The One I Trust (8 page)

She thought about this for a moment.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

I shrugged. “It’s okay.”

“When do you think you’ll hear back from most of the places you applied to?”

“I hope by next week.”

“Well, good.” Then she smiled and asked, “What kind of salad dressing do you like?”

Emily’s calzones were very,
very
good.

“That was fantastic,” I said when I finally finished, leaning back from the counter. I hoped that she was pleased and not too freaked out by how much I ate.

“I hope you saved room,” she said. “I made dessert.”

We both stood up and I gathered some of the dirty dishes and put them in the sink while she opened the fridge. After a moment she turned around, holding a large plate covered with whipped cream, meringue, lemon curd, and fruit.

“It’s called pavlova,” she told me proudly, setting it down on the counter. I’d never heard of it before, but I had the feeling it had taken a
lot
of work. I looked at it and then at her and I felt a rush of warmth spread through my body.

Gratitude probably. Maybe something else . . .

“I need a knife,” she said, stepping forward and leaning past me. I grabbed her hand as she reached to open a drawer.

She looked at me in surprise as I held on to her and raised my free hand to lift her chin. I brought my mouth to her throat and as I worked my way up to her lips, she let out a soft sigh.

Our mouths met and I brought both of my hands to either side of her face, pulling her closer as we kissed and finding myself once again amazed at how warm her lips were. I finally pulled away and looked at her face, still cupped in my hands.

We smiled at each other and with that third kiss out of the way, I let her get the knife that she needed and we sat down to enjoy dessert. It was almost as good as our kiss.

“So,” she said, scraping at the last bit of whipped cream on her plate with her fork. “I was thinking about something . . .”

“What’s that?”

“I’m afraid you’re going to think I’m trying to take advantage of you,” she said hesitantly.

“I won’t,” I assured her.

“If you don’t want to do it,” she said, “it’s totally fine.”

“What?” I was on my second serving of pavlova and I put another bite in my mouth.

“I was wondering if maybe you’d draw me something?”

“Sure,” I said, swallowing. “What?”

“Well,” she answered, “I have this group I work with in Molly’s class and Wednesday is my last day with them and . . .”

“What do you want?” I asked.

“How long does it take you to do one of those caricatures?”

“Not long,” I said, shrugging. “But I’ve got to have pictures of them.”

“Oh, I’ve got pictures,” she said. “I’ve been taking pictures of them all semester.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I can do that.”

“How long will it take you?” she asked.

“How many kids are there?”

“In my group? Four.”

“Pfft,” I said, waving my hand at her. “I can do that in about twenty minutes.”

“Really?”

“Sure,” I said. Then I added quickly, “but of course I took a lot longer on the one I did of you . . .”

“Oh, of course.” She grinned.

A few minutes later we had finished our dessert and were sitting on the couch together with a picture of Ernesto pulled up on Emily’s computer. She watched as I drew a rough sketch of his face, exaggerating his prominent round cheeks, dark eyelashes, and brush-top haircut.

“He likes whales,” Emily mentioned as I ran my pencil across the paper, so I made sure that when I drew his body, it was of him in a kneeling position, poolside, with one hand on a smiling orca.

After I finished Ernesto’s picture, I passed it off to Emily so she could start coloring while I began a sketch of Adrian.

“I wish I could draw,” she said wistfully as she colored. “This is totally what you should do for a living.”

“No way,” I said, shaking my head. “I’d hate it if I
had
to do it.”

“Can you draw other things?” she asked. “Like landscapes and portraits and stuff?”

“Yeah.”

“Have you ever had lessons?”

“No.” I shook my head.

“Where did you get your talent?” she asked. “Did your mom or dad draw?”

“I don’t know,” I said, still looking at my paper. “I was adopted.”

“You were adopted?”

I nodded.

“What happened to your biological parents?”

“I have no idea.”

“Well you must know something.”

“Nope,” I said. “All I know is that I was adopted.”

“Your mom didn’t tell you anything about your real parents?”

