Brooke dropped Natalie back at the house a little after three, leaving Natalie more than enough time to finish her dessert order for the party she was catering that night. Katie had asked Henry to come over after school to play with Logan again, and when Natalie realized that she’d gotten the date of the party wrong, she called Ruby’s mom and asked if Hailey could play there for a few hours, too. Both women had offered to bring her kids home around six, and Natalie promised herself that she would make it up to them with a box full of decadent treats, as well as at least one date set on the calendar when Natalie would take care of their children. She thought about something she’d often told Hailey and Henry: “You have to be a good friend to have one,” and Natalie needed to make sure she practiced what she preached.
“Thanks again for coming with me,” Brooke said just as Natalie opened the car door. “It meant a lot.”
“Any time,” Natalie said, warmly. “Talk to you soon?” Brooke nodded, and Natalie climbed out of the car with a smile on her face. Having a sister was like having a safety net, she thought. It was being one for her, too.
Once inside, Natalie got busy in the kitchen, cutting out perfectly round circles from the sheet pan of sponge cake Brooke had helped mix, topping each of them with a smooth, quarter-inch cylinder of honey caramel and a sprinkle of fleur de sel. Then, she set up twenty boxes on the table with the lids open, and as she began placing individual cakes into them, she thought about Kyle, and the brief spat in the living room before Brooke had reentered the house the previous week. He’d already been asleep when Natalie came to bed that night—or at least he had been pretending to be asleep. The next morning, he left for the office before she woke up. Usually, if he took off that early, he would leave her a note on the dry-erase board that hung in the kitchen, telling her that he loved her or simply to have a good day, but when she went to get her morning coffee that day, the board was blank. They’d spent the last seven days making polite, efficient conversation, each busy enough with work and managing the kids that they didn’t acknowledge the tension simmering between them. Natalie wanted to—she knew they needed to—talk, but she dreaded the idea of having the exact same conversation that they’d had before she’d even met Brooke. Her husband was just being cautious, but she felt like he kept applying the pessimistic-lawyer side of his brain to the situation instead of the supportive-husband side she needed from him. Whatever the case, the way he’d spoken to her sister at dinner needed to be addressed. Hoping that they could discuss the issue rationally, she turned around and walked over to the baker’s racks by the back door, bringing back a sheet pan full of chocolate mousse tortes layered with hazelnut praline, which she carefully transferred to the remaining boxes.
Twenty minutes later, all of the desserts had been loaded into the back of Natalie’s car, and since she didn’t need to be at the venue for another hour, she decided to double-check her orders for the upcoming month so she wouldn’t have to deal with another event date mix-up. She sat down at the kitchen table with her laptop and booted it up, clicking on the scheduling program she used to keep track of orders as they came in, along with an ongoing list of the supplies she needed.
After verifying that everything was set up correctly and her mistake today was a singular occurrence, Natalie decided to open a search engine. She hadn’t mentioned looking for her birth mother earlier in the day with Brooke, and her sister hadn’t brought it up, either. Natalie understood Brooke’s reason for not wanting to find her, but that hadn’t stopped Natalie from digging around on Facebook and other social media sites for women named Jennifer Walker. It hadn’t stopped her from registering on several people search websites and a few more online adoption registries, entering as much information into them about herself and her birth mother as she could.
It turned out that Jennifer Walker was an exceedingly common name, and one that Natalie couldn’t be sure her birth mother still went by. She could have gotten married; she could have moved anywhere in the world. She could be dead, Natalie realized, and the thought sent a shiver up her spine. Poising her fingers over the keyboard, Natalie tried to think of what she could search for next.
And then, not for the first time, she wondered if her parents knew more about her birth mother than what they’d given her in the file. She’d read those pages again and again, searching for some detail, some tiny clue, that she might have missed. There was nothing.
Frustrated, Natalie slammed her laptop shut. She didn’t have time for this. She needed to deliver the dessert order. Grabbing her coat and purse, she headed out the door and got into her car, driving toward the Sanctuary at Admiral, where the party was being held. Once she’d unloaded all of the boxes and carried them into the facility’s kitchen, she left, and intended to head home, but instead, she found herself driving in the direction of her parents’ house. Using the speaker function on her phone, she gave her mom a quick call to make sure it was all right for her to stop by.
