To Know You (9781401688684)

by Ethridge, Shannon (CON)

  “‘Jules, you know I’m a prisoner here,’ he’d said. ‘Can’t breathe unless I can bill it out.’ Work wasn’t what he meant. I was the prison, you and I were the bars about to trap him.”

  Destiny swore loudly enough for the people at the next table to look up from their croissants.

  Julia laughed. “Yeah, that’s what I thought too. My friends and I lugged all the presents up three floors of stairs to find it empty and cold. He gave the excuse that his mother’s house was closer to work and he needed to crash. ‘Tomorrow,’ he’d said. ‘I’ll clear my desk and tomorrow I’ll come home.’

  “I believed him. You knew better—you were so quiet for two days that I finally went to the doctor to make sure you still had a heartbeat.

  “The day after you were born, he signed a surrender of parental rights. I let my mother arrange a private adoption. This friend of hers knew the Connors were desperate for a baby. And they were good people. Right? Your parents are good people?”

  “Yes,” Destiny said. “That’s what everyone says. Good people.”

  Julia stretched her hand across the table, staring with teary eyes. “Please know a big chunk of my heart is still shredded from that morning I had to say good-bye. But if I had kept you . . . Tom was gone and I was alone and I had nothing to give you.”

  “Yeah. Okay. I get it.” She nodded at Julia’s left hand. “So you’re married now.”

  “Eighteen years to Matthew Whittaker. Let me show you.” She fumbled as she tried to get her phone out of her purse with her left hand.

  Tough to navigate life with your nondominant hand. Like navigating life without Luke? No. She was not going there. She was vulnerable enough at this table, with this stranger, without stirring him into the mix.

  Julia finally slid the phone across the table. “There’s Matt.”

  He looked as crisp as fresh lettuce in his buttoned-down shirt and dark slacks. The camera caught something in his eyes, a humorous intelligence.

  “And the kid?” As if Destiny had to ask. He had the eyes. Hungry eyes, like the boy was looking beyond the camera for what came next.

  “Dillon,” Julia said. “He’s twelve in the picture. He’ll be fourteen next month.”

  It had never occurred to her that she might have a biological sibling. The very notion seemed a betrayal to her younger sister, Sophie, the biological daughter of her adoptive parents.

  Nature or nurture—was she closer in essence to this woman with the round eyes and the cast on her hand? Or the parents and sister she had spent her life with?

  This kid in the picture—skinny and floppy-eared—was her brother. Looked like a total geek and probably read the same comic books she had, watched the same superhero movies, maybe sketched in the same left-handed way.

  Destiny zoomed in on the picture so she could study him closer. A knot formed in her stomach. “He’s sick.”

  “Not in that picture.”

  “Yes, he is. His skin tone doesn’t match yours or his father’s, and there’s a small pouch under his right eye.” She knew faces, having spent her early career hiding hangovers, bruises, and the ravages of drug use.

  Something was wrong with this kid, something terrible that prompted Julia Whittaker to seek out her daughter after two decades of ignoring her.

  “My kidney,” Destiny whispered.

  “Excuse me?”

  “That’s what you’re here for. You need me to donate a kidney.” Destiny jumped to her feet because she needed to throw up, but she didn’t dare move because she’d spill her guts right here and now, and wasn’t that exactly what Julia Whittaker wanted?

  “I don’t want your kidney.”

  “Bone marrow, then.”

  The woman shook her head, would not look her in the eye.

  “You want something from me. You don’t show up out of nowhere and shove this picture of my—you don’t shove your son in my face if you don’t want something.”

  “I’m sorry.” Julia dabbed at her eyes with a napkin.

  Destiny’s head spun and she had to sit. “So what part of me do you want?”

  Julia worked her left hand against her cast as if she were compelled to lock her fingers together. “Dillon is a great kid. He’s a really good student and so creative, makes his own films. He loves coming up with special effects, like getting into the kitchen and creating dried blood out of mashed figs and strawberry jelly. And he’s got about twenty friends who volunteer as extras for his battle scenes. Quite a few have made a career of dying unspeakably.”

