And Then I Found You (20 page)

Kate spun around and faced her sister. “You do?”

“Don’t be mad at me, Katey-Latey. I’m just saying that I believe in good coming from
this birthday.” She turned to her dad. “I know you don’t mean to be hurtful, but just
think about what you’re saying before you say it.”

“He knows what he’s saying,” Kate’s anger gained speed, as if knowing it was late
to the party and bursting through the door. “He knows exactly what he’s saying. He’s
telling me, and all of you, that he cares more about Luna than I do. Oh, how he misses
her. How much he wants to see her. He wants all of us to know that he has a bigger
and better heart than I do.”

“No,” Stuart’s voice shook. “No.”

“But you all have no idea what I carry around with me. No idea.” Kate spread her arms
wide. “It’s something you can’t know. It is a missing so deep that it feels like a
canyon. It’s a thing I can’t change no matter where I go or who I’m with or how I
wish or want or pray. The only thing I can do is wait. Nothing.” Kate’s body shook
with sentiments she’d kept inside. “I miss her more than you can imagine. I miss everything
I know about her and everything I don’t know about her.”

Stuart dropped his head and mumbled. “I’m sorry.”

Tara handed the baby to her husband and took Kate’s hand. “We all know, Katey-Latey.
We know.”

“We didn’t mean to make you upset. I thought it would make you feel better, not worse,
to know how much we thought of her and cared,” Nicole said.

Molly’s voice, quiet and fragile, ended the night. “She’s right, you know. No matter
what we do or say, sometimes the future is farther away than we want it to be.”

And now, on this plane to New York, the future had finally arrived. Yes, she’d always
imagined this day, but it seemed that the word
imagine
was what made it
impossible,
the two words inextricably linked.

Kate leaned back on the seat and looked out the window to the growing skyscraper skyline,
to the gaping lost-tooth hole where the twin towers had once been, and to the state
where her daughter lived.

*   *   *

Nicole and Kate rented a car at LaGuardia airport. It was brown, dingy, and smelled
like acrid air freshener sprayed over cigarette smoke.

“I feel like I should have a limousine or chariot for this trip. Not some smelly brown
car.” Kate said, throwing her luggage into the backseat.

Her mom placed her hand on Kate’s shoulder. “Dear, not everything has to go perfect
today. Get that part out of your mind. It’s a miracle, but not a perfect miracle.”

Kate rolled her eyes. “Such a mother thing to say.”

They climbed into the car and hooked up the GPS system, plugging the Jackson’s Bronxville
address into the system. Neon green numbers flashed
THIRTY-TWO MINUTES.

“Thirty-two minutes. Wow.” Kate pressed the bottom of her palms into her eyes and
stayed the tears. “Now I’ve messed up my makeup.” She reached for her makeup bag in
the backseat, knocking over her purse.

“You don’t need makeup. You’ll just cry it off when you see her,” Nicole said.

“Nope. I’m going to remain calm. I don’t want her to think she was born with some
psycho heredity that makes her an emotional basket case.”

“Oh, good, then let her think you’re an ice queen.”

“There’s no right way to do this, is there?” Kate asked in exhale.

“If there is, I don’t know it.”

The car moving off the exit, Kate took in a deep long breathe. “Whatever happens,
happens. That’s that.” She turned on the radio, and finding only static, she turned
it off. Glancing over at her mom, Kate saw that her eyes were closed. “Are you seriously
sleeping, Mom?”

“Of course not. I’m praying.”

Kate navigated the New York City highway system before exiting into a quaint town
that could be painted and hung over a mantel. They passed the dry cleaner, the boutique,
the bagel shop, and the bookstore, all snuggled next to each other and wrapped under
the blanket of ancient brick. The evenly spaced trees were crowded with new summer
leaves, sunlight falling through to make ragged lit patterns on the cobblestone sidewalks.

The GPS instructed, “Turn right now.” And then, in a robotic voice announced, “You
have reached your destination.”

Kate looked up. The Jackson house looked down from atop a hill, white-painted brick
with ivy crawling up the sides and around the front door. Stone steps led from the
sidewalk to the double front door where two iron urns spilled over with flowers and
ferns. “I have reached my destination.”

“Do you want me to go to the door with you?” Nicole asked, softly.

