“Why are there no pictures of me from before I was a toddler?”
Her mother looked up, her eyelashes fluttering as though she were stunned. “What do you mean, Riley? You know about the flood.”
Riley sucked her teeth, taking in a deep, slow breath. “Dad said the roof leaked.”
She didn’t bother to look up, but Riley knew her father did. She heard his newspaper as he laid it on the table.
“What’s this about, Riley?”
“Before we moved to the house on Kemper, where did we live?”
Her mother laughed, and Riley couldn’t help dissecting it—a guilty laugh, trying in vain to cover up her nerves? A standard giggle because Riley had asked the question before? She didn’t want to examine her parents the way she was, but everything inside her told her that something was wrong.
Her father carefully set his hands on the table and leveled his gaze at Riley. “Before we moved to Crescent City, we lived in Chicago. Do you remember the tiny apartment there?”
“Tiny?” her mother giggled. “Do you remember, before we brought Riley home, how big we thought that place was?”
Riley’s head snapped up. “Brought me home from where?”
Her mother’s stare was steady, her lips held in a thin line. “From the hospital, honey. You were too young to remember—you probably don’t remember that little place at all. We left when you were—”
“We left when I was three, because the roof leaked,” Riley finished. “And then what?”
“Well,” her father cut in, “we left that place as fast as our little legs could carry us. The roof almost came in—in winter in Chicago! You have no idea how cold the weather can actually get. You’ve been way too spoiled by the weather out here.”
He smiled jovially at Riley, but every part of her was tense, focusing.
Riley’s mother stepped in. “We moved in with one of your father’s colleagues for a short time while we looked for a place of our own—big enough for all three of us. And then your father got the offer out here. Oh, we were so relieved. Your dad would get to run his own store.”
Riley blinked at her mother, feeling her own mouth tighten as disbelief set in. “And my grandparents?”
“Your grandparents passed away. Mom’s parents and my mother before you were born, and my father when you were much too small to remember.” He spoke slowly as if trying to make sure that Riley understood, could make the connections—or as though he were speaking from a script, carefully trying to make sure every line was right.
Riley felt herself bristle, and her father slipped back into that easy, relaxed smile.
“Riley, why are you all of a sudden so interested in all of this? You know all of it. You were born in Chicago. We moved to California when you were about three—” Her father started to recount everything they had just said while a flicker of interest turned into a white-hot fire in Riley. Her blood was pulsing as if every lie her parents told her—everything so carefully rehearsed—thrummed under Riley’s skin.
“It’s not true,” Riley said to her cereal bowl.
“What’s that, hon?”
Riley swallowed, earnestly trying to keep her heart from slamming against her ribcage. She felt faint. Her skin felt tight and hot. She tried to steady her breath as much as possible.
“Who’s Jane Elizabeth O’Leary?”
The sentence was out before Riley knew she’d said it. It hung out there in the air between her parents and herself, an untouched thing with a heft and a weight, a life all its own.
The room was deathly silent.
Riley’s heart clanged like a fire bell.
Her father’s eyebrows shot up. Her mother’s hands fluttered over the grapefruit knife, leaving it stabbed in a center section. She clasped both hands together, folding them into her lap. The silence could have gone on for five seconds or five hours—Riley had no idea. All she could see was her parents’ eyes on her, their breaths coming in tight little wisps.
“Were you going through your father and my things? You know you are not supposed to go through our things without asking.”
“I found her birth certificate by mistake.”
Her mother took a slow, metered breath as if she were counting to ten, trying to pull herself together.
“By mistake?”
“It was in my baby book.”
“Which I know is in my closet, which I know I didn’t give you permission to rifle through.” Her mother worked to keep her voice even and steady, but Riley could detect a slight tremble in it.
“OK, I’m sorry. But the birth certificate was in my baby book. Don’t I have the right to look through my own baby book? It’s about my life.” Riley licked her bottom lip, suddenly completely unsure. “Isn’t it?”
Her father picked up his newspaper, his eyes flicking from Riley back to it as he folded the paper into a perfect rectangle. He touched Riley’s mother’s hand and they exchanged a look that Riley couldn’t recognize.