The Chocolatier's Secret (Magnolia Creek, Book 2) Read Free

tired of seeing this joy.
    ‘Max.’ Sophie sniffed. ‘His name’s Max.’
    ‘It suits him. Is there anyone I can call for you?’ She felt sure there must be a queue of people waiting to get in to see this little one and offer their congratulations.
    Sophie’s eyes were fully focused on her baby: his delicate features, the scrunched up fist moving against her breast as he suckled, eyes tightly shut as though he wasn’t quite ready to see the big wide world.
    ‘It’s just me and Max now,’ said Sophie. ‘And to think … they wanted me to have an abortion. God, look at him. How could they ask me to do that?’ Molly knew better than to make judgements and she let Sophie carry on talking. ‘The father isn’t in the picture.’
    She said it with such finality, and Molly was left wondering whether the father knew about the baby at all.
    ‘He’s at university studying to be a doctor,’ Sophie went on, ‘and I don’t think he needs this. Our families were both dead set against it.’ The new mum gazed down at her baby and stroked the downy head of dark hair. ‘I was supposed to go to university myself. My parents think I’m wasting everything I’ve ever worked for by having a baby. But you know what? They couldn’t be more wrong. I worked hard before all this, and now I have Max, I’ve even more reason to carve out a decent future. For both of us.’
    Molly carried out the necessary checks and left mother and baby alone as she went out to the nurses station.
    ‘Happy news?’ asked Freya, her colleague and friend.
    ‘Mother and baby doing very well.’ Molly pretended to be engrossed in the form-filling she was required to do. Sometimes she felt as though she were better acquainted with paperwork than the babies themselves. But her mind was elsewhere. Her mind was – if such a thing could happen – back in 1985, the year she was born. Of course she didn’t have any idea what the scene was like, but in August of 1985, she was born to a mother who hadn’t kept her like Sophie was keeping Max. She’d given her up for adoption.
    Molly’s parents, Margaret and Jeff Ramsey, had struggled to conceive Molly’s older brother, Isaac, and after a pregnancy fraught with problems, they’d decided to adopt to complete their family. Molly had always known she was adopted. She couldn’t even remember being told, it was simply a fact she’d grown up with, like knowing the grass was green and the sky was blue. The information had easily blended into her happy childhood with her parents and older brother. But two years ago, Molly’s job as a midwife had piqued her curiosity. Every day she witnessed elated mothers, jubilant fathers, and on the not so good days, she saw pain when the worst happened and babies died before they’d even taken their first breath outside the womb. It was all those moments rolled into one that had set the wheels in motion for Molly to find out what had happened all those years ago.
    Via an agency, Molly successfully traced her birth mother and was given an address for her. She kept the address for nearly four weeks before she decided to do anything about it, and then she sent a letter. It was a simple letter stating her name as it was now and the year they’d lost contact – the only information needed to identify herself to this woman but nobody else.
    Molly waited, and she waited. The counsellor had told her some birth mothers would struggle with painful memories, so much so, it could either take a very long time to reply, or may deter them from contact at all. Molly tried hard to be patient, but as the weeks and then months went on and the reply still didn’t come, she couldn’t wait any longer. She took matters into her own hands. Feeling she’d waited long enough, Molly visited her birth mother’s home address in a tiny village not far from her own home in Lower Weston, Bath.
    One snowy day in January, Molly met her birth mother for the first time and lost her again in the space