by Piper Lennox
“Well,” Betty goes on, “when they were younger, they did manage to conceive. Once.” She takes the photo from me and puts it back in the album. “The baby was stillborn. A little boy.”
I close my eyes, wishing, not for the first time, my aunt wasn’t so blunt. I appreciate honesty and all, but is a little sugarcoating too much to ask?
“Don’t be upset, sweetheart,” she whispers. “Your parents didn’t tell you because...that’s just not what folks did, in our day. Those things were very private.”
“I was their kid,” I mutter. “I had a right to know that.”
“Well,” she says gently, and shrugs as she puts the album back in the chest, as though the matter’s settled. I guess it is: not much my parents can do to fix it, now.
“Any other family secrets?” I joke, falling back across the guest bed. I’ve had coffee all day, but it doesn’t help my exhaustion.
I sense Betty staring at me. When I open my eyes, she’s hovering nearby, nervous: not her typical state of mind.
“Lila,” she says, only it’s lengthy and wilted, this pitying tone I’m all too familiar with, after today. She sits at the foot of the bed and studies my tights. They have a run up the side, courtesy of Donnie, who tried to stop me from getting dressed after our quickie in the car.
“I can’t skip the reception,” I told him. His hands were all over me, no matter how much I swatted. He laughed, like I was playing around.
“Sure you can.”
“My father’s funerary reception,” I said, biting off each word. “You expect me to skip that to hang out with you?”
He pointed to the clock on the stereo. I was officially forty minutes late. “You already are.”
Now, Aunt Betty stares at the run, making me self-conscious, but I realize she’s not actually seeing it. She just doesn’t want to look me in the eye.
“Aunt Betty,” I say sternly, “tell me. Whatever it is, just...get it over with.” I wait. Of course she can’t be blunt when the moment actually calls for it. “Did they have other kids I don’t know about? Like, do I have secret brothers or something?”
“No, no, nothing like that,” she says, smiling half-heartedly.
“Then, what? I’m not adopted, am I?” I laugh.
Betty doesn’t.
“Oh, my God.” I duck my head into her line of vision. “You’re joking, right? I’m adopted?”
“Lila, you have to understand, it just wasn’t—”
“Oh, my God!” The headboard slams into the wall when I fling myself on the bed again. I cover my face with my hands. “This makes so much sense. I never looked like either of them, I wasn’t a match for Dad’s kidneys....”
“Yep,” she whispers. I hear her crying. It just pisses me off more.
“When?”
“When, what?”
“When was I adopted?” My voice chokes up around the word.
“You were three months old.” Betty gets up, the edge of the bed bouncing back into place, shifting my weight. I hear a drawer open. She puts something on my lap.
It’s a cardboard box, thin, but heavy.
“Your father wanted me to hold onto these,” she says. When she looks at me, I feel my anger die down, no matter how hard I will it to stay. “It’s the adoption papers. He didn’t want you finding them, while you were growing up.” Hesitantly, she puts her hand on mine. “He wanted me to tell you after he passed. I didn’t think it would be tonight, of course, but…maybe it’s best you found out now.”
“It would have been best,” I spit, shaking off the lid, “if I’d found out, I don’t know, any time in the last twenty-four years?” I dig through the box. The sheaf of papers is text-heavy and hurts my eyes. “Who are my birth parents? Did Mom and Dad know them?”
“I have no idea. I didn’t even know they were looking to adopt until they brought you home. Our generation just doesn’t share those kinds of details.”
“Details,” I scoff, but Betty either doesn’t hear me, or ignores me.
“The adoption agency might have some information for you,” she offers. “They’re still around, over in the Gold Building downtown, I think.” Her hand is too soft on my shoulder, like she’s afraid to rest her full weight there. “If you want to find out more.”
I close the box. My head is killing me, and everything has a weird dream-like quality to it: the box, the bed, and even Betty don’t seem real. When I realize she’s waiting for an answer, I make myself nod.
