By the time Natalie said good-bye to Gina at her apartment and made it home, it was four o’clock and she only had an hour before Hailey and Henry were due back from their playdates. She considered using the time to get started on the order prep for the party she was catering the next night, but after her conversation with Gina, she couldn’t think of anything else but trying to find her sister. Work would have to wait.
She grabbed her laptop from her desk in the den, opened a search engine, and typed in her sister’s name. The first link that came up was for Facebook, suggesting that Natalie search for Brooke Walker on the social media site. Natalie clicked on it and logged in to her personal Facebook account, which she really only used to post pictures of the things she baked, then typed in her sister’s name again. A list of over three hundred women came up, all living in various cities across the United States. Natalie had no way to know where Brooke might be living. Had she stayed in Seattle, or did she flee the area when she turned eighteen? She scanned the list and then filtered it by adding the modifier “Seattle, WA” to the search field with her sister’s name, and the results came up blank. Similar searches of Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr came back empty, too. If her sister was in the Seattle area, she certainly didn’t spend any significant time online. Of course, she could be married, Natalie thought. She could have been adopted and have an entirely different last name. If that was the case, it was a pointless endeavor to search on social media platforms for the name her sister had had when she was four.
Frustrated, Natalie closed out the web page and opened a fresh tab. She remembered Gina’s words about the various online adoption registries, so she did a search for the largest, most reputable one. Natalie clicked on the link at the top of the list and saw that it was a mutual consent registry, meaning that if her sister—or even her birth mother—was already registered on the site, Natalie could be contacted within a couple of days of when a data match was found. While the site didn’t have access to court records and couldn’t confirm a relationship as authentic, it could at least provide first contact with a possible blood relative. The FAQ page recommended that if necessary, once the two individuals connect, they could petition the court to open their records, or voluntary DNA testing could be done.
This could be it, she thought as she eagerly used her email address to create a log in and filled out her own profile with as much information as she could about herself. She listed her maiden name as Natalie Walker, thinking that would be the name Brooke might search for if she was, in fact, looking for her sister, too. She filled in her date of birth and the dates and details of her infancy as best she could, using the same story her mom had told her and Natalie had passed on to Hailey. She noted her brief stint at Hillcrest before she had been adopted, she described her physical characteristics, and then she went on to fill out the limited information she knew about her older sister. She entered her name, and all the information about how they had both lived in a car with their mother, how she had signed over her parental rights to the state. She entered the fourteen years Brooke had stayed at Hillcrest, as well as Gina’s name and contact information, in case Brooke had included that in her profile.
Natalie was just about to hit submit when there was a knock at the front door. “Mommy, I’m ho-ome!” Hailey called out from the porch. “Let me in!”
Natalie stood up and stared at the screen as she pressed her index finger down on the mouse, and then a box popped up informing her that her profile had been successfully posted to the site. Please, she thought. Let this work.
“Coming!” she said as she jogged toward the foyer and opened the door. Hailey hugged her legs as Natalie waved at Ruby’s mom, who had stayed inside her car in the driveway, waiting until Hailey was safely in the house. Ruby’s mom beeped the horn once before backing out and driving away. Another car pulled up in front of the house then, and Natalie recognized Katie at the wheel.
“Hey!” Katie said as she climbed out of the car and walked around to the other side. She opened the back door and helped Henry release his seat belt, and Natalie watched as her son raced up the walkway and into the house.
“Hi, Mama!” Henry said as he pushed past both her and Hailey, dropping his Buzz Lightyear backpack on the bench next to the door. Buzz was Henry’s latest obsession; he’d watch all three of the Toy Story movies every day if Natalie let him. At night, he slept with a hard plastic, electronic Buzz doll, something she’d found at a consignment store for just a couple of bucks and sometimes regretted buying because of the toy’s irritatingly loud mechanical voice. In the morning, Natalie knew Henry was awake and pushing buttons when she heard “To infinity . . . and beyond!” coming from his bedroom.
