The Mother I Hated to Love

Since her early childhood, Angie McHall noticed that there was something different about her life; although she was surrounded by a father and a mother figure, there was really no one in the house to call mom and dad.

Angie was fortunate enough to have in her life her nanny, Liz Santiago. This was the woman who ended up giving her unconditional love and affection, and who would become the only mother she ever had.

As Angie grew older, she realized that she was the only person in that household of a different skin color. She would later discover that the couple with whom she had learned to share her space was, in fact, her natural parents, who had chosen to treat her as a perfect stranger, because they did not have much in common with her.

Angie was lost; she was engulfed in a mystery that she simply could not comprehend. She was mesmerized by what she considered to be the strange circumstances of her existence.

How did Angie happen to be black when the people responsible for her birth were white? She was determined to find the answer to that question, if there were one to be found.

Upon her insistence, her nanny decided that she could no longer remain indifferent to her cries; so she promised Angie that she would do all she could to help find the truth that was kept hidden from her all of her life.

Liz meant what she said. She was about to make good on her promise.

The night before she was to travel to Florida, where Angie was attending school, for a face to face meeting during which she would reveal to Angie the mystery of Angie's life, she went to bed never to wake up again.

Angie's hope was dashed. The only person on whom she counted to solve her life's mystery was gone. But was Liz's untimely death really an accident of nature, or part of a Machiavellian plan engineered by an invisible hand to keep Angie and, perhaps, her parents from finding the truth?