The last month I was there, I read every issue of the magazine I was supposed to have contributed to. I made my weekly calls to my parents. I tried not to think of what I’d done. I surprised them the day before Christmas. Twinkling lights and a sprinkle of snow. My parents were delighted. I was so skinny, though—was everything all right? I nodded and brightened my smile and let my mother take me shopping for the college I would finally start in January.
At night I cried. Then I taught myself how to forget. Her smell, her face. I erased each memory one by one by one. The memories of him were the hardest. His laugh, the way he held me. The cold look in his eyes when I told him. But I did it. I did it.
I went to college. Every fall, around her birthday, the one day I couldn’t forget, a dark cloud descended. The fall blahs, I used to say, and take my medication. The clouds would lift, but I was a different person. Cautious. Lacking trust. Looking for security.
The man I married matched the new me. Or so I thought. I fashioned a life. The years rolled away. I wasn’t happy, but I was managing.
Then she came back. My daughter, the one I’d abandoned. She wrote to me. She wrote to me, and I was terrified. She wrote to me, and I was sad. She wrote to me, and I told her I wasn’t her mother. That she had the wrong person. That I never gave a baby up for adoption.
So many lies.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book came tougher than some. Keeping me company along the way were: My sister and first reader, Cam.
My friends on the roller coaster, especially Tasha, Janet, Tanya, Stephanie, Lindsay, Christie, and Candice.
Wait, I have male friends, too: my patient and supportive husband, David; Eric; Presseau; Adrian; and Dan.
My writerly peeps; my agent, Abigail Koons, and the whole Park Literary team; my editor at Lake Union, Jodi Warshaw, and the great author team there; Danielle Marshall and publicists Dennelle Catlett and Kathleen Zrelak; my new team at S&S Canada, Laurie Grassi, Nita Protonovost, and Kevin Hanson. And Paul Benjamin. Thank you all for believing in me and my writing.
The other writers in my life, especially Therese Walsh, Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke, Heather Webb, Barbara Claypole White, Kathleen McCleary, Bruce Holsinger, those in the Fiction Writers Co-op, and Shawn Klomparens. You read, you listened, you gave great feedback. This book, and my life, would be less without you.
My readers, who I am so grateful for.
And Sara: who this book is for. She knows why.
This book was written principally in Montreal, Canada; Jackson Hole, Wyoming; Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. February 25, 2016, to January 1, 2017.