by Paula Kay
“True, but I think you do need to speak to your parents first. Iz, they might have some answers for you. Did that e-mail have a reply from your mom?”
Isabella thought for a moment. She’d been so taken aback by the email, had she even noticed if there was a reply? She didn’t think so, but now she couldn’t be sure. And the number had been there at the end. Surely her mother would have responded to an e-mail like that in some way. Wouldn’t she? And what about the trust fund? What the heck was that all about?
She suddenly realized that she hadn’t mentioned that part of it to Thomas.
“Oh, and I didn’t tell you. In the letter, this guy—Douglas—said that there was a trust fund for me too.”
Thomas arched one of his eyebrows and Isabella laughed lightly at the look on his face. This was the silly Thomas that she knew and loved.
“Now, that’s very interesting, isn’t it?”
Isabella nodded. “It is. I mean, I’m not imagining it could be a lot of money or anything. I think Arianna—my mother—would have been very young at that time. I don’t really know for sure because of everything I’ve not talked about with my parents, but I assume she was young when she had me, anyway.”
Thomas was nodding, but he looked thoughtful. “I dunno. I mean, usually a trust fund isn’t a small deal. I mean, most people wouldn’t go through the trouble of that unless there was something substantial to go in it.”
Isabella thought about it for a few seconds. “Well, maybe it’s different because she didn’t know me. I mean maybe it was more about her connecting with me in some way.” Isabella felt her heart jump just a bit with the thought of that. To Isabella, the thought of her birth mother wanting that connection to her was beyond anything that she’d feel about inheriting some sum of money.
Thomas squeezed her hand. “Well, then I guess you should probably start by having a conversation with your parents.” He winked at her and Isabella knew that he was right.
It was finally time to get the answers to questions that she’d had all her life.
Chapter 9
Isabella sat on the edge of the bed, her throat sore after having just thrown up in her bathroom. Her darn nervous stomach. When was it ever going to get any better? She didn’t want to be that girl at Harvard, freaking out over every test or important project. She’d tried to calm her nerves by writing in her journal, but it was only a jumbled mess. She tucked these thoughts away and tried to focus on her breathing.
She knew that her parents would be downstairs in the living room, fighting their own nerves right now. She’d gone back to Thomas’s house after they’d finished talking in the park. She hadn’t been ready to confront her parents just yet, but Thomas had made her send a quick text to her mom telling her that she was okay and would be home later.
Her mother had tried to phone her several times, but she seemed to be giving her some space once Isabella had sent the text. Hours later she’d arrived back home to find her parents visibly upset and seemingly frantic to speak with her. Isabella had asked for fifteen minutes to herself and told them that when she came downstairs to talk, she expected answers from them—answers to each and every question that Isabella was going to have.
It was the first time that Isabella had truly felt like the adult she now was. She owed it to herself, her parents, and their relationship to have an honest conversation—to not hold back anything that she was feeling—to not worry about only her parents’ feelings for once in her life. At least, she’d try not to.
Now, if she could only stop throwing up due to it all.
Her phone dinged and she picked it up to see a text from Thomas.
Have you talked to them yet?
Not yet. In 10 min. I’m SO nervous.
Don’t be nervous. I think everything’s going to be fine. Hard, but fine, Iz.
Thank you. And for today. It really helped having you to talk to. xo
Of course. That’s what friends are for, silly. Go get em. Be honest. Call me later. xo
Isabella clicked off the phone and then did manage to write the quick exercise in her journal.
Big scary thing: the most honest conversation she’d had thus far with her parents.
Worst case scenario: hmm…she feared some answers that would make her feel worse than she already did. But what could those possibly even be? She already knew that her birth mom was gone. That was pretty darn bad.
How likely was the worse case scenario and could she die as a result? Not likely; she couldn’t imagine feeling worse, but she guessed that there were things her parents could say that could make their relationship go in a bad direction. That would be pretty bad actually. No matter how angry Isabella was feeling now, she had an intense amount of love and respect for her parents—even if these feelings were twisted by feelings of weird guilt at times. And no, probably no one was going to die as a result of anything that was said.
Best case scenario: She’d find out information about her birth mother—a young woman called Arianna. And so maybe she’d be able to finally fill in some of the missing pieces that she’d been feeling about herself for the past few years.
She closed her journal and took a deep breath. Yes, she was going to make this conversation worth every bit of anxiety she’d been feeling.
Isabella sat on a chair across from where her parents sat on the sofa together, holding hands and looking every bit as apprehensive as Isabella felt. They’d both come to her right away when she finally came down the steps a few minutes ago. She’d let them hug her, but for now at least, there was a wall up between them. Her parents had put that wall there—and Isabella felt that only complete honestly from them now would bring it down.
Her mother began. “I just want to first of all say that I’m so sorry for the way you found out about Arianna—about your birth mother.”
