Chapter 4: What David Knew
I did not raise my voice.
I had learned, somewhere in thirty years, that the quieter I became, the more clearly David heard me.
"Sit down," I said.
He sat in the chair by the window.
Lily watched him the way a person watches a stranger they've just realized they should have been afraid of all along.
"Start from the beginning," I said.
"All of it."
David looked at his hands.
"Eight months ago, she came to my office."
"To your office."
"Yes.
She said she was looking for her birth mother.
She had the documents — the ones she just showed you.
She said her birth mother's name was Susan Carter and that she'd tracked me down through public records.
She asked if I was married to a Susan Carter who grew up in Portland."
"And you said yes."
"I said I needed time to verify."
"But you didn't tell me."
He was quiet.
"David.
You didn't tell me."
"I wanted to be sure first.
I didn't want to put you through something painful if it turned out to be a mistake."
Lily spoke from the bed.
"He ran a DNA test without telling either of us."
I turned to her.
"He asked me to submit a sample," she said.
"He told me it was routine.
That he needed it to confirm before he could introduce me to you." Her voice was flat.
"He got the result four months ago."
Four months.
I looked at my husband.
"You knew for four months."
"I was trying to figure out how to tell you."
"She was pregnant, David.
She was carrying a baby for four months while you were figuring out how to tell me."
He flinched.
"And the DNA result," I said.
"The one that shows she's biologically related to me.
How is that possible if I was never pregnant?"
"That's what I couldn't understand." He leaned forward.
"So I dug further.
I went back to the agency records.
I found the caseworker who handled the original adoption in 1987."
"And?"
"The birth mother's name was Susan Carter.
But it wasn't you." He reached into his jacket and pulled out a folded sheet.
"It was your sister."
The word landed like something physical.
"Carol."
"Carol used your name.
Your date of birth.
Your aunt's address in Boise as a forwarding contact.
She was seventeen and living in Portland and she didn't want your parents to find out." He set the paper on the bed.
"She borrowed your identity.
Completely."
The room was very quiet.
Lily was looking at me with an expression I couldn't name.
Something between relief and devastation.
"So she's not your daughter," David said.
"She's Carol's."
"Carol d*ed six years ago," I said.
Lily's breath caught.
"I know," David said.
"That's part of why I didn't know how to tell you.
Because the woman Lily has been searching for her whole life is gone.
And you're the closest thing left."
I sat down on the edge of the bed.
Not because I chose to.
Because my legs made the decision for me.
Lily didn't move away.
She stayed exactly where she was, close enough that I could see the gray of her eyes again.
Carol's eyes.
My mother's eyes.
The same eyes that looked back at me from the mirror every morning.
"She never told me," I said.
It wasn't directed at anyone.
"Thirty-seven years.
She never said a word."
"There's something else," David said.
I looked at him.
His face told me I didn't want to hear it.
"The letter in that envelope.
The one that isn't your handwriting." He paused.
"I've seen that handwriting before.
On birthday cards.
On the note she left at your mother's funeral."
He didn't say the name.
He didn't need to.
May you like
It was Carol's handwriting.
Which meant Carol had known, for at least some part of Lily's life, exactly where her daughter was.
