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She hadn’t known that. “Oh, then he still is here if they want him or need him but can leave if he wants to?”
“Exactly,” her mother said. “I know it hasn’t been ideal for him to do this, but it works out. We’ve got enough rooms in this house.”
Her parents put two single beds in her old room for the kids and Dane’s room and another guest room had queen beds in it for guests.
“You do what you need to do,” she said.
“That’s right. And I can tell there is something on your mind. What is it?”
“Is Dad here?”
“He’s in the garage.” Her mother looked at her. “This sounds serious. Are you sick?”
“No,” she said. “Nothing like that. But I’d like to talk to you both if Dad can come in.”
“I’ll go get him,” her mother said.
She took a seat and pulled the letter out of her purse. She’d let them read it. There was no reason not to.
“Mom said you wanted to talk to us?” her father said, coming in.
“Yes,” Chloe said. “I’m fine. I’m not sick or anything like that. But I did get this letter from Emily Bask earlier in the week.”
“What?” her mother asked, reaching for it.
Her parents read it together, then her father asked, “What are you going to do?”
She was surprised they were so calm about this. “I really don’t know. If she never reached out I believe there is part of me that wouldn’t have thought twice about her. I know who my parents are.”
Her parents looked at each other and smiled softly. “Then we did something right. But we also always knew there might come a time when you and Dane would want to know more too and have accepted that.”
“Do you know anything about her? I never asked before. I guess I should know what you know before I decide anything else.”
“Emily was sixteen when she had you,” her mother said. “Unlike Dane’s mother, Emily knew right away she didn’t want to raise you. We were put in contact with her right away. You know all of this. We brought you home two days after you were born.”
“No father listed,” Chloe said.
“No. Emily never told us and she said she didn’t know,” her father said.
“But you don’t believe that, do you?” she asked. Chloe wasn’t sure why she never thought of that before. Maybe because she never thought of any of this before.
“She didn’t come off as someone who slept around,” her mother said. “She made a mistake.”
“I’m a mistake?” she asked.
“No, no,” her father said. “Never.”
Chloe wasn’t sure why she reacted that way just now. “I guess I’m just sensitive to this.”
“It’s understandable,” her mother said. “Emily was young and got pregnant. That is a mistake. She used those words to us too. But it wasn’t a mistake to us. You were a miracle we’d been waiting for. Emily’s parents were pushing the adoption, but we never got the impression that she didn’t want it either.”
“What do you know about her now? Anything?”
“For years we tried to keep up on what we could. She never wanted to know about you. She never reached out or anything,” her father said.
She wasn’t sure she knew that was even an option. “Did you want her to? Or Dane’s mother?”
“Not really,” her mother said. “You were ours, but again, we wanted to do what we thought was right.”
