by Amy Hatvany
“Not really,” Natalie said; then she gave Brooke what seemed like a guilty look. “Well, actually, yes. It’s dry. And overmixed. Possibly not made from scratch.”
Brooke lifted her eyebrows and took another sip of hot water. “You can tell that with just your fingers?”
Natalie laughed and brushed off the crumbs from her hands on a napkin. “I can, actually. I bake for a living. I own a catering company called Just Desserts.”
“Wow,” Brooke said. “That’s so cool.”
“What do you do?”
“I’m a cocktail waitress,” Brooke said. She waited to see a shadow of judgment fall across Natalie’s face, but it never came.
“I used to be a lawyer,” Natalie said, making a face like she had smelled something unpleasant, “but I hated it. I had Hailey and decided that staying home with her was more important. And after Henry came along, the baking thing just sort of happened.”
For the next two hours, they shared little bits of themselves with each other, carefully feeling out what seemed safe to discuss. Brooke spoke mostly about work, the various places she’d been employed over the years, some of the men she’d dated, and a few vague details about her breakup with Ryan. She struggled with whether or not she should tell Natalie about being pregnant. The truth perched on the tip of her tongue their entire conversation, but each time she was about to speak, something inside made her hold back. Even though she felt certain Natalie was her sister, it seemed too soon to share something so personal with a woman she didn’t really know. Not yet.
It wasn’t until Natalie had finished her third cup of coffee that she brought up their mother again. “Did you ever try to find her?” she asked.
“No,” Brooke said.
“And she never reached out to you?”
“No,” Brooke said again. The question prodded at an angry, inflamed knot in her stomach—a wound that had been there since the day she last saw her mother.
“Do you know her name?”
“Jennifer Walker.”
Natalie leaned forward, resting both hands in the crooks of her elbows. “Do you have any idea what happened? Why she gave us up?”
Brooke felt the heat rise in her cheeks, wrestling with how much she should say. If she should say anything at all. But then she decided her sister deserved to hear the truth. “She went to jail for child endangerment and neglect. And theft.” She watched her sister’s mouth drop open and then spoke again, keeping her voice as steady as she could. “I prefer not to think about her, really. Or talk about her. If you don’t mind.”
Natalie looked at her with big brown eyes, and Brooke flashed on the last time she saw them at Hillcrest, the morning Gina had taken her sister away. If she closed her own eyes, she could almost remember what it felt like to hold her baby sister in her arms.
“Oh,” Natalie said. “Of course.” But Brooke could sense her sister’s list of unasked questions. They sat in uncomfortable silence for a few minutes until Brooke glanced around at the other busy tables. “We’ve probably taken up this space long enough this morning,” she said. She raised her hand, indicating to the server they were ready for their check.
“This is on me,” Natalie said, reaching into her purse and pulling out a black leather wallet. “Please.”
Brooke pulled a couple of twenties out of her purse and set them on the table. “Thank you,” she said. “But no. It’s my treat.”
Natalie began to protest, then seemed to think better of it and put her wallet away. “When can I see you again?” she asked.
Brooke hesitated, still struggling to comprehend that the woman sitting across from her was actually her sister. But she couldn’t resist the eager look on Natalie’s face. “How about we have coffee next week?” Brooke said. “There’s a great little spot near my apartment on Capitol Hill.”
“Perfect,” Natalie said. “I’ll text you, and we’ll figure out a day that works for us both.”
The two of them stood up and walked through the restaurant, back out into the bright glare of midday. Natalie hugged Brooke again, and this time, the embrace felt easier, more natural. Brooke let her sister hold her longer than she normally would another person.
“I’m happy I found you,” Natalie said, and for the first time since finding out she was pregnant, Brooke allowed herself to feel a small and bright, perfect piece of happiness, too.
