“He’s your dad and your mom’s your mom. Even if this other lady had you, your parents are still your parents.”

“I’m really freaked out, Cleve,” I said, but my mind was moving away from our conversation. I walked over to my computer, sat down and clicked on Google Maps.

Cleve sighed again. “Look,” he said, “promise me you’ll tell your mother tomorrow and that you won’t do anything stupid. I care about you, Grace,” he said. “That’ll never change. So, promise?”

“I promise,” I said, but I was already typing in the address for the Missing Children’s Bureau.



42

Anna


Washington, D.C.

“What do you think of this look, Dad?” Haley asked Bryan as he opened the curtain around her hospital bed. We’d gotten her settled into the room a few hours earlier and it was very late, but she only now seemed to be winding down from a steroid-induced high. She’d lifted the top of her tray table to check her reflection in the mirror and she ran her hand over the dark stubble of hair that had sprouted up this past week.

“Very cool.” Bryan stood next to her bed, running his hand over the short, soft bristles. I knew how her hair felt beneath his palm. The tickle of it beneath my own hand could give me a false sense of security. I had to keep reminding myself that the little bit of stubble was simply the lull before the storm.

Tomorrow she’d receive another dose of her maintenance chemotherapy and that regimen would continue until a donor was found. Once we had a donor, the chemo and radiation she’d receive would destroy far more than her hair as it readied her body to receive the transplant. I refused to think a donor might never be found before the disease claimed her. Would not even go there. And tonight, I wanted her simply to enjoy her stubbly reflection in the mirror and our last few hours with Bryan. I’d be staying overnight with Haley, but he’d head back to his apartment shortly. Tomorrow he’d be on a plane for San Francisco, where he’d have the interview for the D.C. job. I wasn’t happy to see him go. I’d taken care of Haley by myself for most of her life, so it wasn’t that I needed his help, although his help had been wonderful. It was that I’d grown attached to him and so had Haley. We wanted him around.

“There’s our girl!” Tom, Haley’s favorite nurse, came into the room. “I have your nighty-night pill.”

Haley took the little paper cup from his hand.

“I knew you were coming in tonight,” Tom said while she swallowed the pill, “so I cut this out in case you wanted an extra.” He handed Haley a copy of the article about the bone marrow drive that had appeared in the Washington Post on Friday. Haley’d been great with the journalist from the Post and even better with the reporter from WJLA. She’d talked about what she remembered from her first bout with leukemia. “I just thought all little kids had to be hooked up to killer drugs all the time,” she said simply. “I didn’t know any different.” She talked about Lily in a way I never would have been able to. “My mom lost my sister,” she said. “I don’t want her to lose me, too.” I cringed inside when she said that, hoping no one would think she was being disingenuous. I knew she meant every word and I was touched. So apparently were many others. The car dealership showroom filled with people the following day, all of them volunteering to have their cheeks swabbed.

Once Tom had left the room, Haley lowered the head of her bed until she was lying nearly flat. “Okay,” she said to Bryan, “you’re coming back Wednesday?”

“Wednesday at four o’clock.” He clicked off the bright light on her night table. I was at the foot of her bed, and I watched the movement of flesh and muscle beneath the back of his polo shirt. This week, I’d discovered it wasn’t only certain celebrities who could leave me weak in the knees. If anyone had told me the man I’d held in contempt for so many years could have the same effect on me, I would have said they were crazy.

“What do you want me to bring back from San Francisco?” he asked Haley.

“Just you,” she said, and I saw the wave of emotion pass over Bryan’s features. Haley was so open with her feelings these days. She never wore the mask that so many of us hid behind. She left herself vulnerable, as though she realized there was no time to waste with pretense. We had no promise of tomorrow. None of us did. I was learning so much from my daughter.

“You’re sweet,” Bryan said to her. “But seriously. How about some Ghirardelli chocolate?”

She made a face. “That sounds good right now, but I probably won’t feel like eating it by Wednesday.”

“We can save it for when you do want it, then.” He looked at his watch. “I’d better run.”

“I’ll walk you down,” I said, then turned to Haley, who had curled up beneath the covers with Fred cuddled in her arms. “Are you okay for a little bit?”