“Thanks for bringing him home,” Natalie called out to Katie, who stood next to her car. “I’m happy to return the favor when Logan plays over here.”
“Sounds good,” Katie said, smiling. She gave Natalie a short wave and then climbed back in the driver’s seat and drove away.
Natalie ushered Hailey inside and shut the door behind them. Henry was already lying on his stomach on the couch, propped up on his elbows and scissoring-kicking the cushions as he played with two small action figures, Buzz Lightyear and Woody. His head was bent down and his shoulders were hunched, intent on whatever story he had them acting out, narrating their conversation under his breath, first in Buzz’s voice, “I’ve set my laser from stun to kill!” and then, in Woody’s slow drawl, “Reach for the sky!”
“Guess what?” her daughter said as she pulled off her bright red jacket and dropped it to the floor. “Ruby has a new kitten! His name is Tux because he’s black and has white fur shaped like a bow tie on his neck!”
“Hang that up, please,” Natalie said. Hailey groaned as though she’d just been asked to carry a load of bricks across a desert, but then hung up her coat on one of the hooks by the door.
“But did you hear me?” Hailey said as they walked together into the kitchen. “The kitten’s name is Tux! Like Tuxedo! Because of the bow tie. Get it?”
“I get it,” Natalie said, waiting for her daughter’s inevitable request.
“He is sooo cute,” Hailey said. “I wish I had a kitten.” She looked at Natalie sidelong and raised her eyebrows. “It’s almost my birthday, you know.” Her birthday was actually in March, five months away, so “almost” was a bit of a stretch.
“I’m sorry, honey, but you know with my baking I can’t have animals in the house,” Natalie said. Her kitchen was licensed commercial, and even though she’d soon be moving her work space out into the more spacious and fully remodeled garage, state regulations still forbade any animals on the premises.
“I know,” Hailey sighed. “It’s not fair.”
Natalie glanced at her laptop, thinking she should shut it down, but then decided against it. What if a data match came back tonight? Unlikely, Natalie knew, but still, she kept her computer on.
“How about you work on your family tree while I work on my dessert order?” Natalie suggested as she opened up the refrigerator, pulled out six pounds of butter, two dozen eggs, and a bag of lemons, and set them on the counter. She’d get the lemon curd going first, and then make the truffle filling for the chocolate lava cakes.
“I already finished it at Ruby’s,” Hailey said.
“Wow,” Natalie said. “Can I see it?”
“Okay!” Hailey pushed her chair back and raced to the foyer, where she’d hung up her backpack along with her coat.
Henry wandered into the kitchen then and attached himself to one of Natalie’s legs, sitting on her foot. His arms held tight around her knee while she unwrapped cubes of butter and plopped them into a pan on the stove.
“I’m back!” Hailey announced when she returned, holding a large piece of white construction paper than had been folded in half, which she opened and delivered to Natalie. “It’s kinda bad,” she said. “The leaves are all crooked.”
“Very bad, that picture!” Henry said, letting go of his mother’s leg.
“Very stupid, my brother!” Hailey shot back.
“Hey. No name-calling,” Natalie said, immediately wondering if she and Brooke would have quarreled like this, if they had been raised together. Would they have been close? Would they have stayed up all night giggling about the boys they liked or gossiping about their friends? Would they have fought over clothes and makeup and whose turn it was to clean the bathroom? Would Brooke have fed her ice cream when Natalie cried over her first broken heart? There was no way she’d ever know the answers to these questions, and the thought of that, being victim of that kind of loss, made Natalie’s heart ache.
Still holding the paper Hailey had delivered, Natalie smoothed it onto the counter. Her daughter had drawn a picture of herself at the base of the tree, under the ground. Her curls were drawn in brown springs shooting out from her head, directly linked to the tree’s squiggly roots, which Natalie thought was a creative touch. There was a branch and leaves right above her for Natalie and Kyle, as well as for Kyle’s older brother, Sean, who lived in Los Angeles with his wife, Isabelle, and their two boys, Carter and Cody. Hailey had given both of her cousins their own leaves, too. Her parents’ branch was above them all, along with a branch and two leaves for Kyle’s parents, who lived in South Carolina and rarely came to visit.
