by Erica Boyce
Ella shrugged. “It was stupid.” She put her book down. “I can’t believe I thought he was still alive.”
Rebecca sighed. “No, it wasn’t. It’s hard to accept these things. He loved you so very much, though.”
Ella nodded, her face serious, and leaned forward to hug Rebecca so fiercely that Rebecca rocked back on her heels a little. She heard Ella sniffle as Rebecca gingerly wrapped her arms around Ella’s shoulders.
“They’ve been fighting in there a while, huh?” Ella said when she drew herself back.
“They have,” Rebecca said. “Could you hear what they were saying?”
“Yeah.” Ella scrubbed at her runny nose. “Some lady in there is Lacey’s real mom, and my mom thinks it’s her fault my dad went out.” She looked down and fiddled with her book.
“That’s about right,” Rebecca said. And then it dawned on her—the one thing that might make Ella happy in all this mess. “You know what else?”
“What.” Ella dog-eared one page, then the next.
Rebecca put her hand over Ella’s to still it. “Lacey is your cousin.”
Ella’s jaw dropped. Her eyes lit up. “Really?”
Rebecca nodded.
Ella jumped down off the chair. “I’ve gotta go tell her! I’ll see you later, okay?” Before Rebecca could stop her, she opened the door and slipped inside.
Rebecca stood and considered following but stopped herself. Diane was in there. This wasn’t Rebecca’s responsibility anymore.
She turned away and saw an old man standing nearby with his head craned toward the shouting still coming from the room. She raised one eyebrow, and he harrumphed along on his way. She walked back toward the hospital entrance.
Her phone rang just as she walked through the doors. Still addled from everything, she didn’t even check who it was before answering.
“Rebecca? It’s Ophelia Walsh.” Ophelia’s voice already trembled with rage.
Rebecca closed her eyes and told herself not to sigh. As a library board member, Ophelia was effectively Rebecca’s employer. It would do no good to brush aside whatever small complaint Ophelia was calling her about, no matter how inconvenient the timing. “Hello, Ophelia,” she said. “How can I help you?”
“I’ve just heard about what happened with that girl at the library,” Ophelia said. “And you—how could you—it’s just atrocious,” she continued, so affronted she tripped over the words.
“Yes, it’s terrible what’s happened to her.”
“What happened to her?” Ophelia’s voice rose. “What’s happening to our library? Druggies are just passing out on our floor now? This is a community space! How can our children continue to use it the way it’s intended when they’re surrounded by addicts?”
“Well.” Rebecca sucked in her breath. “I hardly think there’s a crowd of addicted—”
“And her mother!” Ophelia cut in. “Her mother caters our functions! That doesn’t seem appropriate now, does it? I demand that we find another caterer. Someone more fitting.”
The air stuck in Rebecca’s windpipe. Maureen Carson, bent over Lacey’s hospital bed, her worst fears written all over her face.
And Lacey, Lacey. So small in that bed. So pale and fragile. Rebecca knew administering the Narcan was not the only thing she could do for Lacey. There was so much more she should do—she could do—to help that girl recover. So: “No,” she said quietly.
After a stunned, silent beat, Ophelia said, “I’m sorry?”
“No,” Rebecca said, louder this time.
“I’m not sure you understood me. This was a demand, not a request. Our library cannot be seen as affiliated with—”
“And I’m not sure it’s within your powers as a board member to determine who our library does and does not contract with.” Actually, Rebecca was fairly certain it was within Ophelia’s powers, but she kept herself steady and stared out at the cars in the parking lot as if daring them to do something about it.
“Well,” Ophelia said. “Well then.” It appeared she was finally at a loss, but it lasted only a moment before she said, “In that case, I will be resigning from the board immediately.”
Rebecca raised her eyebrows. Was Ophelia bluffing? Was she trying to get Rebecca to give in? “That’s a shame,” Rebecca said. “We will miss your input,” she lied.
“I—” Ophelia stuttered.