  “Still waiting.” Destiny cleared her throat to disguise the tremble in her voice.

  “Dillon has had liver disease since he was born.”

  “Oh.”

  “Most infants with biliary atresia need a transplant in the first few months to survive. Dillon had a special surgery called the Kasai procedure that bypasses the bile duct and connects the small intestine to the underside of the liver. Sometimes it lasts for a lifetime, most often not. He’s been one of the blessed kids who’s held on to it into his teens. A few weeks ago something happened. A virus, an injury, we don’t know. His liver was never what it should be. You saw it in the picture from a couple years ago. Suddenly, the slow creep became an avalanche and we were all caught short. No one we know is compatible or, if they are, they’ve been disqualified. Not me, not Matt, not his uncle, none of our friends.”

  Destiny could barely find the breath to speak. “So you want my liver?”

  “The liver is the miracle organ. If someone donates part of theirs, it grows back within a year and there’s no real risk except . . . well, whatever comes with having surgery.”

  “So that’s why you’re here? For a piece of my liver?”

  “I never wanted to find you on such . . . extreme terms. I am so sorry, Destiny. I have not forgotten you. Not ever. I pass by someone on the street with dark hair and these eyes and I wonder . . . could she be my baby?” Julia gasped for breath around the tears. “And every day I thank God for Matt and for Dillon and for Destiny and for Hope. And I’m so sorry that I have to come to you now. Like this.”

  “Sorry? That’s all you have to say? You’re sorry. Nice. Real nice.” Destiny pushed her chair back. “I assume you can find your way back to wherever you came from. Just stay away from me.”

  “Don’t go. Please.”

  Destiny strapped on her helmet. “Don’t touch me. Don’t call me. Forget you know my name or where I live. I mean it.”

  “Wait. Please.” Julia pressed the birth certificate into Destiny’s hand. “My number’s on the back. I know it’s a lot to process. I’ll stay in town for the day. Please just think—”

  Destiny shoved the birth certificate in her pocket, kick-started her bike, and roared away.

  Sunday Afternoon

  So much for the good life.

  Destiny had arranged everything perfectly. A job she loved and excelled at. Hobbies she enjoyed. Charities she supported. Her family happily intact and three thousand miles away.

  A man who soothed her soul and roused her body.

  She couldn’t stand looking at the empty rooms of her bungalow. So she stayed on her bike, no destination in mind, just putting miles between her and Luke Aviles and Julia Whittaker. Maybe she’d catch the PCH and ride up the coast for a day or two. Wash off the smog of the city, let the salty air of the Pacific cleanse her of any illusion that life could be good.

  Illusion? Delusion was more like it.

  Most adopted kids dreamed of being royal changelings whose father and mother would show up and say, We’ve won the battle so now it’s safe for you to come home and be celebrated and loved and live happily ever after.

  Not Destiny Connors.

  She had imagined her biological mother as an artist slashing canvases with startling color and dark undertones. Not conforming to instruction. Rebelling against conventional form. A woman brutally offended by what passes for contemporary art.

  Destiny had seen some horrors with hig
h praise and high price tags in the galleries. A Big Mac cast in acrylic. A self-portrait pierced with safety pins and paper clips. A fool spitting beet-colored mucous into a cup and calling it performance art.

  Her real mother would rebel against the critics and the patrons. Her real mother would find solace in a cold attic with amazing light and would live for art and spend her passion on—certainly not on a lawyer.

  She had imagined her father as a quiet man, maybe a writer who was on the verge of a great novel when he was struck down with a raging cancer. His story untold, his child still unborn, he had left the world clutched in the arms of his artist-lover.

  She pushed her bike hard coming around the corner. Some plastic-faced, blossom-lipped woman glared at the roar.

  Destiny saw herself coming into the world in a roar of pain and triumph, her mother holding her all night until the time came to send her to a home with heat and light and yes—loving arms.

