Dazed, Natalie turned around and reentered the house, gripping the box her sister had been hiding from her for weeks. Her regret that Brooke had seen the background check Kyle had run was overwhelmed by her shock that her sister had known where their birth mother was all this time and never said a word. She understood that Brooke was still in pain about their mother’s decision to give them up, but had she really not trusted Natalie to the point of keeping her whereabouts from her? Natalie had asked her, point-blank, if Brooke knew where their mother was, and her sister had said no. What else had Brooke said to her that was a lie? Were the more tender moments they’d shared simply an act on her older sister’s part? Natalie had no way to know. All she knew was that suddenly, the relationship she’d hoped to have with Brooke seemed to be over before it had truly had a chance to begin.
Back in the kitchen, Natalie made a cup of coffee and then sat down at the table with the box in front of her. She wondered if she should wait to go through its contents until later, so Kyle would be there for moral support, but decided that she’d waited long enough.
She pulled the thick stack of papers from the box, her eyes immediately landing on several pages of Child Protective Services reports, all of which detailed instances of Jennifer Walker’s errant behavior. Natalie read how her birth mother had left her two-year-old daughter, Brooke, alone in a car, then failed to show up for the parenting skills classes that were required of her. She read the description of the night their mother was arrested at a grocery store for petty theft and for child endangerment and neglect. She read through Gina Ortiz’s reports of her meetings with Jennifer, whom she characterized as an emotionally unstable young woman with no family or friend support system to help her in raising her two young girls. She discovered that her biological grandmother wanted nothing to do with Jennifer or her two girls. She saw her birth mother’s shaky, black signature on the papers that signed away her rights as their mother. She pored over the accounts of her birth mother’s first year in prison, written by someone named Myer; she began to cry when, to her horror, she found the police reports describing how, only a week after she’d been released from her initial sentence, her birth mother had snatched a little girl from a playground and run away with her into the woods. She read the judge’s decision to send Jennifer Walker back to prison, this time for a decade, and how, when she was there, she began an antirecidivism work-release program that allowed her to train service dogs and eventually earn her GED and a degree as a veterinary technician. There was a prison medical form, detailing how her birth mother had suffered through a severe beating by another inmate, as well as the parole board hearing notes that had allowed her to be released three years early, after the glowing testimony of her employer, Randy Stewart, and several other employees with whom she worked.
After going through all of the official paperwork, Natalie found a page of handwritten notes made on yellow legal paper—jotted down by Brooke, Natalie assumed—listing three addresses in Mt. Vernon, one that appeared to be the clinic where her birth mother worked. The notes also included the name of a college from which Jennifer Richmond had earned her doctorate in veterinary medicine, as well as the location of her husband Evan’s automotive repair business.
The last scrap in the file was a newspaper article dated almost twelve years ago that described how Dr. Richmond was responsible for enlarging the same work-release program in which she’d participated, bringing on three other veterinarian clinics so that several female inmates could participate at a time. “I was a broken person when I landed back in prison,” her birth mom was quoted as saying. “The opportunity I was given to get out of myself and learn how to care for something other than what I wanted was the most important gift of my life. If it’s possible for me pass that gift on to other women who are suffering the same way I did, then that’s what I’m going to do.”
Natalie finished reading the article and leaned back against her chair, closing her eyes. She wondered how Brooke could have read all of this and not wanted to talk with their mother about everything she’d been through. What Natalie saw in learning about their birth mom was a woman who’d fought her way through some extremely difficult, painful experiences and found a way to channel all of that into contributing something good to the world. She imagined it was possible that their birth mom’s guilt over giving up her daughters may have prevented her from looking for them—that she didn’t want to disrupt their lives. There was a copy of her marriage certificate in the file, but no birth certificates, so Natalie assumed that what Brooke had said was correct—Jennifer Richmond had had no other children. She had turned fifty-five years old last June.
“Mom?” Hailey’s voice snapped Natalie out of her daze. Her daughter had entered the kitchen unnoticed.
“What is it, honey?” Natalie said. She sniffed and used a paper napkin to wipe the dampness from her cheeks.
Hailey gave her a puckered, doubtful look. “How come you’re crying?”
“Oh, it’s complicated, sweet pea. Just grown-up stuff.” She closed the box and pushed the paperwork to the side. Hailey climbed into Natalie’s lap, and Natalie wrapped her arms around her daughter and hugged her close. She put her face in Hailey’s curls, breathed in the strawberry scent of her shampoo, and wondered how many times her birth mother had held her like this before she let her go. “Where’s Henry?”
“In the playroom, still. I made him wash the dishes.” She paused. “Is Aunt Brooke gone?”
Natalie frowned, feeling a fresh round of tears gathering behind her eyes. “She is,” she told Hailey in a quiet voice. Maybe for good, she thought as she sat in her kitchen holding her daughter, wishing she knew how to fix what had gone wrong—hoping that she hadn’t found her sister only to lose her all over again.
• • •
“It’s my fault,” Kyle said when he got home that night and heard the details of the fight Natalie and Brooke had had. “Should I go talk with her? Explain that you had nothing to do with it?”
Natalie could have blamed him for what happened—for running the report in the first place—but hearing the ragged edge in her husband’s voice, she knew just how sorry he was. And it was Natalie who had forgotten that the file was on the kitchen counter—she’d meant to shred it but kept getting distracted by the kids and work—so the fact that Brooke had stumbled across it was just as much Natalie’s fault as it was Kyle’s. “I don’t think so,” she said. “ ’But thanks for offering.”
“Are you sure?” he said. “Maybe it would help.”
“I wish it could,” Natalie said. She’d sent Brooke a text before Kyle had come home from work, in which she apologized again, and asked her sister for another chance. She didn’t receive a reply.
