by Cathy Lamb
Her shoulders shook.
“Oh, Mom.” I didn’t know what to do. I was so angry at her, but I loved her, too. I didn’t want to see her cry like this.
“Remember our bonds, our family bonds,” Aunt Camellia said.
“Family is family,” Aunt Iris said.
“Mom,” Jules said. “Are we both adopted?”
“No,” my mother sobbed. “No. Just my beloved Evie.”
I sat back, my mind numb. Jules sat back, too. We didn’t think that Jules had been adopted, but we knew there was a possibility. She looked like my mother and aunts—blonde hair, although their hair was now white, dark brown eyes. Jules resembled them in photos when they were her age.
“I’m Baby Rose, aren’t I?”
My mother gasped, as did my aunts.
“Yes, darling,” my mother finally choked out, “You are Baby Rose.”
I was Baby Rose. My biological mother and father had been jailed for murder. One of them, probably my mother, had killed Johnny’s father. It was a huge trial. Their baby, me, had been taken from them after Betsy gave birth in jail.
“Evie,” my mother said, tears all over her face. “I couldn’t get pregnant. We didn’t know what was wrong, and the doctor didn’t either. I was nearing forty and we’d been trying for years. We went to an adoption agency. It was run by the state. We applied. We were interviewed multiple times. Finally we qualified. We were so happy. We heard about a baby being born, a girl, and we wanted you.” She stopped, ran her hands over her face. “We said yes.”
I nodded, feeling my heart squeeze. Sundance put his head in my lap, sensing my distress.
“Your father and I decided not to tell anyone that you were adopted except for Aunt Camellia and Aunt Iris and your grandfather. Your dad’s parents were gone by then. We were moving from one base to another, we had been abroad, so it was easy to present you as our daughter, born in Portland, to everyone when we moved again to another military base.”
“Why, Mom? Why didn’t you tell me?” But I knew why. I wanted to see what she would say. What she would admit to, what she wouldn’t.
“I always wanted you to feel like ours. So did Dad. We saw no harm in that. Remember, back then there was no DNA, people weren’t linking up to family members they never met. We thought you would always believe you were ours, as in our hearts, you always were, you always are.”
“And?” I prodded.
“And your parents were in jail for murder,” she whispered, stricken.
“You didn’t want me to start asking questions about them.”
“I didn’t want any taint on you from your biological parents. Two parents who had committed a murder? Who had killed the man who would have been your grandfather? Wasn’t that too much of a burden for a child to bear? Why have that history around you? And your biological mother, not only was she in jail but we were told that she was crazy, that she believed she could see the future. We didn’t believe that, so we thought she was a fraud or mentally ill.”
“And then I started seeing the future, having premonitions, and she didn’t seem so crazy anymore, did she?”
“No, honey, she didn’t.” My mother knitted her fingers together, back and forth.
“Tell me what happened when I was a baby.”
“We went to the jail to pick you up the night you were born. It was snowy, icy. Your mother should have been transported to the hospital, but she wasn’t because of the weather, I think. Maybe she hid that she was in labor so she could have you to herself as long as possible, or maybe the labor was too fast. I don’t know. We were told when you were born. We were told it would be less than an hour or so before we could hold you, take you home, but it took longer. Over two hours. We don’t know why it took that long.”
“When did you put together that my mother was the one who killed my biological father’s father?”
“It was all over the newspaper at that time. Two teenagers killing one of the fathers? It was a major news story. Betsy Baturra . . .” She stopped, then said, “Your bio mother said that she killed her boyfriend’s father, Peter Kandinsky, but his son, Johnny, your bio father, said that he did it. Both of their fingerprints were on the knife. But the evidence pointed to your mother. Then it came out that she was pregnant.”
“And you went to the jail not knowing whose baby you were getting but you guessed?”