“Of course,” her mom said. “I’m just getting the auction items ready for the shelter’s fund-raiser.” One of her mother’s charity projects was a local homeless shelter, for which she organized a yearly silent auction right before the winter holidays.
“Great,” Natalie said. “See you in a few.” At the next stoplight, she sent a text to Kyle, asking him what time he would be home, since that would affect how long she could visit her mom. His reply came quickly: “On my way now.”
“Kids should both be home by six. Playdates. Taco makings in the fridge. Going to my parents’.”
“OK,” he replied, and Natalie set her phone back in her purse, waving as the car behind her honked. The light had already turned green.
Her mother’s car was parked in the driveway when Natalie pulled up, but her father’s was gone. Likely he was still at work or out to dinner with clients. Natalie shut down her car’s engine and made her way to the front door, which her mother opened before Natalie had even knocked.
“Hi,” Natalie said, and her mother stepped to the side so Natalie could enter.
“Want something to drink?” her mom asked.
“No, thanks,” Natalie said. “I’m good.” She followed her mother into the family room, and they sat down on opposite ends of the couch.
“How are things going with Brooke?” Her mother smiled, but the muscles beneath the skin of her face twitched, giving away how much effort the question had demanded of her.
“I like her,” Natalie said, trying to choose her words carefully so as not to hurt her mother. “She met Kyle and the kids last week.” She considered telling her mother that Brooke was pregnant but then decided against it, not knowing if Brooke would be okay with her talking about it with someone she had yet to meet.
“How was that?”
“Good, for the most part. A little awkward here and there, which I guess is to be expected.” Natalie didn’t think her mother needed to hear about Kyle’s reservations about Brooke; that was between her and her husband.
Instead, Natalie chose to dive right into why she’d come. “I have to say, Mom, spending time with Brooke is making me think a lot more about my adoption. I just feel like there’s something else I need to know. Something you and Dad aren’t telling me.” Her mother’s eyelids fluttered, and she looked away, which convinced Natalie she was on the right track. She pressed on. “Do you know more about my birth mother than you’ve told me? Do you have more information than that file hidden away somewhere?”
Her mother held a closed fist to her mouth and shook her head, keeping her eyes on the floor.
Natalie fell back against the cushion. “Then what is it? Why are you so against me finding her?” Her mother finally looked up at Natalie, with tears in her eyes. Natalie’s frustration softened. “I know you lost a baby before you adopted me,” she said. “I know it took away your ability to have a child of your own. I can’t even imagine how hard that was for you and Dad to go through. But I’ve told you a thousand times you’re not going to lose me. I’m your daughter. I love you. I love Dad. I just want to know more about the woman who gave me up. Is that so difficult to understand?”
Her mother sniffled, and Natalie reached for a tissue from the box on the coffee table. She handed it to her mother, who took it and dabbed at the corners of her eyes. “I didn’t lose just one baby,” she said. Her voice was barely above a whisper.
“What?” Natalie gasped. “Oh, Mom—” she said, but her mother cut her off by holding up her hand.
“It wasn’t another miscarriage,” she said, “if that’s what you’re thinking.” She looked out the window, and then back at Natalie. “It was a year after my hysterectomy, when your father and I first decided to adopt. The agency connected us to a young girl who was seven months along. Back then, most adoptions were closed, but this girl wanted to meet us. We were so anxious to have a child, we did what she asked.”
Natalie couldn’t believe what she was hearing. How many other secrets had her parents kept from her over the years? She swallowed back the swell of emotion that filled her chest and managed to stay silent, anxious to listen to the rest of the story.
Her mother crossed her long legs, then grabbed a throw pillow, holding it in her lap. “She was eighteen,” she said. “And so confident that giving her baby to us was the right thing to do. She wanted to go to college. She wanted to have her own life before being responsible for someone else.” She stared out the window again, as though she were watching her memories play out against the dark night sky. “We did everything for her. We paid her medical bills. We gave her money for groceries and maternity clothes. She still lived with her parents, and they seemed so happy to know we were going to be the recipients of their grandchild. We talked about the pictures I’d send them every Christmas. I promised that when our baby was old enough, I would make sure to tell her that she was loved by her birth family, and that she could reach out to them if she wanted to, when she turned eighteen. We did everything right.”
