrambled for footing, scraping his knuckles against the hot shingles.
    Mrs. Mitchell looked up at him, eyes wide with alarm. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you, but dinner’s ready.”
    â€œMy fault, I didn’t hear you coming.” He forced his lips into a grin that pinched like ill-fitting shoes. “Your timing’s perfect. I just replaced the last shingle.”
    Her eyes lit. “Oh, now I won’t have to cringe at the first peal of thunder.”
    Forcing his gaze away from that sparkle in her eyes, that sweet smile on her lips, he tucked the hammer into his belt. She drew him like a mindless moth to a candle’s flame, a lure that would prove as