“My mom didn’t even tell me I was
adopted
,” I said, picking up a sharpener and turning my pencil in it. I glanced at her and noticed that she was staring at me with her mouth slightly open.

“What?”

“She didn’t tell you?”

“Nope.” I put the sharpener back down on the coffee table and went back to sketching. “What’s something Adrian likes?”

“Pokémon.”

“Charizard?” I asked. “Pikachu? Blastoise?”

“Charizard,” she answered.

I nodded. That had been Noah’s favorite, too.

“So, how did you find out you were adopted?” Emily asked, clearly now much more interested in this than in coloring.

I shrugged. “I found some papers after she died,” I said.

I didn’t look back up at Emily, but I had the feeling she was looking at me with her mouth open again. I kept drawing.

“I can’t believe she never told you,” Emily said softly.

“My mom didn’t tell me a
lot
of things,” I said matter-of-factly.

“Like what?”

This was going to take a while, so I sighed, put my pencil down, and looked her in the eye.

“Remember how you were asking me why I didn’t have any family to spend Thanksgiving with?”

She nodded.

“Well,” I said, “I think my mom left my dad when I was little and didn’t want him to find us. That’s why we never had any contact with anyone on either side of the family.”

Her mouth was definitely gaping now.

“I thought you said your dad died.”

“That’s what she told me,” I said, “but after going through her things and knowing what I know now, I’m pretty sure he was abusing her.”

I hadn’t figured all this out until long after she’d died, but over the years I’d seen lots of women escape from an abusive partner and I knew one thing for sure—my mother had definitely been in hiding.

“Wow,” Emily said softly.

I gave her another shrug and picked my drawing back up. It was quiet for a few moments.

“So,” she said, breaking the silence. “Have you ever tried to find your birth parents?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know,” I said, not looking up from my work.

“You should try to find them,” she said.

“No thanks. I’m good.”

“Here,” she said, picking her computer up from the coffee table. “I want to see something.”

“Hey!’ I protested. “Put that back.”

“We can work on that in a minute,” she said, waving her hand at me. She started pecking away at her keyboard and after a few minutes she leaned back on the couch, close to me so that I could see the screen. She had pulled up a website called ForeverLinked and was on a page that encouraged me to “Start Your Search Now!”

“What do you know about your birth parents?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“Well you must know something,” she said. “Your birthday or where you were born or something? You said you found out you were adopted. How did you find out?”

She looked at me eagerly. I didn’t really want to give her any information, but I also didn’t want to leave without another kiss and she seemed so enthusiastic . . .

I finally decided that she wasn’t going to be able to find anything anyway, so I told her when I was born.

“Your birthday’s in three weeks?” she asked.

“Well, four actually,” I said. “I’ve always celebrated on December 28, but apparently I was really born on the twenty-third.”

She thought about that for a moment and then entered it into the correct field on her computer.

“Do you know the city and state?” she asked.

I did, and I told her that, too.

“Do you know the name of the hospital?”

“Cavendish Memorial.”

“What about the names of your birth parents?”

I shook my head.

“Did you have a different given name at birth?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you—”

“I don’t know anything else,” I interrupted. “Where and when. That’s all I know.”

“Okay,” she said, obviously disappointed. “Well, let’s see what this pulls up.”

She hit “Search” and I was actually surprised to see a notification pop up almost immediately telling me that they’d found a match. I was also surprised that I couldn’t take my eyes off the computer screen.

“Bingo,” she said, beginning to read. “One biological parent searching for a male born on December 23, Cavendish Memorial Hospital.”

“Who is it?” I asked.

“Let’s see,” she said. “It says, ‘Log in for details or to send a message.’”

She looked at me and I rolled my eyes at her.

“Oh, come on,” she said, hitting the “Register Now” button. “What could be wrong with registering?”

“It’s forty-nine dollars,” I said, pointing at the screen that popped up. “That’s what could be wrong with it.”

“That’s not that much,” she said.

