“Yup,” Audrey said, injecting false enthusiasm into her voice. “It’s me.”
The door to her mom and Adam’s bedroom opened. “Oh,” Laura said on seeing Audrey, face washed clean and hair tied up. “Are you going to bed? It’s only nine.” The on a Friday night went unspoken.
“I know. I wanted to get an early night.” Audrey pulled her robe closed and scuffed her socked feet. “Feeling pretty tired.”
Wrong thing to say, Audrey realized too late as her mom’s mouth twisted into a frown.
Laura reached out to press her hand against Audrey’s forehead. “Have you been taking the vitamins we bought? What about the herbal tea?”
“Yes.” Audrey swatted her mom’s hand away. “And that tea is disgusting. It tastes like ass.”
“It’s good for you,” her mom said. “You need to be taking care of yourself, Audrey. It’s not just you anymore, okay? I know you haven’t made a decision yet, but you do need to remember that right now.”
“Do you think I don’t know that?” Audrey closed her eyes, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Do you honestly think that I ever, for a single second, forget that it’s not just me anymore? Forget? Yeah, right.” She was aware of her voice rising, along with the heat of her blood, until she thought she might boil over and burn to the ground. “Fuck.”
“Hey,” her mom said sharply. “Watch it.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Audrey said. “I’ll watch my language. Because you know, cursing is only the beginning—pretty soon I’ll be drinking, and smoking, having sex, and then . . .” She laughed, a loud noise in the softly lit hallway. “Oh, wait. Too late!”
Audrey heard movement then and opened her eyes to see Adam halfway up the stairs, looking confused. “What’s going on? Audrey, is everything okay?”
Is everything okay? What kind of monumentally stupid question was that? She couldn’t remember the last time everything was anything but shit and broken pieces.
But she turned to Adam, shaking her head slightly. (Too much movement and her brain would explode.) “Everything is absolutely fan-fucking-tastic. Oh—” She glanced at her mom. “Sorry.”
Laura’s hands were clasped so tight that her knuckles were white with the effort of it. “Audrey, I understand that you’re upset—”
“You don’t understand anything,” Audrey said. “How could you ever?”
Her mom recoiled from Audrey’s words, and Audrey wanted to slap herself, realizing a second too late, as always, what those words sounded like. Like she was throwing her adoption in her mom’s face and God, no, no, that wasn’t what she meant.
(But if it wasn’t, then why had she even said it?)
Audrey shook her head, looking between her mom and Adam. I didn’t mean it like that, she wanted to say, I would never say that, you’re my mom, I don’t care how you came to be my mom, it doesn’t matter. She opened her mouth to take it back, but she already knew that it was too late. Things like that didn’t come back. “Sorry,” she said automatically. “God! I’m sorry for everything, okay?”
Adam grabbed at her hand. “Audrey—”
“No.” Audrey wrenched herself free from his grip. “Don’t. I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to hear anything that either of you has to say.”
She stomped upstairs, hearing the wind howling around the eaves, and balled up under her duvet with her hands pressed over her eyes and her teeth chattering together. She had no idea where the outburst had come from. She wished Julian wasn’t working a double shift so she could go hide at his place, for once, twined together on his couch. It would be better than being by herself. She was doing a pretty good job of pushing everybody away: her mom, Adam, Rose. Maybe it was best that she wasn’t with Julian, because she’d probably only find something to hate him for, too.
I’m so tired, she thought. Tired of it all.
When she finally fell asleep, no dreams came. There was only emptiness.
THIRTY
Even before she slipped out of the cocoon of her bed the next morning, Audrey could feel the coldness wrapping around her limbs. The low sun offered little brightness, but she was wide awake; already she felt restless and itching to be out of there.
She got dressed quickly, piling on the layers, and packed what she needed into her bag, then wavered in front of her door with her fingers on the knob. Nothing but the sound of silence came from the other side. She hadn’t heard anything else during the night, either, during the hours she’d been switching between staring at the ceiling and watching the insides of her eyelids.
Part of her had expected her mom to come after her last night, the way she usually did when Audrey yelled at her. Don’t take that tone with me, Laura would always say. If you want to discuss something, talk to me; don’t scream it. Haven’t I raised you better than that?
She had, Audrey thought. But apparently it didn’t matter how good a person she’d been taught to be: the treacherous, heartbreaking, bad person she truly was couldn’t be confined.
The stairs creaked under her steps, and she paused outside her mom and Adam’s bedroom but heard more nothing. She couldn’t stop herself from remembering standing in this exact spot the night before and the look on her mom’s face when she’d thrown out those words. You don’t understand anything. How could you ever?
Audrey pinched herself hard on the thigh, and her feet began working again, carrying her down the rest of the stairs and through the hall and finally out the front doorway.
The trees lining the street glittered with frost, but Audrey actually felt warmer out there than in the atmosphere of her house.
She pinched herself again as she headed toward her car. Yeah, she thought, and whose fault is that?
