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Claire smacks his arm then shakes her head. “You can call me Claire or whatever you feel most comfortable with. I… I grew up in the foster care system, so I never really knew how to address the foster parents who took me into their homes. I understand this is probably very weird for you.”
I nod and press my lips together to keep from getting emotional. How is it that these people whom I’ve never met already know me so well?
“Did my parents talk to you about me?”
Chris’s face screws up a little as he shakes his head. “No, they didn’t communicate with us at all after your first birthday. The only contact we had with them were the photos and videos we exchanged through a safe-deposit box.”
“I saw those,” I whisper, thinking of the picture I saw of my sister holding a photo of me.
Claire tilts her head. “Do you have the pictures with you? We can go through them with you, if you’d like.”
I shake my head. “I don’t have them.”
I don’t feel good about this lie, but there’s no way I could sit by and quietly listen as she explains to me all the happy memories that go with each photograph. But there’s no nice way to explain that. And, for some odd reason, I really want to be nice to them.
I want to be worthy of the love they have obviously carried for me all these years.
Chris nods toward the kitchen. “Come on. I’ll make you guys some lunch.”
Caleb finally speaks up. “We just ate a couple of hours ago.”
“Actually,” I begin. “Do you mind if I go outside to make a phone call?”
“You can make a phone call in here,” Claire replies quickly. “I mean, unless you want some privacy. Of course, go ahead. We’ll… be right here.”
I look up at Caleb then nod toward the front door. He leads the way and we head outside. I know she’s not behind me, but I can feel Claire’s desire to come after me. Even from across the room and with my back turned. Her desperation is palpable.
As soon as we’re outside and Caleb closes the front door behind us, I call Amy. She picks up on the first ring. When Caleb dropped her off at her house, I told her I would call her as soon as I opened the safe-deposit box. That was more than two hours ago and she’s probably freaking out.
“What happened?” she shrieks, unable to contain her excitement.
“Amy, I’m here… at my birth parents’ house.”
“WHAT?” she yelps.
I hold the phone a couple of inches away from my ear as I continue. “Their contact information was included on a memory card in the box, along with a bunch of pictures. I can’t tell you everything or you’ll freak out, but I need you to tell my parents that Caleb and I went to his apartment and he’s taking me back home tonight. Just tell them I needed some time to cool off.”
“Abby, what are you doing? Are you trying to buy some time so you can get a new identity and leave the country with Caleb?”
I laugh. “Just please tell them that. I just need some time to process everything. Okay?”
She’s silent for a moment. “Okay. But you’d better tell me everything when you get back. I hate being in the dark.”
We say our good-byes and Caleb is smiling at me. “What?”
“You… I don’t even know how to say this.”
“What? Just say it.”
He lets out a soft chuckle and shakes his head. “You’ve known them for, like, two seconds and…”
My smile disappears as I anticipate he’s going to criticize me for being a bad daughter.
“It’s like…” he continues, still trying to find the right words. “Like you’ve always belonged here.”
I slide my phone into my pocket and try to focus on taking deep breaths. “This is all so weird. I never, ever in a million years expected this. I never expected to…” I can’t finish this sentence. I can’t say that I never expected to be wanted.
Just as this thought crosses my mind, the front door opens and I’m not surprised to see Claire standing at the threshold. “Is everything okay?” she asks as she steps outside.
I nod, but I don’t say what I’m thinking. What I’m really thinking is that everything is not okay. It’s nowhere close to okay. And I’m totally okay with that.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
FEAR IS INSIDIOUS. It’s a noxious gas that chokes the brain of common sense and motivation. There have been many moments over the past eighteen years when I feared I had become my father.
My father left my mother and me when I was six years old. The few memories he left me with are so hazy I sometimes wonder if he ever existed. At a very young age, I came to an unnatural realization: I didn’t miss my father. At first, I thought this was a sign that there was something wrong with me. I tried to fight this part of me that thought it was okay to let go. I even got a tattoo of a pocket watch with the hands stuck at 3:15, the time my father left, to remind me to care. But it didn’t work. I never had any desire to meet the father who abandoned me. So the fact that Abby is in my house, to me, is a miracle. It means I have another chance at not repeating my father’s mistakes.