Isabella could sense how difficult it was for her mother to even use the words “birth mother.” Even though Arianna wasn’t alive, Isabella could see something that looked like fear on her mother’s face. What was she afraid of?
She nodded and waited for her mother to continue.
“Isabella, it’s not that we were never planning to tell you. It just never seemed like the right time, and you’ve not asked any questions for so long. We just—we didn’t know the right way to handle it, I guess.”
Her father’s arm went around her mother, pulling her nearer to him just a bit.
A united front was what they were. Under normal circumstances, Isabella would appreciate that about her parents, but at the moment, it made her angry—like it was them against her. Even as she had the thought, she knew it wasn’t exactly true, though. They might be united as a couple but they were never against her. She did know that deep down.
“Isabella”—it was her father speaking to her now—“we’ll tell you everything we know, but we want to warn you that it’s not much—not at this point anyway.”
Isabella’s heart fell at the words. It was more than she’d had a week ago, at any rate.
“Okay. So did you respond to that e-mail that I saw? Did you end up calling Douglas then all those years ago?”
She’d directed the question to her mother, who was nodding her head just as soon as Isabella started talking.
“Yes. Well, not at first, I’ll admit. We weren’t really sure what to do about it. It was all such a shock. Something that we’d never expected because of the closed adoption. So I didn’t respond to the e-mail and if I remember the timing correctly, maybe a week later Douglas left a voice message.”
Her parents’ eyes met and it was her father who continued then.
“We’d discussed everything at that point and then we did call him back—and we had a few brief conversations after that, but Isabella, we didn’t really ask a lot of questions.”
Isabella felt the first stinging of tears in her eyes.
“What do you mean? Why? Do you even know how she died?”
“Come sit here with us. Please, Izzy.”
Isabella obeyed, coming to sit next to her father on the one end of the sofa.
“We do know how she died, yes. She had an inoperable brain tumor. She was only twenty-two.” Her parents’ eyes met again as her father reached out his hand to take Isabella’s. “You were seven years old when she passed away.”
She had been only twenty-two, just four years older than Isabella was now. It was hard to imagine.
Isabella felt oddly a bit disconnected from the information she was hearing. Her real grief was over the fact that she’d not have the opportunity to ever meet her mother; and now that she’d had a little time to process that fact, her mind was full of questions. Questions that she’d hoped her parents would be able to answer for her, but now that seemed to not be the case.
“Okay. So did this Douglas guy say anything else? Who was—who is he anyway?”
Her mother stood up and her father scooted down on the sofa so that she could come around to sit on the other side of Isabella.
“Well, he was her attorney, but I do think he was also her friend. He seemed very emotional about her passing and he was very passionate about getting the message to us.”
“He was?”
Her mother reached over to take Isabella’s hand. “Yes, he was. We told him that when you were older, we’d be sure that you had the information that you needed and he assured us that we could get in touch with him at any time.”
Isabella looked at her mother’s face as she continued:
“So I guess that time is now, huh?”
So much of the anger Isabella had been feeling toward her parents dissipated with those simple words. She reached out to hug her mother then.
“I want to know about her but—but, you know that you’ll always be my mother”—she looked over at her dad—“you’ll always be my parents.”
They were all wiping away tears now, even Isabella’s father, whom she’d rarely seen shed a tear.
“So, do you want us to call Douglas? We’ll help you however you’d like us to be involved—or not, honey. You’re eighteen and it’s all your call now,” her father said.
“And there is something else you should know about,” her mother said.
“The trust fund?” Isabella asked and then, seeing their reaction, added, “It was in the e-mail I read also.”
“That’s right. So, yes. This is a good thing for you to know and a reason why we really were going to tell you about this soon, Isabella. I hope you know that,” her mother said. “We didn’t get anything specific when we’d talked to Douglas back then. I don’t know—I guess we just didn’t want anything to be about the money. It wouldn’t have gone to you until you turned eighteen anyway, so now is exactly the right time to find out about it.”
“It’s not really about the money for me either. Mostly I want to find out about her—about Arianna.” She turned toward her father. “About contacting Douglas—I think it’s something I should do. I’m nervous but I think I’m strong enough to handle it, whatever that looks like.”
Her father pulled her in for a big hug. “That’s right. You’re more than strong enough, Iz.”
Chapter 10
Isabella must have read the e-mail twenty times, and still, days after she’d written it, it sat in the draft folder of her e-mail program. She bit her lip as she read through it one last time.
Dear Douglas,
My name is Isabella and I’m writing to you to find out about Arianna—my birth mother. I’ve only just found out that she has died, which came as a great shock to me. I understand that you had contacted my mother shortly after her death—something that was unknown to me until just a few days ago when by accident I came upon the e-mail pasted below. I know that you said that she’d left something to me and I want you to know that this is not why I am contacting you now.
