The How & the Why

by Cynthia Hand

  “Exactly,” I agree glumly. “That happens to be exactly what I think.”

  “Good,” Mom says. “Maybe I raised you well. You’re thinking of her, instead of yourself.”

  “But you know, on one of those adoption registry websites it said that ninety percent of the women who give their babies up for adoption are open to being reunited with them at some point. That’s a pretty high percentage.”

  “Yes, it is. So I guess that means it’s likely that she’s open to it, too.” She sets the knife down and turns the cake, eyeing it from all angles. “Like I said, it’s a tough decision.”

  I nod. I go to stick my finger in her big bowl of frosting, and she smacks my hand. We both laugh.

  “But you told me to find her. You were up for disturbing her life back then,” I argue.

  “I was thinking of what you needed.”

  “What, you thought I needed a mother?”

  “I thought you needed an answer.”

  “Oh. Well, now I have lots of answers.”

  “Yes, you do.” She picks up an envelope she’s created out of wax paper and spoons some of the frosting into it. Then she folds it closed and squeezes it until a little bit of frosting comes out of the end. She takes a toothpick from a box and holds it up, then starts to make petals on it, from the center on out. A rose out of frosting, which is something she often tried to teach me, but never could. My roses always ended up looking like pine cones.

  “When I was dying, I used to think about my heart,” she says, and my breath catches. I’ve never heard her say it like that. When I was dying.

  “People would tell me that I’d get a new heart. Someday, when I’d given up hope for it, they’d say, a new heart was going to come along, like magic. I tried to believe that, to have faith in the idea, to visualize it happening to me. But I knew that this heart wouldn’t actually be magic. It belonged to someone else. It was being carried around, even in the moment I was thinking about it, in someone else’s chest, beating for them, keeping them alive. I used to think about that heart so much, even in the dark moments when I wasn’t sure it really existed or if I’d ever receive it. What was the heart doing, I wondered, out there in the world? Was the woman jogging, and so her heart was racing as she sprinted around some track? Was she in love, and her heart fluttered when she saw the person she was in love with? Was she a mother, too? Did she love her child the way that I love you—so fiercely she’d easily give up her life on her kid’s behalf, so completely, so truly?”

  I bite my lip. I don’t know where she’s going with this, but I know it’s important to listen.

  “And then one day, out of the blue, in the nick of time, I got the heart. Now I carry it inside of me, and I feel responsible for both of us, this woman and me. I have her heart. I have to take care of it, and love my life because of it, and never take it for granted, not even for a moment.”

  I nod. “I think I’d feel that way, too.”

  My mom closes her eyes for a second. “That’s also how I feel about your birth mother. She carried you inside of her, and loved you, and looked out for you, until the day that you came to be mine instead. It’s like . . .” Her voice wavers. “I know that I have her heart. And I have to take care of it. And I have to honor her choice, her sacrifice.”

  We’re both in tears by this point. She’s still making the rose out of frosting, so I can’t hug her. I want to hug her. Finally, she finishes with the last petals. “Hold out your hand,” she says, and I do. She places the rose gently into the palm of my hand.

  “For you, my Cassandra Rose.”

  “I love you, Mom.”

  “I love you, too.”

  We would probably have started crying again, but then Dad comes through the door. He stops in his tracks, and lifts his head and smells the air.

  “Cake,” he whispers.

  Mom laughs and wipes her eyes. “We’re almost ready to eat it.”

  I put the rose in my mouth. It tastes fragile and sweet and like a perfect representation of what my mother is.

  “Hey, you got some mail,” Dad says, and holds up a large, official-looking envelope.

  “What is it this time?” I groan.

  It turns out to be the log-in information for the DNA test I did last year, the Christmas gift from my parents. The results are available for me to see.

  Mom cuts the cake, and then she and Dad and I sit at the table and eat the entire thing. We’re so stuffed by the end I can hardly move. Then I take the DNA test stuff down the hall to my room and sit down at my desk and open my laptop. I intend to simply read the results, but something stops me.

