Love Comes Home and A Sheltering Love: Love Comes Home / A Sheltering Love. Terri Reed

began to rise within her.

      “I don’t even know who he was, Josh. What he’d been like. Why he’d left.”

      “I didn’t know,” he responded softly. “You’d said he was gone. I’d assumed he was dead.”

      “He was gone before I was born.” She picked up the birth certificate. Her own. She pointed to the line where her father’s name should have been. “’Unknown’?” Her voice rose, betraying the anguish building in her chest.

      At sixteen she’d needed her birth certificate for her driver’s license. Any hopes or plans she had of seeking her father out died when she’d seen that one word. “I can’t accept he was some stranger my mother hadn’t loved. Some one-night-stand type of deal.”

      “Maybe he hadn’t known she was pregnant when they broke up.”