by Stacy Monson
“Great plan. If you ignored it long enough, you’d eventually buy in to your own fairy tale.” The sarcasm pinched her heart. She’d never spoken to anyone like this, but no one had ever hurt her this deeply. No. Shredded her whole being and tossed the pieces into a cold wind. Who was she? Lin was adopted, but she was illegitimate.
“At least Dad has never treated me as anything but his own.” There was a sliver of consolation in that.
“He thinks you are.”
The world froze. “What?”
They were kindred spirits. She could tie a sailor’s knot faster than him now, chop almost as much wood, catch more fish. He’d never known she wasn’t his?
“I didn’t know until right now.”
Mikayla turned slowly, swaying. “What does that mean?”
“We’d only been married a few years, but we were having a tough time in our marriage, and we’d taken some time apart. I returned home after…after the…”
Wait—what? “You didn’t know he wasn’t my father until right now? How could you not?” She dropped onto the couch, staring at the stranger before her. “Who are you?”
“Sweetheart, I know this is a lot to take in all at once.” She reached a hand toward her. “This isn’t how I imagined the conversation would go.”
Mikayla recoiled, watching her mother’s face crumple. “Because you were never going to tell me. And you’ve never told Lindy?”
“No.”
“Then I’ll tell her. She has a right to know our mother isn’t the saint we all thought she was. And that I’m not even her sister, let alone…” She pinched the bridge of her nose to keep the stinging tears back, the nausea from surfacing.
“Of course you’re sisters, Mikayla. Blood isn’t the only thing that makes a family.”
“Honesty seems pretty essential, but we obviously don’t have any of that.”
“We’re a family by choice.”
“Whose? Certainly not mine. Or Lindy’s. What about Maggie? Did she get a choice?”
Her mother lowered her head. “We adopted her as a newborn as well.”
Wow. Mikayla fell back against the couch, rubbing her temples. This got more bizarre with each revelation. “I’ll guess she doesn’t know either.”
“No,” came the whispered response. “We were so thrilled when each of you came into our lives, we never made a plan about how to explain it once you grew up.”
“So why does some of my DNA match Maggie?”
“It’s complicated, honey. Each of you has such a different story.”
“There’s nothing complicated about the truth,” Mikayla snapped, then her head came up. “Unless none of it was legal?”
“Of course it was. Maggie and Lindy are our children in every way.”
Mikayla flinched. “And then there’s me. Legal but illegitimate.”
“Mikayla, I have no excuse for not telling you except trying to save face,” her mother admitted quietly. “But it’s not as bad as it sounds.”
“You’re going to put a positive spin on having an affair?”
Silence followed by a deep sigh. “I’m not proud of what I did”—she held Mikayla’s gaze—“but I wouldn’t change it for anything because it gave me you.”
The declaration hung between them—humility edged with defiance.
“I want to meet him.” She would tell him exactly what she thought of a man who did something like this and then sauntered off into the sunset.
“I hope you can,” her mother said, “but you’ll have to track him down first.”
“Is he some kind of fugitive?” If she had to be the black sheep, she might as well be as black as possible.
“Don’t be silly.”
The fondness that colored her mother’s smile made her heartbeat stumble.
“When I knew him, thirty years ago, he was funny, and sweet, and determined not to put roots down anywhere.” She took Mikayla’s hand. “A free spirit, just like you. You have his love for the outdoors, his joy for living. And you look a bit like him.”
She yanked her hand away. She was Mitch Gordon’s daughter, not some bum who couldn’t be bothered with a child. Maybe she didn’t look like Mitch, but they’d been connected at the soul her whole life. “So how do I find this paragon of virtue?”
Her mother leaned back. “I wish I knew. Back then he lived and breathed the outdoors. In the winter he worked the ski slopes out west. In the summer he took odd jobs, which is where I met him. At Aunt Cindy’s resort in Michigan. Now,” she lifted her hands, “he could be anywhere.”
“What’s his name? I’ll find him online.” She needed facts, not a romanticized version of what her mother wished were true.
There was a heavy pause before her mother answered. “I only knew his first name. Kenny. Aunt Cindy will have his employment record.”
Mikayla couldn’t breathe in or out. Her mouth opened and closed without a sound. Her mother hadn’t even known the full name of the guy she slept with?
“This is nuts.” Jumping to her feet, she headed for the door. She couldn’t handle one more surprise. “I can’t do this. I have to get out of here. Away from you.”
“Mikayla, please.” She reached out again. “Once you know the whole story—”
“I’ll what? Think it’s all okay and forgive you for cheating on Dad?”
She flung the door open, then glared back at her weeping mother. “Your choices and your lies have ruined my life, and they’ll destroy our whole family.” The disjointed pounding in her chest made it difficult to draw a breath. “I can’t believe you’re the only one I’m actually related to. Just…stay away from me.”
In the car, she pulled blindly away from the curb, sucking in gasping breaths, tears flooding her cheeks. Two blocks down she turned at a side street, lurched to a stop, and rested her forehead against her hands on the steering wheel. She tightened her grasp as if she could hold onto her life that was crumbling into a heap. And she sobbed.