Natalie realized she was holding her breath, spellbound as she traveled with her mother into the past. She both dreaded and desired to find out what happened next.
“We were there for the birth,” her mother continued, in a detached voice, as though she were describing some dry, mechanical procedure. “She wanted us there, in the room, with her. We stood on either side of her, holding her up, helping her push our baby girl into the world. And when the doctor cut the cord and the nurse started to hand her the baby, she motioned that I should be the first to hold her.” She paused, and her chin trembled before she went on. “I’ll never forget that moment, Natalie, when I held that child in my arms. I felt like everything I ever wanted was wrapped up in that thin, pink blanket. I knew this little girl was meant to be mine. We all cried, and before we went home, your father and I thanked the birth mother over and over again. She said she wanted to sleep, and our baby girl went to the nursery for the night.” Natalie’s mom finally looked at Natalie again, her eyes brimming with shiny tears. “Our attorney called us at five in the morning to tell us she’d changed her mind. She wanted to keep the baby. The adoption paperwork hadn’t been finalized by the court, so there was nothing we could do. The law was on her side. It was over. We never saw either of them again.”
Natalie got up and moved to sit back down next to her mother. “Oh, god, Mom. I’m so sorry. I had no idea . . . I can’t imagine.”
Her mother nodded her head, once, pressing her lips together.
Natalie removed the pillow from her mother’s lap and took her ice-cold hand into her own. So much made sense now. Her mother’s reticence about anything related to her birth mom, why she hadn’t told Natalie about Brooke. Any piece of the truth she might have relinquished must have seemed like a threat, something that could steal Natalie away. In her mind, her mother did the only thing she could think of to keep from experiencing another devastating loss. She closed the door to the past and never opened it again.
“What was her name?” Natalie asked.
“The mother’s?”
“No. The baby’s.”
“Oh,” her mom whispered. “We called her Ashley. Ashley Rose.”
And then Natalie felt tears fill her own eyes. Her middle name was Rose, too.
“The whole experience,” her mother said, “losing Ashley like that, was the reason why after we found you, your father and I decided we wouldn’t adopt again. We were too afraid of going through another painful disappointment. And I was terrified if we had adopted Brooke along with you, your birth mother would be more likely to come along and take you both away from us. I guess I thought if she still had the chance to get your sister back, she’d leave you for us to keep.” She let loose a strangled laugh. “Which is completely irrational, I realize, but at the time, it was how I felt. It made sense. All I thought about was protecting you. It’s all I can think about now.”
Natalie nodded. “I understand, Mom. Thank you for telling me this. For trusting me with it.” She squeezed her mother’s hand and leaned over to give her a hug.
“I love you so much, Natalie,” her mother whispered in her ear. “I’m so sorry if I’ve hurt you. I never meant . . .”
Natalie pulled away before her mom could continue and used a thumb to wipe away her mother’s tears. “It’s okay. I love you, too. And I get why you made the decisions you did. But please, you have to know that no one can take me away from you. I’m not going to love you and Dad any less with Brooke in my life. If I meet my birth mother, there’s nothing she could say or do to change the fact that you are my mother. I’m not going anywhere with anyone. You couldn’t get rid of me if you tried.”
Her mother smiled then. “Thank you, honey.” She paused. “I wish I did know more about your birth mother, but I don’t.” She gave Natalie a thoughtful look. “Does Brooke? Has she ever tried to find her?”
“Other than putting her information on the adoption registry that helped me find her, no.”
“Did the background check Kyle ran on Brooke tell you anything?”
Natalie froze, staring at her mother in disbelief. “The what?”
“Oh,” her mom said. Her cheeks flushed and she began blinking fast. “I thought you knew.”
“He ran a background check on Brooke?” Natalie said. She clenched her jaw, seething at the thought of what Kyle had done without her knowledge. “When? And how did you know about it?”
“Your father mentioned it,” she said. “I’m sure Kyle meant to tell you, honey. Maybe he was just waiting for the results.”
“I doubt that,” Natalie said. She stood up. “Sorry, Mom, but I need to go.”
Her mother stood as well. “Honey, wait. Maybe you should try and calm down first.”
“I’ll be fine.” Natalie kissed her mother on the cheek and walked out the door. She drove home as quickly as she could, gripping the wheel hard enough to turn her knuckles white. How could he do this without telling her? He didn’t trust her judgment. He lied to her.