“I think I should go alone and then…”

Nicole took Kate’s hand. “I’ll wait right here.”

Together they climbed out of the car. “Do you think they’re looking at me?” Kate asked.

“I’m sure they are.” Nicole kissed her daughter’s cheek and Kate started up the stairs.
A breeze, full of cherry blossoms, flew across the yard. Pink petals fell to the ground
and scattered in extravagant waste along the steps. Kate glanced down and on the front
steps she saw a feather, freckled with brown and brushed with red. She squatted down
and picked it up, placing it into her purse and whispering, “thank you” to the God
who sent feathers and Facebook requests.

Kate was calmer than she imagined she’d be. Emily opened the door with a half smile.
In the briefest crack of time before she took Emily in her arms, Kate took in these
details: copper hair catching light, a nose sprinkled with freckles, and the green
of Jack’s eyes.

For all the practicing and the imagining of the first words to her daughter, this
is what she said. “Oh, look at you. Beautiful you,” Kate’s voice broke over the last
word.

Emily smiled fully. A gale-force of unnamed emotions arrived, and Kate took Emily
in her arms and held her as if, once again, someone were going to take her away. Mother
breathed in as daughter breathed out.

“Welcome to our home,” said a soft voice from inside.

Kate released Emily to see her daughter’s mother. “Hi, I’m Kate Vaughn.” She held
out her hand to shake Elena’s hand.

“Hi.” Elena reached for Kate’s hand and then pulled her into a hug. “Thank you for
the gift of my daughter.” It sounded like a practiced line from a play or a production,
yet Elena’s voice shook with its realness, with its honesty.

Kate felt the slight shake of a shifting world. “Nice to finally meet you too,” she
said.

Emily giggled, a nervous resonance that broke them free to move. “Okay,” Elena said.
“Come on in.”

Kate glanced over her shoulder and Elena followed her gaze. “Is that your mom?”

“Yes, she came with me and she didn’t want to … interrupt or anything.”

“Please tell her to come in.” Elena made sweeping hand motions to Nicole.

Soon they’d all gathered in the living room: Dad, Larry, and the brothers came out
as if they’d been hiding behind a corner, which maybe they had been. Introductions
were made and everything felt so normal that Kate felt as if she were just meeting
another family, any other family in the world, until she looked at Emily.

Instead of the feared silence, words and explanations and stories overlapped one another
like too many simultaneous songs. Everyone tried to speak at once while telling his
or her side of the passed years.

Sitting in the Jackson living room with family photos and the knickknacks of family
life, they went around the room, slowly unfolding an intricate storyline and overlapping
years where coincidences were synchronicities, when similarities were profound, and
where ordinary days were magical, and they all added up to that moment. “Whoa,” Larry
finally said. “I’m lost.” He smiled. “Kate, you first. Tell us all about your family.”

At one moment, Emily left the room to grab a photo album and Elena leaned toward Kate.
“I know you must wonder about her brothers. I know you chose us because we said we
couldn’t have kids. I don’t want you to think I was lying or trying to…”

“I don’t think that,” Kate said. “Not one bit.”

“I know this story happens all the time, but we tried for nine years to have a child
and nothing worked.” Elena looked to her husband. “Three miscarriages and then the
miracle of Emily. Two years later, when I was late, I thought I might be going through
the early change. But the change was Steven. And then Ethan. It’s like Emily coming
to us began the miracle that kept going.”

Kate smiled at Elena across the room, wanting to take her hand and kiss her cheek.
But Emily bounded back into the room, dropping the photo album on the coffee table
and then settling next to Kate on the couch. Emily held out her hand, waving it back
and forth as if it was underwater. “I used to stare at my hands, or my feet, or my
eyes and wonder where things came from. Like who gave me this or that? Now I never
have to wonder. I never have to … not know.”

“You have Jack’s exact eye color,” Kate said. “Like green glass that lets you think
you can see inside your soul. Like everything green in the world at the same time.”

Emily grinned, a shy smile. “I’ve always wanted to look like someone.”

Kate took that same hand into her own. “Ask anything. Anything you want to know.”

“Did you … love him? My birth dad. Did you love him?”

“Yes, and I still do. Greatly. I loved you from the minute I knew about you. I loved
you more the minute I saw you. And my family too—all of us have loved you and prayed
for you since the second we knew you’d been … formed.”

