• The mother was a famous actress and she didn’t want people to know.
• Both parents had to leave the country because they robbed the biggest bank in New York.
There they sat, Sailor and Emily, designing parents out of nothing, out of imagination and dust.
Finally Emily folded the paper with the mystery parent list, and tucked it into the side pocket of her backpack. Together they walked into the village, stopping for a shaved ice from Brinson’s Pharmacy. When they reached Emily’s home, Sailor looked up at the brick house. “You are so lucky.”
“Yes, I am.” Emily waved good-bye and walked into the front door, inhaling the smell of her mother’s cooking in the back of the house. It smelled like pot roast—her least favorite, but her dad’s very favorite.
Home.
Emiy walked down the back hall, dropping her backpack onto the hardwood floor by the basement door. “Mom?” she called out, tasting the word as if it were new and fresh, something she’d never thought about before although she was told it was the first word she ever said.
“Back here,” her Mom’s voice called from the laundry room.
A bowl of grapes sat on the counter and Emily grabbed a handful before walking to the laundry room and hugging her mother. “I love you.”
“Well, that’s good,” Elena said, throwing clothes into the dryer. “Because I love you too.”
* * *
Emily’s homework that night was to write a paragraph about the favorite parts of her DNA and add a pedigree chart showing where those attributes came from: X for mother. Y for father. The blank sheet stared at Emily until she began to wrap the words around what she wanted to say.
My DNA gave me green eyes with a few brown freckles inside. My DNA gave me wavy coppery hair that isn’t really red or brown, but a little of both. My DNA made me short and strong. My DNA gave me ugly nail beds that go all flat on the sides. My DNA lets me roll my tongue upside down. There are lots of things my DNA gave me, but my parents gave me love. I can’t make a chart out of love because there is no such thing. My parents made me out of love and not a molecule.
Emily 13 years old
Born on March 20, 1997
nine
BIRMINGHAM, AL
2010
Walking into the pizza parlor with Jack and Caleb, Kate felt as if only days had passed, not years. The restaurant was dim and loud—the perfect combination for boys. Baseball players tumbled into the restaurant one after the other, taking over the middle section. Parents clustered around satellite tables.
“Jack,” a man called from across the room. “We’re over here.”
Jack made a motion to indicate he would stay at the corner table where he sat with Kate. He looked to her. “Unless of course you want to eat with the team parents and talk about game strategy and batting order.”
“No, really,” she said. “I’m good here with you.”
They ordered a pizza and salad to share. Caleb sat with his teammates, leaving Jack and Kate to face one another across a cracked linoleum table. “So,” Jack said. “What brings you to Birmingham after all these years?”
“Well, you know I own that clothing store in Bluffton? My favorite client wanted me to check out this boutique in Birmingham that won some design award. So, here I am.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
“So that’s why you’re here.”
“No, that’s my excuse for being here.”
He smiled. “Good then.”
The pizza and salads arrived, and the combined noise of boys’ voices and rock music over the speakers filled the silence until Jack finally leaned forward. “Okay, I’m really glad to see you and I can’t wait to catch up, but is there something … specific?”
“Yes.” She nodded at him and wiped the pizza grease from the corner of her mouth. “I want to talk about some … old stuff.”
“Caleb is going to his grandparents’ farm for the rest of the weekend, so we can talk later, okay?”
“When did your parents get a farm?”
“No, Maggie’s parents.”
“Maggie,” Kate said quietly.
Jack nodded, but changed the subject. “So, tell me, how are things in Bluffton? How’s the family?”
“All is well in South Carolina. I ran into Hayes at a party the other night. He asked about you.”
“Wow. I’m surprised anyone even remembers me. It’s been a long time.”
“You’re memorable,” Kate said, smiling.
“I’m not sure for all the right reasons.”
“Well, Larson asks about you. And Norah says hello.”
Jack shook his head. “Sometimes I forget about South Carolina, like I never lived there. But then, if I close my eyes, I can see the river.…”
“Yes, the river.”
The years melted away and for a breath in and out, they weren’t Jack and Kate in a pizza parlor, but Jack and Katie on the edge of a river on the first day of spring, making promises. Then the moment was gone, a passing cloud or whisper.
“So,” Jack said. “Tell me about your clothing store.”
Yes, they would do their very best to avoid the past, the river, and the vows. Kate dove into his question with relief. “My store.” She smiled. “I’ve written to you about it. It’s called Mimsy. I named it after a little girl I took care of for a few years.”
He shrugged. “I pictured you doing a lot of things, but owning a boutique wasn’t on the list.”
“You pictured me?” She teased, smiling across the table.
He laughed loudly enough for the next table to smile at them. “Yes, I picture you sometimes. Now go … tell me about it.”
“Well, while I was being a nanny during the summer for this family, the mom, Susan Neal, noticed my eye for detail. She started asking me to shop for her, pick things out. Next thing I knew I was flying to New York with her, talking about opening a boutique, and obsessing about new styles and designers. I fell into it like I fall into most things—accidentally.”
She heard the word slip from her mouth at the same time that she wanted to stop it—accident. It wasn’t what she meant to say and its meaning nudged too close to something else, to all they needed to avoid.