“You did a beautiful job, honey,” Natalie said, and for what felt like the countless time that day, her eyes filled with tears.
“Are you crying?” Hailey asked, incredulous. “It’s so good it made you cry?”
Natalie laughed. “Yes,” she told her daughter, even though that wasn’t the reason for her tears. However much she might like to, she couldn’t tell Hailey that the project wasn’t complete. In order to be an accurate picture, a true account of their family history, the drawing needed another branch and two more leaves.
• • •
Natalie did her best to keep busy the next couple of days, trying not to think too much about Brooke or check her email too often to see if the adoption registry had found a match. Instead, she focused on work, fulfilling her weekly orders for the three local espresso stands who had hired her to provide them the baked goods they offered their customers. Since it was fall, she made a selection of seasonally themed muffins: cranberry-orange cornmeal, pumpkin streusel, and eggnog spiced with a hint of fresh ground nutmeg, as well as tender almond croissants and a variety of bite-size, melt-in-your-mouth scones. She met with three different contractors who gave her bids on the remodel of the garage and hired her first choice, excited that the work would soon begin.
But after a week of trying to be patient, Natalie decided she couldn’t take the waiting any longer—she needed to do something more, take some kind of action to try to find her sister. It struck her that she could visit Hillcrest, the state home where she and Brooke had stayed after their mother gave them up—where Brooke had ultimately spent most of her childhood—and see if they had anything in their records that might lead Natalie to where her sister was today. It was a long shot, but Natalie was anxious enough to do it anyway.
“Do you want me to go with you?” Kyle asked when she told him her plan. They were in the kitchen after the kids were asleep.
“I don’t think so,” Natalie said as she wiped down the counter. “But thanks for offering.” She appreciated her husband’s support, but she also felt like this was something she wanted to do alone.
The next morning, after she had dropped off both kids at school, Natalie used the map function on her iPhone to find the address for Hillcrest, then followed the GPS instructions that led her to the facility in a residential neighborhood on the outskirts of Georgetown. Her heart thumped hard behind her rib cage as she parked in the lot next to the three-story, gray-brick building and climbed out of her car, clutching her purse in a tight grip. It was a little strange, knowing that she had stayed inside these walls for a month when she was a baby; the vision she’d had of her adoption process didn’t include a place that looked as stark as this. She’d imagined something along the lines of a daycare center, a cheerful yellow building with lots of flowers in its yard, rooms filled with chubby babies waiting for their new parents to bring them home. But visiting Hillcrest wasn’t about her, it was about finding out more about Brooke.
It was another drizzly day, typical of Seattle in early October, so Natalie held her coat over her head as she made her way up the front steps and pushed open the glass door to where a heavyset man with broad shoulders and a shaved head sat at a desk to her right. He wore a black uniform, which she assumed meant he was a security guard. Two metal detectors stood in front of her, similar to those found at airport checkpoints, as well as a machine with a black conveyor belt that looked like the ones travelers had to put their carry-on luggage through.
“Can I help you?” the man asked. In contrast to his substantial build, his voice was high pitched and nasal. He sported a closely shorn, black goatee.
“I hope so,” Natalie replied, readjusting her jacket so it hung correctly. “My sister and I stayed here when we were kids. We were separated thirty years ago, and I’m trying to find her.”
“Do you have an appointment?”
“Um . . . no, actually. I wasn’t sure if I’d need one. I was just hoping to talk to an administrator.”
The man looked her over, as though trying to decide something. “Let me see if anyone’s available.” Natalie thanked him, and he grabbed for the phone on his desk. “Hey, Lizzie. I’ve got a woman here needing to talk to someone about the time she and her sister stayed here.” He paused, listening for a moment. “Yeah. Okay, thanks. I’ll let her know.” He hung up and looked back at Natalie. “You’re in luck. One of our case managers is free. She’ll be down in a minute.”
“Thanks so much,” Natalie said, relieved.