I watch with great anticipation as the front door opens and Claire walks in, followed closely by Abby and Caleb. I let out a sigh of relief as they assemble in the foyer and Claire closes the door behind them, wearing the kind of smile I only see her wear when she’s with her children.
“Is everything okay?” I ask. “Are you all ready for me to make some lunch?”
Claire comes to me with her hand stretched out before her. She may be smiling, but she usually reaches for me like this when she needs comfort or reassurance. Like me, she’s afraid this visit could be cut short at any moment.
I pull her toward me, planting a kiss on her forehead as I slide my arm around the small of her back. “I make a pretty mean grilled cheese,” I continue.
“Yeah, Chris took cooking lessons a few years ago when I took a six-week trip to Indonesia. He’s a better cook than I am now, not that that’s saying much.”
A smile pulls at one side of Abby’s mouth. “This is really weird, right? Or is it just me?”
I try not to let the ache in my chest manifest in my facial expression. “It is definitely weird. I can’t imagine what it must feel like for you to know that we’ve always known you existed. You must think… Well, I always hoped that you would understand, to some degree, that a great deal of this situation was out of our control.”
I turn to Claire to see her reaction to my words and, as expected, her jaw is clenched and her eyes are beginning to water. No amount of therapy over the past eighteen years could convince Claire that she was not to blame for us losing the battle for an open adoption. No matter how many times I’ve tried to make her see the truth.
The truth is that the war over Abby began the moment Claire gave her up for adoption. But we lost multiple battles for Abby because of my fame. If I were an electrician like Brian, Abby would have spent the last eighteen years knowing that we always wanted her. Now, we have maybe a few hours to convince her of this.
Abby’s smile fades. “I want to know… what happened… I want to know why I wasn’t good enough.”
I look to Claire again and the tears are flowing freely again. “You were more than good enough. It had nothing to do with you and everything to do with me. I’m the one who gave you
up.”
“That’s not entirely true,” I interject, squeezing Claire’s shoulder to assure her I’m not going to allow her to throw herself under the bus. “Claire initiated the adoption while I was on tour for my first album. She was afraid I would give up on the tour and my career if she told me the truth. She gave you up so that I could pursue my dreams and so that you wouldn’t have to grow up without a father, like we both did.”
The way Abby’s eyebrows are screwed up, I can see she doesn’t know what to believe. And I don’t know what to do other than tell her the truth. I have always relied on the truth to cut through the rhetoric and the skepticism. But it seems now that the truth may not be good enough. Claire and I may not be good enough.
Claire steps forward so she’s only a couple of feet away from Abby. “Abigail, can I show you something? Before you leave and before you decide this visit was a mistake, there’s something I’d like to show you.”
Abby hesitates for a moment, glancing up at Caleb, seeking his opinion on Claire’s request. Caleb shrugs, and for a moment I fear she’s going to tell us she has to leave. Then she nods and I let out a huge sigh.
As expected, Claire slides her cell phone out of the pocket of her jeans and begins swiping her finger across the screen, searching for something. Finally, she stops swiping and she seems transfixed by something on her phone. She takes another step forward and holds it up for Abby to get a better view.
“That’s me when I was nineteen and five months pregnant with you. I didn’t know my best friend was taking this picture of me. I was lying on the bed in her room, rubbing my belly as I talked to you.” She draws in a stuttered breath as she tries to compose herself. “I was promising you that you’d have a better childhood than I did. That you’d never question whether your parents loved you, like I did.”
She swipes her finger across the screen again and the photo changes.
“This is a picture you may have already seen,” she continues. “This is the first time I held you. You were seven months old and this was the happiest and saddest moment of my life.” Claire holds the phone still for a moment before she tucks it into the back pocket of her jeans and steps forward so she’s within arm’s reach of Abby. “I’ve wanted you from the moment I found out I was pregnant. There was never, ever a moment where I felt my life was better without you.” She reaches forward and Abby allows her to take her hand. “We’ve been waiting so long to see you, to tell you that we never forgot you. Please stay a while so we can prove it to you.”