“You can stay here tonight.” She pulls her hand away. “Wayne and I don’t mind, you know.”
“I know.” I look down at the bed. It’s soft, warm, and—more importantly—right here. The thought of driving through the rain to Dad’s empty house and curling up on the sofa, left alone with my grief and this bombshell, doesn’t sound appealing.
In the end, I agree to stay through the weekend, but I barely talk to Aunt Betty the entire time. I’m still too angry she hid this from me, that all of them did. But I do like the sounds of her puttering around the house, Wayne watching Wheel of Fortune too loudly. The presence of other people, I guess.
Even though I stay in the guest bedroom all day Sunday, I’m glad I’m here. I want to be alone. I just don’t want to be lonely.
Shepherd
Tillie loved wine. She’d collect them based on the labels: the cleverest names, the coolest logos. I don’t know why she didn’t take any with her, wherever she is.
They aren’t worth much, and I don’t drink, so her fully-stocked shelves in the kitchen are useless to me—but I like pulling one out now and then to study the designs and try to guess what made her choose it.
Tonight, before I go upstairs, I pull out a cabernet called Fretwork. No mystery with this one: the label is in the shape of a guitar pick. I slide it back in with the rest.
My room in Tillie’s house is navy blue. Dark, but comfortable. The furniture is stained gray, and I’ve got a television in the corner, left behind by another tenant. It’s not much, but it’s mine. Kind of.
I get in bed, taking off my shoes and shirt as I go, and turn on the news.
“...still looking for the young woman who allegedly held up a convenience store in Macintosh County two weeks ago,” the newscaster is saying. I look up. Sure enough, there’s Jess’s mug shot. It’s from the B&E over two years ago, so she looks nothing like she does now: back then, she looked like an honor roll student gone bad for a Halloween costume. Long blond hair, parted in the middle, with lots of black eyeliner and my denim jacket draped over her shoulders, bare in a sundress.
Now, her hair is cut just below her chin, dirty-looking. Her eyes are glassy and bloodshot, always. There’s a scar in her eyebrow where she got it pierced at a party. The next morning, it was oozing and swollen. I cleaned it up with peroxide while she blamed the whole thing on me, because I let her get too drunk.
In a weird way, I like looking at the mug shot more. She was sweeter, then. Remembering her now, I just feel sad.
The report closes with the photo again. The anchor gives the number for the local crime line and urges anyone with information on Jessica Silverman’s whereabouts to call. There’s a $1,000 reward.
Most of our old crowd has probably called in to rat her out. Unlike them, I actually do know where Jess is: the studio apartments across from the very same pawnshop I visited this morning. She’s living with a guy. I don’t know who, or if they’re a couple or just roommates. I guess, like anything else going on in her life, it isn’t my business.
Of course, I’m not going to call the crime line. There are good reasons to do it—I could use the money, Jess doesn’t deserve my loyalty, and jail would actually help her—but it’s the principle. I played a big part in her downfall, all those years ago. It wouldn’t be right to snitch on her. Even a dirt bag has his limits.
I mute the television and read Moby Dick, pulled from Tillie’s bookshelf, until I fall asleep.
My dreams are random and short, like a bunch of clips played back-to-back, wi
th no real connection. First, I’m in the pawnshop, somehow managing to fit Tillie’s entire car over the counter for just a bag of sunflower seeds, a deal that doesn’t upset me. Next, I’m on a boat, combing the sea for whales while I heft a harpoon.
The last clip is from a river, in the dark. I tread the thick water while a girl splashes me, laughing, her mouth spiced from rum when I float past and kiss her. When I get too tired to swim, I let myself sink, making sure to grab her hand and pull her down with me.
Lila
“We did have an arrangement where your birth parents could write you letters, and we’d put them here in your file—in case you ever wanted to read them or get in touch.” The woman spins in her desk chair and taps away at a computer. “If you’d like, I’ll have someone bring them up from records.”
