“But not Caroline Cashion.”
“No. Well, that is, of course it is. That’s your legal name now. But you were born Caroline Smith. We decided to keep it. The name Caroline fit you. So graceful. And it sounds pretty with Cashion, and . . . we thought it might be less disruptive for you, emotionally. To be called by the name that you were used to.”
I thought about this. “Do you have my birth certificate?”
“Yes.” She gestured vaguely toward the ceiling. “It’s upstairs in the files. We had to have that and the adoption papers to get your first passport. You can see it, if you want.”
“Sure. Yes.”
I chewed my lip. Tony stood and poured a cup of coffee. Then he excused himself. He needed to get home, get showered, say hi to the kids before work. He gave my shoulder a squeeze. “Hang in there. I’ll call you later, okay?”
“Yep. Nice sweats, by the way.”
He looked down. “High school glory days.”
“Good times. Go Bulldogs.”
He looked unsure whether to rise to this. Then old habit kicked in, reflexes honed over a lifetime of sibling bickering. “I’ll remind you that my senior year we nearly won the Mid-Atlantic Prep Championship tournament.”
“You nearly won?”
“That’s right.”
“You mean, you came in second.”
“Third. A mere detail.”
“Wow. No wonder the ladies couldn’t resist.”
He grinned and pulled me to him in a real hug. “My smart-ass sister. Sorry about all this. I’ll call you.”
He slammed the kitchen door shut. My mother turned and started cracking eggs into a bowl. She rustled around in the fridge, pulled out bacon and bread. An uncomfortable silence grew between us.
“What about the rest of my family?” I ventured after a while. “I mean, not to sound ungrateful, but didn’t I have grandparents? Why didn’t they take me?”
“I asked that same question. Before we signed the papers. For selfish reasons, I confess. I didn’t want anyone to show up later and try to claim you back once you were ours. We were told there was no immediate family to take you. Your father’s parents were already dead. And your mother’s—I gather they were separated, and not in particularly good health themselves. Not the ideal home life for a traumatized little girl. So the decision was made to find you a new family. It was quick. They cut through all the red tape; no one wanted to see you stuck in bureaucratic limbo.”
“But didn’t they ever try to visit me? My own grandparents?”
“Once.” Mom lowered her eyes. “Your grandmother wrote once. Asking to see you. We thought it was too soon. That seeing her might confuse you. She didn’t have any legal rights, not after we finalized the adoption.” Mom hesitated. “I did write to her, some years after that. The letter was returned, unopened. She and your grandfather had both passed away by then.”
I winced. A minute went by before I could speak again. “And why—why you? Why did I come here?”
Mom glanced at me sideways. “You know I had trouble delivering Anthony?”
“Yes.” I couldn’t think how I knew this; it wasn’t something I could remember ever being openly discussed.
“I was unwell for a long time after his birth. We both stayed in the hospital for several weeks. It’s all fine now, of course, but the end result was we couldn’t have another child. It was physically impossible for me to carry a baby again. And we so badly wanted a girl. I so badly wanted a girl.” She smiled. “So we signed up with an adoption agency. We weren’t sure it would lead to anything, and for a couple of years it didn’t. We knew we were low priority; we already had two healthy children. But it turned out, in your case, that that was helpful. It bumped us to the top of the list. The social workers wanted experienced parents. A happy, stable family that you could slot right into. I showed them pictures, how I had a girl’s room all done up in pink, just in case. A week later, we got the call.”
I remembered the pink room. It was a little girl’s dream. The center--piece was a lace canopy bed worthy of Cinderella. Beside it on the carpet had stood a matching miniature bed for my favorite doll. My plastic Fisher-Price record player had a real needle to play vinyl 45s, and my lightbulb-powered Holly Hobbie oven had singed a hole in the carpet (burn marks apparently being a signature of my childhood). What I could not summon now, for the life of me, was any memory of seeing that room for the first time. I had never given it much thought, but I suppose I’d always assumed that before the canopy bed, a baby’s crib had stood there. My crib. That was the logical evolution, just as the canopy bed had given way at some point in my teenage years to the queen-size mattress and headboard that now dominated the room. I had slept in that queen bed last night. The burned carpet had been replaced, the pink walls long since repainted a tasteful shade of taupe.
Mom slid into a chair beside me and set two plates on the table. While I was wallowing in nostalgia, she had whipped up an omelet. Bacon, eggs, grated cheese. She knows I love bacon. Pork in all forms. I have been known to go well out of my way for good chorizo. But when I took a bite, I spit it right back out.
My mother looked mildly offended.
“I’m sorry. It tastes like cardboard.”
“Ah.” She touched my hand. “That can happen when you’ve had a shock.”
I stared at my plate in surprise. “I thought that was just something people said. Or, you know, literary license. Lazy writers always make grieving characters lose their appetite and complain how everything tastes like cardboard. I had no idea it was true.” My mouth felt filthy. I crossed to the sink and spat again. Scooped cold water and splashed my face over and over, until my hair was matted and water dripped onto the tiled floor. I stood there trembling. My mother rose and rested her hand on my back while I shook.