In fifth grade, the year Natalie found out she was adopted, she began telling herself stories. Not just the stories about whom her birth mother might be, but ones involving people she saw every day. She would lie in her bed, whispering to herself, acting out the kinds of conversations she wished were real.
“Hi, Natalie,” she would say in a high-pitched voice, pretending to be Sophia Jensen, who was friends with practically everyone in their class. Sophia had bright blue eyes and thick red hair, which her mother fashioned into a French braid almost every day, setting off a frenzy of other girls wearing the same style. She was the girl everyone wanted to sit next to at lunch; the person who always received more Valentine’s Day cards than anyone else. She was also the girl Natalie wished most to have as a friend.
“Hi, Sophia,” Natalie would say, lowering her voice again, back to being herself.
“You look so pretty today,” Natalie said, switching to her Sophia voice.
“Really?” Natalie replied, as herself.
“Yes,” Natalie answered, as Sophia. “Do you want to come over to my house this weekend? I’m having a party. A sleepover.”
“Wow,” Natalie said, as herself again. “That’s so nice of you. I’d love to.”
“I just know everyone will be so happy you’re going to be there,” Natalie said, pretending to be Sophia once more. “We all think you’re so smart and like you so much.”
But the truth was, instead of attending parties, Natalie spent most of her time alone, or with her mother, who stayed home to take care of Natalie while her father went to work at his law firm. They lived in a large, three-story Tudor on a bluff in West Seattle that overlooked the Puget Sound. The house was surrounded by a thick forest of western hemlocks, red alders, and Douglas firs, and Natalie’s room was on the third floor and had wide, clear windows, making her feel as though she were flying. She often stared out at the water, dreaming about the places across the ocean she might someday go, wishing she had a sister or brother to play with, or the courage to invite one of the girls from school over to her house. She wanted a best friend. But Natalie was quiet, the student who knew the answers to her teachers’ questions but never raised her hand. She had a tendency to speak only when spoken to. At recess, she sat on a bench outside and kept her nose in a book—she loved anything by Judy Blume or Beverly Cleary—watching the other girls play on the monkey bars or jump rope together, wondering how they made talking to each other look so easy. As she peeked at them, she tried not to look too anxious, waiting for someone to invite her to join in, but no one ever did.
There wasn’t a day Natalie got off the bus that her mother wasn’t on the corner, waiting. Now that she was ten, she wished her mom would at least wait for her inside the house—none of the other kids had parents that waited for them on the street—but every time she dropped a hint about being able to walk the three blocks from the bus stop on her own, her mother pretended not to hear.
One Friday afternoon in April, the last day of class before spring break, Natalie and her mother entered their house and closed the door behind them. Natalie hung up her jacket on the coat rack, as she knew her mother expected her to, and set her backpack on the floor in its designated spot. “Can I watch Rugrats?” she asked. The cartoon was Natalie’s favorite show.
“You don’t have any homework?” Natalie shook her head. “All right. But put your laundry away first, please. It’s on your bed.”
Obediently, Natalie nodded, and turned toward the stairs.
“Shoes, Natalie!” her mother called out, and Natalie turned around and went back to the entryway, where she’d forgotten to put the white Keds she’d kicked off her feet onto the shelf in the closet. As her mother looked on, Natalie set them in their appropriate place, next to her dark green galoshes and the black slippers her father liked to wear when he got home from work. There were certain ways her mother liked things done: freshly washed and folded clothes needed to be put away in their proper places, never randomly shoved in one of Natalie’s drawers, or worse, left sitting around. Doors always needed to be shut, towels hung in the exact middle of the bar, lights turned off when you left a room. Shoes needed to be on the shoe rack.
“If your life is messy on the outside,” her mother had told her for as long as Natalie could remember, “your insides feel messy, too.”
Natalie didn’t really understand what her mother meant by that statement—she felt just fine if her dirty clothes landed on the floor instead of in the hamper, or if she forgot to put her breakfast dishes in the sink. Sometimes, she wondered what would happen if her mother walked into Natalie’s room to find her daughter’s entire wardrobe strewn across the carpet. She imagined the look of shock on her mother’s face, taking some small measure of satisfaction from the thought, followed immediately by a ripple of guilt. However overly stringent some of her mother’s rules might be, Natalie loved her, and wanted to keep her happy. She tried to do what was expected of her, if only to keep the peace.