  For years afterward, her birth mother would paint the intersection of beauty and pain and see her child’s face in every shadow.

  If the universe were good and just, her real mother would not design celebrity weddings. What a holy waste. Julia Whittaker clearly had the artist’s eye. So why squander it on silly brides and on marriages that barely lasted past the reception?

  A Mercedes skidded to a stop at a yellow light. Traffic building into the typical LA stop-and-go-like-mad. Straight streets, hurried drivers, constant lights.

  Someday, Luke said, we’ll move to the mountains and soar.

  That’s probably what Julia’s mother thought when she sent her to Boston, that her little girl would soar. If Julia McCord had been only twenty when Destiny was born, Julia’s mother was probably under fifty at the time. That wasn’t too old to take in a baby. Women in the film industry got pregnant—with lots of hormonal assist—in their late forties.

  Was a child born out of wedlock that abhorrent to Julia’s mother that she searched around until she found an adoptive couple in Tennessee?

  Destiny loved Melanie and Will Connors. She loved her little sister, Sophie. It wasn’t their fault that she couldn’t live with them. It had taken them a couple years since the college fiasco, but they finally accepted that their eldest daughter danced to a different fiddler.

  Cutting left on LaBrea now, she let the bike simmer. A dark-haired woman sat on the stoop of an apartment building, watching two little boys dig in the dirt. She said something and the bigger of the two laughed.

  Sunday is family day, Mom always said.

  Now Destiny had a different family.

  Dillon. Julia. Thomas Bryant. Likely her biological dad had his own family, so there would be more siblings. Cousins and uncles and aunts.

  Maybe among all of them was someone who saw life like Destiny did.

  Someone who did not fear bold colors and sharp angles and spaces that were hard to fill. She thought Luke had been that gift. So why had Jesus put a claim on what she truly needed?

  Was this God’s idea of a joke, bringing this woman to Los Angeles? First Luke rips out her heart and now her mother wanted to rip out her liver. She wanted to tell God what she thought of this.

  Since they weren’t on speaking terms, maybe she’d tell Luke instead.

  Christians loved the sound of their own voices.

  Destiny had been standing outside the storefront church on Pico Boulevard for over an hour, listening to the rock praise, the fervent choruses. Luke worshipped at this place with a couple of his fellow stuntmen. A diverse congregation, he had said, with some musicians, a host of out-of-work actors who were really just waiters, a bank executive, a kid who pitched in the Dodgers’ minor league system.

  This congregation had the usual misfits that gathered in the City of Angels, waiting for their dreams to descend from on high. And by the sounds of it, they were still waiting for the Spirit to descend on them. Praise chorus after praise chorus, upbeat and catchy, lots of rhythm and bass, and with enough repetition to cement the words into a singer’s brain.

  Memorize Bible verses and you’ll have security in tribulation, Mom used to say.

  A crutch for someone who could already walk just fine, thank you. That’s how Destiny saw it. She had walked ten miles away from that college, hitchhiked to Los Angeles, and took a job waiting tables and washing dishes. Within six months she had her own apartment, an apprenticeship with a well-known makeup artist, and lots of extra cash from her custom tattoo designs. From there, it was a short jump into conceptual design, creating the monsters and mirages that blockbuster movies thrive on.

  A good life, Luke. So how could he choose this instead?

  Destiny could pull Luke out of the service. No, she couldn’t. What if she had been today’s prayer concern? People would turn and look with that knowing gaze. The prodigal is here. We prayed and God answered.

  Growing up, she had been a frequent resident of many prayer lists. Was she such a bad seed, she had to be prayed into line? Sure, she smoked a little weed, cut a little school, and that pregnancy scare had been a close enough call that she’d had to confide in Mom. That made her normal. Not an object to be fussed over in hushed prayer and knowing glances.

  Luke was easy to spot through the plate glass. With his broad shoulders, he was taller than almost everyone in the group. Blond hair now in braids, he sang his silly heart out. If he had thrown her backside into the street, she would have clawed her way up the side of the hill, wrapped her arms around him, and held him so tightly he’d have to take her back.