“We wondered. Then a guard there told us who you were. He had been in the room when Betsy delivered. He looked ill, and your father asked if we could help him, and the man, the boy, he was so young, told us who was having a baby. I doubt he meant to tell us, but we went to help him because it looked like he was going to pass out. I’m sure he didn’t even realize that we were the adoptive parents.”
“But your names are on my birth certificate.”
“We put our names down. Not hers. Not your biological father’s, as we were legally allowed to do. We were your parents.”
“Did you worry that I would turn out like my mother? That I would be violent, like my mom, or have a mental health issue?”
“No, I didn’t. We loved you from the start, and I knew your dad and I would raise you with a lot of love. If you had a mental health issue, which we knew you might, given your mother, we would help you as best as we could.”
“And when I had the premonitions when I was a little girl?”
“Initially we were devastated. You were like your mother. In fact at her second trial, after she’d been in jail for ten years, she made premonitions about the judge and the jurors that came true.”
“But by then you had to believe my mother’s testimony, that she had foreseen Johnny being shot by his father.”
Her face grew so sad, it looked like it was sagging in on itself. “Yes. We came to believe that Betsy was telling the truth at her trial. We came to believe that she stabbed Johnny’s father because she knew he was going to shoot Johnny. But what could we do? Come out and say that you, Betsy’s biological daughter, also had premonitions and they were correct every time? That would have catapulted you into disaster. It would not be admissible in any new trial, that was for sure. And if the press found out, they would hound us, hound you. Forever your name would be associated with hers and, equally as bad, you would be labeled as an oddity. The daughter of a murderer who has premonitions—like her mother.”
“I get it, Mom.”
“But there we were.” She started to cry again. “Betsy and Johnny were locked up, in cages, in jail, suffering, without their daughter while we happily, lovingly raised you.”
“What did you think when they both received new trials? After Tilly remembered what happened and the bodies were found?”
“Tilly was seventeen then and entirely credible, as you know from reading the article. When Johnny’s and Betsy’s sentences were overturned and they were released, we were relieved for them, but we were also so frightened. We knew they would probably come after you. Why wouldn’t they? They had been locked away and shouldn’t have been, and you were their daughter. They worked hard and saved their money, then they hired top-notch attorneys and the whole case exploded again. It was front page news. Your parents’ argument was that they had been found not guilty and they should now be able to raise you. Millions of people agreed with them, and if they didn’t agree that Betsy and Johnny should get full custody, they did agree that they should get visitation.
“That’s why we moved you up here to the island when you were eleven. The news was too much. It was all around us. We wanted peace for you, privacy. Your dad and I were scared to death. We wanted to shelter you. What if someone found out who you were? It would be a media circus.”
“Were you contacted by the adoption agency? By the state? By Johnny and Betsy’s attorney?”
“We hired an attorney. He handled everything for us anonymously. Back then, and because of the circumstances of your mom being a convicted murderer, the adoption records were sealed. Your parents sued to get the information, but the court d
enied them. Your bio parents fought and lost.”
“So they wanted me.” I tried to breathe, feeling my bio parents’ pain. Sundance, sensing this, licked my hand.
“Very much. And we were scared to death they would win, that they would get custody of you, or visitation.”
“But Mom. Why didn’t you tell me later, when I was a teenager?”
“Because you’re our daughter, not theirs.” She reached for my hand. Her hand was freezing cold. “I didn’t want to bring this mess, this stress, into your life. When would I tell you? When you were in kindergarten? Honey, your parents are murderers. What’s a murderer? Let me explain it to you. . . .
“Or should we have told you when they were trying to get you back as the trial ground on? Bring that fear into your life that you would be taken from us and sent to live with another family you had never met? How would you have felt? You would have been petrified. Or as a teen, should I have told you? When you were battling premonitions and depression and anxiety that was almost crippling you?”
