*
There was no way I could avoid my dad after that revelation. The show was produced by his company. There’d been rumors that it was going to be cut so it wasn’t a huge surprise, but it still felt like someone had pulled the safety net from underneath me.
After I’d finished talking to Camilla, I called my dad. He answered after a couple of rings.
“Hi Dad.”
“Tate? Are you all right? Is something wrong?”
I supposed that was what I got for not answering his calls for so long.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to worry you. I just needed to clear my head. Did you know that our show got canceled?”
“How do you know?”
“It’s all over the internet.”
“They told the media before they told us? How nice of them,” he said. “Who else have you spoken to?”
“Only Camilla. She’s the one that told me.”
“Lucky I got back from London yesterday, then.” He yawned. “I’m still jet-lagged so need to sleep, but in the mean time you should talk to your team about putting something out on social media. Mention how you enjoyed working on the show, you’re sorry it’s over, you’ve got new stuff coming out, that sort of thing.”
“You don’t think it’s too soon? What if they change their mind?”
He scoffed. “They’ve been considering it for weeks. They won’t change their mind.”
“Oh.”
Don’t get me wrong, I’d wanted to leave. But it was also weird. I only had small parts in movies lined up because the show had eaten into so much of my time. Plus I’d been trying to segue into more adult roles. Now that it was actually going to happen, I suddenly needed my comfort blanket.
Dad yawned again. “I really need to go back to sleep. The jet lag gets worse as I get older. Can I come over later and we’ll talk?”
“Um…yeah,” I said, hoping he only meant about my show and not the adoption thing.
I hoped wrong.
*
“Your mother told me you found your adoption certificate,” said my dad as he walked through my front door. So he didn’t want to talk about my show. He’d just used it as an excuse to come over. Great.
Dad gravitated to the kitchen and went straight into the cupboard where I kept the vodka. He poured himself a glass, then sat on one of the barstools. “I hadn’t wanted you to find out like this. I’d wanted to be open about it from the start, but your mother…she was afraid that you’d spend your whole life thinking we weren’t good enough and wanting to know where you came from.”
“Not good enough? How could I ever think that!” I waved my arms around. “Everything I have is because of you two.”
He gave me a meek smile. I’d never seen him look so frazzled before. It was unnerving. “That doesn’t mean you wouldn’t still want answers. I can understand that.”
“Does Mom?”
“Not really,” he said. “She feels that we should be enough. She doesn’t understand that your heart is big enough for everyone.”
“She thinks I’ll leave you and not want you in my life anymore?”
“Something like that, yeah,” he said.
“Oh Dad,” I said. I put my arms around him and rested my head on his shoulder. “That would never happen. You know that, right?”
“Of course I do, but you and I have always been closer.” He kissed the top of my head. “Your mother worries easily. She always blamed herself for not being able to have children. She felt like her body had failed her.”
I sniffled. I hadn’t known that Mom couldn’t have children. We’d never really spoken about her pregnancy. I’d just assumed it had been difficult, so she hadn’t wanted to talk about it. Now, it made sense.
Since I’d almost always been homeschooled, the opportunity to do a family tree project and have the adoption discussion had never come up. How would they have responded if that had happened? Would they have lied?
Dad rubbed his hands together as he talked. Every so often he’d look up, pause, and sniffle. Did he still care about Mom, even if they were divorcing? Or was it more that he was having to talk about something he didn’t want to even think about? “It didn’t help that she didn’t have anyone to talk to. Everyone said that having a baby would solve her problems, but the ironic thing was that she couldn’t have a baby because of her problems.”
“That’s archaic!”
He nodded, his lips pursed. “That’s the way women’s health was back then. I don’t know if things have changed or not, but your generation is a lot more open about these things. It’s important you don’t lose that.”
“I’ll do my damnedest to make sure it doesn’t happen,” I said.
“That’s my girl,” he said, giving me a squeeze. “And remember: you’ll always be my girl.”
“Of course! I can’t believe Mom thought I’d ditch you if I found out I had other parents.”
He tucked my hair behind my ear. “It was a closed adoption, so we have no idea who your birth parents are. There are ways to find them if they want to be found, but she was worried the concept of a closed adoption and them saying that they didn’t want to see you would’ve upset you. She was trying to protect all of us by keeping it a secret.”
I understood where he was coming from, but a part of me resented that the choice had been taken away from me. Shouldn’t it have been my decision to make? Shouldn’t my parents—who’d always preached the importance of honesty—have been honest with me about something this big from the start?
“It just feels so hypocritical. Mom always said how important it was to be honest, and yet there she was, lying to me my whole stupid life.”
Dad sighed. “I’m sorry. We never should’ve put you in that position, and you never should’ve found out like that.”
“But I did,” I whispered.
“But you did. And now we have to decide what to do next.”
“You should get back to work,” I said.
“I’ve told you before: you’ll always come first in my world. If you need me, I’m there. A movie set won’t stop running because I leave. If the director or one of the actors leaves, then we have bigger problems, but it can manage without me for a few days.”
