Searching for Cate Read Online Free PDF

didn’t make anysense to her. Achilles heels signified a weakness. She’d never held Big Ted back. “I don’t understand.”
    â€œIf you had wanted to call someone else ‘Dad,’ it would have killed Big Ted. You were the sun and the moon and stars to him.”
    How could her father have even thought that she’d turn her back on him and all their time together? Turn her back on the man who’d taught her how to ride a dirt bike, how to play baseball, how to fish. She’d been the best boy she could be for her father, and all the while the relationship she’d believed in didn’t even exist.
    â€œBut he didn’t trust me.”
    The accusation surprised Doc Ed. “What?”
    â€œHe didn’t trust me,” she repeated. “My father didn’t trust me not to leave him, not to think of him differently once I knew that I didn’t have his genes in my body.” She leaned forward, trying to make Doc Ed understand what she was still trying to grapple with herself. “Don’t you see, if my father had told me I was adopted, it would have been no big deal. I knew a couple of kids in school who were adopted and they were okay.
    â€œBut he didn’t tell me. Neither of them did, and that made it a big deal. That they couldn’t tell me the truth. And the truth I knew was a lie.” Restless, she ran her hand through her hair. “Now I’m not really sure about anything anymore, least of all who I am.”
    Doc Ed reached for her hand and forced her to look at him. “You’re still Catherine Kowalski,” he told her firmly. “You can call yourself Watermelon, it makes no difference. You’re still Cate.”
    Despite herself, her mouth quirked in a half smile. “Watermelon, huh?”
    â€œWatermelon,” he repeated.
    Her smile faded and she shook her head. “It’s not the name that matters, Doc. It’s the truth that makes a difference. And the truth is that someone else gave birth to me, that there are genes inside of me that didn’t come from the people who, until a couple of hours ago, I’d thought of as Mom and Dad. The truth is, I thought there was no secret in my family and there is. And it’s a whopper.”
    Doc Ed folded his hands on the desk and looked at her over his glasses. “So what are you going to do? All the records that might have given you a clue are long gone.”
    Maybe not, she thought. Maybe someone had claimed them, stored them. Something. But she wasn’t going to deal with that now.
    â€œFor the time being, I’m going to stay where I’ll do the most good, right here with my mother.” She noted how he smiled when she still referred to Julia as her mother. “I’m putting in for a leave of absence so I can be with her for as long as I can. After she gets well, we’ll see.”
    Unlike his colleagues, he believed in dispensing hope if there was even so much as a shred to be had. But even he couldn’t find it within his heart to allow her to deceive herself like this. “Cate, you know that she might not get well.”
    Cate squared her shoulders, the look in her eyes forbidding him to say anything more. “Please,” she whispered the word quietly, “I’m dealing with one truth at a time.”
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    Two and a half weeks later, Cate found herself standing at her mother’s gravesite. It was raining, which seemed somehow fitting. She’d been angry at the sun for daring to shine the day of her father’s funeral so many years ago.
    She was only vaguely aware that her partner, James Wong, was holding an umbrella over her head, keeping her dry. Vaguely aware of the world in general. She felt as if she was walking along on the outside of a huge circle, looking in.
    She’d refused the Valium Doc Ed had offered her just before the ceremony. She didn’t want to be any more numb than she already was. Numb