Once she parked in the driveway, Natalie grabbed her purse and headed inside, her arms swinging at her sides. “Mommy!” Henry said, leaping off the couch and racing toward her. He threw himself against her legs and locked on with all four of his limbs.
“Not now, sweetie,” Natalie said, bending down to extricate her son’s grip. “Where’s your dad?”
“We’re in the kitchen, Mommy!” Hailey called out. “Guess what? Daddy’s trying to cook!”
“Very bad, those smells,” Henry said solemnly. He and Natalie walked into the kitchen, where Hailey sat on one of the barstools at the center island with a black olive on the tip of each of her fingers on one hand. She wiggled her fingers at Natalie, who wiggled hers in return. Kyle stood by the stove, stirring something in a pot. An acrid scent filled the air, evidence of something recently burned.
“Hey,” Kyle said. “I thought instead of tacos, we’d make homemade pizza, but the cheese on the first one oozed all over the oven and burned.” He grimaced. “I cleaned it up, but it still stinks. Sorry.”
“That’s okay,” Natalie said tightly, not wanting to start an argument in front of the kids. “The taco stuff is already done. Let’s just have those.” She looked at their children. “Why don’t you two go wash your hands in the bathroom?”
“We can do it here,” Hailey said, jumping down from her seat.
“No,” Natalie said. “Mommy needs to talk to Daddy for a minute. In private.” The kids waited a moment, and then, seeing that their mother wasn’t smiling, left the kitchen and went down the hall to the bathroom.
“What’s wrong?” Kyle asked, letting go of the spoon he held and taking a couple of steps toward her.
She gave him a look that stopped him in his tracks. “I know about the background check. My mother told me, accidentally, assuming that you already had.”
“Nat, let me explain . . .”
“Not now,” she snapped. “Let’s just get through dinner and get the kids to bed.”
For the next two hours, Natalie spoke politely to her husband, pretending for her children’s sake that everything was normal. Once the kitchen had been cleaned up and the kids were bathed and tucked in, Natalie and Kyle returned downstairs, where they stood together in the kitchen, the corner of the house farthest from the kids’ rooms. Natalie didn’t want them to hear their parents fight.
“Before you say anything,” Kyle began, “I want you to know that I was going to tell you about running the report. I just wanted to get the results first.”
“And you thought that was a good idea,” Natalie said. Her jaw ached from gritting her teeth. “You seriously thought going behind my back was okay?”
“I didn’t think about it as going behind your back,” he said. “I just thought I’d do the check, and if anything weird came up, I would talk with you about it then.”
“It seems more likely that what you were really thinking was that if nothing ‘weird’ came up you wouldn’t have to tell me what you did.” She paused, watching as Kyle let her statement sink in. “Right?”
He stared at her, unblinking, for a good half minute before speaking. “Fine,” he said. “I decided to run the report and not say anything because I knew you’d be pissed. I did it to protect you.”
“You lied to me!” Natalie said, trying not to raise her voice, but failing. “After everything we talked about, how important you knew finding her was to me . . . after you promised not to judge her—”
“I wasn’t judging her!” Kyle said. His light brown eyes clouded with anger. “I was trying to keep you safe! I was looking out for our family. You were so blinded by your excitement—”
“Excuse me, blinded?” Natalie glared at him, her cheeks flushed, her fingernails digging into her palms.
“Yes, blinded. All you could think about was how wonderful it was that you found her. That you finally had the sister you always wanted. I understood that . . . I was even happy for you . . . but you weren’t exactly thinking straight. I was just trying to stay rational.”
“Because I’m so emotionally driven, I’m incapable of logic? Nice to know you have so much faith in me. Just because I’m not a lawyer anymore doesn’t mean I can’t think like one, Kyle. You really believe that if there had been any real sign that Brooke was dangerous, I’d ignore it and let her near our children?”
“Of course not! But what if you couldn’t see the signs? What if she was good at hiding them? What if there were things in her past she wasn’t being honest about? You just took her at her word!” He dropped into one of the kitchen chairs, put his elbows on the table, and tented his fingers on both hands against his forehead. His brown hair was shaggy, growing over the tops of his ears and an inch past his shirt collar. He needs a haircut, Natalie thought, and for some reason, noticing this took a slight edge off the anger she felt. They took care of each other. Maybe in running the background check, he had been trying to take care of her and just went about it the wrong way.
