Chapter One

My name is Tina Kennard. I was born and raised in Cheraw, where I lived with my dad, my brother and my aunt. I have always felt very lucky to have them as my family and I even felt better when I heard stories from my friends about the trouble they were having with their parents. I never knew what it was like to have a mom and a dad, but I also never knew what it was like to be fighting with the ones you love the most. In hindsight, that experience might have helped me later, but I was happy with the way it was – why wouldn’t it be?

As a child, I never questioned the absence of my mother. Growing up and becoming a teenager, it became an obsession. I would ask my father about it all the time, but I saw the look in his eyes, heard her voice tremble, saw him struggling with the tears he didn’t want his daughter to see. I thought that since dad and aunt Charlie were really close, she would be able to help me out. 

Not.

Well, she was able, but she didn’t want to. She wanted my father to be the one to tell Dean and me what had happened to the woman who gave us birth and then disappeared – if that is what she did.

My dad never dated anyone – not that Dean and I know of. Aunt Charlie occasionally brought a man home, but only if she really thought the relationship had a chance of working out. 

Dad has been a gardener for a long time and he was an amateur-filmmaker in his spare time. He did everything: writing, producing, acting, designing… aunt Charlie, Dean and I often had a role in his movies as well. Then aunt Charlie got this big promotion which allowed daddy to pursue his dream: go back to school to be a producer. After a year, he got a job offer in Sacramento. Aunt Charlie asked to be transferred and Dean and I reluctantly changed schools.

We had been in Sacramento for one year. I was finally used to it, I finally knew my way around. I liked living here – and then dad got an even better job offer. They wanted him at CBS and Dad wanted CBS, but that meant we have to move to LA. I didn’t want that. Dean didn’t want it. Aunt Charlie gets used to every place – she could get used to living in freaking Russia.