She found herself down by the river, the wind blowing off it especially biting, and she shivered even under her two T-shirts, sweater, wool-lined coat, and jade-green scarf with a matching hat that Julian’s mom had knitted for her. Her head ached and her throat felt sandpaper raw and she couldn’t shake the feeling from home—
Audrey inhaled sharply. No. She was not out here to think about how much her mom hated her right now. Even if it was true—and after last night, how could it not be? But she was here to forget all that.
She lifted her camera to her eye and snapped, capturing the family coming out of the diner in colorful puffer jackets next to a woman in pale-green scrubs. Early breakfast before a day of fun and a dinner at the end of the night shift, she guessed. Instinctively she pulled back, ready to check the shot in the LCD screen, but it wasn’t there.
Audrey clicked her tongue, readying herself for the next shot. When she’d grabbed her things, she’d decided to leave her DSLR behind for a change. The camera she held now was older than she was, and heavy, a remnant of her mom’s years in New York and the early days of LA. There was no digital screen, no memory card, no macro setting. Just actual film and a flash that emitted a high-pitched noise as it charged up. Laura had given it to her years ago when Audrey had begun messing around taking pictures, and Audrey had played with it for a few months before falling in love with a Nikon she’d saved up for, and since then the other one had been stowed away in the bottom of her closet.
To be honest, she hadn’t thought about it until she’d seen the long black strap snaking through the discarded clothes coating the closet floor. Maybe it was seeing it and remembering how happy she’d been when her mom had given it to her; maybe it was just the need to do something different. Or maybe it was thinking that once upon a time she’d been good enough for her mother, the sweet kind of child who was given nice gifts and was thankful and didn’t feel the need to rain vitriol like blossoms.
Her first mistake was not thinking about the whole film situation. Her second mistake was assuming that finding film wouldn’t be a problem. It took her five separate stores to find some, and then the cashier laughed in her face when she learned how much it would be.
But she’d paid the extortionate cost and wound her way to the river, and now here s
he was.
God knows what these will even come out like, Audrey thought as she squeezed her finger down and the shutter flashed closed and open in front of her eyes. They had a darkroom at school, which she’d known how to navigate once upon a time. Probably by the time she was finished developing them they’d be even worse than they should be, thanks to her shitty skills.
The shrill ring of her phone blasted into the calm, and Audrey barely glanced at it before answering. “Hi.”
“Hey,” Julian’s sleepy voice answered, crackling with the remnants of dreams. “I got your message. Why are you up so early?”
“Couldn’t sleep. I . . .” I got into a fight with my mom, she was going to say, but the thought of telling Julian what she’d said made her wish for the earth to open up beneath her. Audrey shifted on the bench that looked out over the water, ignoring the damp seeping through her jeans. “I thought coming out here would be good.”
“Is it?”
Audrey picked at the polish flaking off her nails instead of answering. “Can you come over tonight?”
“No, I’m working a double today.”
“Oh, yeah. Right. Sorry.” Audrey said. “Yeah, I remember. Okay.”
“I can swing by before, though.” That was followed by a yawn and the sound of Julian clearing his throat. “Or you could come here.”
As soon as he said that, Audrey ached to be there with him right then, curled up in his bed listening to his raspy voice right in her ear. “Yeah, I’ll come to you,” she said, her lips stinging from the want in her words. “Go back to sleep. I love you.”
“Love you more.”
“Not possible,” Audrey said. “Never possible.”
Julian laughed low. “Whatever you say. See you later.”
“See you,” Audrey echoed, and slipped the phone back into her pocket.
Her hand brushed against the other thing resting in there, the paper rustling against her fingers. Audrey paused for a second to watch the way the morning light reflected off the water; this was the best view in town, no doubt, but she was hardly ever up early enough to see it.
She sighed. “You are pathetic,” she said, whispering to herself fervently. “Seriously, truly, pathetically pathetic.”
Because all she was doing was stalling, like she seemed to spend her whole life doing.
Time to rip the Band-Aid off once more.
She brought her hand out of her pocket, clutching the thick cream envelope. When she’d grabbed the relic of a camera, she’d taken out the hidden-away shoe box and pried open the lid. What did she have to lose? Where else did she have to look for answers? She’d pushed away her best friend by being a—she hated to admit it but she had to—hypocritical, self-centered loser. Her mom was upset; Adam, too. She felt like she’d barely spoken to Olivia lately—the one person who’d been purely nice and sweet only because she wanted to, and Audrey had taken that for granted. So now Audrey had backed herself into a corner, and the only way out was to fight through to open space again.
And this letter, this . . . lifeline, maybe? She’d waited too long for this.
The paper tore satisfyingly when Audrey ran her nail along the top of the envelope. She pulled out a single sheet, folded neatly into thirds and covered in a looping script that filled Audrey with a strange comfort.
She sucked in a breath of sharp, snow-ready air and began to read.
Dear Audrey,
I wrote another letter like this a long time ago. I’m not sure if you ever read it, or if you even know that it exists, but I wrote it for you.
I don’t really know how to begin this one.
With my name, I suppose: Amanda Darby. I kept my name when I got married—I wanted to keep that part of me. I used to go by Mandy when I was younger, but my husband’s the only one who calls me that now, and my best friend. She’s known me since I had braces and stupid purple ribbons in my hair.
God, I’m rambling already.
