Somewhere Out There (12 page)

Fortunately, my mother was the one who opened the door. When she did, her eyes widened and her jaw dropped. “Jenny,” she said, still gripping the knob. Her dark curly hair was pulled back from her face with a white plastic banana clip, and she wore a puffy-shouldered blue blouse with a high, ruffled collar tucked into black stirrup pants. At thirty-eight, except for a few more lines across her forehead and around her mouth, she looked almost exactly the same as she had when I was growing up—short and curvy, with the same violet eyes she passed on to me. If she and I stood in a room together with a hundred other people, there would be no doubt that we were related.

“Hi, Mom,” I said. My voice shook as I tried to smile.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. She glanced behind her and then looked back at me, moving the door a few inches toward shut.

“I need to talk with you,” I said. “So much has happened and I just—”

“I know what happened,” she said, cutting me off. “The woman from Social Services told me you were going to jail and wanted me to take care of your kids.”

“I didn’t ask her to do that. She was required to. I told her what your answer would be.” She didn’t respond, so I continued. “She said you got married again.”

“I did.”

“What’s his name?” I asked, shifting my feet, unsure what I should do with my hands. It felt awkward, standing on the front porch of the house I’d lived in for so many years, wondering if she was going to invite me inside.

“Derek.”

“I’d love to meet him.”

“He’s asleep.” She glanced behind her into the house, again, then looked back at me. “He works the swing shift at Boeing.”

“Did you tell him about me?”

“Of course,” she said. “I tell him everything. He’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

I kept silent, feeling a sharp pain in my chest as I remembered that before I got pregnant with Brooke, my mother used those exact same words to describe me.

She looked behind me, toward the street. “Where are they?”

“Who?”

“Your kids, Jenny.”

“Oh,” I whispered, dropping my eyes to the porch. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” she repeated, leaning heavily on the last word.

“I gave them up. Signed away my rights.” I looked back up at her, my words trembling.

“Really?” she said, raising both of her dark eyebrows.

I nodded. “I want to try and get them back, but I just got out and I don’t have a place to stay . . .” I let my words trail off and kept my eyes on her face, trying to read her response before she spoke. I couldn’t decipher the cloudy look in her eyes, so I rambled on. “I know it’s a lot to ask, but it wouldn’t be for very long, I promise. Just until I get back on my feet. I can help out. Clean or cook . . . I actually worked in the prison kitchen . . .”

She stared at me, as though she was trying to decide how to respond. “Hold on,” she finally said. She disappeared from the doorway, then returned less than a minute later with a thin stack of cash in her right hand. “Here,” she said, holding out the money to me.

I dropped my eyes to the bills and then lifted them back to hers. “I can’t stay?”

She pressed her lips together and shook her head. “I’m sorry, but Derek just wouldn’t be okay with it. He’s very . . . structured.” With her free hand, she reached out and grabbed my arm, pressing the cash into my palm. “Take it, okay? I know it’s not much, but it’s all I had in my purse. I can try to get you more later this week.”

“But, Mom,” I said, blinking back my tears. “I’m trying to fix things. I want to go back to school. Make a fresh start. Please. I just need a little help.” I hated how desperate I sounded.

“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I wish things were different, but that’s all I can do.” For the second time, she threw a glance nervously toward the back of the house, where her new husband was sleeping, and I wondered to what extent his “structured” personality might go.

“Mom, please!” I whispered.

“Take care of yourself, Jenny,” she said. “I’m sure you’ll be fine.” And then she slowly shut the door in my face.

Dazed, I turned around and walked away from the house, shoving the money she’d given me into one of my front pockets. I felt numb, barely able to process what had just happened. I’d told my probation officer I’d be staying with her. I worried I might go straight back to jail if he came looking for me and I wasn’t there. My car had been auctioned off and the proceeds used to pay the fines that went along with my sentence, so all I had was the money my mother had just given me, and the aching desire to find my children.