“It is when you don’t have a job,” I reminded her. “Besides that, it’s just a scam. No matter what you type in, they’re going to tell you someone’s looking for you and then after you give them forty-nine bucks, you find out, ‘Oh, sorry. This isn’t who you’re looking for after all. Surprise, surprise.’”

“It wouldn’t hurt to try . . .”

“I don’t have forty-nine dollars,” I said, “and even if I did, I wouldn’t spend it on this. If my biological parents want to find me so bad they can pay forty-nine dollars.”

“But I think they already did,” Emily pointed out. “I think one of them joined this site because they’re looking for you and if you don’t answer them then they’re never going to be able to find you.”

“Emily,” I said, reaching for the computer. “Can we drop this? I’m not giving them forty-nine dollars and we really need to get back to work.”

She looked at me, disheartened.

“Please?” I asked.

She finally relented and handed me the computer and we went back to our drawing and coloring.

Emily was quiet for a few more minutes as she worked.

“I’m going to buy frames for these,” she said, breaking the silence again. “That way they can give them to their parents for a Christmas present.”

“That’s a good idea,” I said, nodding but not looking up from my paper.

“It’s too bad we can’t do one for all the kids in the class,” she added. “These are really cool.”

I looked at her. “Do you have pictures of all of them?”

“Well, yeah,” she said. “But you can’t do that many.”

“How many are there?”

“Twenty-two.”

“I could do that,” I said.

“Seriously?”

“Yeah.” It wasn’t like I had a whole lot of anything else lined up to do. “You don’t need them till Wednesday, right?”

“Well, no, but . . . are you sure?”

“Sure, I’m sure. Why not? Do you know what all their favorite things are?”

“No,” she said, “but I could email the teacher. She’d know.”

“I’m up for it if you are,” I said, handing her the completed sketch of Adrian. “You’re the one who’s taking forever with the coloring.”

We worked on pictures together most of the day Saturday, and Sunday afternoon we went to a dollar store so that Emily could buy frames. We spent about an hour cleaning the glass and putting the drawings into the frames, and when we were finished, Emily propped each one of them up on the coffee table and sofa so that she could stand back and admire all of them at one time.

“They’re amazing,” she said, clapping her hands together. “I absolutely love them!”

“Good,” I said, putting my arm around her waist and looking at them too. “I’m glad you like them.”

She leaned her head against my chest and hugged me.

When Emily called on Wednesday to report that the drawings had been a huge hit with the class, she also told me that her fifth-grade student teaching assignment in Garner had fallen through.

“Now I’m going to be in Apex,” she reported.

“Apex?” I asked. “That’s going to be a long commute. Especially if the traffic is bad.”

“I’m going to get an apartment closer to the school.”

“Can you get out of your lease?”

“I never signed a lease,” she said. “Denise just let me move in.”

“Oh.”

“She’s not real happy about me moving out.”

“How can you tell?”

“It’s not funny, Reid,” Emily said. “I feel bad for her.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“I know, but I think she’s going to have a hard time finding a new roommate.”

“Again,” I said. “Not your fault.”

Emily sighed.

“When are you going to move?” I asked.

“Not until after Christmas,” she said. “I’m paid up through the end of the month.”

“Is it still fifth grade?”

“No,” she said happily. “It’s first grade. I’m so excited!”

We didn’t talk much longer because she had a major project due at the end of the week, but we agreed that we would get together on Friday and do something.

By the time Friday rolled around, however, she was stressing about packing, finding a new apartment to move in to, and exams—which were the very next week. Between Monday and Wednesday she was scheduled to have five exams, so the “something” we did was to go to a drive-thru and order burgers and fries and then sit at the coffee table in the living room eating while I helped her study.

After exams, Emily started searching for an apartment, finding one fairly quickly.

“It’s right off 64,” she told me over the phone. “It’ll take me about five minutes to get to work unless the traffic’s really bad.”

“Good.”

“And I only had to sign a six-month lease.”

“Good.”

“And no roommate,” she added. “I’ve got the whole place to myself.”