“So this Susan woman started the store with you?” Jack asked.
Kate exhaled. She was being way too sensitive, weighing every word like that. “Yes,” she said. “Yes. She put up the seed money and is majority owner. I run it and do all the buying. But you’re right; I never saw myself doing this either. But now that I’m doing it, I can’t imagine another way. I love it. I really do.”
“You run it alone?” he asked.
“No. Norah works with me part time and a girl named Lida, also.”
“Lida,” Jack said, leaning back in his chair. “How do I know that name?”
Kate looked up to the ceiling. Damn. Minefields existed in every word she spoke. “Lida,” she said. “Is the girl who was in the wilderness with me right before I left. The one I stayed for…”
Jack held up his hand. “Yep, I remember.” His eyes closed and for the first time since he’d seen her on the baseball field, his smile dissipated. Then he opened his eyes. “So, tell me about your sisters. How are they?”
For the remainder of the meal, they talked about families and siblings, about jobs and cities, until Grandma came to pick up Caleb. Kate stayed at the table as Jack walked his son outside.
Alone at the table, Kate realized she’d never told Jack about Lida coming to South Carolina. How the girl she’d stayed with in the wilderness for all those years ago was still with her now.
Mimsy Clothing had been open for three years when Lida had shown up at the front door with a duffel bag. Considering that Kate had thought about Lida almost every day since leaving her in the wilderness with the new field guide, it took Kate longer to recognize Lida than it should have. She blamed the complete surprise, like seeing a desert cactus in Key West.
“
Hi, Katie,” Lida said and dropped her filthy bag onto the white slipcovered chair.
In an instinctual movement, Kate picked up the bag and placed it on the floor. “May I help you?”
“I think you already have,” Lida said, and then laughed that deep, raspy sound that came from smoking since she was eleven years old.
The remembering came in a sudden wave, and Kate embraced the young girl, hugging her hard and holding tight. “Oh! I’ve thought about you every day.” She stepped back and took the girl’s face in her hands. “I tried to find you. I called Winsome, but they weren’t allowed to give me your information. I’ve wondered…”
“Well, no more wondering.” Lida shrugged her shoulders. “Here I am.”
“How are you? Where have you been? What are you doing here?”
“How many of those do you want me to answer?”
“All, but not at once.” Kate took Lida’s hands. “Sit, tell me everything.”
It took the afternoon to catch up on the previous nine years of Lida’s nomadic life, in which she’d somehow finished high school and was at that moment trying to enroll in community college, thinking that South Carolina might just be the right place for such a thing.
Kate hired Lida, helping her find a small garage apartment. Exactly as Kate had put her hand over her unborn child all those years ago, and somehow connected Lida and Luna, this seemed a second chance to do at least one thing right. Lida had seemed a symbol of hope and Kate grabbed onto it as a life raft with a flag of faith.
Months after Lida began working at Mimsy, she’d learned to run the store as well as, and sometimes better than, Kate. Natural and comfortable in her own skin, her dreadlocks pulled into a ponytail, her face fresh and consistently smiling, all the customers loved her. She had a knack for knowing what outfit would work on what woman and they all grew to trust her, often asking for her on the days she wasn’t there.
While Kate thought about Lida, Jack startled her by returning and holding out his hand for her to stand. She looked up to him in absolute wonder. Yes, he was real.
* * *
Standing outside the restaurant, feeling as if she’d come out of a movie theater in the middle of the day, Kate put on her sunglasses, shielding the evening sunlight.
“Should we go back to my house or is there somewhere else you wanted to go?” Jack asked.
“I remembered this time you took me to Vulcan and we had a picnic and…”
Jack smiled. “Yep, he’s still there.” He motioned toward his truck. “Come on. I’ll drive.”
Birmingham had the largest iron statue in the country and this Roman god, Vulcan, stared over the city with his bare bottom and a raised fist, proclaiming the power of steel and its ability to form a city out of the deep iron ore in the red dirt. The Magic City.
Jack parked and Kate looked up at the iron edifice, remembering the first time he’d brought her here and how she’d believed that love itself was a god, that it could conquer anything. But obviously lesser gods had conquered.
With evening fading to night, Kate and Jack sat at a picnic table facing one another. “So, Katie, tell me why you’re here.”
“I don’t really know how I want to say what I want to say.”
“Just start,” he said.
“It’s so messed up and confusing, so I’m not sure it will come out right. But here’s the thing. I’ve been dating this guy, Rowan, for four years now and I still … doubt. And I know this is crazy, but I felt like if I talked to you I could get to the other side of that doubt. I mean, you found a way to … move on, and I’m hoping I can do the same. Something is … stopping me.”
“You think I’m stopping you?” He leaned back, as if moving away from her words, from her.
“No, not you. It’s something in me.” She sighed, digging for the right words. “You moved on and had a child and made a life. I haven’t been able to do that. I’ve been running and avoiding and denying, and now I’ve finally met this amazing guy. I found an engagement ring in his bedside drawer … and I want to commit. I do. But I needed to see you. I want to ask the terrible questions. I want to understand. Is that okay?”
