Read Sage's Eyes for Free Online

young man who resembled my father enough to be his twin. I saw classic automobiles in the background, too, one that had a stick for a steering wheel.
    The second picture was clearer and was so surprising that it sent me moving backward to sit on the floor. It was the same man, and a woman with a close resemblance to my mother was standing beside him. Behind them was what looked like an old farmhouse, andanother very old automobile was on their right. The woman wore something around her neck. It looked familiar.
    I went to my father’s desk and found his magnifying glass. It helped me see that the necklace had a pendant of what looked like seven blossoms. I thought for a moment and remembered that I had seen my mother wearing this pendant, but not for some time. Who was the woman? Was it my mother’s mother? Had she given the pendant to my mother? How could all these relatives look so much alike? Why were all these pictures locked away?
    I put the picture back. There were many photos with the same two people, but as I sifted through them, the pictures got better; they were clearer, and the backgrounds were more modern, suggesting that they were taken no more than ten or fifteen years ago. The strangest thing about them was that neither the man nor the woman looked a day older in any of the pictures.
    I noticed some additional pictures, one of a young boy and another of a young girl. Behind these was a picture of me when I was much younger. Who were the other two? Neither looked anything like me. The boy had much darker hair and almost coal-black eyes. The girl had light brown hair and blue eyes. Both of them looked older than what I imagined their ages really were. They had adult faces on young bodies, I thought, faces that looked troubled, pained. Why were we all in this one folder with the other pictures?
    The more I discovered, the deeper I fell into confusion. I almost didn’t look at anything else, but the topof one paper looked familiar, so I dug into that file and found the picture I had drawn years ago of how I imagined my birth mother looked. I sat there staring at it, remembering the day I had shown it to my parents. So they hadn’t torn it up or thrown it out after all, I thought. I should be happy about that. Maybe they were proud of how well I drew at so early an age, but why keep it hidden away?
    I couldn’t take it up to my room and keep it, because that would reveal that I had been in the forbidden cabinet. I started to put it back but stopped. There was something else in the file with my drawing. It was a photograph of a woman who looked very much like the woman I had drawn, but she looked sad, as if she was moments away from crying. There was nothing written on the backs of any of the pictures, nothing to help me identify whoever it was.
    I pulled out an envelope and opened it. It contained my birth certificate. My name on the certificate was Sage Healy. My father and mother were listed as Mark and Felicia Healy. Attached to it were the adoption finalization papers. This wasn’t a surprise. When I had done some research on adopted children, I learned that a new birth certificate would be issued with the adoptive parents’ names on it. Nobody looking at a birth certificate would know if a child had been adopted.
    The birthdate was correct: September 15, 1999. I was born in a clinic in Dorey, so I always had lived here. My parents told people that they didn’t adopt me until I was eight months old, so maybe the originalbirth certificate with my birth mother’s name on it was still somewhere. Would there ever be a possibility of my finding it and discovering her?
    I paused when I saw something to the side of the files. It was a piece of dark brown leather. There was an emblem on it that looked like a family crest with three trees. Under it was the word Belladonna .
    Suddenly, just like when a heavy cloud moves over the sun, the room darkened. I didn’t hear thunder, but