Excerpt of Million To One by Darlene Gardner

UNTIL KAYLEE CARTER sat on the television remote and accidentally switched the channel from a Seinfeld rerun to the late-night news, she'd thought her mother was dead.

She picked up the remote to change the channel back, but her finger paused on the flash button when the camera panned over lush, rolling countryside that seemed to stretch for miles.

The pink-and-white blooms of apple orchards made the deep green of the grass and the azure, cloud-dotted sky even more lovely. The blossoms caused the gentle hillsides to come alive with color and touched something inside Kaylee that the city never reached, something that ached with longing.

Her modest little duplex in Fort Lauderdale off U.S. 1, which was far too close to a high-crime area where muggings and break-ins were common, seemed to fade into the background.

McIntosh, Ohio, the caption read. Named, if Kaylee wasn't mistaken, for a popular variety of red apple. The warm feelings suddenly made a bit more sense. Kaylee had been born in Ohio, although her parents had returned to their native Texas when she was only a few weeks old and she'd since moved to Florida.

The compelling face of a dark-haired, dark-eyed woman took the place of the orchard. Although Kaylee was positive she'd never seen the woman before, she seemed familiar.

The woman had a timeless quality that made it hard to guess her age. Early forties, perhaps? Her wide-set eyes and shoulder-length hair were as dark as Kaylee's own, her nose as distinctive, her olive complexion nearly as unlined except around the mouth and eyes.

The reason for those lines became evident when the woman smiled, which she obviously did often. An inner glow seemed to light the smile and radiate from her.

Kaylee leaned toward the nineteen-inch television screen, wishing she could have splurged on a bigger set. Another caption identified the woman as Sofia Donatelli, a former cook at Nunzio's Restaurant in McIntosh who'd won ten million dollars in the Ohio lottery.

"I need luck like that," Kaylee murmured.

She scrambled off the worn sofa she'd bought at a garage sale, sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the TV and turned up the sound.

An impossibly handsome reporter with a square jaw, blindingly white teeth and gilded highlights in his brown hair revealed that Sofia had become known in the Ohio Valley for her generosity since winning the prize six weeks ago.

He interviewed a young mother who told how Sofia paid for experimental surgery to help control her daughter's Tourette's syndrome and a businessman who'd gotten seed money from her to open an ice-cream parlor. The camera then switched back to a shot of Sofia and the good-looking reporter.

"You're probably asking yourself what's in this lottery bonanza for the woman who won the prize. So tell us, Sofia, what will you splurge on? A mansion in L.A.? A yacht that will take you around the world? A garage full of expensive cars?"

"What I want is something money can't buy." Sofia stared straight into the camera, her eyes moist and glowing with an emotion so stark that Kaylee's chest tightened. "I want to find my daughter."

Kaylee's heart pounded so hard she felt it slamming against her chest wall. She edged closer to the set, afraid to miss a word.

"When did you last see your daughter?" the reporter asked.

"When she was a few minutes old. I was sixteen." Sofia smiled softly, sadly. "I thought the best thing for my baby was to give her up for adoption. I got to hold her, but only briefly. Then the nurse took her away, and I never saw her again."

"When was this?"

"Twenty-five years ago," Sofia said, "and there hasn't been a day since that I haven't thought of her."

The remote dropped from Kaylee's fingers, her heart stuttered and she had difficulty taking in enough air.

Kaylee was twenty-five. She'd never had her suspicion verified, but she'd always believed she was adopted.

It wasn't only because she was the sole brunette in a family of blondes. Quite simply, she hadn't belonged. Not in the sweltering flatlands of Houston, where she'd grown up. And not in the Carter family, where her younger sister Lilly had been the favored child.

Kaylee was the one who couldn't do anything right. She'd been expected to make straight A's, to stay away from boys, to stick to the ridiculous curfew of 9:00 p.m. and to dress like a nun, rules Lilly always managed to skirt successfully.

Kaylee hadn't been as lucky. And though she'd rebelled with a vengeance, she never had gotten up the guts to ask her mother if she was really her mother.