“I’m sorry,” Kyle said. He dropped his hands to the table, pressing them flat against the wood, staring at her with tenderness. “Okay? There wasn’t anything in the report of concern, so I decided you didn’t need to know what I’d done. I’m sorry that I hid what I was doing, but as with everything else in this situation, I meant well. I had your best interests in mind. Our family’s best interests. What if it had come back and said that she was a criminal? A con artist or convicted child molester? Would you be okay with the fact that I ran the report without telling you then?”
The question threw Natalie off, softening her anger even more, because Kyle was right. If the report had shown that Brooke was a danger to their family, Natalie knew it wouldn’t matter how that information had come to their attention. The only thing that would matter was that Kyle meant to keep them safe.
“Is that why you were late the night we had dinner?” she said, instead of answering his questions. “When you specifically promised me you wouldn’t be? Were you waiting for the results?”
Kyle shook his head. “I told you, I got called into a meeting with the DA. You know how it goes. I couldn’t leave. I’m sorry, but I swear I didn’t do it on purpose. I knew how important the dinner was. Do you really think I chose to be late when I knew how much it would piss you off?”
Natalie hesitated. “No,” she admitted. She couldn’t think of a time that Kyle had purposely done something he knew would hurt her. That’s why it had bothered her so much when she thought he had.
“I’m sorry for how I talked with Brooke,” he said. “I honestly didn’t realize how I was coming across. She just seemed so guarded, which you know, in my job, usually means someone’s hiding something. My defense lawyer senses were tingling.”
“She seemed guarded because she was nervous. I told you she doesn’t open up easily. And now that I know she’s pregnant, it makes even more sense. She’s scared, and until now, she’s been totally on her own. She needs support, and I’m going to give it to her. I even went to a doctor’s appointment with her this afternoon.”
“How’d that go?”
“Fine,” she said. “But you remember how scared I was when I got pregnant with Hailey. Just imagine her feeling all of that and not having anyone to talk to. No support. Trying to cope with the idea of having to raise a child completely on her own.”
“Yeah, you went a little bit nuts for a while there,” he said, clearly teasing. She looked at him from under raised brows, wishing he would stop trying to make light of the situation. He held up his hands in an I-surrender gesture. “I hear what you’re saying, Nat. Okay? I promise, I’ll do better.”
“Can I see it?” Natalie asked. “Do you have it here?” The anger she felt had deflated just as quickly as it had inflamed earlier, sitting on her mother’s couch. She tried to focus on her husband’s motivation instead of the fact that he’d kept what he was doing from her.
“The report?” Kyle asked, and she nodded. He got up from the table and walked into the living room, returning with a thin folder, which he handed to her. “It came back a couple of days after she came for dinner.”
“Thank you,” Natalie said quietly. She felt his eyes on her as she sat on one of the stools next to the island and pulled out the few pages in the folder, scanning them. While the background check showed that Brooke had worked for more than ten different employers and lived at eight different addresses since she turned eighteen, she had no criminal record, nor any civil judgments against her. She’d had four tickets for speeding, all of which she contested and had reduced, but paid on time. She’d never been married or filed for bankruptcy. Her record was clean.
“I understand why you did this,” Natalie said slowly, as she set the papers down in front of her on the counter.
“I’m glad,” Kyle said, with evident relief. He sat on the barstool next to her and put his hand on top of her leg.
“I understand,” Natalie repeated, wanting to finish her point before she forgave him completely, “but I still think you should have told me. It’s not healthy for us to keep this kind of thing from each other, no matter how pure our motivation might be.” She turned her upper body to face him and searched his face with her eyes. “Can we agree on that?”
“Yes,” Kyle said, nodding. “I guess I told myself I was being practical when I really just didn’t want you to be mad at me.”
“And look how well that worked out,” Natalie said, leaning over to rest her forehead against her husband’s, the silent signal they’d used over the years to tell each other that everything was okay between them.
“No kidding.” Kyle chuckled. He reached for her face, then ran the side of his thumb down her cheek. “I really am sorry, Nat. I’ve got your back, I promise. I’m here for you . . . for Brooke . . . however you need me to be.”
