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“I was always told that she took me in after my parents died. She was my mom’s sister.”
“Okay.”
“Well, it’s a lie.”
“What’s a lie?” Nate asks.
“I’m not sure she was related to me at all. I was told that she was appointed as my guardian after my parents died in a car crash. I always thought she was my mom’s sister, but she wasn’t. After she died, I found the adoption papers in her office. All the names are blacked out except hers, but there was a part about relationship to the mother, and it just said ‘none.’”
“Wow. That’s a pretty major blow.”
“It was. Frankly, I don’t think I’ve completely processed it all. I’m not sure I can until I know the truth—all of it. I want to know who my real parents are. I think Aunt Ginny planned on telling me when I got older, but she never had the chance.”
“Are you sure you want to do that?” he asks, tilting his head a little as he stares into my eyes.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Well, it seems that some people go looking for their birth parents and end up rather disappointed.” His eyes flicker a bit as if he wants to say something but decides against it. “You never know what you are going to find.”
“I’d rather know. Aside from the fact that not knowing really gnaws at me, there’s knowing your medical history. I might have some treatable condition I don’t even know about, and it will kill me if I don’t find out in time.”
“That seems unlikely.”
“But you never know.”
“People give up their kid for a reason,” Nate says. “That reason is typically something like they’re a junkie or homeless or maybe worse.”
“Maybe not. It could just be people who were too young and not ready for a child.”
“If that’s the case, they'd become new parents without the support of a family to help them. Still not a great scene to put yourself into.”
I press my lips together tightly for a moment, scrunching up my face. I don’t know how to explain this feeling in my stomach—the one that drives me on to find out who my real parents are—and I’m afraid anything I say will be inadequate.
“I need to know, Nate. It will haunt me forever if I don’t at least try. If I ca
n’t find anything, then I guess I’ll figure out how to deal with it, but I can’t just give up when I’ve barely started.”
“All right,” he says. “What do you know so far?”
“Well, when my aunt died, I found the adoption papers at the bottom of a dresser drawer—names blacked out, like I said. The only thing I really had to go on was the address—Cascade Falls, Ohio.”
“You moved here looking for documents?” He looks surprised.
“Initially, I tried to do my own research from home,” I tell him, “but the adoption was sealed, so I didn’t get anywhere at all. I thought maybe one of Aunt Ginny’s friends knew something about my birth parents. Everyone knew she wasn’t my real mother, but the story was the same one my aunt had always told me—I was her sister’s daughter, and my parents had died in a car accident. I asked everyone in town who had ever come into contact with my aunt. The story was always the same—she’d lived there all her life, no one had ever actually met this supposed sister, and I came to live with her as a baby. I didn’t want to push too hard because I didn’t want anyone thinking I was disrespecting her memory.”
“So if she’s not your aunt, what is your relationship to her?”
“I have no idea. Maybe she was an older cousin to my mother, or maybe she was an older child of the same mother. I just…I don’t know. No one seems to know. When Aunt Ginny passed, that was the end of any family relationship I had.”
Tears form in the corners of my eyes, and I don’t want to cry in front of him, definitely not sitting at a bar.
“Family is important,” he says with a slow nod. “I guess I can understand why you feel that way. I’m not sure what I would do without my family.”
“Do you have a big family?” I ask, and he laughs.
“Yes, I do. Everyone lives in the same house, too. Aunts, uncles, cousins, my sister and her…and just everyone, really. The Orsos have never been a reserved bunch, and it can get rather loud.”
Orsos? Did I hear him right?
