Provenance

by Carla Laureano

  Kendall flushed hot and cold. The only things she remembered from that time were emotions she couldn’t deal with, ones she now recognized as guilt. Guilt that she liked living with Bill and Nancy. Guilt that some days she didn’t even think of her mom. And extra guilt when she realized she couldn’t remember her mother’s face, if she’d ever really committed it to memory.

  “I’m sorry,” Kendall said softly. “I never meant to hurt you.”

  “No,” Bill said resolutely. “We don’t blame you. We understood what we were signing up for. Even if it was . . . difficult at times.”

  Restlessness overtook Kendall and she pushed up from her seat. Wandered around the living room for a second, looking at all the things that had changed, all the things that had stayed the same. Remembering all the details she’d hidden away: family dinners at the scarred oak dining table every night, Nancy picking her up from school every day, Bill helping her with math homework at the coffee table in this room. The Christmas tree that would go up in the corner the Sunday after Thanksgiving, and the yearly trip to pick a new ornament to hang on the tree. The birthday banner with her name that went up over the fireplace every year.

  Kendall made two realizations. One, she had no idea what her actual birthday was.

  And two, this whole time she’d been thinking she was an orphan, she’d actually had a family.

  All the years she’d spent thinking she was alone, she’d had people caring for her and holding her up.

  She’d just been so mired in her own loss and pain that she hadn’t been able to see it.

  She turned to Bill and Nancy, forcing down the lump in her throat. “Thank you for everything you did for me. I’m so sorry I didn’t . . . that I couldn’t . . .”

  Nancy let out a strangled noise and leapt from the sofa, crossing to Kendall’s spot near the fireplace and enfolding her in her arms. “Kendall, sweetheart, we’ve missed you so much. But it wasn’t our place . . . We didn’t want to force you to do anything you didn’t want to.”

  Bill stood and moved to their side, his warm hand settling on Kendall’s shoulder. “The important thing is that you came home. We were hoping you might someday.”

  It was that word, home, that finally broke her. The tears that had been hiding behind her eyes welled up and spilled down her cheeks, poured out of her in indelicate sobs to wet Nancy’s sweater. Bill encircled both of them, his arms around their shoulders while they cried. She had no idea how long this went on, but when she finally pulled away, she figured she was completely red and swollen. But Nancy and Bill were smiling at her.

  It was Nancy who spoke first. “We were just about to have lunch. Do you want to join us?”

  And despite the fact that she was going to miss her flight, Kendall nodded. “I’d love that.”

  It was surreal being back in this house, sitting at the familiar oak table. Nancy bustled around the kitchen, putting together roast beef sandwiches.

  “Can I help?” Kendall asked more than once, but Nancy waved her back to the table, where Bill was busy asking questions about her life for the last ten years.

  She’d already told them how she’d gotten a free but completely undocumented interior design education in California while she was working as a receptionist and moved on to her business. “I’m about to start a project in Pasadena on Monday, restoring an old Craftsman in the historic district.”

  “So what are you doing in Colorado, then?” Bill asked, puzzled. “I assumed the private investigator was because you lived somewhere far away.”

  “That’s kind of a long story.”

  Bill and Nancy exchanged a glance; then Nancy smiled. “We’ve got plenty of time.”

  That led to the story of how she’d inherited the homes in Jasper Lake and how she’d found the letters between her mother and grandmother. Nancy gasped. “You were so close and no one had any idea?”

  Kendall shook her head. “No. Something to do with unconnected computer systems. I’m told it would probably never happen today.”

  Nancy set the platter down in the center of the table, sandwich halves stacked neatly alongside freshly washed grapes and dill pickle spears, her usual casual offerings for company. They were treating her like a guest; Kendall wasn’t sure whether to be honored or hurt. After ten years, she guessed they were feeling as awkward as she was.

  Bill took Nancy’s hand and then held out his other hand for Kendall. “Shall we say grace?”

  Kendall blinked. She tentatively joined hands with both Bill and Nancy and they bowed their heads. She followed suit, though she still studied them through her eyelashes.