“I have to ask, though,” Rebecca interrupted, “why it’s so important to you that we cut ties with Maureen Carson. It seems to me that if we didn’t allow anyone who’d been affected by addiction into our midst, we wouldn’t have very many contracts at all.”
Ophelia sniffed loudly. “It’s a matter of principle.” And then, there was just the dial tone.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Ella’s mom didn’t notice when she snuck into the room. They probably didn’t even know Ella could hear them arguing out in the hall. One old man in a robe and slippers had walked by where Ella sat at least four times, wheeling an IV bag behind him, his steps slowing each time he passed. He stopped just short of cupping his ear to the door. Ella glowered at him each time, but he just grinned right back at her.
Lacey was awake but lying down, her face still as she watched the three women fight around her.
Ella approached the bed and slipped her hand into Lacey’s. Lacey squeezed her hand weakly. Ella could smell that she was wearing lotion, Ella’s favorite scent from the store at the mall, the one that smelled like cherries.
“Hey, kidlet,” Lacey wheezed.
“Did you hear?” Ella whispered. “We’re cousins! Isn’t that amazing?”
Lacey nodded. Her eyes were wet, probably because she was so happy. Ella looked down and patted her hand where the IV went in. They used pretty weak tape for those things, and it was already coming unpeeled.
“You’re sick,” Ella said. “Like, on drugs?”
“Yes,” Lacey whispered.
“Sorry I got mad at you and made you go take them,” Ella said. She bit her lip.
“Oh, Ella,” Lacey said. “It’s not your fault. I promise.”
“You weren’t really off visiting your grandparents in September, were you?”
Lacey shook her head.
Ella knit her brows together and bowed her head. It was still Lacey’s hand beneath hers, bitten nails and all. “You’re gonna go away again and get better, right?” Ella said. “For real this time? I’ve always wanted a cousin.”
“Sure,” Lacey said. “Of course.”
And neither of them could tell if she was telling the truth. But Ella knew that Lacey wanted it to be true. Just like Ella wanted her dad to be alive. Maybe this time, Ella could help make it happen.
Chapter Thirty-Three
When Lacey first woke up to the sound of the three women arguing, she didn’t know if she was dreaming or maybe it was a nightmare. Then again, maybe she had died and was watching the whole bizarre thing unfold from somewhere else. And then Ella had appeared, full of unfathomable forgiveness, and made Lacey feel real again.
After Ella had extracted her promise, she squeezed Lacey’s hand and sat back to read her book. Mrs. Staybrook would probably be mad when she realized Ella was there, but Ella didn’t seem to care. And the three kept going, arguing around and around again.
One of them was her mother, of course, as hopped up on anger as Lacey’d ever seen her. One was her aunt now. And the third was her bio mom apparently, the one some people insisted on calling her real mom, the one who hadn’t wanted her, the one to whom—it stung to remember—Lacey had opened up about her fights with Maureen. Lacey wished she could take it all back. This woman didn’t deserve to know her mother’s weaknesses and flaws.
“Genetic or not,” Maureen said or rather snarled, “it’s a disease and one my sweet girl has been completely helpless before. We’ve both been helpless
. It would’ve been nice to at least have a heads-up, to know what to look out for.”
“Surely there’s something we could’ve done if we’d known,” Diane said.
Maureen glanced back at Diane.
“She thinks you’re still sweet underneath there?” the beetle said. “I don’t think so. Defective,” it said. “Defective, defective, defective.”
Enough. Lacey jammed the heels of her hands into her temples. “Shut up,” she said. “Shut up, shut up, shut up.”
It was loud enough to hear.
“Lacey?” Maureen said, suddenly quavering. “Oh, thank God.”
All three of them moved toward the bed, but Maureen got there first. She swept her arms around Lacey and pulled her close. Lacey hugged her back as tightly as she could.
“Lacey, Lacey, oh, thank Christ,” Maureen said into Lacey’s matted hair.
“Hi, Mom,” Lacey said, and then, more softly, “I’m sorry.”
