Somewhere Out There(8)

“You know how much we love you,” he began, and Natalie nodded, wondering what loving her had to do with Laffy Taffy and Jolly Ranchers.

“We loved you so much,” her mother said, “that when you were a baby, we adopted you. Out of all the other babies in the world, you were so special, we chose you to be our daughter.”

“I’m . . . adopted?” Natalie said. She didn’t know how to feel. Her eyelids fluttered, and she wondered if she might start to cry. She looked back and forth between her parents, not for the first time struck that she didn’t look like either of them. They both had dark hair, while she was blond. Her eyes were brown when theirs were both blue. Natalie was petite, with a birdlike frame, and her father was muscular and six foot three; her mother was five foot seven with a tendency to bemoan her less than slender waistline and thick thighs.

“Yes,” her mother said. Her blue eyes were glossy with tears. “You are. The girl who carried you in her belly was too young to take care of you. You lived your first six months with her inside a car.” Her mother’s tone reflected her deep dismay. “That girl did the best thing for you, honey. She gave you up. She gave you to us.”

“She didn’t want me?” Natalie asked in a small voice. She felt as though something in her chest had cracked open. Like a thousand hammers were banging around inside her head.

“We wanted you,” her father said, coming over to sit next to her. He wrapped one of his long arms around her shoulders and pulled Natalie to him. He smelled like Old Spice, the aftershave Natalie and her mother bought him every year for his birthday. “You were always meant to be our little girl.”

“But I’m not your real daughter,” Natalie said. The muscles in her throat ached.

“Yes,” her father said. “You are. We are your parents. Your only parents.”

Natalie nodded, slowly, but her mind raced. She wondered what her birth mom was doing, if she had more children, and if she would recognize Natalie if she saw her now. She wondered who her birth father was, if he was tall, and if he wore Old Spice aftershave, too.

Her chin trembled as she asked her parents another question. “If she gave me away,” Natalie began, her words stiff and halting, “does that mean you could, too?” She assumed this was a valid concern; she didn’t know how it all worked. What if her parents decided they were tired of her, or that they didn’t really want her in the first place? What if they realized that adopting her had been a mistake?

“Oh, honey,” her mother said, taking a step toward Natalie and her father. She sat down on the other side of her daughter on the couch. “No. Never. We would never let you go.”

“Are you sure?” Natalie asked, unable to hold back her tears. She felt them wet her cheeks, and her father cupped her face in his hands and used his thick thumbs to wipe them away.

“We are more than sure,” he said, emphatically. He pulled his hands away from her face and kissed the top of her head while her mother rubbed circles on Natalie’s back.

After a moment, Natalie spoke again. “Can I meet her?” she asked, but when she saw the way her mother closed her eyes and jerked her head to one side, she immediately regretted the question.

“No, honey,” her father said. “You can’t. The adoption was closed, which means everyone keeps their privacy. You’re ours. Nothing in the world can change that.”

At that point, Natalie didn’t tell anyone that she was adopted. Her parents had kept it a secret for so long, she assumed it was something she shouldn’t talk about with anyone else. Then one day, not long after her parents told her the truth, her teacher issued an assignment to create a family tree. When Natalie got home from school that afternoon, she dropped into a chair at the kitchen table, pulled out the large white piece of paper her teacher had given her, and unfolded it, smoothing it as best she could. Gripping her pen hard so it wouldn’t wiggle on the page, Natalie drew a brown trunk and then a long branch, outlining three green leaves for her mom, dad, and herself. Then, off to the side, she added an extra leaf right on the same branch.

“What’s my birth mom’s name?” Natalie asked her mother, who stood at the kitchen counter, cutting up an apple and some cheese for Natalie’s snack.

“What?” her mother said, setting down the silver knife she held. Her voice was tight. Uneasy. “Why?”

Natalie explained the assignment in low tones, keeping her eyes on the table. Her mother wiped her hands on a dish towel, then came over to join her daughter. She looked at the tree on the paper, and then back at Natalie. “Family’s a complicated thing, honey,” she said. “It has more to do with who takes care of you, not who gave birth to you. That girl doesn’t fit in that category.”

“Oh,” Natalie said, feeling the inside of her chest start to burn. She hated that her mom used the term “that girl” when she referred to Natalie’s birth mom. It made Natalie feel dirty, as though the woman who had carried Natalie in her belly was someone of whom she should be ashamed. “Sorry.” She wasn’t sure what she was apologizing for, but she knew she was responsible for the strained look on her mother’s face.

“It’s fine,” her mom replied. “You can just use that other leaf for Aunt Vicki . . . okay?” Vicki was Natalie’s father’s sister, who lived on a ranch in Montana. They saw her once a year, at Christmas, and the only thing Natalie knew about her was that she wasn’t married and her clothes smelled like horses.