  “Dear Lord,” Bill prayed, “we thank You for bringing Kendall back to us today. We thank You for Your grace and protection over her for the last ten years and for granting her many successes. We pray that You’ll help her find exactly what she’s looking for. Amen. Oh, and bless this food.”

  Kendall and Nancy laughed at the last-minute addition and pulled their hands away, but the last words lingered with her. Help her find exactly what she’s looking for. What was she looking for?

  Nancy gestured for her to help herself, and she took a sandwich half and some grapes automatically. She never had liked pickles. “So when did all this happen?”

  “When did what happen?” Bill asked.

  “The prayer thing. I don’t remember you being particularly religious when I was growing up.” She winced at how accusatory the words sounded as they left her mouth, but Nancy and Bill didn’t seem to notice.

  “Well,” Bill said slowly, “I was raised Episcopalian, but I wouldn’t say I was ever really a believer.”

  “And I would have called myself an agnostic.” Nancy laughed a bit self-consciously. “Though I think it was less a matter of not knowing if God existed and more wondering why, if He existed, things didn’t go my way more often.”

  Kendall winced, hearing her own thoughts come out of Nancy’s mouth.

  “But after . . . I guess we needed some comfort. Bill asked me to go to church with him—bullied me, really—and we realized that the thing we were looking for all these years was something we already had.”

  “What was that?” Kendall asked.

  “Family.”

  She couldn’t hear that word without feeling a pang, but now she was curious. “What do you mean?”

  Bill reached for Nancy’s hand and squeezed, but his eyes remained fixed on Kendall. “Did you ever wonder why we fostered, why we wanted to adopt?”

  Not really. It was a testament to her childish self-involvement that it had never occurred to her to wonder.

  “We tried to have a baby for years,” Nancy said softly. “But after six miscarriages, it seemed like it was never meant to be. So we decided to foster. We were really looking for an infant, to be honest. But then we got a call and they needed an emergency placement for a ten-year-old girl, and we . . . well, we couldn’t say no.”

  Kendall knew this part from their interview with the PI, but she wanted to hear it from their own mouths. “Why?”

  Bill chuckled. “Well, now it seems pretty obvious that it was God working behind the scenes. We thought we wanted a baby, and we got a preteen. We thought we wanted to adopt, and we ended up fostering.”

  Guilt struck Kendall. She put down her sandwich. “I’m sorry. If you hadn’t taken me, you might have gotten your baby.”

  “That’s what we’re trying to tell you,” Nancy said. “We’re not sorry at all. You were just what we needed. You made us realize that it really wasn’t about us, what we wanted.” She got teary again. “You made us parents.”

  Kendall’s own eyes swam in response, and she rubbed her nose to make the stinging sensation go away. She’d already done more crying on this trip than she’d done in the last ten years, and she was afraid her mascara was probably now ringed around her eyes like a raccoon’s.

  “But part of being parents is letting go. And after you left, we realized that we’d devoted ourselves completely to you—which is no
t a bad thing, by the way—and the hole that was left made us start to question things. We saw the emptiness of our life.”

  “And that’s when you found church,” Kendall guessed.

  “That’s when we found Jesus,” Bill corrected. “In something that was absolutely not a coincidence, the first service we came to talked about how God has predetermined us for adoption as sons and daughters through Jesus. I remember hearing that verse when I was growing up and it not making any sense to me.” He looked a little embarrassed. “I always thought the status of adopted son was less than. But now it made sense to me, for the first time in my life.”

  “Kendall, we couldn’t have loved you more if we gave birth to you,” Nancy said softly. “But the choice to be adopted or not was yours and yours alone. We weren’t going to force it on you. We could only love you the best we could.”

  “And we realized that’s exactly what God had done for us. He was just waiting for us to take Him up on the offer.” Bill smiled. “The rest is history.”