Twenty-five years later, after dropping Hailey off at her school and then saying good-bye to Henry in his classroom, Natalie made her way to the preschool’s parking lot. Just as she reached into her purse for her car keys, she looked up to see Katie, whose son, Logan, was in Henry’s class and had invited Henry over to play that afternoon. Katie was alone now, so Natalie assumed Logan was already inside, too. Katie wore gray sweats and her brown hair was twisted into a messy bun on top of her head. She had the kind of good skin and natural beauty that didn’t require makeup, something Natalie envied. With her light complexion and fair lashes, if Natalie didn’t put on a little mascara, she barely looked like she had a face.
“Can Henry still come over this afternoon?” Katie asked.
“Yes, thanks,” Natalie said with a smile. “He’s excited.”
“Logan is, too. I’ll bring Henry home around five, if that’s okay?”
“Perfect.” Luckily, Henry wasn’t the only one with a playdate that day—Hailey was going to her friend Ruby’s house, too—Natalie had planned it that way so she could work on a dessert order she needed to finish for a party the next night without the kids clamoring for her attention.
But first, she needed to go see her mother. Natalie had spoken to her mom earlier that morning, while she fed Hailey and Henry scrambled eggs, asking if she could come over for coffee around ten. Natalie thought about the guilt she had felt in her mother’s presence that day all those years ago when while working on her family tree. The guilt she still felt, today, when she thought about bringing up the subject of finding her birth mother. When she turned eighteen, Natalie had thought about registering with an adoption reunion organization, so if her birth mother was looking for her, she’d be easier to find. This was in 1998, before the Internet had taken over as the only way to get things done, so the process would have been more involved than simply typing her name into an online system—she would have had to go to the registry’s office and fill out hard copies of paperwork. But when she talked with her dad about the idea, he begged her to reconsider.
“You know how your mom is,” he said, running one of his large hands through his salt-and-pepper hair. Natalie knew that no one would ever look at the two of them and suspect they were father and daughter. That was one of the disconcerting realities of being adopted—you look at your parents, your entire family, and see nothing of yourself reflected back.
“She takes everything so personally,” her father continued. “She’ll be devastated.”
At the time, Natalie conceded that he was right, so she let the idea go, reasoning that there wasn’t any urgency, any real logistical need for her to find her birth mother. It was more a general curiosity, a wondering about the past. So what if one day the previous summer she had chased after a woman walking in the Junction who resembled an older version of Natalie, only to catch up with her and find that other than being petite and having blond hair, the woman looked nothing like her at all. So what if Natalie sometimes felt a dull, strange sense of emptiness she didn’t know how to explain to anyone else, but often wondered if that feeling was the reason she had a harder time opening up to other people—if after being abandoned by her birth mother, she couldn’t help but be wary of letting other people in, showing them who she was, for fear that they’d leave her, too. Natalie had a good family—a family who loved and provided for her. She reminded herself that was more than a lot of people had; she told herself that would have to be enough.
But didn’t she, as Kyle had said, have the right to know more about the woman who gave birth to her? Intellectually, her curiosity made perfect sense, but as she parked her car in her parents’ driveway, she knew that what made sense to everyone else didn’t always align with what made sense to her mother. She didn’t like emotional messes any more than physical ones.
It was almost ten by the time Natalie grabbed the small box of currant and almond scones she’d baked before the kids had gotten up—she always kept a little something in the freezer, ready to be put in the oven at a moment’s notice—climbed out of her car, and entered the house. “Mom?” she called as she took off her shoes and put them on the rack in the closet. “Where are you?”
“In the kitchen,” her mother answered.
Natalie walked down the hall and through the family room into the large, square kitchen her parents had recently updated with new maple cabinets and restaurant-quality, stainless-steel appliances. Her mother stood in front of the sink, wearing yellow rubber gloves, black yoga pants, and a blue hoodie. At sixty-eight, she wore her silver-streaked black hair in a stylish, chin-length bob. Natalie set the box she carried on the counter, then stepped over to give her mother a quick hug and kiss on the cheek.
“You know you have a dishwasher for that,” she said, nodding her head toward the sink full of soapy water and what she assumed were the pans from the previous night’s dinner.
“I know.” Her mother shrugged. “But with just your father and me, it takes forever to fill the thing up. Besides, it’s relaxing.”
“Zen and the art of dishwashing?” Natalie said as she settled onto one of the stools lining the granite-topped island in the middle of the room, waiting for her mother to finish.
“Exactly,” her mother said, turning to smile at Natalie as she set the last dish in the rack by the sink. She pulled off her gloves and set them on the counter. “Coffee?”
“Yes, thanks. I brought scones.”
“My favorite.” She grabbed two mugs from the cupboard and filled them with coffee from the pot she’d apparently already brewed. Natalie took one of the cups from her mother and set it in front of her so it could cool.