  There’s something I should do first.

  I locate the draft of the email I was composing to Sandra Whit, and I delete it.

  I’ve decided: I’m not going to contact her. I’m not going to cyberstalk her anymore. She deserves her privacy.

  I’ll let her go.

  I know what I need to know, I tell myself. I know my medical history. I know the story of how I came to be a person. I know Sandra Whit loved me. She loved me. That will have to be enough.

  You go your way, I think. I’ll go mine.

  Dear Star,

  This is the last letter I’m going to write you. I don’t know if it will be included with the others, since you were adopted today, and I know the people who started the letter program with the state really only meant for me to write one letter, and this is so many, and I can’t go on writing them now that you’re not mine. You belong to your parents and not to me. I mean, I don’t think you’ve ever really belonged to me. I just got to lug you around with me for a while.

  I’m doing okay since the hospital. My dad came to pick me up, which was not ideal, but he insisted. He drove me back to his place, which, again, is not what I wanted.

  “I’m going to live with Mom,” I told him. “I told you.”

  “I know,” he said gruffly. “I have your stuff all packed. She’ll be here tomorrow. But I wanted to give you something.”

  It turned out that something was a car.

  I’d like to say I refused, out of principle, or because I will not be bribed into making nice with him. But I took the car. It was a moment of weakness that I can’t make myself regret.

  The first thing I did was drive over to the college to apologize to Ted. He lives in the same dorm room as last year, the dorm room where you were conceived, Baby Star, and yeah, that was a little weird, waiting outside in the hall again for some boy to come along.

  Ted smiled when he saw me, this fleeting little smile, but then he tried to act like he didn’t care. “Hi.”

  “Hi.”

  “What are you doing here? Do you need me to help you find Dawson?”

  “No,” I said. “I was looking for you. I owe you an apology.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “I do. I used you. Like you said. That was wrong, and I’m sorry.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay?” I couldn’t help but smile. “Just like that?”

  “Okay.”

  “Good. Thank you.” I turned to go.

  “Wait, do you want to come in?” he asked. “I have tea.”

  “All right.”

  I went in and sat on the bed opposite his—he must have had another roommate, but I didn’t ask about it—and he made me a cup of tea. With sugar, this time. And milk.

  “No Pop-Tarts,” I said preemptively.

  “You’re not pregnant anymore,” he pointed out.

  “Nope.”

  “So she’s okay?”

  “She’s perfect. She’s with her parents now.”

  “And what are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to move in with my mom in Colorado.”

  “Oh.” His face fell. I have to admit I liked how disappointed he seemed.

  “But after I graduate, I might come back here. To school, I mean.”

  “Now you want to go to college?”

  “I like it here.” I stood up agai
n and looked around as if I’d never been in there before. “So maybe. I’m going to play things by ear for a while. See where I end up.”

  “Well, for my sake, I hope you end up here,” he said.

  I arched an eyebrow at him. “For your sake?”

  “I like you. Maybe that’s weird.”

  “Why is that weird?”

  He blushed. “This is the first time we’ve had a real conversation where you weren’t pregnant with my roommate’s baby. I mean, who makes a move on a pregnant girl?”

  “Did you make a move? Did I miss that?”

  “I’m thinking about making a move. Sometime in the future.”

  “When?”

  “In about ten seconds,” he said.

  “Oh.”

  “Nine, eight, seven,” he counted, stepping toward me.

  I counted along, too. “Six, five, four.”

  I kissed him on three.

  “Thank you for being a nice guy,” I said when I pulled away.

  “Um, you’re welcome,” he breathed.

  “You helped me so much. You made me believe that I might have some kind of future.”

  “The future is whatever you make it,” he said. “That’s from, well, Back to the Future.”

  “You glorious nerd,” I giggled.

  That was all that happened, Star, I promise. A kiss. A joke. Then I had to go. But I meant it when I said I believed in the future now, and whatever it holds.

