First Meeting

Chapter 4: The Letter

The room was silent. All you could hear was the steady creak of the ceiling fan blade as it spun again and again around the light fixture.

Abruptly, Alexa laughed. It started out with a snort, then a giggle until finally she let it all out. She couldn't stop. Soon she was holding her sides, her body spasming and her head thrown back in silent laughter while 6 pairs of eyes just stared at her blankly with their mouths hanging open.

"Oh f**k, I'm so sorry!" Alexa hiccupped, trying to get her body back under her control. "I just starting thinking about how in a movie, when the girl finds out some horrible truth she completely falls apart and like, just melts into a puddle of helplessness."

She snorted again, "Could you imagine ME falling apart like that? Wailing and rolling around on the floor waiting for other people to solve her problems and tell her what to do? f**k that noise. You didn't raise a wimp."

Alexa got up and made her way around the table until she was standing directly in front of Morgan and Joe. She grabbed each of their hands, squared her shoulders and looked at each of them with eyes blazing.

"Look, I am sure that you have your reasons for keeping this a secret. I am mad as hell at both of you right now… but we'll figure it out together okay? As a family. Even if my birth parents meant well, they didn't raise me. You guys did. I may not be a Montgomery by blood, but I definitely am in spirit!"

She turned to her best friend.

"And you better tell me how your mom is involved in all of this - and why is your brother's birthday even important right now?" The steeled look in her eye made Ally drop her gaze to her lap immediately.

Morgan was the first to recover and spoke, her voice thick and raw with emotion. "Oh honey, maybe I should start with what I know, and then Ally and her mom can fill you in on the rest in the morning okay?"

Ally glanced at the time. 11 pm already? It was gonna be a long night.

"I guess... I'll start at the very beginning then." Morgan looked around the table before her eyes landed on her daughter's. She took a steadying breath and began her story:

"Alexa, I wasn't the nurse that first saw and treated you. The only reason someone came to get me was because another nurse recognized my name on the letter. They thought that we were maybe related or that I had treated your birth mother before as a patient." She confessed.

"Those 3 days after the social worker took you were absolute hell. No matter what I said or what I did, the police wouldn't believe me. They searched ours cars, our house, and even had a K9 unit come in to see of they could get a scent that would prove that I took you. They came up empty. Everything was a dead end." She paused briefly for a sip of her water.

She cleared her throat, "After we were no longer suspects, the weirdest thing happened: we were contacted by the social services agency so that we could discuss the next steps towards becoming your foster parents. But the thing is, we never applied to be your foster parents."

"Even if we had, the application should have taken months, not days to be processed. And technically, they couldn't even have had you put you in the system yet! You were a baby with no name and no medical history."

"I went down to the agency to explain that they must be looking for a different Morgan Montgomery - it was definitely not me they were looking for. But when I got there, I saw you: eyes screwed up tight, little baby cheeks all red and flushed, and I listened to you bossing everyone around as much as you possibly could in your tiny little rage-filled body."

Morgan chuckled fondly at the memory. "The worker holding you promptly dumped you into my arms and ran away… I never did see her again, you probably scarred her for life. But that was it. You uncurled your teenie fists of terror, looked up at me with those beautiful honey-brown eyes and fell asleep."

Joe looked on in awe at his wife - he had never heard the whole story before. "And then I guess that was that. I signed the papers with you cradled in one arm. They gave me the letters you had been left with and someone let me borrow their emergency car seat, and then I brought you home. You were mine." She shrugged.

"And the letters? Why didn't you open them when you first saw them? They probably had clues!" Alexa asked impatiently.

Morgan knew she would ask that, "We tried, but nothing seemed to work. Letter openers, knives, scissors - we even tried steaming then open! But not even a corner dislodged after all that effort. Soon after, you were a toddler with grabby hands and the older and more attached to us you got, the less I wanted to focus on the past. Eventually I threw them both in a drawer and pretty much forgot all about them."

Liar, Alexa thought. "So how did you know it was time then if they were in the junk drawer with the old take-out menus?"

"Well, when Lucy came, she had a letter that looked like mine but had her name on it instead. It was obvious that she had opened hers a long time ago and read her letter often. The letter paper felt soft and comforting, the way it does when you read your favorite book over and over again."

"She asked if I had read my letter and told me that she needed to talk to me about your future. I explained how my letter was still sealed and I went to the drawer to get it. This time the knife sailed smoothly through the seal and sprung open."

"I knew then that it was time. Time to read, ask questions if I could, and learn about your past. I honestly had no idea just how dangerous the world can be."

"Mom, you still haven't told me - what did the letter say?" Alexa nudged gently.

"Alexa 18 years ago, your birth mother didn't drop you off as a Safe Haven baby, Mrs. Lopez did. And the reason she did it was because your birth parents and the Lopez's were best friends before they were killed, murdered in cold blood, for power and control. Power and control that become your legacy to lead the night you turn 18."

She reached out again for Alexa's hand, "The reason I'm telling you all this sweetie is because the group that killed your parents don't know you exist. They believe that they succeeded in wiping out your family tree and have no one left to threaten them for total domination."

Alexa set her jaw, her voice ringing out clear and hard. " Well f**k them if they think I'm going to run away and hide. They didn't think ripping my birth family away from me was enough? I'll make sure to crush everything they have until they're cowering at my feet...and then I'll crush them too."