Natalie
Kyle was sitting at the kitchen table typing away on his laptop when Natalie got home from meeting with Brooke. He looked up when she walked in the room and lifted his fingers off the keyboard. “How’d it go?” he asked. Despite his obvious reservations about the situation—even after Natalie had explained that Zora had been lying about Brooke being a hooker—he hadn’t tried to keep Natalie from going to meet Brooke. The only thing he said as she was about walk out the door was “Be careful,” and reminding herself that he had her best interests in mind, she promised him that she would.
“Where are the kids?” she replied as she set her purse on the counter, then sat down at the table across from her husband. Both Hailey and Henry almost always came running when Natalie returned from being out; the fact that they hadn’t, now, made it clear they weren’t in the house.
“Your mom and dad offered to take them for a few hours,” Kyle said. “I needed to get some work done on this brief, so I took them up on it.”
“Oh,” Natalie said, pushing down a small flicker of annoyance. “I thought you guys were going to hang out.” Saturday mornings were supposed to be Kyle’s alone time with their kids—a few hours a week for them to spend together, uninterrupted by work or anything else. Normally, Natalie used the time to go shopping for baking supplies or to get prep done on orders she might have upcoming for the week, but her meeting with Brooke had taken priority over any work Natalie needed to get done.
“We did,” Kyle said. “For a bit.” He drummed his long fingers on top of the table. “I just thought it might be easier for us to talk when you got back without them here.”
“Oh,” Natalie said, again. She knew the case he was working on was monopolizing his thoughts, so it made sense that he was working on it now, while he was waiting for her to return. And it actually was thoughtful of him, to give the two of them a little time alone to talk about her brunch with Brooke. Maybe she was being too sensitive.
“So,” Kyle said, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms over his chest. “Tell me everything.”
And so Natalie did, recounting the details of her meeting with Brooke. She described her sister to Kyle, and told him about Hailey having her eyes. “You two must each have a recessive gene,” their pediatrician had once told them. “But even with that, there’s only a twenty-five percent chance of two brown-eyed people having a blue-eyed child. One of you has to have a relative somewhere with Hailey’s eye color.” At the time, hearing this had made Natalie’s stomach ache, knowing that since no one in Kyle’s immediate family had blue eyes, the color must have come from someone she would most likely never meet.
“Wow,” Kyle said now. “You’re absolutely sure it’s her?”
Natalie nodded and then told him about the blanket, how Brooke had given it to Natalie when they were separated. “You should have seen her face when I showed it to her. It was like she was a little girl again. It broke my heart.” Natalie didn’t know how to describe what she felt when she saw this other woman—her sister!—sitting across the table, holding that blanket with tears in her eyes. There was something guarded about Brooke, yet something so fragile and vulnerable, too. Even though she was the younger sister, it made Natalie long to gather Brooke up in her arms and tell her everything was going to be all right. Any doubts she had harbored had quickly evaporated.
“Did you guys talk any more about her past?” Kyle asked, attempting to sound casual, but Natalie knew he was fishing for confirmation that some of his suspicions might be true.
“You mean did I ask her for proof that she’s not a hooker?” The
instant that barbed comment left her mouth, Natalie regretted it, but his continued skepticism felt unwarranted. Natalie had asked about Zora’s accusation, and Brooke had offered a completely reasonable, believable explanation. She seemed normal, and after her initial hesitation, Natalie wanted to enjoy the fact that she’d met Brooke. She wanted to bask in the pleasure of knowing she was no longer an only child. She had a sister. All of those conversations she’d had lying alone in her bedroom, talking to imaginary playmates, maybe they weren’t so imaginary. Maybe the entire time, she’d been talking to a subconscious memory of Brooke.
“Natalie—” Kyle began, but she cut him off.
“Can you hold off on the judgment until you meet her? Please?”
“I don’t mean to judge,” her husband said, carefully. “I’m just saying that we need to understand more about her.”
