Some People Change (Currently Editing)

Chapter Thirty-Seven

My heart pounded wildly as I stepped into the giant storage unit. A man with a million keys on a key chain in his back pocket led us to my very own unit. It was huge, almost the size of my room. He unlocked it, and then I stepped inside.

There were boxes everywhere, and none of them clearly labeled. I started with the first box I could get my hands on. 

I found nothing important in that one, so I ripped open another. This time I stumbled on pictures, but they were from my mom’s and Tom’s wedding. It was the same story with another small box.

Finally, I found what I had come her for. Pictures of Joanne. I found some from the day she was born and her first birthday. After that, sadly, the pictures just ended. That was when my mother picked up her fierce and nasty drug habit, and she just stopped caring.

Amy had given me a bag that I could put the pictures in, and I collected all the ones of Joanne. I looked through five other boxes, and I discovered some pictures of me. They were all taken by Jackson.

In no time, I had arrived at the final box. It was just a bunch of documents, but since it was the very last box, I decided to sift through it. 

There was nothing very interesting, until I got to the bottom of it all. There seemed to be a framed certificate and I took it out for closer examination. 

I almost dropped it and I gasped when I realized the thing I was holding was my birth certificate. All these years, I had wondered about it. I wondered if my mother was really my mother, praying that she wasn’t. And of course I could only guess the identity of my absent father. Now, I had all the answers in my hands. 

I read the paper closely.

Date of Birth: July 2, 1993

Mother: Annie Robinson

Father: Jason Richmond  

This time I did drop the dang thing. I shook my head, thinking what I had read couldn’t possibly be right, but when I re-read it for the tenth time, I realized that I had indeed read the my father was Jason Richmond. And then slowly, I began to piece it together.

The day before when Jason had acted so strangely made sense. He had recognized the woman on the front page as the girlfriend that he had left seventeen short years ago, and that was why he been so shocked to find out that that woman was my mother.

But something still didn’t make sense. Why hadn’t he said something about my name being an identical match to his daughter’s name? I mean, he had to know that my mom was pregnant, right? That must’ve been why he left us.

So many things didn’t add up, and I needed to confront him. I needed to know if all this time Jason had known. And if he had, I wasn’t sure what I would do. 

I hated the fact that there were so many more questions than answers in this world. I had just found out who my father was, but there was still so much that I needed to know about him. That would just have to wait until tomorrow.

The next morning, I was up at around four and I couldn’t fall back asleep. Nervousness was the only thing that I felt. I had no idea how Jason would react to me showing him my birth certificate, but I had a hunch that he already knew. 

At seven, just before we headed out for the stables, I slipped on my jacket and hid my birth certificate underneath it. Emma, Amy, and I all piled into her car and then were on our way. 

Ed stood outside the barn to greet us this time. I caught a glimpse of Taylor feeding the horses in the stable. 

“Hey, ladies,” Ed greeted cheerfully.