Somewhere Out There (23 page)

“Who wants to know?” Zora demanded.

“I got your name from Miss Dottie at Hillcrest,” Natalie said, and went on to explain her search for Brooke.

“Huh . . . Brooke Walker,” Zora said as she grabbed a pack of cigarettes from the table and shook one out and lit it. She took a long puff and then blew out a white plume of smoke through her nose and tilted her head, peering at Natalie through half-lidded, mascara-smeared eyes. “Yeah, I know her.”

Natalie’s pulse quickened at Zora’s use of the present tense. “Is she still in Seattle? Do you know how I can reach her?”

“Maybe.” Zora took another drag on her cigarette and looked Natalie up and down. “That depends.”

“On what?” Natalie asked. A sense of dread filled her as she waited for what Zora might say next.

“You know how it is. Not everyone wants to give up information for free.” She sucked on her cigarette again, turning her head to the right in order to blow out the smoke.

“Do you actually know where Brooke is?”

“Like I said, that depends.” Zora lifted a single dark eyebrow. “How much cash you got on you?”

She was a liar, Natalie realized. Zora had no idea where Brooke was, she was just an addict trying to work an angle for money. Whatever hopes Natalie had had in coming here vanished. “Sorry to have bothered you,” she said quietly. She turned around and faced the front door, thinking she would report the little boy’s living situation to Child Protective Services as soon as she got home.

“Wait,” Zora said. “You have to have something. Please. My kid is hungry. You can see that. Every bit helps.”

Natalie stopped, and even though she was fairly certain that whatever cash she handed over to Zora would be used for more drugs, on the off chance she was wrong, she reached into her purse, opened her wallet, and handed the other woman a handful of bills. “Please,” she said. “Use it the right way.”

“Yeah, of course,” Zora said, snatching the money from Natalie’s hand. Then she laughed, a dry, barking sound. “You know Brooke was a hooker, right? A total whore. I have no clue where she is now. Probably in a shitty hotel room waiting to suck her next dick.”

Natalie cringed at Zora’s vulgarity, and she raced out of the house with tears in her eyes, wondering if there was any truth to what the other woman had said. Even if Zora was a liar, it was within the realm of possibility that Brooke was a prostitute, or at least had been at one time. Natalie couldn’t imagine bringing her sister into her world—introducing Brooke to her children—if she was, in fact, anything like Zora. Brooke could be a drug addict, a criminal . . . and yes, a prostitute. It might have been callous, but there was no way Natalie would want anything to do with her if she was any of those things.

“Maybe it’s not such a bad thing that you’re finding all this out now,” Kyle said later that night when the kids were in the playroom enjoying their one hour of screen time while he and Natalie sat together on the living room couch. She’d filled him in on everything that had happened earlier in the day, including the phone call she made to CPS. Not surprisingly, the social worker who took the report indicated that Zora Herzog already had a file with the agency.

“Maybe,” Natalie said. “It’s just disappointing.”

“I know.” Kyle put his arm around her shoulders and kissed the top of her head as she leaned against his chest. “But what you saw today isn’t exactly an uncommon result for kids who get stuck in the system. I’ve defended them as adults. Brooke had a very different upbringing than you, and I think it’s important to take that into account.”

“Lots of people have a difficult time growing up and turn out just fine.”

“Of course they do.”

Natalie appreciated her husband’s attempt at neutrality, and his ability to comfort her, but the truth was that she believed people tend to do one of two things: either they break the patterns they experienced in their childhood or they perpetuate them. The odds were that Brooke had done the latter.

“Do you think I should just focus on my birth mom?” she said, tilting her head so she could look up at her husband. “And not worry about Brooke?”

Kyle nodded. “It might be better to leave well enough alone.”

While she wasn’t completely certain that was the right path, it was the stance Natalie took. For the next couple of weeks, she focused on work and taking care of her family, trying to make peace with the idea of not looking for her sister. In making impromptu visits to Gina, Hillcrest, and Zora, Natalie had been fueled by emotion rather than rationale. She’d simply gotten ahead of herself. After the remodel on the garage was complete, she would look into filing a motion to open her sealed adoption records and wait patiently for the legal system to find her birth mother. It was the least disruptive, most sensible thing to do.