Emily looked around the room, surprisingly dry-eyed and clear. “I think my ‘I’m-not-wanted’
button just turned off.”

Laughter filled the room the same way the universe fills the sky: with pure delight.

*   *   *

In a stark hotel room outside Bronxville, Kate sat on the edge of the bed with her
cell phone in her hand. The simplest of all things to do—hit one button that dialed
the seven numbers for Rowan—she couldn’t do. She couldn’t explain to him what it felt
like to walk into Emily’s bedroom and see her bright apple-green bedspread, her bulletin
board covered in photos, dried flowers, and cutouts from fashion magazines. She couldn’t
tell him how they held hands while Emily talked about her best friend, Sailor, pushing
her to find them.

Kate wanted to call Jack, tell him every feeling, every moment, every sparkling sentence
that had passed between the families. This wanting—the one of needing Jack more than
Rowan—felt more betraying than even the lie she’d told about Birmingham all those
months ago.

Nicole came out of the bathroom and sat on the hotel bed across from Kate. “You okay?”

Kate nodded. “I want to call Jack. I want to tell him everything about everything.
Her freckles. The way she covers her lips with her fingertips when she laughs. The
way her bulletin board looks like mine did at thirteen years old. The cleft in her
chin. Her greenest eyes. How happy she is. So good and so happy.”

“Then tell him, darling.” Nicole glanced around the room, as if looking for escape.
“You’d kill me if I lit a cigarette. So, I’m going outside.” She stood and grabbed
her purse from the side table.

“Mom?”

“Yes?”

“I did the right thing, right? I mean, now that we see her and know. I did the right
thing.”

Nicole nodded. “I don’t know if there’s a right thing here. But yes, it was a good
thing. A great thing.”

“What now?”

Nicole smiled. “Just like you couldn’t know back then, I don’t think you can know
now.”

The hotel room door slammed its metal weight with a startling pop as Nicole left the
room. Kate again looked at her phone contacts and scrolled to Jack’s name, touching
his number with the tip of her finger.

twenty-one

BRONXVILLE, NEW YORK

2010

“Tell me again,” Sailor asked.

“Seriously? Can’t we talk about something else?” Emily pushed her feet against the
grass, sending the tire swing higher so she looked down at Sailor, close and then
far, a kaleidoscope. “I told you every single thing.”

“Maybe you forgot one thing.”

Emily stopped the swing with the jolt of her heel into the dirt. “It’s been like a
month and I can’t think of anything I haven’t told you.”

“Liar,” Sailor said. “I don’t know why you are so super-secret about it all. I mean,
really, if it wasn’t for me you might not have even looked for her. You’d still have
that stupid notebook full of fake mom stuff.”

Sailor was right, and Emily took a deep breath. “Something I haven’t told you … let
me think.” Emily sat in the grass and plucked clover—the green stem with the tiny
white flower edged in pink—from the dirt, making a pile. “I want to meet Mr. Jack.”

“Mr. Jack?” Sailor plopped down next to Emily, joining in the flower collection.

“Yes, that’s what we all decided I’d call them. Miss Katie and Mr. Jack. It’s like
a totally southern thing, I guess.”

“See?” Sailor pushed at Emily. “You didn’t tell me that. You’re always leaving things
out.”

“Whatever.” Emily sat cross-legged and began tying stems together to make a fairy
chain. Emily and Sailor believed that when they each made a perfect circle of white
flowers with stems end to end, and then placed those garlands on their heads, wishes
were heard. Of course so far none of their wishes had been granted, but there was
always next time.

The lawn was circular, a tidy oasis behind Sailor’s uncles house. Since his wife had
died, he’d made a garden for her. When Sailor’s aunt was alive, he’d always been “too
busy” to make this garden he’d promised. When she died, he devoted his weekends and
evenings to the magical place where he gave Emily and Sailor special permission to
hide on boring and searing summer afternoons. He was the one who told them about the
fairies, and they believed him.

Silent under the July sun, tying flowers together while their fingertips turned green
with brilliant stem-juice, they each thought of their wishes. As with every afternoon
that summer, far-off thunder was the broken promise of much-needed rain that never
came. A fat blue bird dipped into a nest above Emily’s head and glared down at her
as if she might try to take the speckled eggs that she would never touch or hurt.