  Kendall shifted uncomfortably in her seat, though she didn’t know if it was because of the talk of God or the talk of her rejected adoption. As memories filtered in of nights sitting at this table, of how well they’d treated her, of how much they had actually loved her, she couldn’t push back the guilt swelling in her chest. They’d accepted her as a member of their family, and she’d scorned it. She’d been too busy thinking about all she’d lost to ever realize what she was gaining in return. There was no real need to have felt alone for the last decade.

  She barely noticed when tears began falling again. “What happens when you realize that too late?” she whispered.

  Bill and Nancy reached for her hands at the same time, but it was Nancy who spoke. “It’s never too late, Kendall. You’re our daughter, legal or not. You’ve always been part of our family if you want to be. We were just waiting for you to come home.”

  It was too much. It was all too much. The knowledge of her birth family, Gabe, the understanding of what she’d thrown away with her foster family. She pulled her hands away and jumped to her feet so quickly that she knocked the chair backward onto the kitchen’s tile floor. “I’m sorry. I can’t do this.”

  She fled the kitchen and found herself standing on the front porch of the house that had been home for much of her childhood. But found she couldn’t walk down those stairs. Couldn’t walk away again. Her feet were rooted to the spot as surely as if they’d been poured in the cement of the steps. She swallowed and rubbed her raw eyes and instead settled onto the porch swing. It had a new flowered cushion, but it still creaked in the same way when she sat on it, the chain squealing with every push.

  After a few minutes of swinging, the front door opened. Bill stepped out and closed the door quietly behind him. “Can I join you?”

  Kendall scooted over to make room, but she didn’t look at him. He sat beside her but didn’t say anything, just started the swing swaying again.

  Finally Kendall couldn’t stand the silence anymore. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “For how I treated you and Nancy. I should have said yes.”

  Bill stopped swinging abruptly. “It’s not your fault, Kendall. Maybe we shouldn’t have told you. We never meant for you to carry our burdens.”

  She glanced at him. “I don’t even remember you asking to adopt me.”

  “You were hurting. You’d had a lot of change in your life. We understood.”

  “That makes one of us,” Kendall said. “I’ve spent my entire adult life feeling like I had no one to count on. Like I was just one bad decision short of being on the street, with no safety net.”

  Bill nodded and resumed swinging. “You know, it’s not too late.”

  “I’d say it’s about a decade too late.”

  “Not necessarily. There’s something called adult adoption.”

  Now it was Kendall’s turn to still the sway of the swing. “You’re serious about this.”

  “Of course we are.” Bill looked at her. “It’s a little different because you’re a fully independent adult, but it would still make it legal.”

  Kendall’s heart swelled in her chest and she felt like it might stop. She had just discovered her Green roots. She’d just learned that had things turned out differently, she would have been a Burton. And now Bill was asking her to consider becoming a Novak? She had no idea how to answer that question. And yet the fact he’d asked . . .

  She reached for his hand and squeezed it. “You have no idea what that means to me. But it’s a big decision. I feel like my last name is the only thing I have left, the only connection I have to my mother’s family.”

  Disappointment laced his voice. “I understand. And we thought you might feel that way. That’s why Nancy didn’t come out with me.”

  Because she couldn’t stand another disappointment. The unspoken words hung between them.

  “But there are other kinds of family, aren’t there?” Kendall asked softly. “Just because it’s not legal doesn’t mean . . . Well, I mean, I’ve always wanted someplace to spend Christmas.”

  A slow smile spread over Bill’s face. “We still have your stocking, you know.”

  “Are you sure that’s okay with you guys? I know it’s not really what you’d hoped your family would look like . . .”

  He smiled and squeezed her hand. “We loved you, Kendall. We never stopped. We’ll take you however we can get you.”

  The tinge of self-deprecation made her laugh and her heart lifted. Even Bill had to know that what he offered was too much for now, maybe ever. But to know that she wasn’t alone . . . to choose a family based on love and gratitude for what they’d done for her . . . that had to mean more than anything a judge could pronounce.

  And yet reality called. She glanced at her watch. “I’m not sure I can still make my flight, but I should probably try.”