In the meantime, Natalie knew she needed to speak to her parents more about why they’d kept Brooke’s existence from her, so when her cell phone rang on Tuesday in the early evening, two weeks after she’d met Zora, she grabbed for it. The caller ID told her it was her father, and she hesitated only a moment before picking up.

“Hi, Dad,” she said. She was certain her mother had already reported how Natalie had stormed out of her parents’ house after getting the news about having a sister, so she braced herself for a reminder of how sensitive her mother could be.

“Natalie,” her dad said in his usual low voice. Natalie used to think that James Earl Jones had nothing on her father’s sonorous baritone. As an adult, she loved sitting in court, listening to him question a witness or present his passionate closing arguments to a jury. She had loved it less as a teenager, when he used that voice to yell at her for doing something to make her mother unhappy. “We haven’t heard from you in a while. Are you all right?”

This was not the first question she had expected her father to ask, so it took her a moment to respond. “I don’t know,” she said, which was as honest an answer as she could give. “I’m confused. And hurt, I guess.”

“Angry, too, I’d imagine.”

“A little bit. Yes.”

“I’m sorry we kept it from you so long,” her dad said. “It really was what we thought would be easiest for you.” He paused. “Perhaps we were wrong.”

Natalie knew how much it took for her father, a dedicated debater not only in his professional life but in his personal one, to admit that he may have made a mistake. She decided to take that for the olive branch it was, and to save the story of meeting Gina and seeing Hillcrest for another time, when they were in person. “It’s okay, Dad. I love you guys. I’ll see you soon.”

They hung up, and almost immediately, her phone chimed with a notification indicating that she had an email. When she saw who it was from, her heart literally skipped a beat and she strode into the den, where Kyle sat, working at his desk. The air smelled of the white bean and chicken chili Natalie had simmering on the stove, and the kids were in the backyard, playing on the jungle gym before the sky became too dark.

“What’s wrong?” Kyle asked when he saw the look on her face. He scrunched his eyebrows together. “Is it the kids?”

Natalie shook her head. “You’re not going to believe this,” she said. “But the adoption registry I put my information on just sent me an email. They think they found Brooke.”

“Wow.” Kyle pulled his hands back from the keyboard and set them in his lap. He had taken off the jacket to his suit when he got home from work but only loosened his tie instead of removing it, so it rested halfway down his chest like a green silk noose against his white shirt. “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I was just starting to feel okay about letting the idea of meeting her go.”

“You still don’t know anything about her living situation.”

“Right, but . . .” Natalie trailed off, unsure what else to say. She felt twin urges—one to call the adoption registry immediately and the other to delete the email and pretend she’d never seen it. She didn’t want to find her sister—to meet her—only to discover that Brooke wasn’t the kind of person she wanted to know. It would be easier to just let the situation go.

Kyle stared at her with assessing eyes. He knew how to read her, Natalie thought. She knew she couldn’t hide how conflicted she felt.

“You don’t have to decide right now,” he finally said.

“You think I shouldn’t talk to her.”

“I think it might not even be her.”

“What if it is?”

“Okay. Let’s say it is. What if she’s just like Zora? What if she’s had trouble with the law, or a problem with drugs? What if she is a prostitute? Do you want to bring someone like that around the kids?”

Natalie realized he was using his careful, I’m-dealing-with-a-hostile-witness voice with her, and it made her jaw clench. She couldn’t blame Kyle for being concerned at the prospect of inviting a total stranger into their lives; his lawyer-brain was trained to automatically highlight areas of concern. Seeing all angles of a situation, looking for red flags so he could better argue his points was part of who he was; it was what made him good at his job. It was also what made him occasionally infuriating to have as a husband. Natalie tended to look for the good in every situation, and Kyle had a habit of pointing out the bad.

Natalie sighed, feeling like they’d already had this conversation. But things were different now. There was a real chance that the adoption registry had found out exactly where Brooke was. If Natalie didn’t at least talk to the woman who could be her sister, she knew she’d regret it for the rest of her life. Despite the apprehension she felt, she knew what she had to do.