  Luke hadn’t even tried.

  Destiny started her bike up and headed home to the Hollywood Hills. When she got to her street, she proceeded slowly in case Julia Whittaker lay in wait.

  The road was quiet except for the birds, chirping in delight. Luke’s clothing was still scattered in the driveway. His boots were gone. Stolen, most likely. Why should she care?

  Caring gets you nothing except a bad headache.

  She scooped up the clothes. She’d wash them before boxing them up. Her legs ached as she climbed the forty steps. Waiting up all night to toss Luke out on the street had sapped her strength. Julia was just a sprinkle of salt in her open wound, as faded now as the names on that birth certificate.

  Destiny shoved the clothes into the washing machine, added fabric softener to ease the guilt. She went to the kitchen, juiced carrots and strawberries, mixed in some honey and protein powder. She gulped it down, took a deep breath, and found her mother on Skype.

  Sunday afternoon in Tennessee.

  Working, Destiny thought. Always working, except for Saturday when she took what she called her sabbath rest. That meant attending Sophie’s gymnastic meets, having dinner out with Dad, going to church Sunday morning. He would fly back to DC, Sophie would hang with her youth group, and Mom would get on the computer.

  “Hey. My baby girl.” Melanie Connors smiled warmly. She was a small woman with shy eyes. “How are things?”

  “My birth mother appeared in my driveway this morning.”

  “What?”

  Destiny held up the birth certificate, trying to steady her hands so the image would be legible. “Infant daughter of Julia McCord and Thomas Bryant. Born in Boston. Is this right?”

  “I can’t confirm that,” Melanie said. “It was a closed adoption.”

  “Come on, Mom. Tell me Daddy didn’t have them checked out.” Will Connors was the chief of staff to a United States senator. With resources and access, nothing slipped by him.

  Her mother rubbed her temples. “What did she want?”

  If Destiny told her, Mom would be on the first plane to the coast, standing at the gate to Destiny’s house with a baseball bat. She was, indeed, a woman with shy eyes—and a spine of steel.

  “Destiny.” Melanie’s face was close to the screen now. “Tell me what she wanted.”

  She wanted her son to live. Did Julia really pray for Destiny every day when she prayed for the sick boy? For Dillon?

  “She was just passin
g through and decided she wanted to see what I looked like. I must not have impressed her because she didn’t stay long.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Do you want me to come out there? Sophie and I can come out tonight.”

  Her mother homeschooled her younger sister so they could go anywhere, anytime. Melanie had tried to homeschool Destiny, but she wouldn’t have it, was probably the only kid in history to run away to school.

  “Stay put, please. This is no big deal. She’s a stranger and going to remain a stranger. We had a nice chat and she’s gone.”

  “Gone where?”

  “To wherever. Vancouver or something. You can google her—she runs Myrrh. You know, those artful celebrity weddings. I have no plans to extend the relationship. It was just a go-see and good-bye.”

  Everyone lies. So often to protect someone they love.

  “Are you okay?” her mother asked.

  “Asked and answered.”

  “Destiny, please . . .”

  “I’m sorry. Okay, so I’m a little freaked. But really, I’m fine. I just wanted to check in with you and make sure someone wasn’t running a scam.”

  Her mother bit at her thumbnail. “I should come out there.”

  “I’m fine. Stay and get the house ready for Christmas.”

  “You’re still coming, right?”

  “Of course.” Sophie needed her to make the occasional visit, to assure her that the family was fine. The Connors family together under one roof was a rare enough sight. Given Destiny’s aversion to home cooking and Dad’s . . . whatever. Who knew why he stayed in Washington and Melanie in Nashville? They were kind to each other when they were together, so it wasn’t really her business.

  “And Luke?” Melanie said. “He’s coming too. Right?”

  “Mom, I’ve got to go. Got a shoot tonight. Need to make beautiful people more beautiful.”