“And I’m just saying the only way we’re going to understand anything about her or what her life has been like is if we spend time with her. If I spend time with her, first. It’s not like I asked her to come live with us. We’re meeting for coffee next week, and maybe I’ll see what I can find out about her criminal past then.”
Kyle stared at her for a long minute before speaking. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t mean to ruin this for you. I know how much it means.” He stood up and walked over to her, pulling her up so they could stand face-to-face. He put his strong arms around her. “You just don’t let a lot of people in close to you, honey. At least, not this quickly. I’m feeling protective. That’s all.”
Natalie’s body stayed rigid for a moment, and then she relaxed into her husband’s embrace. He was warm, and smelled like maple syrup. “I get it,” she said against his chest. “But you have to trust me, okay? I’m a pretty good judge of character.”
“Well, that’s true. You did marry me.”
Natalie laughed and shook her head, pulling back far enough that she could look up at his face. “Cocky bastard.”
“Ah yes,” Kyle said with a smile. “But I’m your cocky bastard.” He rubbed a circle on Natalie’s back with one hand while letting the other wander down to cup her ass.
She looked up at him, amused. “Oh, really?”
“Really.” He pressed his hips against her and gave her a good, long kiss that warmed her blood and made her joints feel rubbery and loose. The irritation she’d felt just moments before vanished, and desire took over.
“The kids might be home any minute,” Natalie whispered, snaking her arms up to link her wrists behind his neck.
“Then we’d better be quick,” he said, grabbing her hand and pulling her down the hall to the stairs that led to their bedroom, and Natalie felt like she had when they first met, when they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. Once inside their room, he laid her down, and with a firm grip, pinned her arms above her head. Natalie felt her pulse quicken as he stared at her as though he were trying to memorize all the details of her face. “I love you, Nat,” he said, and then she let him take her, knowing that even when they disagreed, Kyle’s honesty was part of what she loved about him. He was her husband. He would always be on her side.
• • •
The next morning, after Natalie had finished with her baking prep for the week’s orders and Kyle got home from playing racquetball with John, she grabbed her cell phone from her purse, which was on the kitchen counter.
“I need to call my mom,” she told her husband, who was in the living room with the kids, keeping them occupied with books and Legos and building forts so Natalie could work without interruption. Yesterday, when her parents had stood on the front porch to drop off the kids, they’d kept the conversation brief and casual, no one acknowledging the life-changing bomb that had been dropped the day Natalie’s mother handed her her adoption file. Still, Natalie noted a muscle twitching beneath her mother’s right eye, a telltale sign of the stress she felt, and she knew she needed to resolve things sooner rather than later.
“Okay,” Kyle said.
“I won’t be long,” Natalie said, and she headed upstairs. She sat on the bed, which was unmade and still smelled faintly sexual after their passionate quickie the day before. She smiled a little to herself, remembering, and then shook her head as though to rid it of those images before she dialed her mother’s phone number.
It only took a few rings for her mother to answer. “Hi, honey,” she said, sounding guarded.
“Hi,” Natalie replied. “Thanks again for taking the kids yesterday. They had a great time.”
“Oh, good.”
Natalie decided the best thing she could do was get right to the point. “So, finding out I have a sister sort of put me in a tailspin. I’m sorry I haven’t called to talk about it.”
“Sweetie—” her mother began, but Natalie interrupted her.
“The truth is, I can’t pretend to understand all your reasons for not telling me about Brooke.” She paused, trying to sort out exactly the right thing to say. “I know you’re afraid of losing me, which you never will, but I guess it makes sense you might feel that way. And I don’t really know how else to tell you this, but I found her. My sister.” The word felt stiff and strange inside Natalie’s mouth, as though it belonged to a foreign language. “I met the social worker who handled our case and it took a few weeks after that. Brooke still lives in Seattle. She grew up here. We talked on the phone Friday, and I met with her yesterday.”
Her mother finally spoke. “Does she know where . . . did you find . . . your birth mother, too?”