“It’s okay, but why do you feel like you need to see me after all this time? I don’t get it.” He took off his sunglasses and those green eyes, the same ones that had been on their daughter’s sweet face, stared back at Kate.
“When I look back on those days, I see that I was such a mess. I know we made the decision about Luna together. I know that we talked until we both couldn’t stand it any longer, but to do what I did I had to shut my heart completely. I slammed it shut.”
“I’m sorry. I am. I don’t know how to go back and change things.”
“I don’t either. I think that’s the point. I want to know—what happened? I’ve gone from hating you to loving you at least a million times. I want to know. It might help. I mean, why did you marry Maggie and not wait for me to finish with my job?”
Her words seemed a weight, slumping his shoulders and head forward. “I did wait. I’ve gone over this in my head, too. What could I have done differently? How could I have changed things?” He sat straighter as if shaking off the past. “I asked you to come home. I loved you. I waited. And then I waited some more. You didn’t come home. You wrote letters about all the fabulous things you were doing and seeing. Then you came to visit me and promised you’d give your notice, but you didn’t.”
“Lida…” she said.
“And then I waited some more.”
“I know.” Her explanations and reasons and rationales no longer mattered even as they begged to again be spoken.
“When I finally mattered to you, it was too late. Sometimes, Katie, it’s too late for something. And by the time you came home pregnant, it was too damn late.”
She nodded.
“So, to answer your question—I didn’t stop loving you. Not once. But I did stop believing. There is the difference.”
“I get it,” she said and stood. “God, I’m so stupid. I knew all this. You were always clear about it. I don’t know why I thought that coming here might help. I shouldn’t have come. I shouldn’t have…” Kate backed away. “This was a really bad idea.”
He stood also and then took her by the shoulders with both hands. “I’m being honest.”
“I’ve made us both feel all that old terribleness again. I’m sorry.” Tears came before she felt them rising, salty puddles in the corners of her eyes. “I’m so sorry. I’m making everything worse.”
“You know, when I first saw you standing at the game, I thought you might be coming to tell me you found Luna. Or that you knew something about her. That’s what I was hoping for.”
Kate dropped her head into her hands. “I should go. I’ve completely screwed this up.”
Why couldn’t she have kept it light? Talked about Bluffton and Birmingham. About old friends and jobs. Why the hell had she ruined what had been a perfectly nice afternoon?
Jack’s face was obscured from Kate as he spoke. “I have no idea why doing the right thing can feel so wrong and awful. But that’s what it felt like after we had Luna. And I don’t want to ever feel that way again.” He paused and then stepped into the circle of lamppost light. “Come on, I’ll take you to your car.” His voice was distant, as if it came from the past to reach the place they were.
Somewhere in the middle of their conversation, evening had turned to night, and they drove down the twisting road back to the village where Kate’s car was the only one remaining in the baseball field parking lot. He finally spoke. “I’m glad you came. Of course I wonder about you and how you are. But the truth is that as good as it is to see you, being near you brings up all the awful feelings. I’ve never tried to forget anything like I’ve tried to forget that time.”
“I shouldn’t have come here. Maybe I should have let us send yearly letters for the rest of our lives, but something in me wanted to talk about it, to see you.”
“I understand,” Jack said
, staring through the windshield.
Katie pushed her thumbs into the inside corners of her eyes, trying to stay the tears. She would not cry in front of him. She would not make this any worse than it was. Visiting Jack was an incredibly stupid idea. The sight of an engagement ring had obviously made her lose all sense.
She stepped out of the truck and dug into her purse for keys. She wanted to say good-bye, some kind of parting words that mattered, but she couldn’t find her voice. She shut the passenger door, turning away to walk to her car, and then she spun around to return. She opened the passenger door and placed her hands on the truck’s roof, glancing into the cab. “I came here because I wanted to see you again, to heal whatever could be healed.” She again shut the door and walked away.
She didn’t look over her shoulder or glance backward as the tears had come and she wanted to get in her car, safely in her car. Her head dropped onto the steering wheel and she groaned. She couldn’t reform the past with words and apologies and explanations.
Long minutes passed as Kate sat in her car, waiting for her tears to stop, waiting for her mind to calm. She finally turned the key in the ignition, tuning the radio to a country station where Rodney Atkins sang about his son, saying, “He’s mine, that one.”
Backing out of the parking spot, Kate drove toward the stop sign at the end of the street before she realized that she didn’t know where she was going. She’d followed Jack and now she was lost. She hadn’t seen the boutique. She didn’t have a hotel reservation. She slammed her hand on the steering wheel. She’d made the usual mess of things.
A honk startled her, and she glanced in the rearview mirror. A black truck was on her bumper and a man was waving at her from the driver’s seat. “I’m going. I’m going,” she hollered, and then glanced one more time. She twisted her head and looked at Jack through the back window as he got out of the truck and walked to her car. He had the grin, that adorable shy grin she’d loved for her whole life. He approached her driver’s-side window. She rolled down the window, and he leaned down.
“You know where you’re going?”
“A little, yes,” she said and then laughed. “No, not at all.”
And Then I Found You Page 8
