Rafael keeps his focus on me. “Why do you recognize her?”
“She’s the one who tried to kidnap me.” Brittany flinches at the word. I do, too.
Rafael takes my hand in his. “We’re leaving.” His voice is calm, but his eyes are hard.
I yank my hand away. “Do what you want. I’m staying.” He closes his eyes and clenches his jaw, but I don’t care. I’ve waited eighteen years for answers, I’m not waiting another second.
I walk over to Brittany on unsteady legs and attempt a smile again. “Let’s sit down.” I move toward the table and glance at the picture Rafael was holding. I’m in a swimsuit and swim cap, holding a first-place ribbon and grinning for the camera. The old photograph from the blog is folded in half, erasing Poppy completely. I touch the frame gently with trembling fingers before looking at Brittany in awe. She was telling the truth.
“I have more.” She pulls a large photo album from under her bed and thrusts it into my arms. My hands are still shaking as I open the book. When I see the first page, my stomach floods with acid. It’s a scrapbook filled with pictures of me. Me as a baby. Me taking my first steps. Me on my first birthday. Some of the picture were always solo shots, but in many others, Poppy has literally been cut straight from the image. Page after page, I view my life through a lens that removes my mom and dad and sister. It’s just me, smiling at nothing, arms thrown around thin air, celebrating birthdays and Christmases as if I sprung up from nowhere. Anxiety wraps its iron grip around my heart, and I can’t move or speak or even breathe.
“I’m going to print out the ones I missed,” Brittany says, referencing the gap in the timeline that I suspect represent the years she spent in prison. “As soon as I get time.”
“You real busy these days?” Rafael’s voice is icy. He stands behind my chair with his hands on the back of it. I look up to see him glowering at her while she studiously avoids his gaze.
I close the book and push it away from me. The room is stuffy and hot. Sweat soaks through my shirt.
Rafael’s hands twitch and he folds his arms across his chest. He’s seconds away from losing it, which will destroy any chance I have of connecting with my birth mother. I’m here to find my family, discover my roots, and hopefully see a path for my future. As much as I wanted him here, I can’t do any of those things with Rafael breathing protectively down my neck.
“Can we go for a walk?” I ask Brittany. She smiles weakly and stands.
Rafael moves to follow us, but I shake my head. “I need to be alone with her.” He looks like he wants to protest, and Brittany quietly slips out the door, leaving us behind in her apartment.
“You don’t know if she’s safe or mentally stable. I can’t leave you alone with her.”
I gesture around the dingy room. “She’s had a hard life, sure, and this is weird and uncomfortable, but nothing here makes me scared for my safety.”
He sighs. “If you’re not back in thirty minutes, I’m coming to find you.”
Thirty minutes isn’t much, but I appreciate the fact that this is hard for him too. If the situation was reversed, I wouldn’t be thrilled at the thought of leaving him alone with the person who almost destroyed his life. I nod and hand him my car key, and we stare at each other for a fraction of a second too long, tipping the moment from gentle understanding to tense and loaded silence. It seems like he wants to hug me, or maybe just stop me from leaving, but he doesn’t do either. I’m disappointed and relieved.
Brittany waits for me in the yard. “You hungry?” When I nod, she says “Wait here,” then opens the front door of the main floor of the house and returns a minute later with a black apron.
“Auntie Brittany!” A little girl in a diaper and small pigtails chases her out the door and throws her body around Brittany’s leg. She giggles as Brittany lifts her legs and stomps around the yard.
“I’ll be back soon,” Brittany says as she detaches the girl and carries her back to the porch. The girl juts out her bottom lip and threatens to cry. “And I’ll bring a treat. Broccoli is still your favorite, right?”
The girl shrieks in disgust until Brittany promises to return with a sugar cookie, a statement that is met with delighted squeals. She allows Brittany to usher her inside and shut the door.
I watch the whole encounter, speechless. How could this be the same person who dumped her baby, and returned nine years later to ruin her life? I don’t sleep, or talk to strangers, or feel safe in public. Because of her. But she obviously loves that little girl (my cousin?!) and the girl feels the same. Brittany isn’t unfit for motherhood . . . she was just unfit for me.
My mind and heart race as my feet robotically follow the path she leads to a café in Historic Superior. I barely listen as she narrates the walk, pointing out landmarks around town. She opens a heavy door in the back of the building and we weave through a small but busy kitchen filled with line cooks assembling sandwiches and ladling soup into bowls. I sit on a counter stool while she stands on the other side and ties the apron behind her back.
“I shouldn’t have showed you the book.” She sighs.
“You shouldn’t have made it. You gave up your right to my life.”
Cringing, she turns to scoop ice into a glass cup, then fills it with water, sticks a straw in it, and slides it in front of me, alongside a cookie from the bakery display. “Happy birthday.”
At least someone remembers. I take a sip even though I’m not thirsty, my mind still stuck on the girl from the yard, on the life I could have had.
“Why did you do it?” I swirl the straw in my cup and avoid her eyes. I’m not even sure what “it” I’m referring to. Giving me up, or trying to take me back. She interprets it as the former.
“They were going to take you away.”
My head snaps up.
