Brooke dropped Natalie back at the house a little after three, leaving Natalie more than enough time to finish her dessert order for the party she was catering that night. Katie had asked Henry to come over after school to play with Logan again, and when Natalie realized that she’d gotten the date of the party wrong, she called Ruby’s mom and asked if Hailey could play there for a few hours, too. Both women had offered to bring her kids home around six, and Natalie promised herself that she would make it up to them with a box full of decadent treats, as well as at least one date set on the calendar when Natalie would take care of their children. She thought about something she’d often told Hailey and Henry: “You have to be a good friend to have one,” and Natalie needed to make sure she practiced what she preached.
“Thanks again for coming with me,” Brooke said just as Natalie opened the car door. “It meant a lot.”
“Any time,” Natalie said, warmly. “Talk to you soon?” Brooke nodded, and Natalie climbed out of the car with a smile on her face. Having a sister was like having a safety net, she thought. It was being one for her, too.
Once inside, Natalie got busy in the kitchen, cutting out perfectly round circles from the sheet pan of sponge cake Brooke had helped mix, topping each of them with a smooth, quarter-inch cylinder of honey caramel and a sprinkle of fleur de sel. Then, she set up twenty boxes on the table with the lids open, and as she began placing individual cakes into them, she thought about Kyle, and the brief spat in the living room before Brooke had reentered the house the previous week. He’d already been asleep when Natalie came to bed that night—or at least he had been pretending to be asleep. The next morning, he left for the office before she woke up. Usually, if he took off that early, he would leave her a note on the dry-erase board that hung in the kitchen, telling her that he loved her or simply to have a good day, but when she went to get her morning coffee that day, the board was blank. They’d spent the last seven days making polite, efficient conversation, each busy enough with work and managing the kids that they didn’t acknowledge the tension simmering between them. Natalie wanted to—she knew they needed to—talk, but she dreaded the idea of having the exact same conversation that they’d had before she’d even met Brooke. Her husband was just being cautious, but she felt like he kept applying the pessimistic-lawyer side of his brain to the situation instead of the supportive-husband side she needed from him. Whatever the case, the way he’d spoken to her sister at dinner needed to be addressed. Hoping that they could discuss the issue rationally, she turned around and walked over to the baker’s racks by the back door, bringing back a sheet pan full of chocolate mousse tortes layered with hazelnut praline, which she carefully transferred to the remaining boxes.
Twenty minutes later, all of the desserts had been loaded into the back of Natalie’s car, and since she didn’t need to be at the venue for another hour, she decided to double-check her orders for the upcoming month so she wouldn’t have to deal with another event date mix-up. She sat down at the kitchen table with her laptop and booted it up, clicking on the scheduling program she used to keep track of orders as they came in, along with an ongoing list of the supplies she needed.
After verifying that everything was set up correctly and her mistake today was a singular occurrence, Natalie decided to open a search engine. She hadn’t mentioned looking for her birth mother earlier in the day with Brooke, and her sister hadn’t brought it up, either. Natalie understood Brooke’s reason for not wanting to find her, but that hadn’t stopped Natalie from digging around on Facebook and other social media sites for women named Jennifer Walker. It hadn’t stopped her from registering on several people search websites and a few more online adoption registries, entering as much information into them about herself and her birth mother as she could.
It turned out that Jennifer Walker was an exceedingly common name, and one that Natalie couldn’t be sure her birth mother still went by. She could have gotten married; she could have moved anywhere in the world. She could be dead, Natalie realized, and the thought sent a shiver up her spine. Poising her fingers over the keyboard, Natalie tried to think of what she could search for next.