“Doesn’t it look bad, though?”
“A father leaving for a family emergency? No, that makes me look even better to them,” he said with a smirk. “Plus, I’m their boss. What are they going to do?”
“Oh Dad.” I fought back tears as I kissed his cheek.
“You know,” he said, “you should really return your mother’s calls. She’s worried about you.”
I suppressed a sigh. “Worried about how I’ve taken the fact that you’ve both lied to me for my entire life?”
“Tate,” he said scoldingly. He only used that voice when I was in trouble. Oops.
“Sorry,” I said. “I guess I should hear her side of things.”
He nodded. “It might help you understand.”
*
After a few more nudges from my dad and Trinity, I begrudgingly went to my mom’s apartment the next morning. She greeted me with a conflicted smile: she was happy to see me but trying to suppress how happy she was so that she didn’t look over excited.
“Oh, Tate—”
I stepped away from her. I wasn’t sure why she’d done what she did, but I still wasn’t comfortable being around her after what I’d found out. The hypocrisy of it infuriated me.
My mom lowered her arms and her head. She didn’t look as polished as she usually did. The only other times I’d seen her look less-than-polished were when she was in bed for days on end because she was feeling depressed. It had been something she’d dealt with for as long as I could remember, but as far as I knew, she’d never been to a doctor about it. She just let it consume her for days, weeks, or months. If I had meetings or needed to travel, then she’d come with me, but she’d be as quiet in the background as she was in her room when she stared up at the ceiling.
Dressed in sweatpants and a baggy shirt, she looked like she’d given up. Something tugged at my heart, but I still couldn’t forgive her for what she’d done. Why should she teach me one thing, then follow a different rule herself? That wasn’t fair.
“Would you like a drink?” she offered.
“No. Thank you.”
I went into her living room and sat on the ugly red love seat. She followed, having the sense to sit on a different chair.
She’d added some more touches to her apartment to make it more homey since the last time I’d been there. Pictures on the walls, some flowers, and a new smart speaker. I’d always assumed we hadn’t had a smart speaker at home because Mom hadn’t liked them, but apparently it was Dad that didn’t and she’d just gone along with it. Interesting.
“Have you spoken to your dad?” she said, fiddling with her cuticles.
“Yes,” I said. “But I’d like to hear your side of things.”
She shifted in her seat, staring at her hands as if they had all the answers. “OK, I suppose.” She closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths, as if she was trying to prepare herself for what was to come. Was talking to me about it really that difficult?
Then again, she had avoided the topic for twenty years. Had she spoken to anyone about it during that time?
“OK. OK.” More deep breaths. I wished I hadn’t asked, given how worked up she seemed. It felt cruel to put her through it. But if she hadn’t waited so long, would it have been easier?
Finally, she began: “We tried for years to have a baby. I was so desperate you have no idea. But I’d had issues with my periods for years. The doctors did some investigating and found out that I had endometriosis, which can affect your fertility. And it ruined mine. We could’ve gone through the pain and suffering of things like IVF or a surrogate, but I’d spent years with my body working against me. I couldn’t handle the pain of a miscarriage or stillbirth or any of the things that were more likely because of my endometriosis.”
“Like what Trinity has?” I said.
She sighed. “Yes, but worse. I was in so much pain during my period I couldn’t get out of bed. If I did, I’d walk at a ninety-degree angle. No painkillers touched the pain. I’d black out in the middle of eating dinner or having a conversation. It may not have been fatal, but there were days I wished it was. Every doctor dismissed it as a ‘women’s problem.’ Their solution? For me to get pregnant.” She scoffed. “I loved the irony. It was like they thought I hadn’t been trying. But I was done. So I got a hysterectomy in my thirties, then we adopted you.”
“That sounds a little extreme.”
“It took a few attempts to find a surgeon that would do one on a young woman who hadn’t had a child yet, but when you’re blacking out in pain and there’s no cure, there are only so many times they can say no when you’re in the doctor’s office crying and begging.”
Wow. I had no idea she’d been through so much. Or that she’d bottled up so much for so long. It was clear that what she’d been through was still difficult for her. Could that be why she struggled so much with depression? A depression she was in denial about, that was.
“I’m really sorry, Mom.”
She swallowed, her eyes growing puffy as she held back tears. “Thank you.”
I was desperate to find out everything about how my adoption had come about but also aware that pushing her could seem cruel. But then, she hadn’t exactly put my feelings first for the last twenty years.
She looked up and met my gaze. Her expression was fierce. “I don’t regret adopting you.”
“Not even the part where you lied to me? You spent my whole life telling me about how important it was to be honest, then you lied to me about one of the most important things in my life. When would you have told me if I hadn’t found the paperwork? Had you forgotten it was even there?”
