Michael's Discovery by Sherryl Woods

nodded. “I didn’t think of her that way, not for long, anyway. She wouldn’t allow it. She said thateven if she couldn’t adopt me, she intended to be my mother. No boy could have had a better one.”
    “Then why have you waited so long to get in touch with her since you got back to Boston?” she asked. “I still don’t understand that.”
    “Self-protection,” he admitted candidly. “She’s the kind of woman who assesses a situation, then takes over. It doesn’t matter to her that I’ve been a grown man for a long time and that I’ve handled extraordinary responsibilities with the Navy, I’m still her baby.”
    “Hard to picture anyone thinking of you that way,” Kelly said, surveying him with blatant appreciation. “Then again, that’s exactly how my folks treat Bryan and me. It would probably help if Bryan and I moved into our own places, but it’s been so comfortable living at home, neither of us have bothered. Hovering and worrying is probably just a universal parental trait.”
    “That doesn’t make it any less annoying, especially in a situation like this,” Michael said.
    “No, it certainly doesn’t.” Kelly regarded him with undisguised curiosity. “Do you remember your real…” She immediately stopped and corrected herself, “I mean, your biological mother at all?”
    Michael had thought about that very question a lot over the years, even more so since Ryan and Sean had found him in San Diego. They both had such vivid memories of their mother, but Michael’s were all hazy. When Mother’s Day rolled around, it was Doris Havilcek—with her sweet smile, graying hair, sharp intelligence and steely resolve—whose image filled his head. Kathleen Devaney was a name on hisbirth certificate, nothing more. She stirred no sentimental feelings in him at all.
    “Not really,” he told Kelly. “I don’t have the same kind of anger about her and my dad that Ryan and Sean feel, either. Maybe if I’d been a little older or if I’d wound up in a different situation the way they did, I’d hate them, too, but basically when it comes to my biological parents, I feel nothing at all.”
    Sorrow spread across Kelly’s expressive face. “Aren’t you even the least bit curious about them? I know I would be. I’d want to know what they’re like, why they did what they did, where they are now.”
    “Why bother?” he said cynically. “There are no good explanations for any of it. If it were up to me, Ryan would give up searching for them, but he’s determined to finish what he started. Sean has some reservations, but in general, I think he’s backing him up. I think one reason they’re so determined to find our parents is to find out what happened to the twins. For all we know, they were abandoned along the way, too, when it got to be too inconvenient to keep them around.”
    “Twins?” Kelly repeated incredulously. “There were more of you?”
    He nodded. “Twin brothers, Patrick and Daniel. They were only two when we were all split up. Ryan seems convinced our parents took them when they left.” He tried to dismiss the little twinge of dismay that stirred in him, but he wasn’t entirely successful. If it was true, it made the whole mess even more despicable.
    He met Kelly’s gaze. “If you ask me, Ryan’s going to be opening up a whole lot of emotional garbage by tracking them down. If they did have all those yearswith our parents, how the hell are they supposed to react when three older brothers come charging back into their lives? And I doubt if either Ryan or Sean can claim to be entirely indifferent to the fact that our parents chose to keep Patrick and Daniel while dumping the rest of us into foster care.”
    “But it could be wonderful to be reunited,” Kelly insisted.
    “Maybe in an ideal world,” Michael said. “But something tells me it’s not going to be a picture-perfect moment, not for anyone.”
    He shrugged off his dread of that day and forced a smile. “Have