She yawned, nodding. Bryan bent down to kiss her on the cheek and she wrapped one arm around his neck. “Don’t forget about us,” she said softly.

He stood, holding her hand between both of his. “No,” he said. “Never.”

We walked quietly to the elevator and rode down to the parking garage, which was nearly empty this late. I walked him all the way to his car. I didn’t want to see him go. Maybe I felt some of Haley’s trepidation. Some of that Don’t forget about us. But I didn’t think that was it. I wanted to be with him every moment that I could. I was going to let go of my own mask.

He unlocked his car door, then turned to me.

“Hurry back,” I said.

He smiled, then pulled me into a long hug that brought memories flooding back to me. They were the good memories, the ones from when we were young and the future held nothing but promise.

“Hold on,” he said, letting go of me. He opened the rear door, then climbed in and tugged me in after him. I laughed, practically falling next to him on the bench seat. He kissed me and we made out like the kids we once were, laughing at first at how ludicrous it seemed to be two forty-something people, fooling around in the backseat in a parking garage, but after a while, our laughter stopped and the car filled with our breathing, our touching and the sweet new beginning of a complicated love.



43

Grace


Wilmington, North Carolina

I was still awake at three in the morning, lying in bed, planning my next move. The more I thought about going to Alexandria, the more I knew I had to do it. I’d already printed the directions to the Missing Children’s Bureau and it looked pretty easy. Almost a straight shot from Wilmington to Alexandria, though I couldn’t picture myself actually driving that straight shot, and it was a longer drive than I’d thought. According to Google Maps, it would take five hours and fifty minutes to get there. Five hours and fifty minutes to find my biological mother. When I thought about it that way, it sounded like no time at all.

I’d have to leave as soon as the sun came up. My mother didn’t have school tomorrow because of the holiday, but she never slept in. Getting up before she did would be hard. I’d set my phone alarm for six, but now I changed it to five. I should leave while it was still dark. If I left at five-thirty in the morning, I’d be there by lunchtime. My heart thumped at the thought of walking into the Missing Children’s Bureau and announcing my identity to the woman who was my mother.

What if she went out to lunch, though? One of those long business-type lunches like my father used to take? I picked up my phone from the night table again and pressed the display to see the time. Three-ten and I was wide-awake. I’d never been so awake. I felt like I’d drunk a bucket of coffee. If I left right now, I could be at the Missing Children’s Bureau way before lunch. But it was so dark outside and I could still hear the rain thrumming against my window. I’d only driven a few times in the rain before I’d lost my nerve behind the wheel altogether.

“Do it,” I said out loud.

I got up quickly and put on the same cropped pants and blue sweater I’d worn that day. I dumped my textbooks and notebooks out of my backpack onto my bed and replaced them with clean underwear, my toothbrush and toothpaste, and the folder Jenny’d left with me. I was moving fast, as if I was in a race. In a way, I was. I was trying to beat the part of me that thought my plan was not only stupid but dangerous. I hadn’t driven since before my father died, and I’d never driven alone and never more than a couple of hours at a time. I grabbed the directions I’d printed out, lifted my backpack to my shoulder and quietly walked downstairs. I took the keys to the Honda from the key cupboard by the back door and left the house before I could change my mind.

I did okay driving for about an hour. I knew I was going way too slow, but it was hard to see. The rain made the road as shiny as a mirror and I kept picturing deer zipping out of the darkness in front of my car. I nearly had the road to myself, though, and that was both good and spooky. Then all of a sudden, the rain got unbelievably heavy. Heavy wasn’t even the right word to describe it. It fell in blinding waves against my car, pounding so hard on the roof that I couldn’t hear the radio. The wipers were set to their fastest setting, but it was still impossible to see more than a few feet in front of me. I slowed down to forty miles an hour, then thirty, sticking really close to the shoulder. There were more cars on the road by then and none of those drivers seemed to be having any problem with the rain as they zipped past me. One of them honked at me, probably because I was driving so slowly. My hands were sweaty, but I kept them glued to the steering wheel and I was leaning forward like I could somehow see better if my face was closer to the windshield.