“No,” Natalie said, thinking about the way Brooke had shut down when Natalie asked her about their mother. “Not yet.”
“So she . . . your sister,” her mother said, “isn’t in contact with her?”
“No. She grew up in and out of foster homes, but mostly lived at Hillcrest.”
Her mom let out a tiny, surprised yip. “She was never adopted?”
“No.” Natalie was quiet then, letting this bit of information settle in before she spoke again. “I just wanted to be honest with you about what’s going on. I don’t want to keep anything from you.”
“The way we kept this from you,” her mother said in a barely audible voice. She didn’t wait for Natalie’s reply. “I’m so sorry, honey. I wish . . .” Her mother sounded as though she were about to say more, but then allowed her words to trail off into nothing.
“I know,” Natalie said, feeling a flash of suspicion that her parents might still be keeping something from her, but she decided she wasn’t up to pushing the issue. “You did what you thought was best at the time. There’s no way to change it now.”
Jennifer
When I finally left the infirmary in late July of 1987, Blake had been transferred to a high-security prison and I hadn’t been to the vet clinic for over a month. Her attack on me had resulted in a severe concussion, a broken cheekbone, and four cracked ribs. One of my lungs had collapsed, too, which was the reason I had to stay in the prison medical wing for so long—the doctors needed to make sure all of my ribs had healed so they wouldn’t pierce my other lung when I got back up and around.
The only thing that kept Blake from beating me to death had been Trixie—when the guards found us in the hall, I was bloody and unconscious, but Blake was on her back with Trixie’s snarling muzzle fixed directly over her jugular. She didn’t bite the woman, but the threat she imposed was what saved me.
The morning I rejoined the rest of the inmates for breakfast, O’Brien handed me a special tray filled with French toast and bacon, which she knew was my favorite. “Missed you, girl,” she said.
“Me, too.” Other than Myer and Randy, I hadn’t been allowed visitors in the infirmary. I never thought I’d be so happy to see my fellow prisoners.
“You headed back to the clinic today?” O’Brien asked.
“Nope,” I said. “Meeting with Myer right after I eat.”
“Maybe he’ll put you back in the kitchen, where you belong.” She winked at me, and I smiled, c
arrying my tray over to an empty table, where I ate slowly, taking small bites. My cheekbone had mostly healed, but chewing hurt if I wasn’t careful. My ribs ached if I twisted too far in one direction or the other, so mostly, I stayed still. I wondered how my injuries would affect my ability to run and move while working with the dogs. I wondered if Trixie had been adopted while I couldn’t take care of her. Randy told me several families had met with her, but as of a couple of weeks ago, she was still in the shelter. She hadn’t been allowed to visit me in the prison’s medical wing.
Several other inmates joined me at the table, and many issued their condolences, which I appreciated. I knew I’d been luckier than most during my internment; conflicts ending in a beating were common occurrences, and this had been my first. It was probably stupid of me to have pushed her, but seeing her kick Trixie had sparked a fury inside me I couldn’t hold back. I was happy she’d been transferred. I don’t know what I would have done if I’d had to see her again.
I finished my meal as quickly as I could, then made my way to Myer’s office. The door was open, so I stuck my head inside, surprised to see Randy already sitting opposite Myer, who was at his desk.
“Sorry,” I said. “Am I interrupting?”
“No, no,” Randy said. “Come on in.” He gestured for me to sit in the chair next to him, which I did, after closing the door.
“You’re looking better,” Myer said. “How do you feel?”
“Good,” I said. “Not perfect, but yes. Definitely better.”
“Glad to hear it,” Myer said, and I gave Randy a questioning look.
“So, you wanted to see me?” I said, glancing back to Myer. Was he going to tell me I couldn’t work with Randy anymore? Would he say that Trixie was too dangerous to have on the premises? My heart fluttered at the thought of losing the one thing in my life that made me feel proud. The one thing that had helped me survive.