Outskirts Press, INC.

A DNA Test from a Genealogy company was an unexpected gift and may just lead to her death. Life is unpredictable and full of surprise for Delta, whose mother is a prostitute and drug addict. Her father is unknown. Somehow she overcomes disastrous foster care placements and sexual abuse and is able to prosper in the worst of environments. Then her mother dies of a drug overdose when she is 15 and now she is truly alone. A high achiever in school without any support but fate had more in store for her. She is alone so alone that she asks a truck driver who is a total stranger to lie and become her guardian to prevent her from going back in foster care. Surprise, it works and with her guardian’s support she achieves all her goals. She completes a biochemical engineering degree on the way to become a medical researcher committed to solving the issue of drug dependence. Accepted at prestigious medical schools she has the world under control, or at least she thinks so. Then—She takes that simple DNA test promoted by an ancestor genealogy site and her world is forever changed. She may find a father she never wanted but at the same time she may be killed for finding him. The few people she loves are now in danger of being hurt or killed because they know her story. Is her father trying to kill her? If not her father, who would want to end her life and why? Just who will save Delta? The truth is in her genes.

Maybe it was Ollie being in the house yesterday or my mother’s drunken stupor, but today routine was changed. Usually I just left the coffee pot going for my mother, but today I gently pushed my mother’s bedroom door open. Her room reeked of stale cigarette smoke and dirty laundry. I saw my mother stretched out across the bed with her head hanging slightly over the edge. I went over to the bedside prepared to adjust her position. When I reached out and touched her I was shocked to feel cold, clammy skin. I couldn’t believe emotionally what I rationally knew had happened. My mother was dead. My first reaction was to grab and shake her, thinking that would bring her around, but her stiff body didn’t respond. I started to panic and before I knew it I was sitting on the floor hyperventilating. All the things that my mother had done wrong and all the times she failed me as a mother weren’t important to me now. I was in a fog and couldn’t find my way out of it. I don’t know how long I was sitting there before I regained some semblance of calmness. Taking deep breaths, I felt the panic lift and my mind starting working much like solving a word problem in algebra. To describe my reaction as flat and unemotional wouldn’t be accurate, because I certainly reacted with emotion when I found her dead. The initial panic and tears that came with it were gone. Now I stared at my mother’s body and my mind tried to wrap around the idea that I was truly all alone. If there was any sadness, it was because any hope of having a relationship with my mother was gone. I was indeed an orphan.