“No problem. Can you sign in here, please?” He pointed to a clipboard on his desk, and Natalie took a couple of steps over so she could comply. After she had, he nodded in the direction of the metal detector. “Go ahead and walk through now, and put your purse on the conveyor belt.”
Natalie did as he asked, feeling a bit like she was entering a prison. She wondered if the kids who stayed here felt the same way, having to be checked for weapons every time they entered the building, being treated like criminals in a place they were supposed to call home. After picking up her purse, she waited for the case manager, taking in her surroundings. The floor was dingy white linoleum with several cracks and missing chunks along its surface, and the air had a stale, locker-room quality. The walls were gray cinder block, which Natalie thought only added to the jail-like feel of the building. There was nothing soft or inviting about the space; she could only imagine what spending the majority of her childhood here might have done to Brooke. What kind of person it might have turned her into.
“Hello,” a voice said, interrupting Natalie’s thoughts. She turned to see a blond woman coming toward her. The woman looked to be in her mid- to late twenties and wore jeans, a blue-and-white–striped sweater, and black Converse sneakers. Her long hair was pulled into a simple, sleek ponytail at the base of her neck. “I’m Melissa Locke.” She held out her hand, and Natalie shook it.
“Natalie Clark,” she said. “Thanks for seeing me.”
“You caught me at a rare slow moment,” Melissa said, with a smile. “How can I help you?” Natalie took a moment to explain why she was there, and when she finished, Melissa spoke again. “Hmm. Well, we can check our files, but it’s unlikely we’d know where your sister went after she aged out, unless she kept in contact with someone here. What year did you say she left us?”
“I’m pretty sure it was 1994,” Natalie said. “That’s the year she would have turned eighteen.”
“Okay,” Melissa said. “Let’s go see what we can find.”
Natalie followed the younger woman to her office, a cramped, cube-shaped room without a window but with three walls lined with tall black filing cabinets. Melissa gestured for Natalie to sit in the chair on the other side of her desk while Melissa sat in front of her computer. “Most of our records are digitized, so we should have something on her,” she said as she typed. “Here we go. Brooke Walker.” Her eyes moved over the screen, reading aloud what she saw on it. “Brought in with her six-month-old sister, Natalie, in October of 1980.” She paused, reading more, silently. “You were right. Looks like she did age out in 1994, but we don’t have anything on her after that. Nothing official, anyway.”
“Would there be something unofficial?” Despite having known that the odds were against there being anything substantive here about her sister’s whereabouts, Natalie couldn’t help but feel disappointed.
“We actually have one employee who worked here back then. Miss Dottie, our kitchen manager. She was only twenty when she was hired, and has been here almost forty years. The kids love her, and she’s got a great memory. A real knack for names. Maybe she knew Brooke.”
“Is she here?” Natalie asked, feeling a surge of hope.
“She should be. Let me check.” Melissa reached for the phone on her desk, and after a quick conversation, she hung up and looked at Natalie. “She’s in the middle of overseeing lunch prep, but we can head down to the cafeteria and wait for her, if you like.”
“That would be great,” Natalie said, fingering the edge of her leather purse strap. “I was wondering, though . . . if it’s not an inconvenience, is there any way I can see a bit of the building? Where Brooke might have stayed?”
“Sure,” Melissa said. “I’d offer to show you where you were for the brief time you were here, too, but we don’t house babies anymore. They’re kept in a different facility altogether. The infant room has been remodeled into a study hall.”
“Oh, that’s okay,” Natalie said. She’d been so focused on finding out more about Brooke, it hadn’t even crossed her mind that she might want to see where she had spent a month of her own life—she wouldn’t have remembered it anyway.
Melissa moved her eyes back to the computer. After a moment of scrolling, she smiled at Natalie. “Found it.” She stood up and headed out the door, Natalie following right behind her.