“No.” Maureen pulled back and wiped the back of her hand over her face. She grasped Lacey by the shoulders. “This is not your fault, do you hear me? You’re sick, and we just need to try again.”
Lacey nodded slowly.
Annie stepped closer. “Lacey, hi,” she said. “There’s something I should tell you.”
“I heard,” Lacey said, settling her hands in her lap.
A small, trembling smile grew on Annie’s face.
Lacey couldn’t stand to see it. “Please leave.”
“What?” Annie said, though all of them had heard her. “I was only trying to—”
“I need you,” Lacey said, one word at a time, “to leave.” The beetle was quiet, waiting to see what would happen. Lacey’s stomach turned, and she couldn’t tell if it was out of anger or grief. Here she was, the woman Lacey’d been looking for all her life in one way or another. There was no treacly music or shy greeting at the airport. Instead, there was this: Lacey in a hospital bed and Annie with her eyes on the floor as she gathered her things.
The door closed behind her, and Maureen started to say something, her face crinkled with concern. But then she stopped herself and leaned forward to tuck a chunk of hair out of Lacey’s face.
“Ella? What are you doing there?” Diane said, finally turning toward the chair next to Lacey’s bed. Ella looked up from her book warily, but Diane just sighed. “I should’ve known you’d sneak in. How much did you hear?”
“Is it true Lacey’s my cousin?” Ella asked in response.
Lacey held her breath. Would Diane deny it? She wouldn’t want her daughter growing closer to someone like Lacey.
Diane touched Maureen’s elbow and looked down at Lacey. “It’s true,” she said. “It’s good to have you back, sweetie. And in the family, too.”
For the first time all day, Lacey smiled.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Dusk was just starting to creep in around the edges of the white-bright hospital room. The buzzing of the fluorescent lights crammed Lacey’s head. Everything ached in the usual way. Again, she pictured Ms. Bray—she refused to think of her as anything else, not “my bio mom,” not “Annie”—her face twisted up and pink as she scurried out of the room. As she ran away again. Lacey wondered with a sickening lurch if she’d be going to a bar tonight.
Then, there was her mom, her mother, head bowed, sitting by the bed. Lacey finally begged her to leave. The beetle—or her “generalized anxiety disorder” or whatever Ms. Bray wanted to call it—was skittering all over the place, scraping its legs across the place where her scalp met her spine, hissing and spitting. “You’ve done it now,” it said. “Shouldn’t have made that woman go away. Neither of them will want you anymore. Your fault.”
Now, in the empty quiet, she pressed her hands to her temples again, the IV tugging at her skin. Focus, she had to focus. She’d just found her bio mom, the woman she’d been looking for, consciously or not, willingly or not, for as long as she could remember. The woman for whom she’d been unwanted. The one who’d given her her brown hair and maybe the beetle and maybe the addiction but had also given her her real mom in some small way. Lacey wished she could be angry about it, but all she felt was emptied.
On the day her mom took her to the adoption agency, her friend Amanda had come over for a sleepover. Lacey sat at her desk, supposedly doing her math homework but really staring at the wall while the beetle made wide pirouettes. Amanda’s bright voice—the one she used with parents—filtered up the stairs. She’d just started dating Derek at the time, and it felt like Lacey hadn’t seen her in weeks.
Lacey heard her mother’s low murmuring, and Amanda’s voice dipped, concerned. Lacey winced. Her mom believed in collecting a team of women and using their wisdom and strength to problem solve together. It was progressive, Lacey guessed, but it meant her struggles and fights with her mom were never all that private. She hated it when that team extended to Lacey’s own friends.
Sure enough, when Amanda got to her room, sympathy was scribbled in wrinkles across her forehead.
Lacey sighed. “She told you about what happened at the agency,” Lacey said.
“I can’t believe she won’t release her info,” Amanda said, flopping down onto Lacey’s bed. “I mean, what kind of person gives birth to a kid and then never wants to see it again?”
