nestled there soft and safe, and even though Grace’s body felt like soot and ashes, her head felt as if it had been washed clean for the first time in ten months.
Peach was perfect. Grace was not.
And Peach deserved perfect.
Catalina and Daniel didn’t call her Peach, of course. No one knew about that nickname except for Grace. And Peach. They called her Amelía Marie instead. Milly for short.
They had always said that it could be an open adoption. They wanted it to be that way, Catalina especially. Privately, Grace thought Catalina felt a little guilty that Peach was becoming her baby. “We can set up visitation,” Catalina said one day when they met in the adoption counselor’s office. “Or send you photos. Whatever makes you comfortable, Grace.”
But after Peach—Milly—was born, Grace didn’t trust herself. She couldn’t imagine seeing her again and not taking her back. Right after she was born, Grace was flying on the sort of adrenaline that she imagined only Olympic athletes could experience, and she was half ready to jump up, tuck Peach under her arm, and run like a linebacker toward the end zone. She probably could have run a marathon with her, and what scared her was that she knew she wouldn’t have brought Peach back.
Grace didn’t remember giving Peach—Milly—over to Daniel and Catalina. One moment, her daughter was in her arms, and the next, she was gone, riding away with strangers, someone else’s daughter and lost to Grace forever.
Her body remembered, though. It had ushered Peach into the world, and it mourned her when Grace got home from the hospital. She locked her bedroom door and writhed in agony, one of Peach’s receiving blankets clutched in her fist as she choked into it, sobs pressing down on her chest, her heart, crushing her from the inside. She didn’t want her mother anymore. This wasn’t a pain that she or the doctors could take away. Grace’s body twisted on the bed in a way that it hadn’t during her labor, like it was confused about where Peach had gone, and her toes curled and her hands flexed. Grace had delivered Peach, but now it felt like she had truly left her. She was untethered, floating away.
Grace stayed in her bedroom for a while. She lost track after ten days.
After two weeks of staying in the dark, she went downstairs and interrupted her parents’ breakfast. They both stared at her like they had never seen her before, and in a way, they hadn’t. Grace 3.0 (“Now with no baby!”) was here to stay.
And then she said the words that her parents had dreaded hearing for the past sixteen years, ever since the day Grace had been born. Not “I’m pregnant” or “my water broke” or “there was an accident.”
Grace went downstairs, her stomach empty, her hair wild, and she said to her parents, “I want to find my birth mother.”
Grace had always known that she was adopted. Her parents had never made a secret of it. They didn’t really talk about it, either. It just was.
At the breakfast table, Grace now watched her mom reflexively screwing and unscrewing the lid on the peanut butter jar. After the third time, her dad reached over and took it from her. “We should set up a family meeting,” he said as her mom’s hands moved to her paper napkin.
The last time they had had a family meeting, Grace had told them she was pregnant. At the rate they were going, her parents would probably never have a family meeting again.
“Okay,” Grace said. “Today.”
“Tomorrow.” Her mom had finally found her voice. “I have a meeting today and we should . . .” She glanced at her dad. “We should get some paperwork for you. It’s in the safe.”
There had always been an implied agreement between Grace and her parents. They would tell her everything they knew about her biological family, but only if she asked. She had been curious a few times—like when they studied DNA in freshman-year biology, or that time in second grade when she found out Alex Peterson had two moms and Grace wondered if maybe she could have two moms, too—but it was different now. Grace knew that somewhere in the world was a woman who had maybe hurt (and maybe was still hurting) like Grace was hurting now. Meeting her wouldn’t bring Peach back to Grace, or fill the cracks that were threatening to shatter her into pieces, but it would be something.