The idea of asking them for money or, well,anythingis as enticing as the idea of the pap smear I’m scheduled to have next week. And I still owe them a little for the repairs on their car.
It wasn’t my finest moment. I flipped all the way out when I discovered I was adopted. It still makes me cringe just to think about it.
Slamming the door of the house. “Borrowing” my parents’ car. Ignoring their pleas to stay and talk about it, to not go driving in the rain at night. My vision blurred by tears as I sped away from the house. The thud as I hit the deer and careened out of control. I vowed to repay them every damn penny for repairs.
I need this job. I need to clear my conscience, repay my debt.
Would there ever be a better job for me? Spending time surrounded by tales of tragedy and love? It feels like it’s meant to be. Kismet. Yuanfen. Fate.
“I’m flying home for Thanksgiving.” I’d rather scrape my skin off with a potato peeler than see my parents, but I promised my sister, Sophia, that I’d go back to Minnesota for the holiday.
“Not a problem. We’ve got the schedule covered for Thanksgiving since our other recent hire is traveling then, too. You could start the week after Thanksgiving.”
“In that case, I’d love to.” I’ll have to be disciplined to the extreme and not allow myself to buy all the books. As much as I’d love to take them all home with me and spend my days stroking and sniffing them, I don’t have the funds or the space. I nod, determined in my decision. “You might have to keep me from buyingallof the books with my salary though.”
Frieda laughs, the sound joyous and uplifting. She’s one of the warmest people I’ve ever met; it’s hard not to love her already. “I feel that. I’ll run interference on all your book purchases.” She pauses and nibbles on her lip. “Is it a bad time to mention that we have a staff discount?”
I pay for my book at the counter, chatting with her about the layout of the store and the duties involved with the position she’s offering. I feel good about it. Book addiction aside, I’m taking back control of at least a little piece of the chaos that has been my life lately.
I started the week with two goals: find a job and Google my birth mom. One out of two ain’t bad, right? Now that I have a job under my belt, I’m coming up short for any more excuses to keep me from hitting the search engine.
As I leave the store, the tinkle of the bell above the door seems to taunt me like it knows all my secrets.Deer Killerit chimes. The dumb bell knows I’m a coward, that I’ve typed my birth mom’s name into the search bar countless times over the summer, but I haven’t been able to push the enter key.
Killer. Coward.
For a bell, it certainly is opinionated.
Fine. It’s not the bell. It’s my own critical inner voice giving me shit. Some days I’d love to reach into my mind, pull her from the depths of my gray matter by her roots and beat the ever loving snot out of her.
Bitch is loud.
The only way to shut her up in this moment is to head home and look up my birth mom. Sounds easy enough, but man, even the thought makes my stomach churn. I’ve had so many questions over the past months, and I’m too fucking scared to find the answers. But maybe it’s time.
* * *
I crack my knuckles one by one as I stare down the Google homepage on my laptop screen. I need to know. I need to know where she is and anything else I can find out about her. Does she have a family? Is she local?
Questions I’ll never have the answer to if I don’t suck it up and look, ricochet around in my brain. I throw back a shot of tequila and shudder as it burns through me, its warmth rippling out to my limbs. It’s time. I need this.
I type her name into the bar,Amara Declercq, and wait as though the act of typing it alone will bring me the answers I seek. It’s the same every damn time.
Throwing back another shot, I scrunch my eyes closed. When the shot glass hits the table I smack the enter key on my laptop before I can change my mind. It’s done now. No take-backs.
I open my left eye a crack, squinting at the screen. My hands are clammy and shaking, and when I try to pop my knuckles again I get nothing but disappointment.
Heaving in deep breaths, I face my past. There’s no need to scroll. My own eyes meet my gaze, staring right back at me from the screen. The knowledge is deep in my chest. That’s her.
Part of me is glad she has an unusual name so I don’t need to scroll through pages and pages of Jane Smiths to find the right one. But the other part of me is freaking out that Google found her in under three seconds. Her. My birth mother.
When I click the photo, my stomach sinks. Tears prick my eyes as I gulp once, twice, a third time but the wave of emotions hitting me from all sides can’t be swallowed down.
Deceased.
A tightness bands around my chest as I scan the obituary. She was an only child, her parents both died a number of years ago, and according to the article, she never married or had a family of her own. She was an elementary school teacher in Wisconsin.
Grief consumes me like a black hole, and I’m powerless to escape its gravity. I hover the arrow over the X at the top of the page, hoping that clicking it closed will ease the agony stirring inside me, but I pause when something catches my eye.
She died a week before I found my birth certificate in my dad’s study. If they’d just told me about my life, my past, my birth mom… I could have tried to connect with her, had a chance of finding out who I really am.