Amidst my own frustration with my parents and the grief of realizing that I will never know my birth mother, I feel an intense desire to learn more about her—to learn something about the woman who gave birth to me and the circumstances of her life—as well as the circumstances of her death.
I’m not at all sure how to move forward with this but I guess sending this e-mail will be the first step of that.
I hope this finds you well and I’m very sorry to bring up memories of the past if they are painful for you, as I’m not sure what the nature of your relationship was with Arianna. I do appreciate any information you can give me and I hope to hear from you soon.
Sincerely,
Isabella Dawson
And before she could think about it for a single second more she hit the send button, shut her laptop, and went for a run.
Chapter 11
Isabella felt anxious as she waited for Thomas to arrive at the diner. The entire morning had passed since she’d sent off the e-mail to Douglas. She knew that she needed to be patient, though. If he was still in California, there was a three-hour time difference to account for, but for all she knew, he may have moved somewhere else. She made herself close out the e-mail on her phone to focus on Thomas as she saw him making his way to the booth to join her.
“Hey, sorry, Iz. I got a little held up by the parental units.” He leaned down to give her a hug.
“Trouble in paradise?” Isabella laughed. She teased him all the time about how good and weird his relationship with his parents was. Thomas could tell them anything, and they were pretty open themselves.
“Oh, no. We just had to sort out some financial stuff for my trip—all good stuff, really.” He winked. “Good ol’ Dad is taking care of everything via his travel agent from work.”
Thomas’s dad was the president of a big tech firm and he seemed to enjoy a lot of perks that came with the position, travel being one of them.
“So what does that mean exactly? Are we talking total luxury here instead of the backpacker dream?”
Isabella had teased him about this when he first started planning the trip. Thomas was used to traveling in style. His parents had taken him on some amazing vacations throughout the years, a couple of which Isabella had even been invited to. There was nothing about a budget vacation that was anything near what he’d experienced, ever. But Thomas wasn’t pretentious at all—and neither were his parents. He’d laughed when she teased him about it, saying he was leaning toward something in between budget and luxury, but he would take the first class airfare regardless.
Thomas laughed. “No, not luxury. Keeping it middle of the road. Oh, and on that note—you know that you don’t have to pay for anything when you come visit me.”
She laughed because he’d stressed the word “when.” Thomas had already offered to treat her to everything—a week’s vacation in Europe with him—but he knew how she felt about accepting gifts like that from him or anyone, really. She’d finally relented, saying that if she did go, he could cover the hotel but she still wanted to get her airfare and pay for any other expenses while she was there. But she also knew that all of this was a very big if.
She turned her attention back to Thomas’s question. “Thanks. It really is such a generous offer, and I do appreciate it. I hope you know that.”
He nodded. “But?”
“But nothing. Nothing has changed really. Okay, that’s not true. A lot may have changed. If and when I hear back from Douglas, I’ll probably have an idea of what this money Arianna left me was. I’m guessing it might be enough to cover my flight.”
Thomas looked over at her and she laughed.
“But I still have the timing issues and, more importantly—to be honest—the fact that I still can’t imagine getting on the darn plane.”
“We’ll have to work on that. I’ll come back to get you myself if I have to. To make you feel better on the plane, I mean.”
Isabella laughed. “That’s sweet of you, but I’m sure you’ll be way too busy partying your way across Europe.”
“Bite your tongue. I am going for the history and the culture, of course.”
“Of course.”
Isabella laughed.
“So back to Douglas…I’m guessing, since you’ve not mentioned it, that you haven’t heard from him yet?”
“Nope. I’m trying to be patient. I did only send the e-mail a few hours ago. Do you think he’ll even get it? I’d be so frustrated at this point, if he wasn’t reachable now after all these years.”
“But didn’t you say that he had e-mailed your mom every once in awhile over the years to stay in contact?”
“Yeah, but it’s been a few years now. He did send her an e-mail with a new phone number awhile back though, so obviously he does want her to keep his current contact information. So, that’s a good sign, I guess.”
“I’d say so.” Thomas grinned at her. “So what do you wanna do today? Are we hanging out after lunch?”
“Oh, shoot. Sorry, I can’t. I forgot to tell you that I have coffee scheduled with Ms. Carlson—well, at three o’clock, so maybe we could do something after that if you want to?”
“Oh yeah? That’s cool.”
Thomas really liked Ms. Carlson also—all the kids at school did. She’d helped him with his deferment process for NYU, so the two had gotten to know one another a little better during that time, something that Isabella was happy for since she had talked about him to Ms. Carlson so much.
“Yeah, I just thought it might be nice to catch her up on everything that’s happened this last week. I sent her a text this morning and she got right back to me that she was free today, so that’s why the short notice—about our hanging out, I mean. Rain check for tomorrow, though?”