“I failed the drug test.” She methodically rolls forks and knives into flimsy white napkins and secures each set with a paper ring. “The nurse told me while I was in labor. She said to expect a visit from CPS after you were born, and that I wasn’t allowed to breastfeed you, and that you’d have to be tested. They took you away to the nursery. I was standing in the hall, watching you through the window, when Ashley and her new baby were wheeled by. She didn’t recognize me, but I read her blog, knew every detail of her perfect pregnancy and perfect life. And I thought, I’m going to see more of that little girl’s life than my own baby’s. I snapped. If she could just take you for a little bit, until I could get my life together, I’d still know you.” She swipes a tear from her cheek with the back of her hand and continues rolling.
I’m too stunned to respond.
She loved me.
She made a lot of really bad decisions, but she loved me.
“It was harder than I thought it’d be, watching you grow up from the other side of a screen. She was the one wrapping your presents and brushing your hair. And lying the whole time, pretending you were hers. Letting commenters compare you to Poppy. It made me sick.” She spits the words. “I got worse instead of better, and I got tired of waiting.” She looks at me for the first time since starting her story, and her eyes are filled with decades-old anger. She’s so consumed by her own rage that she doesn’t consider my own.
“I still have nightmares,” I say.
“So do I.” Her eyes are hard, and it’s obvious I’m not getting an apology. But I ask for one anyway, because I’m desperate and sad and too pathetic for words.
“Do you regret it?”
“I regret not fighting for you when you were a baby.”
My stomach sinks. Giving me up was the best thing she could have done for me, but that’s the decision she would change. I let my head fall into my hands, suddenly exhausted.
“My dad?”
“Never knew about you. He moved on long before you were born.”
Of course. Another dad I’ll never know.
“You graduating soon?”
I nod, too tired to be amused by her atte
mpt to pretend she doesn’t know every detail of my life.
“Then what?”
I shrug. “Maybe a reality show. With Poppy.” I may as well tell her. She’ll find out eventually.
“You don’t sound too happy about that.”
“I’m not.”
“Move here.” She says it as if it’s the most obvious solution in the world, but I can’t mask the look of shock on my face. Is she serious?
“You don’t belong in that world, with those people. You belong with me. I can get you a bed, and a job, and we can finally be the family we were always meant to be.”
I squirm uncomfortably, because I’ve had some of those same thoughts. I don’t belong in Mom and Poppy’s world. But I don’t belong in this one either.
This could have been my life, but it’s not. This is her town. Her stuffy garage apartment. She could have been my family, but she’s not. And not because she was too sick to take care of me as a baby. She forfeited any right to my life when she used violence to try to rip me away from the only family I’d ever known.
“Your boy is here.” Brittany nods to the front door of the café. I spin on my stool to see Rafael hesitating, waiting for a signal from me. I hold up a finger and swivel back to Brittany. “He doesn’t like me,” she muses.
“Can you blame him?” The words slip out before I can stop them, and she freezes midroll. “I don’t think I’ll be moving here.” My voice is strong, but my body winces in anticipation of her reaction.
Her face hardens. “Why did you come here?”
“I wanted to meet you.”
“Well, congratulations! You met me. Now what? You’re going to run away again? Just like last time?
“No, I just—”
“You came here just to show me how much you don’t need me?”
“It’s not that.”
“You’re just like Ashley.” She shakes her head. “No appreciation for my sacrifices. Neither one of you spared a single thought for me in eighteen years. Ungrateful bitches, both of you.” Her hands shake as she grasps a roll of silverware. My body freezes at the abrupt turn in mood.
“That’s enough.” Rafael crosses the small café in quick strides.
“What’d you say to me?” Brittany gives him a look of pure hatred that knocks the breath right out of me.
“The fact that Claire’s even here is more than you deserve.”
“Her coddled life is more than she deserves.” She turns her steely glare from Rafael to me. “Get out of my town!” It’s a threat as much as an order, and her entire body shakes with rage.
“Gladly.” Rafael takes my hand and moves toward the door, but I’m paralyzed by indecision. All rational thought is telling me to get out of here, but my feet are welded to the floor. It can’t end like this. This isn’t how it was supposed to go. She’s my family. My second chance. If I don’t have her, what do I have?
Rafael looks at me in disbelief. “Let’s go!”
“I . . . I . . .” I stare into Brittany’s angry face, desperate for a hint of the affection and understanding I saw minutes ago.
“I said get out!” She shatters my cup against the floor, spewing glass and ice water at my feet.
I don’t need to be told again.
I wrench the car door open with trembling hands. My clumsy fingers fumble with the keys while Rafael impatiently taps an unsteady rhythm against the dashboard. I finally get the car started and slowly ease it down the road. Back in Historic Superior, I pull into the parking lot of an empty auto body shop, turn off the car, and crack my knuckles to relieve the tension coursing through my hands.
Rafael doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t even apologize. Before I realize it, I’ve stopped my deep breathing and my hands are shaking again.
“Why did you do that?” I ask.
“Do what?” He looks at me like I’ve lost my mind.
“Make her angry!” She was opening up to me. We just needed more time.