I need a place to stay. I need to figure out what I’m going to do.
I trudged back toward the bus stop and checked the schedule when I got there, deciding that I should head back downtown, where I knew of a few cheap motels, places I’d stayed with my daughters.

An hour and a half later, I found myself in a small, dingy room with a full bed and a television that the manager told me only had three channels. The walls were covered in dark wood paneling, and the well-worn bedspread was a print of large orange and brown flowers. I’d used a few dollars to buy a ham sandwich and a Snickers bar at the corner gas station, so I sat on the bed and wolfed them down, then drank metallic-tasting water using a smudged glass next to the sink. The room smelled of body odor and mildewed, sour towels, but I was too exhausted to care. All I wanted to do was sleep.

I lay down on top of the covers and stared up at the ceiling, counting the muddy brown spots that stained the white tiles, replaying the events of the day, sorting out everything I’d have to do in the morning. I’d need to call my probation officer and let him know where I was. I’d need to find Gina’s phone number and call her, too. I needed her to tell me that even without my mother’s help, I could get my daughters back.

Holding the tattered white box in her hands, Natalie left her mother’s house in a daze and climbed into her car. She had a sister. The sentence felt foreign, so apart from her normal lexicon that she had to keep repeating it in her mind to try to absorb it as the truth. She reached over to the box and pulled out the manila folder that held all the paperwork from her adoption. Flipping through it, she found the page indicating that her unnamed birth mother had relinquished all of her parental rights, both to six-month-old Natalie and to her four-year-old sister, Brooke. Their father was listed as unknown.

“We thought it would be easier for you this way,” her mom had said, just moments ago, when Natalie was still inside. “Your dad and I only wanted what was best for you. The social worker said it was up to us, how much information we gave you. You were only six months old. It wasn’t like you’d remember her.”

“Did you meet her?” Natalie asked, still clutching her lavender blanket. “Did you even think about adopting her, too?”

Her mom stared at Natalie for a moment, then shook her head. “We really only wanted a baby, and were advised that older children tended to have behavioral problems. I didn’t think I could handle something like that. Your father and I thought it would be better for her if she was adopted by someone more experienced. Someone better equipped than us.”

“I don’t know what to say.” Natalie leaned against the kitchen wall, thinking about her mother’s distaste for anything messy, shocked to hear that this predilection had extended to the possible emotional issues of a four-year-old girl. She could have grown up with a sister. She had a
sister.
Her muscles buzzed; her skin felt too tight for her body. Her mom was silent, her fingers laced together in front of her, waiting for Natalie to continue. When she did, it was with tears in her eyes. “I don’t think I can be here right now.”

“Sweetie, please,” her mother said, reaching out and touching Natalie’s hand.

Natalie jerked away. “I need some time to think. I’ll call you.” She grabbed her purse and headed out the door. She knew what her mother had told her was the truth—her parents had only done what they always did—what seemed best for her at the time. In her mother’s mind, Natalie could see how the decision made sense. Chaos upset her, so choosing not to tell Natalie about Brooke likely seemed the right thing to do. Her father tended to go along with whatever kept the peace, whatever kept his wife happy, so he wouldn’t have argued the point.

But then Natalie thought about Brooke, her sister, who was left alone, separated from the only family she had, and Natalie’s heart squeezed inside her chest. She remembered Hailey at that age, only a few years before, Henry just last year. How vulnerable her children were then, with their delicate feelings and fragile, birdlike bones—how they still needed Natalie so much. What had happened to Brooke? Was she adopted, too? Did she wish she could find Natalie? Did she wonder why Natalie never tried to find her?

As she sat in her car in front of her parents’ house after having left her mother inside, Natalie’s stomach ached and her thoughts zipped through her brain so quickly she felt dizzy. She wanted to talk with Kyle, to process everything she’d just learned, but she knew he was still in court and a brief recess wouldn’t be enough time for the kind of detailed conversation she needed to have. This wasn’t the sort of news to break to her husband via text. Instead, she decided the best thing she could do was head home and sort out her next steps.

