Chương 8
“No.”
Adrian watched her.
“Did Dad?”
“I do not know every payment your father made thirty-four years ago.”
“Did you pay Daniel’s old firm?”
“I assume we paid legal fees.”
“For my adoption?”
“Probably.”
“Who was my birth mother?”
“She requested anonymity.”
“What was her name?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you meet her?”
“No.”
“Did Dad?”
“I don’t believe so.”
“You told me when I was nineteen that you met her once.”
Evelyn froze.
Claire looked between them.
Adrian continued.
“You said she was young and scared.”
“I may have been simplifying what we were told.”
“You said she had brown hair.”
“Adrian—”
“You said she cried when she signed the papers.”
Evelyn’s face tightened.
“I was trying to give you a compassionate picture of a difficult situation.”
“So you invented her.”
“I gave you what a child needed.”
“I was nineteen.”
“You were my child.”
The sentence came out with enough feeling that Adrian almost lost his anger.
Almost.
He sat down.
“I need you to tell me the truth.”
Evelyn’s eyes shone.
She looked away before tears could form fully.
“You are my son.”
“That is not the question.”
“It is the only answer that matters.”
“No.”
“To me it is.”
He stared at her.
There it was.
Not a confession.
Something more difficult.
A moral position.
Evelyn believed motherhood could override history.
Maybe she had believed it for so long that history had become an offense against her.
Claire leaned against the doorway.
Adrian asked, “Did you know Teresa Alvarez?”
Evelyn’s fingers closed over the edge of the table.
“No.”
“Did you see her at the hospital?”
“No.”
“Did you know her baby was alive?”
“No.”
“Did you know there was another mother who had not consented?”
Evelyn’s eyes moved.
A tiny delay.
Adrian saw it.
“So you did.”
“I did not say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
She stood straighter.
“I was told the biological mother had relinquished custody.”
“By whom?”
“An attorney.”
“Name.”
“I don’t remember.”
He laughed without humor.
“You remember the florist who ruined your anniversary party in 2004.”
“That is childish.”
“Name.”
Evelyn turned away.
Adrian stood.
“Mom.”
“Gerald Pike.”
Claire took out her phone.
Evelyn snapped, “Do not record me.”
“I’m not. I’m writing it down.”
“Put the phone away.”
Claire looked at Adrian.
He shook his head.
“Leave it.”
Evelyn stared at him.
“You have known this woman for four years.”
“Five.”
“And suddenly she outranks your mother.”
“This isn’t a ranking.”
“Everything becomes a ranking when people want something from you.”
Adrian flinched.
That sentence belonged to childhood.
Evelyn had said versions of it whenever friends asked for favors, girlfriends wanted access, classmates invited him places, journalists requested interviews.
People want something from you.
It had shaped him.
Protected him.
Isolated him.
He thought of Teresa refusing to ask for money.
Rafael telling him he owed them nothing.
He hated that the comparison formed so quickly.
“What did Gerald Pike tell you?”
Evelyn’s voice lowered.
“That a young mother could not care for the child.”
“Did he say she consented?”
“Yes.”
“Did you see consent paperwork?”
“There were documents.”
“Signed by her?”
“I assumed.”
“You assumed?”
“I was twenty-eight years old. I had been through three failed pregnancies and two adoption arrangements that collapsed. Your father told me this placement was legal. The attorney told me the same.”
For the first time, something real entered her explanation.
Not innocence.
Pain.
Adrian knew about the miscarriages.
He had not known there were two failed adoptions.
Evelyn sat again.
Her hands shook now.
“I had a nursery upstairs for four years,” she said. “Do you know what that does to a person?”
Adrian said nothing.
“I stopped going into it. Then your father called me from his office and said there might be a baby. A boy. Healthy. The mother had agreed to placement but wanted privacy.”
“Who told Dad?”
“Gerald.”
“Why?”
“Your father knew him.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
“Business?”
“I think one of Thomas’s partners used him.”
Adrian paced once across the room.
“What hospital?”
“I wasn’t told until later.”
“When did you first see me?”
“At the house.”
He stopped.
Not at a hospital.
“Who brought me?”
Evelyn looked down.
“A nurse.”
Claire whispered, “Jesus.”
“Name,” Adrian said.
“I don’t remember.”
“You remember.”
“I don’t.”
“You remember everything about that day.”
Evelyn’s face crumpled for less than a second.
Then she said, “Margaret.”
Nobody moved.
Adrian’s skin went cold.
“Margaret Raines?”
“I did not know her last name.”
The room became silent enough that they could hear the refrigerator motor in the kitchen.
Adrian sat.
Evelyn looked at him.
“I swear to you, I did not know another woman believed you were dead.”
He wanted to believe her.
That was the worst part.
He wanted desperately to believe at least one version of his mother remained intact.
“What did Margaret say when she brought me?”
“That the mother had signed.”
“Did you see the signature?”
“I saw documents.”
“Did you read them?”
“I—”
“Did you?”
“No.”
Claire looked away.
Evelyn’s voice broke.
“I had you in my arms.”
Adrian closed his eyes.
There were facts and there were reasons people failed to examine facts.
The second category did not erase the first.
But it mattered.
He thought of a twenty-eight-year-old Evelyn after miscarriages, standing in a nursery she had stopped entering, handed a newborn by a nurse and told the paperwork was proper.
He could see how someone might not ask the question that could take the baby away.
He could also see the selfishness in it.
Both things could be true.
“When did you start suspecting something was wrong?” he asked.
Evelyn said nothing.
There.
The real question.
Adrian opened his eyes.
“When?”
She looked at Claire.
Then at the window.
“Your father received a letter.”
“What letter?”
“When you were about six months old.”
“From whom?”
“I never knew.”
“What did it say?”
“That there were discrepancies in the placement.”
May you like
“What discrepancies?”
“It suggested the mother had not consented properly.”
