Recognition flashed across JD’s face. “The hospital, the hall of records.”
“I couldn’t find anything.” She picked at an ancient glob of cheese stuck to the Formica table. “So, I—I’m beginning to think that Jane Elizabeth O’Leary is me. I’m her.”
She waited for JD to drop his pizza or reel in stunned silence. She waited for him to grab his phone and dial 9-1-1.
Instead, he took another huge bite and asked, “So you’re adopted?”
Riley’s mind was blazing. “No,” she said quickly. “No, I wasn’t adopted. That’s not even my birth date.”
“So then you’re not Jane.”
Riley was getting exasperated. “I think I was Jane.”
“So your parents changed your name and your birth date? That’s weird. Why would they do that?”
“Exactly. Why would they?” She looked around, suddenly feeling very exposed. She dropped her voice to a hoarse whisper. “I think I may have been kidnapped.”
JD stopped chewing and put his slice on his plate. “Why do you think that?”
“I found this birth certificate hidden in a slit in my baby book. I’m almost positive it’s me. I don’t even look like my parents. They won’t let me do anything. I had to beg for a month to get them to let me on the school trip to look at colleges.”
JD looked around the pizza parlor. “Well, in hindsight…”
“You know what I mean!”
“So all that adds up to kidnapping but not to adoption.”
Riley grabbed the slice from her plate and took a big bite. “My parents would have told me if I was adopted.”
“Because the parents who you think are kidnappers, who changed your name and your birth date, wouldn’t lie to you.”
Riley chewed her pizza, considering. “I know it sounds weird, but I know them. I know I’m not adopted. We talked about adoption all the time. The family across the street from our old house adopted a kid from Vietnam. We were friends with them. I remember having a conversation with my dad, though, before Thuy came home. I asked him how I could make the little girl feel welcome and he didn’t say, ‘you can tell her you were adopted too.’”
JD picked up his slice again. “Well, that seals it. You, Riley Spencer slash Jane O’Leary, were kidnapped because your father didn’t say you were adopted.”
Riley threw down her pizza. “I knew I shouldn’t have told you. You’re a real ass, you know that?”
“OK, OK, I’m sorry, Ry. It’s just kind of a big thing to wrap your head around, isn’t it? There have to be a million other explanations for that birth certificate.”
“The bigger thing is that nothing came up at the hospital or at the hall of records. Even if baby Jane isn’t me, why did this family just disappear, and how would my parents be involved?”
JD straightened. “Involved? Like, you think your parents may have made Jane’s parents disappear?”
Riley put her chin in her hands, frowning. “I don’t know what I think anymore.”
“Well, you said you found the birth certificate in your baby book. Don’t you have pictures of yourself as a baby with your parents? My parents have them all over the house. It’s ridiculously embarrassing.”
Riley warmed, thinking of JD as a smiling, round baby in the arms of his doting parents. But the thought was immediately replaced by something cold and dark. “There aren’t any pictures of me as a baby. Nothing until I was about three.”
JD sipped his Coke. “Really?”
Riley started to feel clammy and panicky again. “Not a single one. My parents said that the house we used to live in flooded and we pretty much lost everything. That’s why my mom started making the new baby book.”
“Do you remember anything about the old house?”
Riley tried to remember. “No, I don’t think so. I mean, I kind of remember the layout, but I’m not sure if it’s because that’s what they told me, you know? It was in Chicago, I remember that—I think.”
The pizza sat in Riley’s gut like a heavy black stone. Heat snaked up the back of her neck and suddenly everything—the pizza parlor, the booth, her clothes—felt wrong. Who am I? she thought, the panic pinballing through her.
“Do you remember anything about Chicago?” JD was asking.
Riley shook her head, everything going in super slow motion. “Only what they’ve told me.”
JD blew out a sigh, and Riley held his eye, tears threatening to well in hers. She didn’t know why it was so important that JD believe her. She didn’t know why it seemed to ache that he looked at her with a slight, disbelieving grin on his face.
“You just don’t understand. I used to know who I was. Now I have no idea. I don’t know what’s been a lie, what’s real. I feel like I’ve been play-acting this whole time.”
“Riley, there’s nothing different about you. You’re still the same person—you just found a birth certificate. And even if it is yours, it’s not going to change who you are right now or any of your experiences in the past.”