They walked down a long, narrow hallway that was lit by buzzing, yellow-tinged fluorescent lights and then went up a flight of stairs. The walls there were plaster instead of cement, painted the same dingy white as the linoleum, and were covered in brightly colored posters with inspirational sayings on them, including one that said, “The struggle is part of the story.” As she walked by it, Natalie noticed that beneath that statement someone had written “Fuck you and your story” in thick black ink. She winced, practically able to feel the anger coming off the resident who had penned those words.
When they got to the second floor, Melissa led Natalie down another hallway, this one lined with several gray doors. Melissa stopped at the third one on the right and gestured for Natalie to enter. “This is it,” Melissa said as they each stepped inside. “She stayed in a lot of different rooms before she hit ninth grade, a new one every time she came back from another foster home, but this is where she spent her last four years.”
Natalie moved her eyes around the room, which was about the same size as Hailey’s bedroom at home, but rather than her daughter’s frilly canopy bed covered in a lime-green comforter and lavender pillows, the space had four black metal, twin-size bunk beds squeezed along its perimeter. There were no windows, no other furniture besides the beds, and nothing hung on the walls. The space was blank, industrial. There were dented cardboard boxes with handles under the bunks, which Natalie assumed served as makeshift dressers. There was nothing about the room that said home.
Natalie took a step over to one of the bunks and sat down on the thin mattress, resting the heels of her palms on the scratchy gray blanket. She thought of her children, how they might react to being relegated to a room like this—how they might survive knowing their mother had given them up—and she had to fight back an ache in her chest. She thought about the room that she had grown up in, with its big windows and comfy, full-size bed. She remembered wanting to redecorate it when she turned thirteen, abandoning the pink and white frills for blue paint and posters of Luke Perry and Jason Priestley. She thought about how lucky she was to have been adopted, that her parents had saved her from living in a place as sterile as this.
Natalie moved her eyes upward and noticed that the plywood beneath the top bunk mattress was etched with so many names, it was difficult to decipher one from the other. “Julie Peterson was here, 1987,” Natalie read aloud.
“The kids like to leave their mark,” Melissa said.
Natalie slowly scanned the wooden board above her again, and without a word Melissa, seeming to sense what Natalie was trying to do, stepped over to another bunk, checking the plywood on that bed for Brooke’s name. When neither of them found it, each moved to a different bunk. Natalie was just about to give up when Melissa spoke. “Here she is.” She pointed to a spot above where she sat, and Natalie quickly joined her. Melissa stood up, leaving Natalie to look at the spot where the younger woman had pointed. It took her a minute to find her sister’s name, but when she did, she reached up and slowly traced her index finger over the gouged wood, the muscles in her throat thickening. “Brooke Walker,” her sister had carved in jagged letters. “Here too fucking long.”
“Wow,” Natalie said, and her eyes blurred with tears. The fact that her sister had sat in that exact spot—that she’d taken the time to make sure there was evidence of her existence in that space—hit Natalie hard. She couldn’t imagine the life of a young girl in these surroundings: sharing a room with seven likely revolving-door strangers, sleeping on a thin mattress with a flat pillow and a stiff, scratchy blanket. Having no one to tuck her in at night. Nothing to make her feel treasured and safe.
“Miss Dottie should be free by now,” Melissa said. “And I have a meeting I need to attend pretty soon . . .”
“Oh,” Natalie said, standing up and wiping her cheeks with the back of her bent wrist. “Of course. Sorry.”
“No need,” Melissa said. “I’m happy to help.” She led Natalie to the end of the hallway and down another set of stairs, then turned a corner and pushed open a pair of black swinging doors. The room was set up with multiple rectangular tables and metal benches. To their right was a large, square open space in the wall, and through it, Natalie could see four women working in the kitchen. One of them stood off to the side with a clipboard in her hand. She was a tall woman with a sturdy-looking build and olive skin. Her silvery black hair was pushed down beneath a net, and she wore a bright red chef’s coat, white sneakers, and jeans.
“Miss Dottie!” Melissa called out, and the woman left the kitchen and came to stand in front of Natalie. “This is Natalie Clark,” she said, and quickly explained why Natalie was there.
