His mother is across from him, picking at one last piece of pie.
Maybe it’s the comfort, and maybe it’s the comfort food, but this feels like the perfect time to ask. He takes a breath and says, “I’d like to talk to you about something, if that’s okay.”
“Why wouldn’t it be okay, son?” asks his father. There’s gray in his hair that wasn’t there when Roger went away for college, marching forward every day, slowly conquering the territory from scalp downward. (At least he still has his hair is the automatic thought, followed by the dull flush of shame; what does it matter if Colin Middleton still has his hair or not? It’s not like Roger has any of his genes. Roger’s future is a mystery.) The sight carries its own brand of dull shock. When did he get so old? When did they both get so old?
Blissfully unaware of the thoughts filling his son’s head, Colin continues, “We’ve always been happy to talk with you.”
“Unless you’ve managed to get some girl pregnant,” says Melinda. “That’s between you and her, and we’re not going to give you any advice beyond ‘think about your future’ and ‘think about her future.’”
“Mom,” says Roger, scandalized. “Do you really think I’d do that?”
“Accidents happen,” says Melinda. “Not to us, of course. You were perfectly planned, every inch of you.”
Relief replaces shock. Roger sits up straighter in his chair, trying to look like the adult he is and not the child he always feels like in this house, where the walls are full of remembered bogeymen and the attic creaks with childhood’s ghosts. “That’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about.”
He’d have to be stupid to miss the glance that passes between his parents. It’s quick, but it’s so laden with dread and dismay that it falls into the convivial atmosphere of a family Thanksgiving like a rock into a quiet pond.
His mother recovers first. “What do you mean, dear?” she asks, and her voice is honey and sugar and dread. He analyzes her words—he can’t help himself—and finds them packed with fear. Even the cadence is off, tension turning a question he’s heard a thousand times before into a tripwire primed to catch him off-balance.
They’re worried I want to make contact with my birth parents, he thinks, and it’s a reasonable explanation for an unreasonable response: it works, it fits the facts without distorting them. It’s the explanation that leaves his parents in the right, no matter what comes next, because what adoptive parent wouldn’t worry about their child someday finding someone to love more? He could try to explain that they’re irreplaceable, that they were so perfect for him that he might as well have chosen them—his bookstore-owning father, his stay-at-home, intellectually flexible mother—but for once, he doesn’t feel like he has the words. The only way out is onward.
“We’ve never talked about my adoption,” he says. “I’ve always known I was adopted, and I know my birth mother didn’t want any contact with me after the adoption was finished. I’ve seen the paperwork. Before we go any further, I want to say I love you—both of you—very much, and you’re the only parents I’ll ever want or need. I’m not looking to find the woman who gave me up. Whether that was her mistake or her looking out for me, it gave me the best family anybody’s ever had, and I’m grateful, but I’m not indebted to her.”
His parents relax a little, his mother’s hands unclenching until the color begins flooding back, his father’s shoulders slumping.
“There’s this girl.”
The tension returns. It’s an instant, unmistakable thing: his parents may as well have been replaced by statues that look exactly like them. They barely even seem to be breathing.
“Her name’s Dodger, and she was adopted the same day I was. Born the same day I was, in the same state. She got her name from her birth parents. Keeping it was a condition of her adoption.” Roger looks between them, waiting for them to say something, to do something, to show, in some small way, that they’re still present. “She’s nice. I think you’d like her, if you met her.”
“Are you . . . dating this girl?” his mother asks, in a strangled voice. She looks almost like she’s going to throw up, like she can’t stomach the idea of him and Dodger together.
Something about that is wrong. Something about that is screaming for him to be careful. He forces his way