I was angry at her. I was angry with my father. I was angry with my aunts. “Mom, everyone has a right to the truth of their own reality. I understand why you didn’t tell me as a kid. Given the circumstances, I may have done what you did. Even when I was a teenager, I understand why you didn’t tell me. That kind of history could mess up a teenager’s mind, especially mine because I was a wreck, but as an adult, even at eighteen, don’t you think I should have been given the truth about who I am?”
My mother sat back. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“No. For all the reasons I told you. How are you better knowing what you know now?”
“I’m not better, Mom, but I want the truth. Why can’t you see that?”
“The truth is that I am your mother, your father was your father.”
“I know that, Mom.” I saw the tears in her eyes, but I also saw guilt, and doubt, and the fear that she would lose me now. “I wish you had told me as a young adult.”
“Your father and I, we debated endlessly, but we didn’t want to tear your world apart. I had lied to you, too. Your father had lied to you. Both by omission. I felt awful. But how do you walk back from such a monumental lie?”
“But it wasn’t about you and how you would feel walking back from a lie, Mom. It was about me. It would have helped me to know Betsy, to know that having premonitions was genetic, to talk to her and reach out to her for help and advice. It would have helped me to know Johnny, to meet Tilly, to later know I had another sister.”
“And then what, Evie?”
“What do you mean?”
“Then you go to that family, you’re furious at me, at your dad, and we lose you. You stop talking to us. Then we’ve lost our daughter.”
“Mom.” I was shocked. “Why would you think you would lose me?”
“Because you share the same blood with them. Betsy gave birth to you. You both see the future. Those are enormous bonds. You could have chosen to live with her, to call her Mom forever.”
“You will always be my mother. Always. I love you so much, but I am livid with you, and with you, Aunt Camellia and Aunt Iris, for not telling me.”
Aunt Camellia burst into tears.
Aunt Iris’s chin trembled and she dropped her face to her hands.
“Mom,” Jules said. “I think you should have told Evie.”
My mother dropped into another round of choking tears. “I know. Maybe you’re right. I don’t know. Maybe. I’m sorry. I am. I did what I thought was best.”
“You all knew this secret about me,” I said, my voice cracking with pain. “You’ve all known how lonely I’ve often felt, how alone. There was something missing, and I couldn’t explain it, couldn’t fix it, couldn’t deal with it. I thought that it was me, that something was wrong with me. I thought it was my premonitions that were setting me apart, but it wasn’t. I had been taken from my biological parents, and somehow, some way, even though I was a baby, I felt it. That separation is what caused the inexplicable hole I have felt, I have battled, my whole life.”
My mother shook her head back and forth, not in the negative, but as if she was emotionally crushed, jerking this way and that.
“Knowing I was adopted could have helped me in so many ways.”
“I know,” she said, crying. “I know. I’m sorry. I see what you’re saying now. I didn’t handle it right. Evie, please. I love you so much. Please forgive me. Please.”
Jules reached over and held my hand. Her hand was shaking in mine.
“Mom, my bio parents, Betsy and Johnny, they were found to be innocent of murder. It was self-defense. They lost me for all these years, and they clearly wanted me back. I understand why you didn’t want to hand me over as a child, but when I was eighteen, or a young adult, you could have told me. When I read that article about them, what struck me was how desperately they wanted to find me. That’s why they did the interviews, the talk show. The DNA test. To find me.”
My mother hiccupped and sobbed again.
“They weren’t bad people, Mom. They did not willingly give me up.”
I did not have children, so I could not fully understand the heartache a parent would feel for a child who was gone. But I could imagine part of it. My bio parents had lived for decades without their own child. Their own daughter.
I had had enough. “That wasn’t right, Mom. If not for me, then for them. They were teenagers when all this happened. They went to prison. You should have told me so I could have made my own decision. My decision would have been to find them, knowing their story. I’m thirty-seven years old. They have not known for decades if I was alive or dead, healthy or sick, happy or not. Wouldn’t you want to know if it were your daughter? If it were me or Jules?”
