not some other person from some other place full of dark-skinned, curly-haired people. Later, though, when she replayed the scene in her head, the banished doubts returned. When she’d asked point-blank if she was adopted, why hadn’t her mother been surprised? It was as if she’d been expecting this day and was prepared. Documents, Jacy recalled thinking, could be forged.
* * *
—
TWO YEARS PASSED. She was in high school now and not the same girl at all. She was vigilant, questioned everything. She watched both her parents like a hawk. Made a study of them. Why did they argue so much? Why did her father get so many calls after working hours and always take them in the den with the door closed? Why did her mother become so annoyed when Jacy dragged out old photo albums and pored over them intently? “What are you looking for?” she wanted to know. Evidence was the short answer Jacy couldn’t give. Evidence that she was who she was supposed to be. There were almost no photos of her father as a young man—because he was the youngest of eight siblings, he claimed—whereas her mother’s life had been well documented. The photos that meant the most to Jacy were of her mother as a girl, because there she thought she could see a resemblance. Okay, sure, different color hair and lighter skin, but the same posture, the same delicate nose and round eyes. Which meant the birth certificate wasn’t forged. She was who she was. Why, then, was she unable to shake the feeling that something was being kept from her? Why did everything feel like a lie?
One day when she got home from school, a taxi was sitting at their curb, completely out of place in their upscale Greenwich neighborhood. She was trying to figure out what it was doing there when their front door opened and a middle-aged man in a dark, ill-fitting suit lurched out. Jacy instinctively ducked behind the privet hedge. Her mother appeared behind him and called, “Wait! Wait! Let me help you!” He said something in response, but his voice had a strange, braying quality, and she couldn’t make out what. Clearly, something was the matter with this man. As he came down the steps, his gait was spastic and his elbows jerked wildly, as if pulled at by invisible strings. She expected him to regain his balance on level ground, but instead he reeled around even more uncontrollably, and when her mother, catching up, reached out to steady him, he keeled over onto the lawn, where he lay on his side while his legs kept churning as if he were still upright. “Andy!” her mother cried. “You have to let me help you!” Eventually, she managed to get him on his feet and back onto the sidewalk, and it was then they both noticed Jacy, who’d stepped out from behind the hedge. “Mom?” she said. “What’s going on?”
Her mother stiffened with surprise but quickly gathered herself. “Inside!” she ordered. “Now! This instant!”
Jacy would’ve liked nothing better than to do as she was told, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the man in the dark suit. Though she was sure she’d never laid eyes on him before, he looked somehow familiar. His gaze was now fixed on her as well. Was that a smile on his face, or a grimace? When he reached out to her, his hand jerking, she quickly backed away from him.
“Inside!” her mother hissed.
“Aaaace!” the man bleated, trying once again to touch her.
This time she ran up the brick walkway and the front steps, stopping in the open doorway. A car, invisible behind the long privet hedge, was roaring up the street in their direction, and she knew who it would be before her father’s Mercedes came to a rocking halt behind the taxi.
Her mother stepped in front of the stranger as her father came trotting toward them. “Don!” she said, holding up both hands. “Everything’s okay. Andy was just leaving.”
But her father was having none of this. Elbowing his wife aside, he planted both hands on the stranger’s chest and shoved. The man took two quick, awkward steps backward, arms windmilling, and fell flat on his back. “What the fuck are you doing here, Andy?”
“Don!” her mother was yelling now. “Don’t hurt him! He’s leaving!”
“You’re goddamn right he is,” her father said, standing over the man now, both hands clenched into fists.