Fiction Friday – In-Sight by Gerard Webster

Special thanks to Gerard Webster, author of “In Sight” and “The Soul Reader.”

This week, I’m running an excerpt from “In Sight,” his award-winning first novel. Next week’s excerpt will be from his newly-released “The Soul Reader.”

Carrie set her fork down.
“I don’t have a family,” she said.
Ward looked up suddenly.
“What do you mean you don’t have a family?” he asked. “What about your parents?”
“I don’t have any parents.”
“Aw, come on!” Ward waved his fork expansively. “Everybody has parents.”
“Not me.”
She looked down at the cloth napkin in her lap.
“You’re serious, aren’t you,” Ward realized too late.
“My parents,” Carrie said, “the people I thought were my parents…were killed in a car wreck when I was eighteen.”
Ward set his silverware down.
“My God, Carrie! I’m sorry…I didn’t know…” he stopped in mid-sentence when her meaning registered. “Did you say ‘the people you thought were your parents?”
“I was adopted.”
“Oh.” Ward was at a loss. It dawned on him that he didn’t know anything at all about Carrie’s past.
“I didn’t learn about that,” she went on to explain, “until three years later—when I applied for a passport.”
Ward reached for her hand across the table. He thought it best to just let her talk.
“I couldn’t find a birth certificate under the name Carrie Hope,” she said. “That’s why I couldn’t get a passport. Carrie Hope isn’t the name I was born with. I had to contact the attorney who handled my parents’ will to learn my real name…that’s when I learned I was adopted…three years after the accident.”
She looked up at him.
“Would you like to know my real name?” she asked. “The name I was born with?”
“If you’d like to tell me…”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“Yes,” Ward sensed that no matter what he said now, he’d be wrong. “I’d like to know.”
“It’s Caridad Padilla,” she said. “I’m half Cuban. My mother’s maiden name was Estella Padilla. That’s all I know about her.”
Suddenly Ward saw the pieces of her genetic beauty clicking into place—an American father, probably with blond hair and fair skin, and a Cuban mother with dark brown eyes and perpetual tan. Carrie got the best of both of them.
“Would you like to know my father’s name?” Carrie asked.
“Yes,” Ward ventured.
“So would I,” Carrie said. And with that, she pushed her chair back, threw her napkin on the table, and darted to the ladies room.

To find out more information about Gerard Webster’s novels, his website is www.gerard-webster.com

Interested readers can purchase In-Sight at Amazon.com

Copyright Gerard Webster