“Yes. Yes, I would have wanted to know.” My mother was trembling and her sisters had their arms around her. They were three white-haired women in their seventies, and they were all crushed. I could see that. I was crushed, too. I was crushed for them and for me and for Betsy and Johnny. “Aunt Camellia and Aunt Iris. Wouldn’t you want to know your niece? I’m sure my aunt Tilly would like to know me.”
“Yes,” they said, their voices weak. “Yes, we would.”
“One more question,” I said.
“Anything,” my mother said.
“Did you know that Johnny and Betsy named me Rose?”
“No, we didn’t. Not until their trial ten years after we adopted you.”
I have loved roses all my life. They calm me down. I had them painted or embroidered on my clothes. In vases at my table. My pink and yellow rose wallpaper at home and in the bookstore. Surrounding my home. Growing up my trellis. I thought it was because my mother and aunts and grandma loved roses. It was deeper than that.
I couldn’t talk about this anymore. I was having trouble getting deep breaths. I do not like when I can’t get deep breaths. It reminds me of anxiety, and I hate having anxiety. I stood up and said, “I love you,” to all of them and walked home through the moonlight, through rows of roses, which now had a deeper meaning for me than before. I stopped to smell several, trying to calm down.
I heard my mother call my name, her voice broken. I heard my aunts call my name, their voices filled with pain. My sister did not call my name. She knew I needed to be alone.
Sundance walked beside me.
Once again I headed to our beach. I felt like I could hardly walk, as if I were moving through a wave of lies and deceit. Butch and Cassidy came running, bursting out of the cat/dog door at my house. Ghost tumbled on over, as did Mars.
I sat on a log and cried and cried. For me, for Johnny and Betsy, who had had their baby ripped out of their lives, and for Tilly. I cried for the terrible things that had happened to both of them in jail and, for Tilly, in foster care, traumatized and not speaking, that had been detailed in online articles that I’d read for hours.
I cried because my life had been cracked open and filled with lies. I
cried because my father wasn’t even here to comfort me and I wanted his comfort, even though I was mad at him, too. I cried because of Marco and how much I loved him, and wanted him, and I cried because I felt bad for this happening right before Jules’s wedding.
When I was cold, I called to Butch and Cassidy and went home. The goats hopped around and I said hello but didn’t bother chasing them back to their blue home, which was clearly a disappointment to them. I took a bath and didn’t even eat my pie that night. I climbed the stairs to the loft, my body feeling as if it had been beaten up, the dogs and cats following behind me. I was so screwed up I couldn’t even read. I turned out the light.
Sundance plopped his head right next to mine and licked my tears. “You’re my best furry friend,” I said to him, whispering, in case Butch and Cassidy heard. Jupiter and Ghost appeared and found their favorite sleeping spaces.
My hot tears dropped into Sundance’s fur.
* * *
It had been a long day at the bookstore. Lots of tourists, and we’d sold a fair amount of books. They loved the desserts, the white chocolate cranberry cake and bourbon caramel spiced pie, and our tea specials: Sweet Cinnamon Milk and London Fog.
I sold Aunt Iris’s sensual photographs of flowers; Aunt Camellia’s lotions, including new ones she had named Bedside Body Art and Love Potion Pink; and my mother’s bouquets, two labeled “A Woman Must Find Her Power and Wield It” and “Love and Romance Are on My To-Do List.”
The History Nerd Book Club had their monthly meeting, and they had proceeded to analyze the siege of Leningrad during World War II down to the finest detail. There were maps drawn and military analysis and a review of what the people there had to do to survive. There were some raised voices, which alarmed customers enough to hurry on over and join the near-raucous historical discussion. A professor of Russian history happened to be there and gave a wonderful fifteen-minute lecture that everyone found mesmerizing, in particular the cannibalism that some people in Leningrad resorted to.
After they left, Mrs. Lennert hustled in and told me her problem.
