Until There Was You(99)

Posey exhaled slowly. “Okay. But it was about me, obviously.”

Her parents exchanged a glance. “Yes, of course it was,” Stacia said. “And we always agreed that if you ever said anything about wanting to find your birth parents, the first thing we’d do was hand you that letter. But you never did. So we didn’t say anything.” Stacia folded her arms across her massive chest and dared Posey to find fault.

Max came over and sat next to Posey and put his arm around her shoulders. As always, the smell of her dad was comforting, his big arm heavy and solid. “It was a tough time,” he said. “Your aunt and uncle had just died, you were getting ready for college. We wanted it to be your choice to find her, not to have this letter just come out of nowhere. We figured if she wanted to write to you, she would have. So we kept it secret. Maybe it wasn’t right, but…well, we thought it was.”

Posey nodded. In her heart, she knew her parents would never do anything to hurt her. Not on purpose. “I’d like to see it now,” she whispered.

Max and Stacia exchanged a look. “I’m sorry, Posey,” her father said. “We lost it in the fire.”

THE LETTER, WHICH Stacia coolly recounted with the help of an index card on which she’d noted the pertinent information, was more of a recitation of facts than anything. Posey’s birth mother had updated the family medical history: Posey’s maternal grandfather had diabetes. Her paternal grandmother had had breast cancer. Posey’s birth mother’s name was Clarice. She had brown eyes and brown hair. Her father’s name was Paul. He had brown eyes and black hair. They’d been in college (English for her, art history for him) when she got pregnant. Clarice had not seen Paul since they graduated. She had felt compelled to write after eighteen years because the baby she’d given away was now the same age she was when she’d had her. She hoped that “the baby,” as she called Posey, was happy and healthy.

And that was it.

“Nothing about wanting to meet me?” Posey said quietly.

Max squeezed her hand. “No, honey. Which is not to say that she might not want to meet you now, if you reached out.”

“So all of a sudden, you want to meet her?” Stacia asked, her voice tight.

Posey swallowed. What she wanted was a stiff drink. And Liam, maybe. Liam definitely. “I don’t know, Mom.”

“Well, I hate to be the one to point it out, honey,” Stacia said, “but she could’ve had any arrangement she wanted, and she chose a closed adoption. For whatever reason, she thought that was best.”

“I know.” Posey sat there for another minute. “I’m gonna go, okay?”

Her parents followed her to the door. “Are you going to apologize to Gretchen?” Stacia asked, her way of regaining the moral high ground.

“Not really high on my list of things to do,” Posey said tightly, and with that, she walked out to her truck, her steps shortened by her dress. The new sandals were already giving her a blister.

At home, she changed into shorts and a sweatshirt and poured herself a glass of wine. A healthy glass, one guaranteed to induce a buzz. She sat on the back steps, rubbing her dog’s head as he licked her ankle.

The sky was that sweetly painful shade of between, not quite dark, not quite light, the blue aching and melancholy. The birds quieted, a bat wheeled out from the belfry, and from the swamp, the frogs sang their nighttime song.

What a sucky birthday. Well, it hadn’t all been bad. A niece was on the way, and that was…that was unabashedly wonderful. She fished her phone out of her pocket and texted Henry and Jon, apologizing for the drama and telling them she wanted more info on her soon-to-be niece and would stop by tomorrow.

But still. As the sky darkened, it seemed that melancholy wouldn’t be put off. The Meadows would be ripped down. Gretchen was furious, her mother was furious and somewhere out there was her birth mother, who, one would assume, loved to read. Her birth father, who liked art and old things. They had dark hair and dark eyes, as did she.

Posey knew she was lucky. She had a brother and a brother-in-law and would soon have little Betty to spoil. She had Brianna as a surrogate sister, and she had parents who would lie down in front of a bus for her. She’d had everything she needed. She even had Liam, sort of.

But even so, even if she might never admit it out loud, it was hard not to feel a little lonely, picturing two dark-eyed people in their fifties who never wanted to meet her.

When the church bell rang, she just about leaped out of her skin, bolting off the back step, spilling her wine. Shilo jumped up, barking and running in a circle before dashing under the lilacs, and Posey stared up at the belfry. Her bell swung back and forth, right on time, and the deep iron tone rang out loud and strong into the night, reverberating in Posey’s stomach, filling the air. Nine cavernous, unspeakably beautiful clangs marking the hour, the sound so rich and profound that it felt like it might lift her right off her feet.

As the last note finally faded from the night, Posey raced inside, charged up the stairs, out onto the catwalk and up the skinny stairs to the belfry.

There was a note secured with duct tape, right on the lip of the bell.

Happy Birthday.

It wasn’t signed.

It didn’t need to be.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

“BAD CHOICE,” MAC muttered into his coffee cup the next morning. Posey had just broken the news about The Meadows, and the mood was glum.