Once there, Natalie did her best to steady the turmoil she felt and let the skills she’d learned as a lawyer take over. Having a breakdown wasn’t going to help her find her birth mother. She told herself that if Kyle could focus on the facts of a situation, she could, too. She’d just pretend she was researching a case.

Feeling determined—hungry for more information—she sat down at the kitchen table and lifted the folder out of the box, flipping through it again. There really wasn’t much detail on the pages, mostly legal terminology and discussion of fees paid to the state for the adoption. Her birth mom was referred to as the “surrendering party.” Is that what she had done? Natalie wondered. Surrendered her daughters? Did she surrender her feelings, right along with her rights?

A moment later, her eyes landed on the name of a social worker, Gina Ortiz. Natalie wondered if this woman could help—if she knew more about the situation than the file held. She got up and grabbed her laptop from the coffee table in the living room. Back at the kitchen table, she turned on the machine, and after it had booted up, she opened the browser, then typed, “Gina Ortiz Washington State social worker” into the search engine. She had no idea how old this woman might be, if she was working or if she’d retired long ago. For all Natalie knew, Gina Ortiz could be dead. But if her days as a lawyer had taught her anything, it was that almost every person left a paper trail. All she would have to do was find Gina’s.

Natalie scanned the results on the screen. A link to the Washington State Department of Health’s website was the first to come up, so she clicked on it, wondering if there was a list of individual social workers on the site. She found none, so she navigated back to the results page, where she clicked on another link—an association for social workers who were accredited to provide supervision to those new in the profession. But Gina Ortiz was nowhere to be found on the alphabetized list.

Discouraged, Natalie opened another page and brought up the Department of Health website again, deciding she would just pick up the phone and call them. She pulled her cell phone from her purse, punching in the appropriate numbers. An automated system answered, so Natalie pressed 0, knowing that would at least give her a real person with whom to speak. “I’m looking for a current, or possibly former, social worker,” she explained to the operator. “Her name is Gina Ortiz. I need her address and cell phone, if possible.”

“I’m sorry,” the woman said. “I don’t have access to that information.”

Natalie hung up, frustrated, and drummed her fingers on the table next to her computer, staring at the screen until another idea struck her. She hit redial on her phone, and waited for the operator to answer again. “Hello,” she said, in a much louder, more nasal voice than the one she’d used on her initial call. “Can you connect me with Shelly Philips, please?” Natalie used a name she had seen on the top of the association of social workers list, where Shelly Philips’s title included lead caseworker at the Department of Health. She would have asked to speak with Human Resources, but Natalie worried privacy laws might prevent them from giving out an employee’s personal information; Gina’s supervisor wouldn’t be held back by the same restrictions.

“Of course,” the operator said. “I’ll transfer you.”

“This is Shelly,” a woman’s voice answered.

“I’m wondering if you can help me,” Natalie said, switching back to her normal voice. “I’m a family law attorney who worked with Gina Ortiz on a custody case, and I’ve lost her contact information. Do you know how I can reach her?”

“I’m sorry, but Gina retired several years ago.”

“Oh,” Natalie said. “I didn’t realize. Do you happen to have her forwarding information? I need to touch base with her on some specifics of the case. It’s being revisited by the court.”

“Are you sure I can’t help you?”

“I’m sure,” Natalie said. “She was well acquainted with the guardian ad litem, so I really need to speak directly with her.”

“Let me see what I have on file,” Shelly said. Natalie heard the clacking of the other woman’s fingers on her keyboard, and before she knew it, Shelly was reciting Gina Ortiz’s phone number.

“Thank you so much,” Natalie said as she read back the ten digits, to make sure she’d gotten it right. “I appreciate it. Have a great day.” She hung up, feeling more than a little pleased with herself. Then, after opening another page on her browser, Natalie punched Gina’s name and phone number into a reverse directory and came up with her current address, which she jotted down, as well.

Staring at the numbers, she debated whether or not she should call Gina, or if she should just show up at the woman’s front door. What if she slammed the door in her face? Natalie wondered.