Here’s the thing: I don’t know if I can write this letter. I know I can physically write the words on paper, but I’m not sure I’ll be allowed to get it to you. Which is my own fault—I was the one who didn’t want any communication, after all. I thought it would be easier that way, and I guess it has been, in some ways, but over the past few years I’ve spent more and more nights awake thinking about you. My husband says I get obsessive about things, and I won’t say he’s not right. We went to France last year on vacation, and now I’m nearly fluent. Weird, huh?
I guess I should say, not like I haven’t already, that I’m married, to a man who doesn’t think my obsessions are strange and always brings me breakfast on my birthday. We have two sons, five and three. My husband wanted a daughter, but I’d already had my girl, so two boys were okay with me.
What else . . . I went to college, got my degree. Not a very good college, but I worked hard to get through it and I’m proud of that. I work in design, websites and magazines mostly, which I love. We have a dog, a Siberian husky named Poppy that I got from a rescue when I graduated college, and two goldfish that the boys called Hugo and Egg (don’t ask).
There are so many questions I want to ask you. The reason I placed you for adoption was so that we could both have a chance at a good life, and now I have that good life, but I feel as if I can’t rest easy until I know you do, too. Your mom is a wonderful person, so I feel confident in thinking that she will have tried her best to give you a wonderful world, and that’s good.
But still, when I’m lying awake at night, I want to know whether you like cats or dogs. Do you play an instrument? Can you sing? Are you good at languages? (My boys speak Spanish and English—my husband’s Puerto Rican.)
I want to know, are you happy? Do you have friends? Has that first love hit you yet? What do you dream about? Where do you want to go?
I’m selfish, I know. I have no right to want to know all these things about you, and yet I do.
Mostly I want to know if you are happy, and I know that happiness is an oddly unquantifiable thing, but if any part of your answer could be yes, then I would be so happy.
I’m going to give this letter to the adoption agency, and maybe they’ll get it to you. It’s a long shot, but I’m going to try.
If you want to write me (another long shot, I admit), then please do. Of course I’ll understand if you don’t, so don’t worry about that at all.
All my love to you and Laura—I hope the two of you are as good together as you were the day you were born, Audrey.
Sincerely,
Amanda
Audrey gripped either side of the letter, steadying it against the wind.
Amanda Darby. Amanda Darby the graphic designer—like Adam, Audrey realized with the beginnings of a smile—with the husband who makes her breakfast and two little kids and a dog named Poppy.
None of the possible lives that Audrey had imagined over the years for “the girl Mandy” (she’d never be able to think of her as that again) came close to the actuality. Audrey hadn’t ever doubted that her adoption had been the best for everyone involved, but to know for certain that it was true? God, it was so— She forgot about the damp wood under her butt and the cold that made her fingers tingle and the difficult camera. None of that mattered in comparison to this.
Audrey’s eyes stung, from the wind and from the letter and from the aching in her heart, and the same question kept bouncing around in her head: why have I put this off for so long?
Well, duh: of course she knew why, but she wished she hadn’t. This—this was what she’d been searching for. The good thing she’d needed to remind her that things got better even when it didn’t seem like they ever could. Look at Amanda Darby and the place she’d been in seventeen years ago, and then look at the beautiful life she had now.
Look at the life Audrey herself had: family, friends, the best boy in the world. And sure, right now everything was fucked up and confusing and so, so hard, but still, she wouldn’t change it for anything.
There had been
a girl exactly like her all those years ago who’d made a hard decision for a good reason, and now look where they all were.
It was as if Amanda Darby had known, somehow, that Audrey needed this. This proof that the choice Amanda had made had been the right one for her and that whatever Audrey chose would be right for her, too. Adoption had been the right decision for Amanda, and Audrey had wanted, desperately sometimes, to believe it was the right decision this time around, too.
But it wasn’t.
She couldn’t do it. No: she didn’t want to do it. And as much as she wanted to believe in a fantasy world where she and Julian and their baby all lived happily ever after, she couldn’t do that, either. Neither of those things was the right one; she felt that deep down in her bones. The point of deciding, of having this wondrous and heavy ability to choose what she wanted to do, was to find for herself what was best for her, and Julian. Not what she wished was right, or what she dreamed of doing, but what she knew now was the only way for her to go.
Audrey had been scared to read the letter for fear of what it contained, and what those contents might push her toward. She’d thought that if Amanda Darby regretted it at all, it would make her decision harder, and change the way she thought about her whole life. She’d thought that if Amanda Darby didn’t regret it at all, it would push her closer to the adoption choice, even though she knew it wasn’t right for her. But, no. Reading those words written by the woman who’d gifted her with this life, what Audrey really saw was the power available to her right now. That power to choose the beginning of the rest of her life.
So that only left one thing.
The idea of an abortion—it had been playing in the back of her head ever since she’d found out she was pregnant. Think about all the options, Julian had said. And this was an option. The option, the best one. The only one that would let her—and Julian—go on with their lives. And oh, she wanted to live her life. And it was scary, but knowing that she had thought it through, that all the deliberating and worrying and everything else could be over soon—it filled Audrey with calm.
You Don’t Know Me but I Know You Page 16