“Yes,” I say, too quickly. My heart practically hums.
I don’t know how I feel about the situation yet. I tried forcing myself to process it all weekend, thinking to myself, You’re adopted. Your parents aren’t your biological ones. But no matter how many times I repeated it, it still didn’t seem real. Walking into the agency was like walking into any other office building.
On the one hand, it does make sense. I’ve never seen pictures from my birth or newborn days, despite Dad’s insistence they were “somewhere in the attic.”
It was unlikely my mother could’ve had me at the tail end of her forties without any fertility help, a fact I’d questioned more than once. “Miracles happen,” she told me, each time I broached the subject.
We were all short, but the similarities ended there; I never looked a thing like either of them.
And, most importantly, my parents were prone to secrecy of this magnitude. It took Dad over a year to confess his kidneys were failing.
On the other hand, I never once thought I might be adopted. They were the only parents I knew. That’s where things stop making sense: the place where facts end, and my emotions and memories take over.
I wait until I’m in my car to look at the envelope the woman gives me. It’s addressed to the agency, and feels like metal in my hand. There’s a return address in the corner: Crossbridge County, thirty minutes west.
It’s a single page.
To my daughter, Kathryn:
This letter has been on my mind for a long time. I’ve been meaning to write it, but every time I start, I don’t know what to say.
I guess I should start with what you’re wondering most: why I gave you up. I want you to know it was not what I wanted to do. It was what I had to do, though. I was young and scared. I wanted you to have a better life than what I could give you.
Richard and Evelyn are the kindest people on this earth. I know they’re raising you the way I would have wanted to, but couldn’t.
If you would ever like to meet and get to know each other, please don’t hesitate. I think about you every single day.
- Tillie Davidson
I let the paper flutter into my lap. My heartbeat has finally slowed down.
Tillie Davidson. My mother, Tillie, named me Kathryn.
She lives just half an hour away.
I grab the envelope again and check the postmark. The letter was sent eleven years ago, the week before I turned thirteen. She was probably thinking of you becoming a woman, I realize, and her not being there to see you grow up. Cheesy sentiment aside, it makes me smile, bittersweet.
I realize something else: if this letter was sent over a decade ago, she might not live in Crossbridge anymore. She might not live in Indiana at all. She could be anywhere.
I look at the address again.
Dad’s car rumbles, protesting, when I hit the highway and floor it.
The house looks abandoned.
I check the address on the envelope again. It’s correct.
The doors and windows aren’t boarded up or anything, but the lawn is overgrown with dead shrubs and snarls of grass, and the mailbox is so full it can’t close. There’s no car in the driveway. A cat under the porch hisses as I approach.
I knock twice, loud. No one answers.
Go back to Dad’s house, I tell myself. I have to decide what to keep before the estate sale, and my work is cut out for me. It’s depressing to be there alone, though. Aunt Betty’s is a reasonable alternative, but I’m still not ready to make nice.
Ever since the funeral, I’ve felt a weird restlessness, like I’m supposed to go somewhere or do something, this urgency so strong I can’t stay still—but for the thirty-five minutes between learning Tillie’s name and arriving here, I didn’t feel that. This house is the only place I want to be right now. Even if there’s nothing, or no one, here for me.
I peer through a narrow window near the door. There’s furniture inside, frames on the walls. I can see into the kitchen, too: a coffee mug is on the counter.
I sit on the steps and sigh into my palm, resting my elbow on my knee.
Against my will, I find myself thinking of Donnie. He was (and is) a huge jerk, but we did have some fun together. He made me bolder, took me interesting places, introduced me to people I never would have met...at least, in the beginning, when things were good. If he were here, he’d probably tell me to break in and poke around. “Don’t give up, just like that,” he’d say.
“I don’t even know if she was the last person who lived here,” I would protest, because bolder or not, I was still the voice of reason in our relationship, even if I didn’t have too much myself, back then.