A month passed without a word from Brooke. The plumber finally arrived—four weeks after he’d promised he would. He completed his task in a couple of days, and then Alex and his crew got back to work, managing to finish the job a week before Christmas. The holiday was quiet, and Natalie couldn’t help but wish that Brooke had been there, too. Natalie had yet to contact her birth mother. It was strange, how deeply she’d longed to connect with the woman, but now that she knew where she was, Natalie was hesitant to reach out. Terrified, in fact.
Kyle’s murder case finally closed after the first of the year—his client was found not guilty—and after that, he made it a point to work from home as much as he could, taking the kids to the trampoline park or swimming on the weekends to give Natalie enough time to do her job without interruption. Natalie had both Logan and Ruby over to her house for a playdate, and invited Katie out for a cup of coffee when she came to pick her son up.
Now, the second week of January, Natalie glanced at her watch and wondered when her mother, who had offered to pick up the kids so Natalie could work, would arrive. A few minutes later, Hailey came bursting through the front door, Henry trailing behind.
“Hi, Mom!” she said as she raced inside. “Gramma said to tell you that she didn’t come in because she and Grampa have to go to a fancy dinner tonight and she has to get ready.”
“Okay,” Natalie said, as Henry launched himself against her legs, causing her to stagger backward. “Careful there, buddy. You’re so strong, you almost knocked me over!” She reached down and ruffled his soft hair. He giggled, and let her go, dropping his bag on the floor.
“Hang that up, please,” Natalie said automatically, watching as both of her kids put their jackets and backpacks on the hooks by the front door. “How was your day?” she asked as they walked together toward the kitchen.
“Good,” Hailey said. “But Chase said my hair looks like Medusa. Like snakes!” She frowned and crossed her arms over her chest. “He’s such a butt.”
“Such a butt! Such a butt!” Henry chanted.
Natalie had to work hard to restrain herself from laughing. “Hailey, you know it’s not okay to call people names.”
“But he called me Medusa!” her daughter protested. “It’s not fair!”
“I know,” Natalie said. “But we can’t control how other people act. We can only control ourselves. I know it’s hard, but the best thing to do is treat Chase how you want to be treated. If you don’t react to his teasing you, eventually he’ll stop.”
Hailey sighed. “I don’t think so. He’s just not normal.”
Again, Natalie had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep her amusement in check. “Want to help me make the cookies for the bake sale?” she asked. She’d volunteered to provide eight dozen chocolate chip cookies for the PTA fund-raiser at Hailey’s school, which would happen the next day.
“I want to help, too!” Henry said.
“You can’t,” Hailey informed him in a haughty voice. “It’s not for your school.”
“Sure he can,” Natalie said. “We have to make a lot, so there’s plenty for both of you to do. Why don’t you both wash your hands while I get the ingredients out?”
Her children made their way to the sink, vying to be the first to use the soap and get their hands under the water. “Don’t push!” Henry said as the two stood together on the footstool.
“I’m not!” Hailey replied, and Natalie watched as her daughter shifted her weight away from her brother, as though to prove her point. But her motion tilted the stool, and before Natalie could stop it, Henry lost his footing and fell to the floor. He landed on his side on the hard wood, and Natalie saw his head bounce when he hit. He was quiet a moment, likely stunned, trying to register what had just happened, and then began to wail. She rushed over, dropping the bag of chocolate chips she’d taken from the pantry onto the counter.
“Hailey!” she said in a sharp voice. “You have to be more careful!” She knelt down next to Henry and gathered him into her arms. “It’s okay, baby,” she murmured. She ran her hand over his entire head, checking for blood, but found only a bump above his right ear, about the size of a quarter. He cried on her chest, rubbing his wet face against her.
“I’m sorry!” Hailey said, and Natalie realized that her daughter was crying, too. “I didn’t mean to, Mommy! It was a accident!”
“It’s okay,” Natalie said, feeling panicked. She could feel her heartbeat hammering inside her skull. She stood up, still holding Henry, grabbed her cell phone from the counter, and quickly found the number for the nurse line at their pediatrician’s office. “Hey, Susan,” she said, when the nurse answered. Over Henry’s now-whimpering cries, she explained what had happened. “Do I need to bring him in?”
“Probably not,” Susan told her. “Just watch him, and make sure he doesn’t seem too drowsy or disoriented. If he does, or if he vomits, you can take him to the ER to have him checked for a concussion. Otherwise, it’s probably just an old-fashioned bump on the head. Put some ice on it, and give him a little children’s Tylenol if he’s hurting.”
Natalie thanked her and hung up, turning to see that Hailey had gone upstairs to her brother’s bedroom, coming back with his favorite blue fleece blanket. She held it out, and Natalie couldn’t help but think of Brooke and her lavender “soft side,” and the muscles in her throat thickened. Henry snatched the blanket from her, no longer crying but still snuggled tightly against Natalie.
“That was very nice of you,” Natalie told Hailey, whose bottom lip stuck out and was still trembling.
“It was a accident,” she said again, sniffling, and Natalie nodded.
“I know, baby,” she said. She sat down at the table with Henry in her lap and her daughter pressed up to her side. Natalie put her free arm around Hailey. “I’m sorry if I snapped at you. I was just scared when I saw your brother fall. You didn’t do it on purpose. You don’t need to feel bad.”
Hailey nodded, but in that same moment, Natalie thought about Brooke. She wondered if her sister would ever be able to get over seeing the background check—if she would believe that Natalie never meant to hurt her. But Natalie feared that the damage was done. Whether a window is shattered by accident or by a deliberate strike, its jagged pieces cut just as deep. The injured party still bleeds.