“I need to call her,” she told Kyle. “I need to know if it’s her.”

He bobbed his head, once, and then stood up, coming to stand in front of her. “I just don’t want you to get hurt,” he said as he slipped his strong arms around her waist, pulling her to him.

“I’m not saying I’ll meet her,” Natalie said. Adrenaline pumped through her body, and her cheeks flushed pink. “We’ll just talk. I’ll be careful.”

“That’s all I ask,” her husband said. And then Natalie pulled away from him, eager to reread the email from the adoption registry and take the next step.

The Friday morning before Halloween, Brooke was about to jump in the shower when her cell phone sounded. She grabbed for it, half-expecting to see Ryan’s face and number—he’d sent her a couple of texts since they last spoke, despite her having asked him to stop—but instead, an unfamiliar number popped up on the screen. Brooke swiped her finger and said hello.

“Is this Brooke Walker?” an older woman’s voice inquired.

“It is,” Brooke said, cautiously, hoping she didn’t just get caught by a telemarketer.

“My name is Sarah,” the woman said, “and I’m with the National Adoption Registry. I’m calling about your sister, Natalie.”

“What?” Brooke said, squeezing her cell phone and pressing it hard up against her ear. Shivers shot across her skin. “What did you say?”

“Ms. Walker, were you surrendered to the state by your mother in October of 1980?”

“Yes,” Brooke said, hesitantly. On impulse, she had filled out a profile with the adoption registry in 1994, when she was eighteen. She had just left Hillcrest and thought her sister or mother—or both—might be looking for her, too. But the last time she had updated her contact information on the site was almost ten years ago, when she switched to her current cell phone number. As months passed, and then years, without receiving a single notification of a possible match, Brooke gave up hope.

“Did you have an infant sister named Natalie Walker, also surrendered, but adopted in November of 1980?”

“I did,” Brooke said, feeling the tingle of impending tears behind her eyes. Was this really happening?

“Well, then, Ms. Walker,” Sarah said, “I’m happy to tell you that your sister recently completed a profile on our website and our search engine made a match with the data you both provided.” She paused. “Of course, as we are only a not-for-profit organization and not a legal entity, we cannot guarantee that this woman is, in fact, your sister.”

Brooke’s heart sank. “But you just said . . .”

“I know,” Sarah said. “The data looks very much like a match, but I’m required to tell you that any official verification of relationship, if you so choose it, would be your responsibility.” She waited a moment, and when Brooke was quiet, Sarah spoke again. “I understand this is an overwhelming moment for you. I went through something similar when I received the call about the son I’d given up for adoption. He came looking for me here, and after we found each other, I started volunteering for the organization.”

“Oh,” Brooke said, “that’s nice.” It felt like a lame response, but it was the only one she could come up with in the midst of her stupor.
Natalie wants to see me,
she thought. After thirty-five years. Or seventeen, if Brooke counted from the moment Natalie turned eighteen and didn’t need her adoptive parents’ permission to search Brooke out. Brooke’s stomach twisted, wondering why her sister had waited so long. Was she sick? Does she need something only Brooke could give her, like bone marrow or a lung? Was she reaching out not because she wanted to, but because she had to?

“Natalie has asked for permission to call you,” Sarah said, interrupting the questions eddying in Brooke’s mind. “I can’t give out your contact information without your approval. She also offered to email first, if that would be more comfortable for you.”

“No,” Brooke said, looking around her tiny studio, wondering what her sister would think of how she lived. And of the fact that, in seven months, she would be an aunt. Brooke swallowed back an itch in her throat. “It’s okay. She can call me.”

“I can give you her number, too,” Sarah said, “if you’d like to call her, instead. She indicated she’s fine with whatever you want to do.”

“Have you already spoken with her?” Brooke asked.

“No, but we’ve emailed. She seems like a lovely person. At least, her emails were lovely.”

The muscles in Brooke’s belly relaxed. “That’s good to know. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Sarah said. “Let me give you her number and I’ll pass yours along to her. Do you want me to set up a time for the call, so you’ll know when it’s coming?”