~ 8 ~
The days that followed were a hazy mess of questions and wildly fluctuating emotions. Not telling Lindy made her complicit in her mother’s lies, but what could she say that wouldn’t ruin Lin’s life as well? She stayed away from the townhouse until she could slip in and go right to bed. Work, she explained when Lindy asked. And that was true. The only place she felt somewhat normal was at the office.
By Monday it was impossible to concentrate. She and Ted had reviewed the proposal and the presentation she’d created for the board of directors meeting, tweaking it, tightening the wording and rechecking the financials. She’d asked to present alongside him but reluctantly accepted his explanation that since none of the board members knew her, it would be better coming from just him. While it was her baby, her ideas and vision, she was relegated to off-stage, unable to present and defend her proposal. That grated.
She sat at her desk Monday, unable to focus on anything other than Ted in the board meeting. When her phone buzzed after lunch, she snatched up the receiver. “Hi, Betty.”
“Hi, hon. I wanted you to know I put a two o’clock on your calendar with Ted.”
“Okay. Did you get a sense how it went?” Was he in a good mood? Did he give any indication at all?
“I didn’t, but he only stepped out of the meeting for a minute.”
Heart in her throat, Mikayla thanked her for the heads-up and checked her calendar. Proposal discussion, two p.m. She leaned back in the chair and forced the sudden jumble of nerves away. There was no way to predict their response, despite Ted’s enthusiasm for the project, so it would be better to prepare for the worst. She smiled to herself. Easier said than done.
In the ensuing ninety minutes she finished two more columns, putting her six weeks ahead of schedule. That would allow her more time to focus on the project, to get everything lined up and ready to go. If they gave it a green light, she’d show them their faith in her hadn’t been misplaced.
By ten past two she realized it was she who had mispla
ced her faith.
“They asked a number of good questions,” Ted said as they met in his office. “But there were a few, as we’d suspected, who couldn’t understand why we’d want to consider this.”
Listening to Ted deliver the rejection as gently as he could, Mikayla sat rigid and silent, knuckles white as she tightened her clasped hands. Her past had been obliterated, and now her future was blurry at best.
Not a reflection on her work, they’d said. “Nor on your being female,” Ted insisted.
A nice man but delusional if he believed that.
“One of their arguments was that current readership wouldn’t accept it, and since no one is clamoring for it, there’s no reason to take the financial risk.”
“Of course they’re not clamoring for it because they don’t know it’s even an option for them!” Nerves screaming for movement, she stood and paced behind her chair. “We could be on the cutting edge of this becoming big business, Ted. I’ve met our new readership out on the trail—hiking, camping, rock climbing. I’d think the board would want to be on the front lines, leaders of change, innovators.”
“The money men in the group only see loss right now,” he said. “They can’t see it being profitable because they can’t think outside the box. To put extra salary into creating it, even as an online product, just didn’t fly for them.” He sighed heavily. “I’m sorry, Mikayla. The presentation you created was excellent, but I didn’t do a good enough job selling it.”
Then she would. She leaned her hands on the back of her chair. “Let me meet with them. You and I could do a follow-up presentation together.” Hope fluttered at the edges of her dying proposal.
“Well, that’s worth a try, although the next board meeting won’t happen until sometime in September. I’ll get us back on the agenda.”
September? A lifetime from now. With the search for Kenny and Lindy’s wedding between now and then, would she have the time and energy to rework the presentation? Did it even matter? The wings of the last bit of hope lay still.
“Take the afternoon to process this, Mikayla,” he said. “I’m not giving up on the idea. It’s just going to take time to change the culture. We’ll do it one small step at a time, okay? We’ll have a new presentation ready for their next meeting with more statistics, even better financials.” He folded his hands on his desk, his salt and pepper eyebrows tented. “We aren’t giving up.”
His encouragement fell short, shattering into jagged shards at her feet. She nodded, forcing a smile. Then she walked on stiff legs past Betty’s worried expression and Justin’s tiny basketball hoop with crumpled paper balls littering the floor, and Leif’s cubicle, thankful he’d taken the day off. Deep voices, guffaws and chuckles filled the space until she wanted to press her hands over her ears.
She stood at the opening to her small cubicle, seeing it clearly for the first time. Seeing her life clearly. She didn’t fit here; never had. She wasn’t making a difference; she was just taking up space. A tiny bit of space as a token female.
She didn’t fit with her family either. Maggie and Lindy were a choice their parents made together, but she hadn’t been planned or chosen. She was a mistake. It hadn’t been her choice to be conceived in a night of drunken passion by people who barely knew each other. She was a product of other people’s choices.
The buzz of her cell phone startled her, and she yanked it from her pocket. Another text from her mother. As she’d done the last three days, Mikayla hit delete without reading it. There. That was her choice. Never speaking to her mother again would be her choice.
Ted had said getting them onboard would take time. So she could spend the summer working even harder on the presentation and hope they saw it differently. Or she could move on and find a better fit in a place with a vision like hers. Those were her choices. As was finding the man who’d drunkenly made her mother pregnant and telling him exactly what she thought of him. It was time to live her life the way she wanted.
