“Yeah, of course,” Zora said, snatching the money from Natalie’s hand. Then she laughed, a dry, barking sound. “You know Brooke was a hooker, right? A total whore. I have no clue where she is now. Probably in a shitty hotel room waiting to suck her next dick.”
Natalie cringed at Zora’s vulgarity, and she raced out of the house with tears in her eyes, wondering if there was any truth to what the other woman had said. Even if Zora was a liar, it was within the realm of possibility that Brooke was a prostitute, or at least had been at one time. Natalie couldn’t imagine bringing her sister into her world—introducing Brooke to her children—if she was, in fact, anything like Zora. Brooke could be a drug addict, a criminal . . . and yes, a prostitute. It might have been callous, but there was no way Natalie would want anything to do with her if she was any of those things.
“Maybe it’s not such a bad thing that you’re finding all this out now,” Kyle said later that night when the kids were in the playroom enjoying their one hour of screen time while he and Natalie sat together on the living room couch. She’d filled him in on everything that had happened earlier in the day, including the phone call she made to CPS. Not surprisingly, the social worker who took the report indicated that Zora Herzog already had a file with the agency.
“Maybe,” Natalie said. “It’s just disappointing.”
“I know.” Kyle put his arm around her shoulders and kissed the top of her head as she leaned against his chest. “But what you saw today isn’t exactly an uncommon result for kids who get stuck in the system. I’ve defended them as adults. Brooke had a very different upbringing than you, and I think it’s important to take that into account.”
“Lots of people have a difficult time growing up and turn out just fine.”
“Of course they do.”
Natalie appreciated her husband’s attempt at neutrality, and his ability to comfort her, but the truth was that she believed people tend to do one of two things: either they break the patterns they experienced in their childhood or they perpetuate them. The odds were that Brooke had done the latter.
“Do you think I should just focus on my birth mom?” she said, tilting her head so she could look up at her husband. “And not worry about Brooke?”
Kyle nodded. “It might be better to leave well enough alone.”
While she wasn’t completely certain that was the right path, it was the stance Natalie took. For the next couple of weeks, she focused on work and taking care of her family, trying to make peace with the idea of not looking for her sister. In making impromptu visits to Gina, Hillcrest, and Zora, Natalie had been fueled by emotion rather than rationale. She’d simply gotten ahead of herself. After the remodel on the garage was complete, she would look into filing a motion to open her sealed adoption records and wait patiently for the legal system to find her birth mother. It was the least disruptive, most sensible thing to do.
In the meantime, Natalie knew she needed to speak to her parents more about why they’d kept Brooke’s existence from her, so when her cell phone rang on Tuesday in the early evening, two weeks after she’d met Zora, she grabbed for it. The caller ID told her it was her father, and she hesitated only a moment before picking up.
“Hi, Dad,” she said. She was certain her mother had already reported how Natalie had stormed out of her parents’ house after getting the news about having a sister, so she braced herself for a reminder of how sensitive her mother could be.
“Natalie,” her dad said in his usual low voice. Natalie used to think that James Earl Jones had nothing on her father’s sonorous baritone. As an adult, she loved sitting in court, listening to him question a witness or present his passionate closing arguments to a jury. She had loved it less as a teenager, when he used that voice to yell at her for doing something to make her mother unhappy. “We haven’t heard from you in a while. Are you all right?”
This was not the first question she had expected her father to ask, so it took her a moment to respond. “I don’t know,” she said, which was as honest an answer as she could give. “I’m confused. And hurt, I guess.”
“Angry, too, I’d imagine.”
“A little bit. Yes.”
“I’m sorry we kept it from you so long,” her dad said. “It really was what we thought would be easiest for you.” He paused. “Perhaps we were wrong.”
Natalie knew how much it took for her father, a dedicated debater not only in his professional life but in his personal one, to admit that he may have made a mistake. She decided to take that for the olive branch it was, and to save the story of meeting Gina and seeing Hillcrest for another time, when they were in person. “It’s okay, Dad. I love you guys. I’ll see you soon.”