She'd asked her father only after her mother died suddenly of a brain aneurysm when Kaylee was in her teens. He'd never had much to say to Kaylee and didn't then, muttering that she shouldn't be ridiculous, before changing the subject.

He hadn't outright said no. "Have you tried to find your daughter before now?" the reporter asked Sofia Donatelli.

"Many times. My stepson even hired a private investigator a few years back. But I always come up against a brick wall." Sofia talked with her hands, pantomiming the action of hitting a wall.

"Why do you think this search will be different?"

"Because I won the lottery and you put me on television." Sofia grew more animated, her hand gestures more pronounced. "There's a chance that my daughter or somebody who knows her could see this."

The reporter's forehead creased with little-used lines. "But how could anyone who sees you on television put the pieces of the puzzle together? You can't know much more about your daughter than you've already told us."

"Oh, but I do." Sofia's smile was bittersweet. "I wanted her to take a little bit of her Italian heritage with her so I stipulated that her adoptive parents keep the name I chose."

Kaylee's stomach seized. Her middle name was quintessentially Italian, a striking contrast to the American names of "Kaylee" and "Carter."

"What is her name?" the reporter asked. Kaylee held her breath as she waited for Sofia Donatelli's reply.

"Constanzia," Sofia said. "Her name is Constanzia."

The breath whooshed out of Kaylee's lungs. The room seemed to tilt and her head swam so that she couldn't tell whether the sudden flickers on the television screen were due to a failing picture or her glazed eyes.

Kaylee's full name was Kaylee Constanzia Carter.

"Mommy, my tummy hurts."

The soft voice intruded into her consciousness. Her six- year-old son Joey stood in the middle of the living room. His hand rested on his Spider-man pajama top, his eyes drooped and misery clouded his cherubic face.

As she sat on the floor trying to come to terms with her shock and his sudden appearance, his color paled and his face contorted in pain. Kaylee leaped to her feet, scooped him up and reached the toilet in the bathroom the instant before he was sick.

As he retched, she rubbed his back to let him know that she was there. She felt every one of the spasms as though she were the one who was ill. When he was finally through, she ran a washcloth under the cold tap water and wiped his hot, little face. "Do you feel better now, honey?"

He nodded, but his lower lip trembled. Thinking aloud, she said, "I knew I shouldn't have let you eat that second hot dog at dinner."

"Like hot dogs," he mumbled. He blinked hard, trying valiantly not to cry.

Kaylee's heart turned over. She gathered his small body close but still he didn't surrender to tears. Was it because he'd sensed how hard things had become for her?

Being a single mother had never been easy, but she'd had a live-in support system until six weeks ago. She'd shared expenses, child-care duties and friendship with another single mother who had a little girl Joey's age. Then Dawn met a man, took little Monica and moved away from Fort Lauderdale.

Dawn used to jokingly call Joey the man of the house. Had Joey taken that description too much to heart? "It's okay to cry if you need to, honey," Kaylee whispered into his soft, sweet-smelling hair.

He held himself so rigidly that she thought he hadn't heard her, but then the tension left his body in a rush and, finally, he cried. Not delicate, silent tears but noisy, shuddering sobs.

Kaylee held him close, glad of the comfort she could offer.

Her son's appearance in the living room had prevented Kaylee from hearing what else Sofia Donatelli had to say. She told herself it didn't matter. Constanzia was her middle name, not her first name. Some other Constanzia was Sofia's birth daughter.

Or maybe you are.

She shut her mind to the thought.

Still, she knew that if she'd seen the news feature years ago, she would have jumped in her car and driven through the night to Ohio in her quest to learn the truth.

But she was a mother now. She had responsibilities and one of those was to curb the rash part of her nature that had gotten her into so much trouble when she was growing up.

The notion that the lottery winner who lived in the lush Ohio Valley could be her mother amounted to nothing but a fantasy.

The sobbing, little boy in her arms who depended upon her was her reality.