She got her daddy's tongue and temper
Sometimes her mouth could use a filter
God shook his head the day he built her
Oh, but I bet he smiled.
Lee Brice, She Ain't Right

She gaped at the box that's contents lie spilled out on the floor of her parents old bedroom and sank down, picking up a manila envelope, opening it up, curiousity filling her. She'd always wondered what was hidden in this old box in the top of her mom's closet and now, apparently, as her mother's dying wish, she was going to find out.

The tears slowly slipped down her cheeks as she pulled out a birth certificate for a woman named Angela Monroe, stating that she'd given birth to a live baby girl (her, apparently) , then adoption papers, then a legal document that declared that her name had actually been changed when she was about two months old to what it was now, Adriana, from Samantha, which had apparently been her old name.

A picture fluttered out and she gasped, picked it up as she walked to her mother's vanity table and peered curiously into it's mirror, touching her cheeks tentatively, then trailing her finger along her jawline, then over her pert nose.. She licked her full lips as she looked at the picture of her 'parents' that sat on her mother's vanity and shook her head sadly, picking it up, holding it against her as she rested her chin on it's fancy sterling silver heirloom frame.

"Why'd you both never tell me, mama? Did my real mother just not want me?" Adriana wondered aloud as she wiped away a tear and the door to her parents bedroom opened. Her older sister walked in, hugged her and said quietly, "They took you in because this woman.. She used to clean the house for Mama and Daddy.. She was pregnant, she wasn't ready to be a mother.. They never saw her again after she left you on the doorstep and took off so Mama and Daddy always just assumed it was her.. You know, that she left you because she trusted them to take care of you.. Mama had just lost her own baby then.."

"And all of you knew? None of you ever thought maybe I'd wanna know this one day? What the fuck, Anna?" Adriana asked through gritted teeth as she looked at her older sister with an angry gleam to her normally happy warm brown eyes. The funeral had been hell on all of them. It'd been the worst on Adri, however, because she'd left home around the age of 17 because she and her parents butted heads constantly.. Today, the day they put them both into the ground.. Today had been the first (and the last) time that Adriana had seen them. She'd never get to apologize, she'd never get to rewind time and she'd never get to go and fix things with herself and her parents.

And now she was angry because apparently, all along they'd been hiding this huge secret from her.. All of them had, really. Adriana grabbed her keys and the box and stormed out of the cozy little 2 story Victorian she'd grown up in and jumped in her car. She was mostly on autopilot, she was mostly just wanting to drive out to the bar she spent hours at after work playing pool.

She needed to think.. To figure out her next move.. To try and sort out whether she actually wanted to find her birth mother and confront the woman or forget she'd ever been given the chance to peer into this box, the one her mama used to tan her for trying to sneak peeks into when she was little. The one that scared her mama whenever she'd ask curiously, "Mama.. What's in that box?"

Well now that she'd literally opened the box and all the secrets were out?

Adriana Harper just wasn't sure exactly what to do with what she knew and she didn't know what she'd do next with that knowledge.. She did know, however, that now a lot of things about her life made sense.. That this weird empty space in her, this sense of not belonging.. It finally all made sense.

Three hours found her about partially into a bottle of Jack Daniels as she read all the letters her 'mama' made an attempt to reach out to her real mother, Angela Monroe in. And bitterly, Adriana was starting to wonder if the woman just didn't want her, if she'd just turned tail and dumped her off somewhere for someone else to take care of and ran like hell.. Had her mother ever wanted her, even a little?

From the looks of the 245 letters stamped return to sender.. Adriana was seriously having her doubts about that very thing. What was so wrong with her, she wondered, that her birth mother just dumped her off on some strangers and took off to parts unknown? The anger built, almost bubbling over by now and she paced the back room of the bar, throwing back more and more alcohol the more she thought about things. And the more she thought about things?

The more she was dying to find this woman for herself and confront her, if for nothing more than to get her own due closure on things.. She'd already gotten her closure with her mother and father, she'd visited their graves earlier and poured her heart out, let everything she'd been holding in for so long out finally. Now she just wanted to find this one stranger who shared her DNA and complete the puzzle..

What she didn't realize was that like any story, there was so much more to this one than met the eye.. And when she did whatever it was she felt she had to do.. She'd wind up with a totally changed life.

Maybe even a happier one.