Lacey shrugged and turned back to her desk. An ant was crawling slowly along the spine of her textbook. She flicked it away. “Whatever. It’s not like I need her at this point anyway.”
“But aren’t you curious?” Amanda sat up and hugged a pillow to her middle. “Don’t you want to know what she looks like or, like, what she does for work?” Her eyes were bright, like this was her own private mystery to solve.
It struck Lacey that they’d never talked about it before, not really. Just like everybody else, Amanda knew she was adopted, but she never brought it up. Lacey thought it was unremarkable to Amanda. To her, she wasn’t the adopted kid. She was just Lacey. But maybe it was just that Amanda felt she needed permission to ask about it.
“Why would I want to find out about someone who doesn’t want to know me?” Lacey mumbled.
“Oh, screw that.” Amanda tossed the pillow aside and scooted to the edge of the bed. “She was probably, like, our age when she had you. She didn’t know any better, and now she’s being stupid and stubborn. Anyway, your mom was telling me—” She wrinkled her nose. “Um, your other mom. The one downstairs. She was saying there are other ways to find her. Private investigator type shit.”
Lacey opened her desk drawer and pushed aside a pile of notebooks. She pulled out a small, white box and put it in Amanda’s lap.
Amanda picked up the box and squinted at it, as if she could see through the cardboard. She tilted it from side to side. “What is it?”
“A DNA test.” Lacey reached over and closed her bedroom door. Her mom was slamming pots around in the kitchen, probably getting ready to cook her feelings. “There’s a cotton swab in there, and you get some of your spit on it and mail it in. They’ve got a whole database of people who’ve done it, and they can match you to anyone who’s in there that you’re related to. Sometimes, if you get in touch with those matches, they can tell you who your birth parents are.”
“Whoa.” Amanda picked at the flaps.
They opened easily. Lacey had already peeled away the tape, sifted through the box, and read the instructions. She’d looked up vlogs online of adoptees who’d found their families.
She’d ordered the kit one brightly moonlit night before she’d sent her forms to the adoption agency, when everything still seemed possible and she’d felt undeniably optimistic, thinking she could meet her birth parents and find out about her extended family, too, while she was at it. Why not? The beetle was quiet that night as she lay awake in bed. Her bio parents would respond to her request with heartfelt letters explaining how they wished they could’ve
kept her and they couldn’t wait to meet her. Maybe they’d send her an old, beaten-up teddy bear they’d bought at the hospital when she was born and held onto ever since.
“You should do it. Definitely,” Amanda said. She held the box clamped between her hands and nodded firmly.
“If she doesn’t want to be found, she doesn’t want to be found.”
“What she doesn’t want is you,” the beetle whispered.
“Lacey.” Amanda sighed, still cradling the box. “You deserve to find her.”
Lacey opened her mouth to protest, but there was nothing left. There might still be extended family who wanted to meet her, even if her bio mom didn’t. She could send in the test and find lists and lists of second cousins, aunts, great-uncles, her family ballooning right before her eyes in steady italics. Her mom would organize a family reunion, and their backyard would fill with masses of people with dark hair and freckles and honking, embarrassing laughs. People like her.
She’d seen the commercials for the DNA test. It could be true for her.
It was sort of a game after that. Amanda clapped when Lacey rolled the swab over the inside of her cheek, bouncing up and down with glee so the springs on Lacey’s bed creaked. Lacey slipped the envelope under her shirt, the paper cool and smooth against her clammy skin, and they told her mom they were heading out to get ice cream. They giggled as they slammed Amanda’s car doors behind them.
At the post office—Amanda insisted they mail it at an actual post office, not the drop box outside the grocery store, even though it was late and the post office was closed anyway—Lacey hesitated on the sidewalk.
“Come on, do it,” Amanda whispered, planting one hand on Lacey’s shoulder and pushing her forward.
Amanda probably imagined herself as the coach in an inspirational movie, with rain streaming down her face and a headset around her neck. The image made Lacey smile, and she focused on that instead of the sour taste of panic in her mouth as she stuffed the envelope in the mail slot.