Her mother sat down next to her at the counter and held her coffee with both hands, as though warming them. Even their fingernails were different—her mother’s long and elegant versus Natalie’s short and square. “How are you?”
“I’m good.” What Natalie actually felt was anxious, but she was trying not to show it.
Her mom reached inside the box and broke a piece off of one of the scones, then popped it inside her mouth. “Mmm,” she murmured. “Fantastic. I love the almonds.”
“Thanks,” Natalie said, trying to find the right way to bring up the subject they needed to discuss. But first, she spent a while making small talk with her mom, inquiring about her volunteer work at the food bank and the European vacation she and Natalie’s father were planning in the spring.
“And how are my gorgeous grandbabies?” her mother asked after they’d each finished eating a scone and decided to move to the more comfortable overstuffed couches in the family room.
“They’re good, too,” Natalie said. They settled into opposite ends of the same couch, and Natalie looked at her mom, who appeared about as relaxed as Natalie had ever seen her, and decided there was no sense waiting any longer. She dove into why she was there. “Hailey actually has a project for school that reminded me of one I had to do, too.”
“Really?” her mom said. “What is she doing?”
“Our family tree.” The muscles in her mother’s face froze, as Natalie suspected they would, but she forged ahead anyway. “I know this is a touchy subject, but it reminded me of how I wanted to include my birth mother on mine and you didn’t want me to. It made me think that it’s time for me to at least know her name.” She paused. “Kyle and I talked about it, and he thinks my knowing more about her might be a good idea, too.” Her mom loved Kyle like he was her own son; Natalie brought him into the conversation because she wanted her mother to see that this idea wasn’t just coming from her. She had her husband’s full support.
Her mother pressed her thin lips together and looked out the large picture window, so Natalie did, too. The rain from the previous night had dissipated before dawn, and strong winds had blown away the steel-wool clouds. Now, the sky was an intense, brilliant shade of blue, as though the storm had scrubbed it clean.
After a minute of silence, Natalie spoke. “Mom?” she said. “What do you think?”
“Why,” her mother asked, “do you think this would be a good idea?” Her voice was quiet but tense, and her fingers were linked tightly together in her lap.
“Because she’s the only blood relative I have, other than the kids.” Her mother closed her eyes and jerked her chin upward, as though Natalie had hit her. “Mom, please. I’m not trying to hurt you. I just think if I want to know my birth mother’s name, I should be able to.” Natalie grabbed a throw pillow and hugged it to her chest. “Honestly, I feel like I should already know it.”
“You only want to know her name?”
Natalie shook her head. “I want to see my adoption file. I want to know more about where I came from.”
Her mother’s blue eyes glossed with tears. “You came from your dad and me. We raised you. We took care of you. Aren’t we enough?”
Natalie gritted her teeth. “Of course you’re enough. That’s not the issue.”
“Then what is? Tell me how I’m not supposed to feel like I haven’t been a good enough mother to you when you want to go off and find another one?”
“Jesus, Mom.” Natalie released the pillow she held, letting it fall to the floor.
Her mother stared hard at the fallen pillow. Natalie sighed, reaching down to return it to its rightful spot on the couch. Some things never changed. In her parent’s house, if you dropped something, you picked it back up.
“Thank you,” her mom said, looking at Natalie again.
“You’re welcome,” Natalie said. A deep pinpoint pain began to pound below her right eye. Oddly enough, her sinuses were often the barometers of her emotional state—the more stressed she became, the more they swelled. Her doctor told her it was likely an autoimmune response, her body’s reaction to too much adrenaline. She pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to relieve the pressure, not knowing why she had thought this conversation would be any different than the others she and her mother had had about this subject. They always ended this way, her mother in tears and Natalie with the kind of headache that comes from banging your head against an impenetrable maternal brick wall.
“It would be harder,” Natalie finally said, “but you know I can look for her without your help. I could hire a private investigator.” She and Kyle had discussed that possibility the night before, in case her mother refused to cooperate. Now, Natalie kept her voice gentle, filled with as much compassion as it could hold. “But I came to you first, because I didn’t want to hide anything. I wanted you to know that this isn’t about you or Dad.” She felt a barb of tears in her throat, and she had to swallow them down before she went on. “You are my mother. You will always be my mother. The one who held me and took care of me and made sure I had everything I could ever possibly need. You and Daddy both did that. And I’m not looking to replace you. You could never lose me . . . you have me. I’m already yours.”
Her mother’s chin trembled, and before Natalie could say anything else, her mom stood up and without a word, strode out of the room.
