texted back.
As I read her words, I wanted to throw the phone across the room. I wanted to scream at her, to say she was hiding behind the same lame excuse Marta had used. Fingers flying, I typed, YOU WERE MY FRIEND. HOW ELSE CAN I TAKE YOUR SILENCE EXCEPT AS THE ULTIMATE BETRAYAL?
After a long pause, her next text finally came: I’m sorry. I talked to your father about it once, thinking you should know. He didn’t see that it would do you any good.
Unwilling to accept her apology, I simply put down my phone and did not reply.
After a while my phone rang. It was Mrs. Glick. I let it go into voice mail and listened as soon as she was finished leaving the message. “Lexie, dear, we’re all so worried about you. Please come home,” her frail voice said.
All of them knew I was two when I was adopted. And Mama and Dad had lied all those years about my grandmother and mother loving me. If they had loved me, they would have kept me. Now, instead of a gentle handoff of an oblivious infant at the Philadelphia airport, I imagined Mammi shoving me into my parents’ arms, me a screaming two-year-old, and then rushing away. And Klara dusting her hands as she turned her back. And Giselle…I stopped. I didn’t even know what to imagine when it came to Giselle.
My phone beeped again. It was Sean. Everyone was weighing in today on my life except for James.
Sean’s text read: On the train to Baltimore. The little girl in front of me is Asian. Probably Chinese, with a white family. Adopted, obviously. Made me think of you. She’ll probably never have the option of finding out her story. What if that were your case? Could you be happy? If so, then why not just let it go now, instead of driving yourself crazy?
I dropped my phone onto my pillow. He didn’t get it. I’d found people who knew my story. Even if the truth ended up being uglier than I had expected, they had no right to withhold it from me. For that matter, I wished that little girl on the train could have her story too. It wasn’t likely she’d ever get it, but she deserved it nonetheless. Just as I deserved mine.
Oh, why had I told James not to come? Suddenly, more than anything in the whole world, I just wanted him to be here with me, wrapped safely in his loving arms. The fact that he hadn’t even bothered to call since we talked last night upset me more than I could have possibly imagined. I felt adrift, abandoned, floating alone in an icy sea.
I heard steps on the stairs and then Zed’s voice. “Lexie?”
My young cousin had been a huge help to me, but at the moment the sound of his voice made me cringe. I didn’t want an update on Burke Bauer or his wife Lavonne or the odd American woman living in Switzerland. Not now.
“There’s someone outside,” he said, his voice tentative. “He wants to see you.”
Oh, great. A patient’s husband, no doubt. Just what I needed. “Tell him to call your mom. Explain that she’s taken over the practice again.”
“It’s not anyone from around here,” he said, appearing at the end of my bed.
I swept my fingers under both eyes and reached for a tissue. “What does he want?”
Zed shrugged, eyeing me strangely.
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen him before. But he knew who I was. In fact, he seemed familiar with our whole family.”
I sat up, the skin on my arms prickling. “What do you mean?”
“He said he was here to see you, but he also asked for Mom, and he said he wants to round up everyone over at Mammi’s so we can get down to the heart of the matter, whatever that means. Do you want me to call Mom?”
I was off the bed instantly, tossing Zed my phone and then taking the stairs two at a time.
“James!” I called out as I rushed through the front door.
He stood at the bottom of the stairs, smiling tentatively. Until I knocked him down.
Flat on his back, trying to raise his head with me on top of him, he gasped, “And I thought you might be mad.” He laughed and then pointed toward the front door of the cottage
I turned to look. Zed stood on the small porch, my open phone in front of his face.
“You’d better get off