“Perfect.” Luckily, Henry wasn’t the only one with a playdate that day—Hailey was going to her friend Ruby’s house, too—Natalie had planned it that way so she could work on a dessert order she needed to finish for a party the next night without the kids clamoring for her attention.
But first, she needed to go see her mother. Natalie had spoken to her mom earlier that morning, while she fed Hailey and Henry scrambled eggs, asking if she could come over for coffee around ten. Natalie thought about the guilt she had felt in her mother’s presence that day all those years ago when while working on her family tree. The guilt she still felt, today, when she thought about bringing up the subject of finding her birth mother. When she turned eighteen, Natalie had thought about registering with an adoption reunion organization, so if her birth mother was looking for her, she’d be easier to find. This was in 1998, before the Internet had taken over as the only way to get things done, so the process would have been more involved than simply typing her name into an online system—she would have had to go to the registry’s office and fill out hard copies of paperwork. But when she talked with her dad about the idea, he begged her to reconsider.
“You know how your mom is,” he said, running one of his large hands through his salt-and-pepper hair. Natalie knew that no one would ever look at the two of them and suspect they were father and daughter. That was one of the disconcerting realities of being adopted—you look at your parents, your entire family, and see nothing of yourself reflected back.
“She takes everything so personally,” her father continued. “She’ll be devastated.”
At the time, Natalie conceded that he was right, so she let the idea go, reasoning that there wasn’t any urgency, any real logistical need for her to find her birth mother. It was more a general curiosity, a wondering about the past. So what if one day the previous summer she had chased after a woman walking in the Junction who resembled an older version of Natalie, only to catch up with her and find that other than being petite and having blond hair, the woman looked nothing like her at all. So what if Natalie sometimes felt a dull, strange sense of emptiness she didn’t know how to explain to anyone else, but often wondered if that feeling was the reason she had a harder time opening up to other people—if after being abandoned by her birth mother, she couldn’t help but be wary of letting other people in, showing them who she was, for fear that they’d leave her, too. Natalie had a good family—a family who loved and provided for her. She reminded herself that was more than a lot of people had; she told herself that would have to be enough.
But didn’t she, as Kyle had said, have the right to know more about the woman who gave birth to her? Intellectually, her curiosity made perfect sense, but as she parked her car in her parents’ driveway, she knew that what made sense to everyone else didn’t always align with what made sense to her mother. She didn’t like emotional messes any more than physical ones.
It was almost ten by the time Natalie grabbed the small box of currant and almond scones she’d baked before the kids had gotten up—she always kept a little something in the freezer, ready to be put in the oven at a moment’s notice—climbed out of her car, and entered the house. “Mom?” she called as she took off her shoes and put them on the rack in the closet. “Where are you?”
“In the kitchen,” her mother answered.
Natalie walked down the hall and through the family room into the large, square kitchen her parents had recently updated with new maple cabinets and restaurant-quality, stainless-steel appliances. Her mother stood in front of the sink, wearing yellow rubber gloves, black yoga pants, and a blue hoodie. At sixty-eight, she wore her silver-streaked black hair in a stylish, chin-length bob. Natalie set the box she carried on the counter, then stepped over to give her mother a quick hug and kiss on the cheek.
“You know you have a dishwasher for that,” she said, nodding her head toward the sink full of soapy water and what she assumed were the pans from the previous night’s dinner.
“I know.” Her mother shrugged. “But with just your father and me, it takes forever to fill the thing up. Besides, it’s relaxing.”
“Zen and the art of dishwashing?” Natalie said as she settled onto one of the stools lining the granite-topped island in the middle of the room, waiting for her mother to finish.
“Exactly,” her mother said, turning to smile at Natalie as she set the last dish in the rack by the sink. She pulled off her gloves and set them on the counter. “Coffee?”
“Yes, thanks. I brought scones.”
“My favorite.” She grabbed two mugs from the cupboard and filled them with coffee from the pot she’d apparently already brewed. Natalie took one of the cups from her mother and set it in front of her so it could cool.
Her mother sat down next to her at the counter and held her coffee with both hands, as though warming them. Even their fingernails were different—her mother’s long and elegant versus Natalie’s short and square. “How are you?”