“Shit,” Natalie muttered, pushing on the sore spot of her cheekbone with her thumb. She didn’t know why she’d even bothered coming. She should have just found her birth mom on her own and told her mother about it after the fact. After Natalie could show her mother that the other woman wasn’t any kind of threat—she was simply a part of Natalie’s history, a history she was entitled to know.
Her phone buzzed in her purse, which she’d left on the counter next to the half-eaten box of scones, so she rose to get it. “On a quick recess,” Kyle’s text message read. “How’s it going?”
“She just walked out on me,” Natalie responded, grateful that her husband had remembered what she was going to do that morning.
“Not surprising.”
Natalie’s gratitude was quickly replaced by a flash of irritation at her husband’s seemingly flippant remark, but she did her best to push it down, telling herself that he was in work mode, focused solely on pointing out the facts of a situation. She reminded herself that there were two parts of her husband—lawyer-Kyle and family-Kyle. Sometimes, when she needed one, she got the other. “No,” she typed, “but that doesn’t make it any easier.”
“Sorry,” he said, and she knew that her conclusion about his current mind-set was spot-on. “Be home as soon as I can tonight, OK?”
Natalie thanked him and shoved her phone back in her purse, trying to think about what else she could possibly say to her mother in order to get through to her. But before she could land on anything that might work, she heard footsteps behind her on the hardwood floor and spun around. “Look, Mom,” she began. “I’m sorry.” But then Natalie saw the box in her mother’s hands, and she froze where she stood. The box was white, its edges slightly torn and yellowed with age. “What’s that?” she asked, feeling her heartbeat quicken.
“It’s what you wanted,” her mother said. Her face was pale. “All we know. Everything before you were ours.” She held the box out to Natalie, who took it from her. It was lighter than she’d expected; it seemed like something as significant as what her parents had kept from her all these years should have more heft. She fought the urge to rip the box open right then and there, but she didn’t want to hurt her mother any more than she knew she already had.
“It’s okay,” her mom said, as though she had read Natalie’s thoughts. “I just called your dad. He agreed it was time for you to see it.”
“Are you sure?” Natalie asked.
“No. But one of us should be here when you do.”
Natalie cocked her head and furrowed her eyebrows, wondering what, exactly, she was about to see that her mother thought she needed to witness. But then it didn’t matter, because she set the box down on the kitchen island and lifted its lid.
The first thing she saw was a purple blanket with a silky but threadbare trim. “I remember this,” she said. Her voice quavered. “I used to sleep with it.”
Her mother nodded, pressing a closed fist against her mouth. “Until you were Hailey’s age,” she said when she dropped her arm back to her side.
“It’s the same color as my delivery boxes,” Natalie said, a bit dazed by the realization. She remembered the day she’d chosen the lavender boxes for her business over white ones, something about the color appealing to her in a way she couldn’t explain. She looked at her mother through glassy eyes. “Did my birth mother give it to me?”
“I don’t know,” her mom admitted. “Maybe. You had it the day we came to get you from the social worker. You wouldn’t go to sleep without it.”
Natalie lifted the blanket out of the box and set it on the counter. Her birth mother might have wrapped this around her. Natalie swallowed hard, then looked inside the box again. There was a single manila file folder with no label on the tab. She reached for it, but her mother’s voice stopped her.
“Honey, wait. I need you to understand something, first.”
Natalie looked at her mom, then back at the folder. Her pulse raced. “What?”
Her mom shifted her feet, her eyes darting to the floor, then back up to Natalie. “Your father and I did what we thought was best at the time.”
An alarm began to sound inside Natalie’s head, screaming in sync with the pounding beneath her eye. “What are you talking about?”
Her mother took a step toward her and placed a single hand on Natalie’s forearm. She stared at her daughter’s face as though trying to memorize something. “You said you want to know more about the girl who gave birth to you,” she said. “When you open that folder you’re going to see something I hope doesn’t upset you too much.”
“Mom, please. Just tell me.” Natalie’s thoughts spun with worst-case scenarios. Was her birth mom a prostitute? A victim of rape? Did she already know her? Natalie’s mom didn’t have any siblings, but her father did. Did her aunt Vicki get pregnant and then let Natalie’s parents adopt her? Was this some big family secret they’d been keeping all these years?
Her mom reached into the box and picked up the folder, holding it out for Natalie. “You already know she gave you up because she couldn’t take care of you,” she said. She held very still, a muscle twitching just under her right eye. “But what you don’t know . . . what your dad and I never told you . . . is that she gave up your sister, too.”
