Swim Deep - Page 106

In the end, broaching the complicated topic of possible adoption wasn’t as difficult as I’d imagined. My father wasn’t home yet from work when I called, so I had my mother all to myself. We talked about my painting and what was going on in Jessica’s life. She told me that she and dad had joined a gym. But after ten minutes or so of idle chitchat, my mother was the one who cut to the chase.

“Okay, tell me what’s going on,” she said. I could hear pans clanging in the background, and pictured her in our bright kitchen, with the blue barstools pulled up to the oak countertop island. My mom ritualistically had a cup of tea and unloaded the dishwasher when she got home from work. I imagined her favorite pink mug steaming as it sat on the counter. A sharp feeling of homesickness went through me.

“What do you mean, get to the point?” I asked her.

“I don’t know. Something in your voice. Call it a mother’s intuition. You didn’t call to hear about your dad’s and my ab workout, did you? Is something wrong, honey?”

“I wouldn’t say wrong, necessarily, no. But something happened to me recently,” I began carefully. “I was at a local library, and there was a photo on the wall of someone who helped build the library. Anyway, this woman looked almost exactly like me.”

The pans stopped rattling.

“That’s odd.”

“I mean, she was almost my double, Mom. And it got me wondering… Do we have any relatives out here? I know you and Dad went to school in Northern California and lived there for a few years. But we don’t have family here, right?”

“No family that I know of. We’re all scattered around the Midwest.”

I heard the caution in her tone, though.

“Mom?” I asked softly. “I know it may seem strange for me to ask this… but is there any chance I was adopted?”

I heard a scraping sound and knew she’d just pulled out one of the blue barstools and was sitting down. I, too, suddenly felt a need to sit. I sank down heavily onto one of the chairs in the seating area.

“I don’t know who that woman in the picture you saw was, Anna,” my mom said. “But… Jesus, I wasn’t expecting this,” she continued under her breath. “I wish your father was here.”

“Mom?” I asked, because she’d faded off.

“I’ve imagined telling you before, but never like this. I never thought you’d be the one to bring it up. To ask me point blank.” She sighed. “We never wanted you to feel less than… never wanted you to feel that you weren’t one hundred percent one of us, our beautiful, treasured little girl—”

Her voice broke. I just sat there, clutching my phone to my ear, my heart fluttering like it wanted to escape from my ribcage.

“You know that your father met me when he was in law school and I was an undergrad at Berkeley. We eloped before I even graduated, and lived in this grubby little apartment in Oakland while your dad clerked for a local judge. Hardly a similar scenario to your marriage and living situation, but it was wonderful. Some of the best days of my life.” Her laugh sounded wistful. “Then I graduated and got a job as an art teacher at a local high school, and your dad got a good job as a human resources attorney at Kaiser. And we saved up enough to buy ou

rselves a little house in Emeryville.”

I’d heard this story a hundred times before—the little dive apartment in Oakland with the heater that always gave out on the coldest nights, and the rickety winding stairwell that was such a pain for carrying up groceries. And how after a few years of marriage, they’d bought their first home. They’d felt like royalty in their new little house.

Their thoughts had turned to starting a family.

“You said that’s where I was conceived,” I inserted at this point. “At the new house you’d bought. That’s where I was born. In Emeryville. It’s on my birth certificate. Then Dad was offered a new job in Chicago. When I was a few months old, we moved.”

“I know that’s what we’ve told you, honey. But the truth is, we had trouble conceiving a baby. We tried for almost a year before we went to a specialist. And we were told that we’d probably never successfully have a biological baby that was both of ours.”

“So I am adopted.”

“Yes.” She made a sound of frustration. “I wish your father was here. He’ll be so upset, knowing I told you like this, on the phone. But I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately, now that you’ve finished school. Now that you’re a married woman. I’ve been thinking about telling you the truth… and now, this call. I hope you’re not angry, Anna. Maybe you think it was selfish of us, not to tell you, but I truly believe we didn’t do it for us. Not entirely, anyway. You were ours, from the moment we laid eyes on you. And we were yours. Forever. I never wanted you to believe anything different.”

Her small sob cut through my stunned state. In the suspension I’d existed in between belief and disbelief, I’d half expected she might confirm my suspicion.

But at the same time, you can never really prepare for being told that your entire past wasn’t at all what you thought it was.

“I’m not mad, Mom. I’m not. You and Dad will always be my parents, no matter what. I’m just trying to understand. Is Jessica adopted, too?”

“Oh, honey,” my mother sniffed. “No, that’s one of the strangest things about it. Ten months after we took you home with us, I found out I was pregnant. It floored us. But we learned that it happens that way sometimes, in cases of adoption. When the stress of getting pregnant goes away, after the couple adopts, things just resolve naturally. It was the damndest thing. We couldn’t believe how lucky we were, to have one beautiful little girl, and then to be blessed with another one.”

So. Jessica was the natural one, then.

Me, the unnatural.

Tags: Beth Kery Romance
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