She placed her hands in her lap and stared into them. “Yes. It’s sat at the back of my closet for years. The longer I went without telling you, the harder it was. I didn’t know what to do. I was afraid that if you met your birth parents, you’d prefer them over me.”
Her. Not her and Dad. Her. That said everything.
“I know I wasn’t the perfect mother, but I couldn’t bear the thought of losing you. You were all I had.”
“You have your own business!”
She scoffed. “It mostly runs without me. I can sit here and let it generate money. I don’t need to put the effort in. What I needed was to feel like someone needed me. And you did.”
Until a few months ago, when I’d asked to start going to meetings on my own.
“That’s a lot of weight to put on one person.”
Her shoulders fell. “I know. And perhaps I shouldn’t have. But it was all I’d ever wanted. I’m not wired like you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that you’re strong and independent and I admire that about you. They’re things I’ve never been,” she said.
“But there’s no reason you can’t learn to be those things.”
“Perhaps,” she said. “But what matters to me more is making things up to you.” She shifted forward in her seat. “Just tell me what I need to do.”
I stared into my lap, my mind a sea of emotions. I didn’t know how I felt about my mom and what had happened. She’d been through something terrible, and it had caused her to do horrible things to me. I’d always love her, but there was really only one thing that could make me feel better in that moment.
“Nothing. There’s nothing you can do. I’m going to hire someone to help me find my birth parents. That doesn’t mean I see you and Daddy as less than them, but I need to do this for myself.”
Her face fell. She looked like she was suppressing tears. But I didn’t care. One conversation wasn’t going to magically fix two decades of lies.
“Tate—”
“Please give me some space. I really don’t know how to handle all of this right now.” I walked out and left, feeling both guilty and relieved. Guilty because I knew how upset she’d be at my not wanting to speak to her, but relieved that I wouldn’t have to carry someone else’s emotional weight around with me. Did that make me a bad person?
7
Tate
You had a secret
You couldn’t keep it
But you didn’t give me answers
So now I’m taking my chances.
— “Chances,” Tate Gardener
I arranged to meet a private investigator at his office a few days later. It was the same one Trinity had used to get info on her dad so that the court would agree to her emancipation. She came with me to meet him.
I had no idea what to expect from him or what the process would be like, but I needed to know where I came from. What my life could’ve been like. I was lucky; I knew that. I didn’t hate my parents, I just hated that they were divorcing. A part of me would forever wonder who the people that created me were, no matter what happened. I needed to satisfy that insatiable curiosity.
“How long do you think it’ll take him to find them?” I asked. The assistant had given us both drinks, gestured to a couch for us to sit on, then returned to her computer and left us to wait. Why did waiting always feel like it took forever?
Trinity shrugged. “Depends on what the adoption agency is like. Your birth parents may not even want to meet you.”
“Hmph.”
There was no need for her to be such a killjoy.
Ever since I’d found my adoption certificate I’d been dreaming about what they were like. It clouded everything else that was going on in my life. I didn’t even care that much about Jack or my show or the divorce because I just kept wondering what my biological parents were like. Would they like me? Had they heard my music? Seen my shows or movies? Would they be proud of me? Who was I kidding? Of course they’d heard of me! And what parent wouldn’t be proud of what I’d achieved. I’d achieved more than most people could in their lifetimes, let
alone before the age of twenty.
“You’re daydreaming again, aren’t you?” said Trinity.
“What’s wrong with that?” I asked.
She rolled her eyes. “It’s nauseating.”
I pursed my lips. “You don’t have to be so surly about the whole thing.”
“Just don’t want you hyping them up in your head and they turn out to suck, that’s all,” she said.
That’s what she said, but I was pretty sure she was just jealous. If she could’ve had a chance at a second set of parents I knew she would’ve taken it. Her parents’ behavior wasn’t her fault, but they weren’t exactly role models. Even the nannies she’d had had been terrible. The ones she’d gotten attached to her father had fired for stupid reasons, leaving her alone and isolated from pretty much everyone except me and anyone she worked with. And she didn’t get along with a lot of her coworkers. They were always telling her she was wrong and acting like a drama queen. She wasn’t, she just knew what she wanted. Why was that so wrong?
“What’s the PI like?” I asked, sort-of changing the subject.
“He gets the job done. Isn’t that what matters?”
“That makes him sound shady,” I said.
“No, he’s not shady. Just a guy of few words.”
The PI walked in through the front door a few minutes later. He was a gruff-looking man with very little hair. I was disappointed to find he didn’t wear a trench coat or a trilby. He had on biker leathers and thick-rimmed glasses. Noticing us sitting on the sofa, he shook our hands.
“It’s nice to meet you, Miss Gardener. Trinity spoke very highly of you,” said the PI in a hoarse voice.
“Please, call me Tate,” I said. “It’s good to meet you too. Thank you for agreeing to help me.”
“I hope I can get you the answers you need. If you’d like to come with me,” he said, going into his office. We followed him in. He took off his biker leathers to reveal grey suit trousers and a white button-down shirt.
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