  It’s easy for me to imagine your future. You grow up to be beautiful and smart and strong and good. Someone is there to pick you up when you fall down, to kiss your scraped knee, to make your birthday cakes and sing songs to you and teach you about the world. You’re loved, every minute of your life. You’re so loved, and you never doubt that, even when things get tough. You’re loved.

  That’s the future, Baby Star. That’s what I know to be true, because I’ll be there, too, even if you don’t know me, even if you can’t see the ties that bind us. I’m under the same sun as you, the same moon, walking the same earth, and I’ll be thinking about you every day, every step. I’ll be hoping for the best.

  I’ll be loving you.

  S

  Epilogue

  Six Months Later

  “Happy birthday, Cass,” says Bastian.

  “Thanks,” I say, smiling. Nineteen feels older this time, a little more weathered than who I was last year. Wiser. More aware of myself. More comfortable with who I am.

  Bastian holds up a bag. “Chocolate chip cookie? The cafeteria makes these insanely good ones. Like, the-freshman-fifteen-might-be-worth-it good.”

  “Okay. Yum.”

  “Wait. There’s more.” He unwraps the cookie and sets it on a napkin in the middle of the stage, then pulls a little white candle and a lighter out of his back pocket, sticks it in the cookie, and sets it on fire. He starts to sing, and the other people in the cast notice and turn to us and start to sing along.

  I clap with them at the end and blow out the candle.

  “And many more,” Bastian sings.

  We share the cookie and then get back to work painting the set of the new fall play at College of Idaho: The Marriage of Bette and Boo. We both have small parts, Bastian and I, because we’re freshmen. We’re still little fish at this school, it turns out, but we’ll get there. We’ll grow.

  My phone buzzes. A text from Nyla, who I miss terribly, like an amputated limb. I get phantom pains for Nyla all the time.

  Nyla: Happy birthday, Cass! I wish I were there to celebrate!

  Me: How’s USC?

  Nyla: I have sand in my pants.

  Me: Sorry if my heart doesn’t exactly bleed for you right now. How’d the audition go?

  Nyla: You think the world is ready for a black Sandy in “Grease”?

  Me: The world is definitely ready.

  Nyla: How’s the new bestie?

  Me: He’s only my second-best bestie. He’s still unfairly pretty.

  “Tell Nyla I said hi,” says Bastian. He’s not really second best. He’s just second in the bestie line.

  Me: Bastian says hi.

  Nyla: Is he taking you out for a birthday dinner?

  Me: Better. It’s homecoming week. There’s a big ceremony, and my parents are coming.

  Nyla: Awesome! Give Mama Cat a hug from me.

  Me: I will.

  Nyla:

  Me: ☺

  My phone buzzes again. Mom this time.

  Mom: We’re here. We’re at the SUB.

  Me: I’ll be right out.

  My parents are standing at the foot of the steps at the student union building when I get there, both grinning. They’ve been here before, of course, when they dropped me off in August, and we all went around on the campus tour back then (and Dad had been on the campus tour before, that time we went college shopping), but today when I show them around it feels more official, somehow. I am showing them my college. My favorite table in the cafeteria. My spot under my tree in the quad, where I like to read. The desk I always sit at in the library. That pretty classroom on the third floor of Strahorn Hall, where yesterday I learned all about Christopher Marlowe from Dr. Spencer. My dorm room, all decked out now with my stuff. My new roommate, Lindsey, who’s hilarious and helpfully tidy and who can do the harmony with her violin to any song I play for her: country, R & B, pop. And the theater, of course.

  My theater.

  We while away the afternoon wandering around campus and hanging out with my roomie in the dorm. And when it’s almost time to leave for the homecoming ceremony, Dad suddenly says, “I get it now, why this is where you wanted to come. It’s very you.”

  “It is,” I agree happily. “It’s where I was supposed to end up. I always, like, knew it somehow. I’m meant to be here. I don’t know why, but . . .”

