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

"Whoa, wait.. What do you mean you're going to go find her, Adri?" Anna Harper asked her younger sister as Adriana stopped pouring shots for patrons of the bar she worked in currently to look at Anna and reply, "Just what I said, Anna.. I'm gonna find that Angela Monroe woman. Just wanna get it all off my chest, okay?" as she got back to work pouring shots, the matter dropped for the moment. Anna, however, didn't agree with her sister dropping the bombshell then taking the discussion off the table and she said quietly, "You sure that's a good idea, Adri?"

"You have a better one, Anna? Relax.. It's not like I'll find her.. Hell, mama tried, look where it got her.. She didn't find her, so what makes you think I will?" Adriana insisted stubbornly as she wiped down the bar then hopped over and said calmly, "Going for a smoke now. And don't try and talk me out of trying to find the woman, Anna, because I've made up my mind."

"Why's it so damn important though, Adri? I mean you had a happy life.. You coulda had a happier one if you hadn't wasted so much damn time being stubborn and all that with Mama and Daddy.. Why do you have to find this woman? It's gotta be obvious she didn't want a kid dragging her down, I mean the letters and pictures Mama sent all came back."

" Valid point, Anna, but trust me.. This has to be done. I'm just.. You and Abby don't realize what it was like, do ya? Growing up I was always the odd girl out.. I didn't look like you guys, I didn't even act like you guys most of the time.. I just felt..." Adriana said quietly as she shrugged and started to walk towards the door again, reluctant to finish what she'd been about to say. She knew her sisters were still hurting, she was too.. But finally, for once in her life, she felt like she might have a clue as to why she didn't ever feel as if she fit in with her so called family.

She might finally get an answer to all her lingering questions about her strange habits, about just simple basic things really. And if this woman, the woman who'd obviously given her up to the Harpers in the first place and walked away without once looking back were a way to do that? She was going to find the woman and demand answers. She just needed to do this, she needed to know that either there was something wrong with her, something about her that made her unlovable, or she needed to find out the reason why her own damn mother would give her up to total strangers and walk away without so much as a word.

She already had a friend of hers that happened to be a PI looking into finding the woman for her using the old picture Adriana found inside the box when she'd opened it and the one letter that her mother did supposedly write, the one that'd been left with her, vaguely explaining what she was doing and why she'd chosen the Harper family to leave the baby with.

Of course, the letter could have (and most likely was in Adriana's opinion) been a crock of pure bs just to excuse the fact that Angela Monroe couldn't be bothered to be a mother to her child but Adriana for whatever reason needed to know this for herself. And she'd made up her mind to find the woman earlier. Just so she could stand face to face with her and show her that she hadn't needed her after all, she'd had a fucking great life without her real mother in it.

What she didn't realize was that she didn't exactly know the entire story.. And neither did her sisters. And that her poor 'mother' had only known just a little.. But for now, she was going with her gut. Even if this whole thing went badly, at least when Adriana looked back she wouldn't be able to say she hadn't tried.

She walked outside of the bar and sat down on the hood of her car and dug out her cigarettes and a lighter. She checked her phone anxiously for a text from her friend, the private investigator and scowled to herself running her long delicate fingers through her long and dark hair as she bit her lower lip. Her friend had been on the case over a week now and he still hadn't found anything concrete.

She exhaled and took a few deep breaths and reminded herself that while patience may not be one of her better and stronger virtues, she was going to keep at this until she got answers of some kind on the woman who'd given birth to her and then left her with strangers and walked away for no real reason. "I turned out okay even if you abandoned me." she muttered to herself as she leaned back and looked up at the sky, found herself wondering for a split second if her real mother were out there somewhere, looking up at the same stars and wondering what ever became of the little girl she hadn't wanted back then..

Had she regretted it at all? Even a little bit?

And in Port Charles, Sam McCall Davis Morgan was standing on the deck of her mother's house, wine glass in hand, looking up at the sky as she hugged herself against the chill in the night air. The patio doors slid open and she heard her half brother Lucas walking out. "You okay?" Lucas asked as Sam said quietly, "It's nothing, I just.. Sometimes I wonder about something.."

"What?" Lucas asked as he flopped down on a patio chair and looked up at his half sister as he said casually, "Spill it." and patted the chair sitting next to the one he was flopped across. The sounds of a family dinner drifted out the partially open patio doors, laughter hanging on the night breeze and echoing across the lake. Sam looked back into the house and at her birth father, Julian, who was holding her son, Danny.

"Danny wouldn't be my only kid.." Sam started as she sipped the red wine in her glass and looked at Lucas who gave her a gaping dropped jaw as he asked, "What do you mean? Is this about Lila?"

"Nope.. Lila, had she lived, would have been my second child.. This is further back than that.. I was only seventeen when it happened, Lucas.. I was doing anything and everything I could to keep my brother Danny safe and cared for while our so called father was away for weeks at a time on salvage boats.. I worked for this family, the Harpers.. And the husband..." Sam said quietly as she bit her lower lip and shook her head.. He'd done a bad thing to her, yes, but she'd responded to the flirting, the touching, the promises the man made even.. then she'd gotten pregnant.. And she'd been so young, too young really, to properly care for a daughter..

The man of the house, of course, made a deal with her.. And even though it killed her, and she'd hated herself for a long time since, she'd taken the man up on his deal.. And years later, when the truth came out and the wife began looking for her in the hopes of correcting the situation, the damage had been done.. Sam didn't want to tear the little girl from the family she'd grown up loving, thinking her own family.. Not like the little girl had been torn from her own arms, practically..

So when the letters came, with pictures, she'd open them, make copies of the pictures that Samantha's new mother Angel sent and then she'd tape the letters back up and send them back marked return to sender..

In truth? This one man and the things that transpired while knowing him.. They were all a part of what made her become the Angela Monroe she eventually became later in life.. And when she straightened her life out.. She chose a name that made her just a little happy when she thought about it.. A name that gave her hope (because every letter Angel sent her about her little girl gave her hope that maybe despite everything she'd made a wise decision) and she'd picked the name she'd given her own baby girl to start over in her new life..

When she became Samantha McCall around the age of 23, she'd done it because she wanted to never forget the little girl taken from her. She did it in hopes that one day she'd find her little girl and find out she was alright, that she had a happy and normal life, a good life.. Maybe right now, that little girl was looking up at the same stars as she was, or maybe she was snuggled into bed by now, safe and happy in the arms of a man she loved.

As a mother that's all Sam really hoped for.

When she finished telling Lucas the full story he looked at her and said quietly, "And you haven't told our dad or Alexis any of this why exactly?"

"Because, Lucas.. I don't deserve to find her. And I know she's at least happy and with a good family. She was well cared for.. She never even knew about me for all I know." Sam said as she finished off her wine and then stood, stretched and said "But maybe I should tell them.. This does not mean I'm going to look for her.. I promised myself that I'd leave well enough alone.. That I didn't want to destroy her life by popping up in it."

"But what if she finds out anyway, Sam?"

"What if who finds out what?" Alexis and Julian asked as they fixed their eyes on their daughter expectantly. Sam gave Lucas a dirty look and then told them the same thing she'd just told her half brother. And when she finished, Alexis looked at her and said quietly, "You don't have to ever let her know you looked.. But you could find her and at least see for yourself without her knowing, how she really is.. You might be surprised, Sam."

On the drive home, Sam mulled her mother's advice over.. And by the time she walked through the door of her apartment with her sleeping son in her arms, she'd decided.. What if she just looked into the girl and made absolutely sure the girl was happy, that she had actually had the life that Angel Harper described to her in letters...

There wasn't any harm in that.. Right?