“In case you didn’t notice, she’s intensely unstable. I had to say something.”
“I was handling it.”
“No. You weren’t.” His face is calm but he fixes me with an intense stare. I can’t deal with him looking at me like that, so I climb out of the car and slam my door. Rafael follows suit. We face each other across the hood of the car.
“You made everything so much worse. I can’t believe you did that.” I hurl the words across the car with as much venom as I can muster.
“Worse? Worse?” He raises his voice to match mine. “Listen to yourself! That woman went to prison for trying to kidnap you. It doesn’t get worse!”
He didn’t hear her story, so he can’t understand the pain she’s been through. “I shouldn’t have brought you.” It’s not true. I’m glad he was there with me.
He pauses, and when he speaks again, his voice is quiet. “Why did you bring me?”
“I don’t know. Obviously, it was a mistake.” Lie.
“No, Claire. Why did you bring me?”
“You didn’t have to come.” Lie. Lie. Lie. I barely gave him a choice. I didn’t even tell him where we were going until he was already in the car.
“I never said I didn’t want to come. I said, why did you bring me?”
He’s looking for a specific answer, but I don’t know what it is. And if I did, I’m so mad I wouldn’t give it to him. “Who else would I have brought? Poppy?”
“What about Jackson? He should be home for Thanksgiving in a few days, right?” His face is blank, his expression unreadable.
“What are you talking about? Why would I bring Jackson?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because he’s your boyfriend?”
“What?”
“You told me you want to go to school ‘with a friend’ in California. You defended long-distance relationships when I said I didn’t believe in them. Your Instagram is covered in pictures of him.”
“Old pictures.” And even then, those pictures don’t tell the full story. The relationship they flaunted was nothing more than an illusion. I thought Rafael understood that.
“Not all of them. You two were looking very friendly on the blog just last month. All the comments say you two are together and—”
“You read the blog? And the comments?” Hurt and anger compete for my attention.
“Sometimes.” He shrugs like it’s no big deal.
Anger wins. “I can’t believe you would do that after everything I’ve told you!”
“You don’t tell me anything! You never told me about Jackson. Instead you just string me along and try to kiss me and fall asleep on my shoulder all while you have a boyfriend.”
“Jackson is not my boyfriend.”
He raises his eyebrows in disbelief. “You said you didn’t want people to see us together, and I assumed it was because you two were still dating. What else was I supposed to think?”
“He was never my boyfriend. You would have known that if you had bothered to ask me about it instead of trusting gossip written by strangers on the internet.”
He puts his hands on the hood of the car and hangs his head with a sigh. “It wasn’t just strangers. It was Poppy, too.”
“You talked to Poppy? Instead of me?”
“I wanted to ask you so many times, but I was too nervous. I didn’t want to scare you off. So, I asked Poppy. She told me that you and Jackson got together when he visited last month. She warned me not to interfere because you’ve been in love with him forever. It seemed like everyone knew but me. Even Olivia mentioned it one or two dozen times.”
Okay, I shouldn’t have lied to Poppy. But I refuse to let this be my fault. “It’s not true. And like I said, you would have known that if you had talked to me instead of going behind my back and believing the crap you read online.”
“It’s hard not to believe something when the proof is in front of my eyes.”
I think about Jackson with his arm around me at di
nner last month and my mom with her camera, and I’m flooded with anger. “It’s a lie! I’ve told you that! You’re just like everyone else, except worse because you know how I feel about the blog but you trusted it anyway.”
“You know what I don’t understand? If you hate the blog so much, why don’t you tell your mom to stop?”
“It’s not that easy. She started it before I was born. It’s her life.”
“It might be her life but it doesn’t have to be yours. You had no choice when you were little. I get that. But you definitely don’t have to agree to that reality show.”
“What about you? Had any honest conversations with your dad lately? Or are you going to stop whining about your relationship with him and just deal with it?”
Rafael’s expression falls. If I’m trying to hurt him, I’ve succeeded. And I hate myself for it. I blink back my tears and brace myself for his response when something catches my eye across the empty parking lot, at the gas station next door.
No. Someone.
A teenage girl leans against the side of her old Volkswagen Beetle while she waits for it to fill up. She’s close enough that I’m sure she’s heard every word Rafael and I have hurled at each other. Worst of all, she has her camera phone pointed directly at us.
“Crap.” I lock eyes with the girl, and she stumbles with her phone. It drops on the ground. She picks it up and shoves it in her pocket before she turns around and pulls the fuel nozzle out of the gas tank.
“Hey! Excuse me!” I run across the empty parking lot toward her. “Hey!” I yell again as she opens her car door. I reach out and hold it open before she can slam it shut. “What do you think you’re doing?” My heart slams against my ribs as she glares up at me from behind her thick, black-framed glasses.
“Claire!” Rafael slides over stray pieces of gravel and comes to a stop next to me. “What’s going on? Do you know her?”
“She was recording us. Or taking pictures. On her phone.” The words come out in short spurts as I try to catch my breath.
“I was not.” She doesn’t look at either of us. Instead, she sticks her keys in the ignition and stares at the fuzzy purple dice hanging from her mirror.
Just for Clicks Page 20