  Bill looked disappointed but he nodded. “Let us wrap up your lunch. You can eat it at the gate.”

  “Thanks.” She rose and smoothed her hands down her jeans-clad legs. “But I’ll be back. And I can call you guys, right?”

  Bill put one arm around her shoulders and squeezed. “Of course you can.”

  Kendall lingered on the porch, and when Bill came back, Nancy was with him, bearing a care package for the plane—her uneaten sandwich, some chips and grapes (no pickles), and a couple of homemade chocolate chip cookies. She gave her foster parents one last hug goodbye and promised them she’d be in touch, feeling both wrung out and lighter than she had in years.

  She waved one more time after she climbed into her rental and put it in gear. That was absolutely what she had needed to do, and if she wasn’t mistaken, they’d needed it just as much. Even though she would soon be twelve hundred miles away, knowing that they were there waiting for her, that she’d see them at Christmas, filled a spot in her soul that she hadn’t realized needed filling.

  But she’d also realized that this house was not her home now, any more than it would have been had they been her birth parents. Children were supposed to move on and have their own lives. And however abruptly it had happened, regardless of the ties unnecessarily severed, they’d unknowingly given her that gift of wings.

  It was time to fly home.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  IT TURNED OUT THAT KENDALL needn’t have hurried. Storms elsewhere in the country had delayed her plane’s arrival in Denver, and by the time she finally walked through the door of her Pasadena house, it was well past dark.

  Very dark. The front porch light, always on a timer, had been left on, but the interior of the house was pitch-black. Kendall flipped on the entryway light. “Sophie? Are you home?”

  It was a silly question. It was Saturday night. Of course Sophie wasn’t home. Either she was with her boyfriend or she was out with friends at a club, just as Kendall would have been, had she stayed home. And yet somehow, her life before Jasper Lake, only two weeks in the past, felt completely foreign. As i
f her “glamorous” California existence had been a dream, and the time in the Colorado mountains had been her waking up to reality.

  Don’t be overdramatic, she chided herself. She headed down the hall to her room first, unlocked her door, and dropped her bag inside. Only then did she notice the note taped to her door, surprisingly analog for Sophie: Spending the weekend at Sean’s house. Will be back Sunday night. XOXO, Soph

  Well, that explained it. As much as she wanted to see Sophie, she couldn’t much complain about having Sunday to herself. Kendall wasn’t sure she could adequately answer all the questions Sophie would likely have. She wasn’t even sure if she could answer them for herself right now. It was probably good to give herself a little space and silence to sort through everything she’d found out in the past several days.

  It also gave her some uninterrupted time to sort through the inevitable mess that had been left in their office. Sophie was many things, but neat was not one of them.

  But she didn’t yet have the energy to deal with that, not without a hot drink. She went into the kitchen, flipping switches as she went until the house was blazing with light. It was completely neat, no dishes in the sink, the dishwasher unloaded and empty, the countertops wiped off. That probably meant that Sophie had been working outside the house for the entire time Kendall was gone. She flipped on the electric kettle, which stood in its place of honor next to the coffeepot, and plopped a tea bag in her mug, wishing for a second for Delia’s amazing coconut milk Lake Fog. But good old-fashioned English tea would have to do.

  Minutes later, she walked back to the office with her steaming mug and kicked her boots off at the entrance of the office space. She braced herself and clicked on the light.

  She blinked. For a second, she was tempted to turn the light off and on again to see if the results would be the same. Rather than the mountains of paperwork and books that she’d anticipated, the office was pristine.

  Kendall wandered over to her desk, which was usually overflowing with mail and paperwork. Not this time. Her in-box had a number of new items in it, but instead of being tossed haphazardly into the bin, still in their envelopes, they’d been removed, flattened, and tagged with sticky notes where necessary. Two staggered columns of paperwork sat on her desk as well. The left side appeared to be items that Sophie had responded to, bills she’d paid, and other urgent items, all documented with sticky note explanations. The other, shorter column were things that Kendall needed to address when she returned, all annotated with their due dates.