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We’d be heading our separate ways in the fall anyway—I was hoping for Northwestern, and Donal had already been accepted at Yale. It was too late for us to have anything serious, even if Donal had wanted that with me. Why not enjoy what I had while I had it?
Our covert make-out sessions continued, and pretty soon I’d lost my virginity in the back seat of Donal’s Chevy Citation. We used protection, of course. We were young and stupid but notthatstupid.
In those days the local pharmacies kept their condoms locked up behind glass—unconscionable at the height of the AIDS epidemic (or any other time, for that matter)—and not many teenagers were bold enough to hunt down a pharmacist and ask him to fetch you a box of prophylactics. Fortunately, Donal had acquired some from a friend’s older brother. Only apparently they’d been sitting around too long, or maybe they weren’t very high quality, because I ended up pregnant anyway.Oops.
It felt like the end of the world. I had plans for my life that didn’t include marrying Donal Larkin and becoming a mother at the age of eighteen. Not that he offered to marry me. When I told him, he totally freaked out and started ranting about his future plans and how this was going to mess up everything.
Yeah, no shit.
He basically acted like I’d ruined his life—as if my plans wouldn’t be ruined right along with his. Then he told me he needed time to think and promised to come to my house so we could talk about what we were going to do.
He didn’t. Quelle surprise. I didn’t hear a word from him all that weekend.
It was clear he was avoiding me, so I cornered him Monday at school. Once I got him alone, I told him I’d decided to give the baby up for adoption and didn’t want or need his help. By then I knew better than to expect a guy like Donal to take responsibility. He wasn’t someone you could rely on to come through for you. I was in this on my own.
The only thing I asked from him was that he keep my secret. Amazingly, he did. He was so relieved to be let off the hook, he was happy to pretend none of it had ever happened.
We barely spoke for the rest of the school year. Lucky for me, baggy clothes were all the rage in the late eighties, and I was able to hide my pregnancy until graduation. I was five months pregnant when I gave my valedictorian speech, but no one could tell under my graduation gown.
My dad and stepmom did their best to be supportive, although I’d forever be haunted by their looks of disappointment when I broke the news. It didn’t help that I’d been the result of an unplanned pregnancy. My mother’s unhappiness at being saddled with a husband and baby she’d never wanted had driven her to leave us when I was ten. My determination not to end up like my mother was a major factor in my decision to give the baby up for adoption.
I deferred my acceptance to Northwestern for a year, told everyone I was visiting my grandmother in Michigan for the summer, and sequestered myself in my parents’ house for the next four months. I cried when they took the baby away, and I cried on and off for the next two months, convinced I was a horrible, selfish person for giving my daughter up. But after my hormones leveled out, I picked myself up, dusted myself off, and took a full load of community college classes to get a head start on my undergraduate credits.
Eventually, my life went back to normal. Except for the fact that I thought about my daughter almost every day. Even now, thirty years later, I still thought about her all the time, wondering what she looked like, where she’d grown up, if she was happy and loved, if she had kids of her own.
I finally had the answer to one of those questions. She’d uploaded a picture to her LineagePlus profile. I’d been staring at it for hours, ever since I got home.
After my panic attack in the break room, Marie had cleaned up my broken coffee mug for me. Then we’d gone into my office, closed the door, and I’d unburdened myself on her sympathetic shoulders. She’d listened to every word, then gently reminded me to use commonsense precautions before sharing any personal information with a stranger. She’d done a lot of research on social engineering and phishing scams for a story she’d written recently, and described some red flags I should watch for in my correspondence with Erin. She even offered to talk to a friend of hers who owned a security firm if I wanted to have a background check done on Erin.
I politely declined. Marie was a wise person and good friend. She was right to be paranoid, and I intended to heed her advice. But I knew in my bones this wasn’t a scam.
Erin was the daughter I’d given up for adoption.
Now I was at home, alone in my apartment, and I couldn’t stop staring at the picture of Erin in her LineagePlus profile. She was beautiful. A golden complexion to go with her golden brown hair, a heart-shaped face, and a smile as bright as her eyes.
She looked so much like her father it made my chest hurt.
Crap.
Her father.
She wanted to know about him. That meant I’d need to contact Donal.
Although we’d crossed paths occasionally thanks to mutual friends and our involvement in our high school alumni association, we’d mostly avoided speaking face-to-face. Since I was still nursing a mother of a grudge and Donal was still a self-centered asshole, our limited interactions had been terse and unpleasant.
It seemed unlikely Donal would take this latest news well. He had a family of his own now, and he might not want anything more to do with Erin than he had thirty years ago. I’d need to feel him out before I put her in touch with him.
But first, I needed to respond to her message.
CHAPTERTHREE
DONAL
My stomach made a noise that sounded like a fork in a garbage disposal. It was a noise so loud and unholy, it startled me out of my concentration on the contract I was reviewing.
Damn. I’d forgotten to eat lunch.
Again.
