Page 40 of Cole

“What could be worse than spam?”

“My brother.”

“You don’t want to talk to Benji?”

“No. It’s not Benji. It’s my other brother, Julian.”

“Oh, ” Cole said. “Do you not get along with him?”

“I usually don’t have a problem with him,” she said. “But I do at the moment.”

“What did he do?”

Annie hesitated for a moment, then said, “You know that Benji and I don’t share the same mom, right?”

“Yes. You mentioned that.”

“Well, recently my mom—my birth mom—contacted my dad to pass on her request to see me.”

Many questions exploded in Cole’s mind, and he tried to figure out if it would be rude to ask any of them. “So, uh… you don’t have contact with her?”

“No.” Annie tugged the band holding her hair up on top of her head loose, allowing her hair to spill across her shoulders. Without hesitating, she gathered it up again. “We experienced a family tragedy when I was young, which resulted in my mom leaving us and divorcing my dad.”

“And she didn’t want custody of you kids?”

Annie sighed. “Actually, she wanted to keep seeing Julian. Just not me.”

Cole could hear the hurt in her voice. “That must have been difficult.”

“Not really. It happened when I was three, so I really have no memory of her. Julian is seven years older than me, so he had a much closer relationship with her.”

“And now she wants a relationship with you?”

“I guess.” Annie shrugged. “Every once in a while, she’ll contact my dad about talking to me. He passes on the request, and when I say no, she goes to Julian and he calls me to tell me I need to talk to her.”

“You have no interest in having a conversation with her?”

Annie shook her head. “No. Benji’s mom is more of a mom to me than I can remember my own mom being.”

“Has she had other kids since leaving your dad?”

A look of pain passed across Annie’s face. “Yes. She had two more girls.”

Cole was at a loss as to what to say to ease her pain. “Do you know that four of my siblings are adopted?”

Annie looked back into the camera of her tablet. “Yes. Benji had mentioned that when he first learned about you, after deciding you were his favorite player.”

“And then I suppose he realized that Jay and I couldn’t be biological brothers when he started to play on the high school team.”

That brought a small smile to Annie’s face. “Yeah. He mentioned it again then, too.”

“None of them have mentioned talking to their birth parents,” Cole said. “Well, Jay and Janessa can’t since their parents have passed away, but Zane and Lee have never saidanything—to me, at least—about wanting to talk to their birth parents. So you’re not alone in not wanting to speak to your mom.”

“I think I struggle a lot with this because one of the things I’ve learned since becoming a Christian is that I should forgive people.” Her shoulders slumped as she wrapped her arms across her waist. “I don’t want to have her apologize to me. I don’t want to have to forgive her for what she did to me.”

Cole understood where she was coming from. He’d heard all about forgiving people as he’d grown up. It wasn’t an easy thing to do in general. But to forgive a parent for abandoning you? Especially when they hadn’t abandoned a sibling? That would be hard for most people.

“Will your brother keep calling you?” Cole asked. “Or will he give up?”

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