Within minutes she’d stuffed her few personal belongings into a plastic bag, then printed off a brief letter of resignation and handed it to a wide-eyed Ted with her thanks for his support. No, she wasn’t angry. The board’s decision made it clear it was time for her to move on, pursue other options that would better suit her career plans. Yes, she’d be happy to get a letter of recommendation from him.
She told him where he could find the columns she’d written which would keep that slot filled until he found her replacement. Then she gave Betty a hug and a promise to keep in touch. On the way out, she stepped into Leif’s cubicle. After considering the greatest impact, she slid the keyboard shelf out and set the rubber snake he’d left under her desk two months ago on the keyboard. She slid the shelf back in and left his cubicle with a smile playing at the corners of her mouth.
Without speaking to any other colleagues, she left the building. They wouldn’t care that she left. If Leif were there, he’d send her off with an “About time.” Standing outside squinting against the afternoon sun, she waited for an emotion. Any emotion. Instead her spine stiffened, her chin lifted. From now on, every step she took, every decision made would be intentional.
Show no weakness. Rely on yourself. The mantra she’d told herself after getting the DNA results would now be her life’s mantra. In this new life, her first decision was to find her biological father and get her medical history. After that, she’d figure it out. On her own.
~ 9 ~
Planted at her laptop, Mikayla fired off searches with what little information her mother had provided. Countless Kennys surfaced with each search—Kennys who skied but were too young or too old. Kennys who didn’t ski and were too young or too old.
Releasing an irritated breath, she pushed away from the desk and closed her eyes, massaging her temples. Simply typing his name brought a sour taste to her mouth. She refilled her coffee cup and stood at the sliding door, her resolve slipping like raindrops down the glass. Mom said he was an outdoorsy guy who lived to ski. There’d have to be some record of him working at a ski resort somewhere. Like at Aunt Cindy’s resort.
Mom had suggested that but in her fury it had barely registered. Why was she wasting time on the computer when she could just call Cindy and Jim? Better yet, she could drive up there for a visit. That would hopefully lead to another resort or at least a direction to look.
A sigh fogged the glass. If she didn’t have this heart issue, she’d just forget he even existed. She had a dad. She certainly didn’t need another one, especially one without a moral compass. Would her childhood have been different if Dad—Mitch—had known the truth about her? Would his attention have gone to Lindy or Maggie instead?
A corner of her mouth lifted. Maggie with her nose always in a book. Lindy teetering around in Mom’s heels from the time she could walk. Hard to imagine either of them dressed in waders standing in freezing cold water with a fishing pole. Or learning to set up a tent in driving rain.
A broken laugh erupted, and she shook her head. Nope. But she’d loved following him anywhere, shivering in a deer stand, reeling in a bass as he cheered, camping under the stars. Anything just to be with him.
She frowned. Maybe they were wrong. She was like Dad in every way. Well, except for her blue eyes. And the tangle of wavy blonde hair. But that came from her mother. She was Mitch’s daughter in every other way.
Modern medicine wasn’t always right. She straightened in the chair and glared at the folder holding the DNA results. They could have mixed her sample up with someone else’s. Her spine wilted. But how many people sent in that many samples for testing? And her mother’s story only solidified things—important things like she’d had an affair, Dad wasn’t her dad, nor were Lindy and Maggie her actual sisters.
She set the cup down with a bang and retrieved her jacket. She’d find this Kenny character and come to her own conclusion. But one thing was fact. She’d never call him “dad.”
At her parents’ house she let herself in, relieved Dad’s car
wasn’t in the driveway. “Mom!”
A brief silence then, “Mikayla? Oh, honey. I’m so glad you’re back.” Her mother appeared from the kitchen wiping her hands on a dishtowel, relief in her smile. “We have so—”
“I need more information on that man. More than a first name. You’ve got to have a photo or a letter with his address or something.”
Mom stopped short and blinked. “I don’t. It’s not like we kept in touch after…”
Disgust surged. “You slept with someone and didn’t even know his name!”
Pink filled her mother’s pale face. “If you’d let me explain a little more, you’d understand.”
“What’s to explain? You slept with the guy. I showed up. He waltzed off into the sunset while I grew up in a family where I never belonged. The rest is just excuses.”
“Of course you belonged! All three of you belong. To us and to each other.”
“You chose Lindy and Maggie,” Mikayla shot back, the words sharp against her tongue, “but you were stuck with me. A reminder of something you never wanted anyone to know about.”
Tears spilled down her mother’s cheeks. “Honey, I have never for one second been ashamed of you. I love you!”
Who was this woman weeping before her? Who said she wasn’t ashamed yet had raised Mikayla at a distance while refusing to acknowledge what she’d done? “I’ve never been like Lindy or Maggie which has always made you crazy. I’m probably more like him than you’d ever want to admit. You didn’t know what to do with your unexpected prize, so you pretended I was the awkward twin of the adopted daughter you did know what to do with.”
The angst of the words spilling from her mouth knotted her lungs until she couldn’t breathe. She needed distance from this mess. From her mother. “I’m going to Aunt Cindy’s. Hopefully she’ll be honest with me. Then I’m going to find him and make sure he knows what kind of man he really is.”