  “The universe unfolds as it should,” Mom says sagely.

  “Exactly.”

  “And right now the universe is telling us it’s time to eat,” Dad chimes in. “I’m starved.”

  I run us back to the caf. We have to hurry with our meals because it’s almost time for the ceremony, which is held in the big auditorium. When we get there Mom and Dad go sit with the other proud parents. I find Bastian and we walk together with the incoming freshmen through something called the alumni walk, where the people who graduated from C of I stand along the edges of the aisles as we go in and hand us the tassels that we’ll wear four years from now, when we graduate.

  “My uncle gave me my tassel,” Bastian says as we’re sitting down.

  “Your uncle is here?”

  He doesn’t have time to tell me about that, though, because then the ceremony gets started. We sit back and listen to speaker after speaker talk to us about the future, about the opportunities we’re going to have here at C of I, about how we are free now to figure out our purpose in life, and about how much fun we’re going to have and all of the lasting relationships we’re going to build here.

  “Like you, second bestie,” whispers Bastian, bumping his shoulder into mine.

  I smile. I know it’s true.

  Afterward there’s a reception in the lobby where we meet up with my parents again. There are tea cakes and cookies and punch.

  “Hello,” Mom says to Bastian. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  “Hi, there!” he greets her. “You’re Cass’s older sister, right? You look just like her.”

  He’s still doesn’t know I’m adopted. I’ll tell him soon, I think, but for now I am enjoying the way he thinks I look exactly like my mom.

  “Oh, you,” she giggles. It’s good to see her this way, all dressed up, her body filled out again, stronger, her cheeks flushed with color, her hair shiny and her eyes bright. “You’re a flatterer, you are.”

  “And flattery will get you everywhere with her,” I add. Snerk.

  “It was a great ceremony,” Dad says. “I feel so inspired.”

  “Me too,” Bastian agrees. “I know I’m on the brink of figuring out my purpos
e in life.”

  We laugh. Then Bastian spots somebody across the room.

  “There’s my uncle,” he says. “Come and meet him.”

  “Where are we going?” my mom asks as Bastian grabs my hand and I grab hers and we start to weave through the throng of people. She grabs my dad at the last minute. We’re like a silly people train chugging through the crowd.

  “How come I’ve never met this mysterious uncle before?” I ask as we make our way over there. “I mean, you’ve met Uncle Pete.”

  Bastian grins. “My uncle doesn’t live in Idaho. But he’s the reason I wanted to come here, actually. He went here. He’s always talked about C of I like it’s the best place on earth. He develops video games now—have I told you that? He’s like a millionaire, but you’d never know it to look at him.”

  “He develops video games? How cool is that?” This makes me think of Sandra Whit, and my throat tightens. I swallow and push past it. I’m trying not to think about her so much.

  “It’s pretty awesome,” Bastian says. “Growing up I also had the best video game collection out of all my friends.”

  “I would never have pegged you as a gamer.”

  “I became a theater nerd. I don’t have the time,” he explains. “Hey, Uncle Theo!” He raises his hand, and a dark-haired man turns and waves at us.

  “He and his wife came all the way out from California,” Bastian says. “Because my dad still . . .”

  His dad still isn’t speaking to him. His parents aren’t here with all the other parents, so his uncle is filling in.

  We finally get to the other side of the room and pull up in front of Bastian’s uncle: Bastian, me, my mom and dad all in a line.

  “Hey, buddy,” his uncle says, clapping Bastian on the shoulder. “Great ceremony, wasn’t it? Isn’t this place the absolute best? And who’s this?”

  “This is Cass McMurtrey, the bestie I’m always talking about,” Bastian says.

  “Hi,” I say awkwardly.

  “And this is Cass’s mom and dad, Cat and Bill McMurtrey,” Bastian continues. “Meet Theo Takamoto, my infamous uncle.”

  “Wait,” I say. “Takamoto?”