And Donnie would dig around in the dead leaves and find a rock or a brick, test its weight, and pass it to me. “Then go find out.”
In the end, I don’t have to break a window to get inside—not that I would have, anyway—because the back door is unlocked.
This is the part where I would tell Donnie this isn’t safe. Anyone could be through this door.
It’s also the part where he’d just stand there and shrug with his thumbs hooked in his belt loops, giving me a look that says, It’s up to you.
I go inside.
The place is a little messy, but cute. Sort of a Southern cottage-y feel. The furniture is awash in crackle paint. The throw pillows are gingham, powder blue, and each tabletop has a lace doily, caked in dust. There’s no heat. Every light switch I flip along the way does nothing.
Guess she had to leave in a hurry, I think. Of course, that’s assuming this is still her house. For all I know, some random people lived here, fell on hard times, and left.
Actually, for all you know, she’s dead. The thought of finding a corpse in here is as terrifying as it is ridiculous.
The kitchen doesn’t have mail lying around, but it does have something interesting: a massive wine collection. All the bottom cabinets are missing their doors, and inside each is a wooden rack, almost every cubby occupied. I slide out a bottle and study it: Sweet Home Alabama Moscato. The label is a strange holographic design, two goldfish jumping out of a bowl.
So my mother collected wine, I think, then catch myself. I still don’t know if this was her house last, or if I’m rummaging through a stranger’s stuff.
Well, she is a stranger, technically. Still, it feels wrong to keep looking, until I know for sure whose stuff this is.
My parents kept all their private papers in their office and bedroom, so I gravitate towards the stairs, letting my fingers trail the dusty tables and wainscoting, leaving my mark through the grime.
The stairs creak and pop under my feet as I climb. I look up and down the hall, wondering which door could be hers, if any. They’re all closed, except for one that’s just a little ajar.
I step closer and peer in: the walls are painted a deep, pretty blue, and I see a bedpost. This must be it.
With my palm against the wood, I pause. Rationality breaks through the fog, the restlessness, and reminds me that this is dangerous. And, frankly, kind of insane.
But then I hear the words again: Go find out.
It’s my own voice this time, not Donnie’s. I’ve got to at le
ast try, here. Insane or not.
I push the door open.
Almost instantly, a clock comes flying at my face, missing me by less than an inch, as a voice shouts, “Get the fuck out of here!”
Three
Shepherd
The girl screams. “Yelps” is more accurate, actually. “I’m sorry!” she sputters, hauling ass down the stairs.
“Wait, hold up,” I call. Now I feel bad. I didn’t get a good enough look to notice her age, but high schoolers have broken in before, thinking the place is abandoned, just looking for somewhere to smoke or drink. I probably scared the hell out of her.
“Wait,” I say again, stumbling to the top of the stairs as she reaches the bottom. I’m about to explain myself when my foot catches on the rug. Tillie put them all over the house: braided rugs, Oriental carpets, hand-woven jute ones from craft fairs. Instead of using one rug per room, properly sized, she threw down a collection of small ones wherever she wanted. I’ve been tripping on them since the day I moved in.
I have to admit, though, I’ve never tripped on one at the top of a staircase.
Most of my fall takes place in the air. I land on my bare stomach at the bottom, skidding down the last four or five steps, and flip under the edge of the rug at her feet.
The house crackles around us, like my one sudden impact woke it up from a deep sleep. Then, it’s silent.
“Are you okay?” she whispers.
I think I am, miracle of miracles—until I open my mouth and take a breath to speak.
“Oh, my God,” I groan, as the pain collects in my chest and radiates out to every inch of me. I pull myself down the rest of the staircase and roll onto my back, panting and holding my ribs.
When I open my eyes, she’s hovering over me.
“Should I call someone?”
“No,” I cough. It sends another earthquake of pain through my chest. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Let me see. My aunt used to be a nurse.”