The older woman listened with her head cocked to one side, still holding her clipboard, and then looked at Natalie. “What did you say your sister’s name was?”
“Brooke Walker,” Natalie said. “Melissa said you might remember her?”
“I’ll let you two have a chat,” Melissa said. “Thanks, Dottie. And good luck, Natalie. I hope you find what you’re looking for.” Natalie thanked her, and Melissa turned and left the room.
“Let’s sit,” Miss Dottie said, gesturing toward one of the tables. “I’m just about ready to retire, so I have to practice not being on my feet all damn day.” She cackled, and Natalie smiled politely. The two of them sat and Miss Dottie set her clipboard down. “Now. Brooke Walker . . . Brooke Walker.” She squinted her eyes and repeated Natalie’s sister’s name a few more times, as though she were fingering her way through a cabinet in her head, looking for the right file. “When you say she aged out, again?”
“Nineteen ninety-four,” Natalie repeated, wondering if there was any point in having this conversation. She imagined thousands of children coming and going from this facility over the past thirty-some years. How could Miss Dottie remember a single face? “She stopped being sent to foster homes when she turned fourteen and stayed here all four years of high school.”
“Ah!” Miss Dottie said, loudly enough that it startled Natalie. “I remember. Dark curls, pretty eyes. So blue they almost look purple.”
Just like Hailey’s, Natalie thought. Her pulse quickened.
“If I recall,” Miss Dottie continued, “her and that wild girl, Zora Herzog, talked about getting a place together when they left. They were the same age, but Zora’d only been here two years before she turned eighteen.”
“She and Brooke were friends?” Natalie asked, feeling excited but a little wary at Miss Dottie’s use of the adjective “wild” to describe Zora.
“I wouldn’t say friends, exactly,” Miss Dottie said. “More like they happened to be leaving at the same time and needed someone to split rent with.”
Natalie considered this before speaking again. “You said Zora was wild. How so?”
“Oh, you know,” Miss Dottie said, waving a dismissive hand around in front of her face. “The kind of girl that they’d probably put on some kind of drug now. She was a hyper little thing. Loud, too.”
“Was Brooke the same way?”
“Hmm,” Miss Dottie said, pressing her lips together and making them pooch out a little, like she was about to give someone a kiss. “Not that I recall. Pretty sure she was a quiet one. Kept her head down.” She shrugged. “That’s all I remember. Does it help?”
“I think it will,” Natalie said, thinking that Miss Dottie’s description of Brooke matched what Gina had said about her. “Thank you.” She stood, and Miss Dottie joined her.
“My pleasure, honey,” she said. “Your life turn out all right, after being here?”
Natalie smiled, thinking of her parents, of Kyle and the kids and the home they shared. “I was only here a month when I was a baby,” she said, “but yes. It did.”
“Glad to hear it,” Miss Dottie said, bobbing her head and then repeating the phrase. She gave Natalie a wave and then headed back into the kitchen.
Five minutes later, Natalie sat in her car, doing an online search for “Zora Herzog, Seattle,” on her phone, relieved that the girl Brooke might have moved in with after leaving Hillcrest had such a unique name. It would make finding her all that much easier. She could have waited until she got home and done the search on her laptop, but she was too excited about what she’d learned. Maybe Zora and Brooke were still friends. Maybe their shared background at Hillcrest had created a bond that linked them. Maybe once Natalie found Zora, she’d find Brooke, too.
It didn’t take long for Zora’s name and contact information to come up on the search engine, and Natalie was grateful the other woman hadn’t chosen to keep her address and phone number unlisted. She glanced at the clock and saw she still had plenty of time before the kids got out of school, and a quick check on the map told Natalie that Zora lived in White Center, which was on the south side of West Seattle and only a fifteen-minute drive from Hillcrest. Again, she thought about calling first, but she couldn’t contain her enthusiasm and decided to head right over to Zora’s house. Even if she wasn’t home, Natalie could leave her a note. She put her phone on the passenger seat, started her car, and went exactly where her GPS told her to go.
