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“Some adoptees want to have their own kids sooner rather than later, because they want to have someone in their life who’s genetically related to them.”
Heather wasn’t fooled by the change in topic. No doubt, Marcus would return to the other conversation later. She’d had too much experience with mental health practitioners to trust they’d put any of this to bed.
But, even though he’d said it as a statement, rather than as a question, if she sidestepped the unasked question, he’d give the whole topic more weight, so she told him, “I won’t purposefully get pregnant unless I know what genetic minefields I might be passing on. I don’t know if I’m prone to heart disease, if any of the women in my family have breast cancer, if I should be worried about Alzheimer’s. I don’t know any of that. I can live with it okay when it comes to my own future, but I don’t want to give birth to a child and then discover I’m a carrier for something I’d never want to pass onto an innocent.”
“So you want to find your biological family?”
“No. I just won’t have a child unless I do.”
“So you don’t plan to have kids?”
“I didn’t say that either, Marcus.” She realized she’d snapped at him, so she carefully modulated her voice back to normal and tried to explain. “Look, it’s not all cut and dried, okay? If I ever decide I want to have kids, I’ll make those decisions then. Maybe my husband won’t be able to have kids, so it’ll be a moot point and we’ll adopt. Maybe he’ll want bio kids, in which case I’ll hire someone to find my bio family and get their medical histories. I can’t evenseethat bridge yet, and I don’t have to make any decisions until I’m ready to cross it.”
“But if you decide to find them, you’ll do it as a business transaction? Hire someone to get the information for you, so you keep everything at arm’s length?”
Heather stopped walking and spun to look at him, but just saw curiosity and not judgment, so she turned and continued down the trail. Kyle reached for her hand and then tugged her to a stop, and she turned back to them.
Kyle wrapped his arms around her as if to protect her from Marcus’s questions, but that wasn’t right either. She met Marcus’s gaze and told him, “I havewonderfulparents. My original family chose to not raise me, but I’m not angry with them over it. I mean, sure, I’ve had periods of being angry, but I’m old enough now to know that it wasn’t anything I did. My records say I came into the orphanage at less than a week old, based on the condition of my umbilical cord. One-week-old babies can’t piss someone off enough to make them angry, so it couldn’t have been me personally that they were rejecting. It was circumstances. Either my bio-mom was single and couldn’t raise a child, or my bio-parents were poor and couldn’t afford to raise a child, or... who knows? Whatever the circumstances, they made the decision to not raise me, and someone else did. There are times I think that, if I were to discover siblings, I might want to talk to them, meet them, but I don’t know how to speak Korean, and the odds are that they can’t speak English. There couldn’t be a relationship. There’s an entire cottage industry around people who search for birthparents, so if I ever decided to search, then yes, I’ll pay someone else to do it, and my primary reason will be to get a medical history. I wouldn’t mind hearing the circumstances of why they didn’t raise me, but it’s not important for me to find out.”
She gently pulled herself from Kyle’s arms and turned to walk back down the trail while holding his hand. Luckily the trail was wide enough for two people, but they’d soon be back to single file.
Marcus was quiet for several long moments before saying, “Knowing you as I do, I believe you’ve dealt with your beginnings and you’re telling me how you truly feel. However, I can understand the other professionals who’d doubt you could be in such a good place and not have shit to work through. Honestly, so many of the adoptees who have adoption issues have them because their parents curtailed any discussion of their feelings about being adopted. Or, they’ve gone the other direction and gone overboard and created issues. It sounds like your mom and dad found a nice balance. Kudos to both of them.”
They’d reached a point in the trail where they could run the rest of the way, so Heather took off and assumed they would either follow her or use their words to tell her to stop.
Miles later, when they made it back to Rainbow Lake, Heather scaled a dump-truck-sized boulder and sat on it. Kyle sat on a three-foot tall rock near the trail, and Marcus stood and looked up at her.
She had the sense he was about to accuse her of climbing so high to get away from them, so she started talking again, to finish the conversation she’d run away from.
“My mom became an expert on sensory issues, attachment issues, and adoption issues. She knows more than some of the experts out there. At different times in my life it’s annoyed the hell out of me, but all in all, I’mreallyglad we ended up together. I wish I could be more honest with her now — she thinks I can’t have a relationship that lasts very long because of some attachment issue somewhere she missed, and I’ve never been able to tell her it’s sensory stuff, not attachment related.”
Heather looked around to make sure they were alone before adding, “My mom’s one big hang-up is that she’s a prude. Sex is simply not talked about. With kids who live with their bio parents, they can be sure their parents have done it at least once. I have my doubts about my parents. I mean, my dad, sure, I can see that — but my mom? No way can I see her letting loose enough to...”
Heather jumped from her boulder to a smaller one, climbed down to a small shelf ten feet above the trail, grabbed a tree branch with her right hand, and used it to swing down off the boulder and land on a soft part of the trail. “If she knew I was saying this, she’d die of embarrassment.”
“Did you ever use sex to try to rebel against her?”
“Of course I did. I was a sensory-seeking teenager. Unfortunately, it never did anything for me. I thought it was gross, but I couldn’t talk to my mom about it, and my friends all thought sex was just the greatest thing. It took me a while to realize it was a sensory thing — that I didn’t enjoy sex because I couldn’tfeelenough for it to do anything for me.”
“And now you know that part of you, the sexual part, is in there, it just takes a little more to awaken it. Hopefully after you’ve read some of what I send you, things will make even more sense.”
They cut up and joked with each other the rest of the way back to the car. Kyle opened the passenger door for her to get in, but Heather shook her head. “I rode up front on the way up the mountain, so I’ll ride in the back for the trip down.”
“I don’treallywant to see where we’re going. I’ll be much happier in the back. Trust me.”
Heather grinned. “Then that settles it — you’re riding up front. It’s safe, there’s a guardrail, and you’re inside the vehicle. It’s not like you’re going to fall out of the front seat but not the back seat. Perfect opportunity to start getting your senses used to this kind of thing.”
She urged him into the seat and got into the back as Marcus was starting the engine. “She’s got your number, Richardson. I’ll go slow. It’ll be fine.”
Chapter 14
Heather lined up with the runway of the New Orleans airport in the pouring rain. Her body was always calm and on alert during takeoffs and landings, and today was no different. Visibility sucked so she was landing purely by instruments, and it was only in the final few seconds she took in the rush of the ground coming up to meet the plane. The wheels touched at the perfect angle, and she brought them in for a beautiful landing on an ugly, stormy day.
The contractors offered to let her come with them and tour the jobsite to see what they were building, but she declined, telling them she had some reading to get caught up on.
She was flying their company plane today — a nice cushy ride she loved piloting, and the recliners in the passenger compartment would be the perfect spot to curl up with a good book while mother nature stormed all around her.
Once they were all off the plane, Heather sent a quick text to Kyle letting him know she was on the ground safely, she went through the refueling process, parked, grabbed her snacks and something to drink, walked back to one of the passenger recliners, and settled in with one of the fiction books.
