The doorbell rang, and I forced myself onto my feet. Lunch had arrived, and Ilona would soon return. Good, because I wasn’t doing well left alone with my thoughts.
I made my way to the front door and collected the bags from the porch, then sent a text to let Ilona know to come on over.
A stack of books on the windowsill caught my eye after I hit Send. Atop the pile sat a button box.
I set the lunch bags on a chair and opened the little box with greedy hands, plunging my fingers into the contents. The edge of something stiff scraped my skin. I pinched it between my thumb and forefinger, then pulled it free. Another photo of my mom and Bastien, my biological father.
My breath caught as I took them in, leaning casually against a fence backed in shrubbery. At a park, perhaps? Bastien wore a T-shirt with stripes and tan pants. Mom wore a cinched-waist dress and a smile as bright as the sun. She looked at the camera, but his eyes were on her.
I flipped the photo over, scanning Mom’s faded script.Sébastien Allard, summer abroad.
My heart raced as I knelt and dumped the box’s contents onto the floor. I spread the button pile with my palm. The little disks felt cool and smooth to my touch, brightly colored and cheerful against the worn brown carpet. I searched hungrily for something more. Another photo, or trinket, some additional clue about my origin.
There were only buttons.
I heard Ilona humming as she crossed the back patio and entered the house. Deeply rooted Southern manners insisted I rise and greet her, but I could only stare at the photo, buttons, and box scattered before me. Based on Mom and Bastien’s clothing, the picture was taken on a different day than the photo Mom had given me. On the day she toldme about my origin, and the man with one arm around her in this image. Was I already growing inside her then?
I’d obsessed over the first photo during the weeks I waited for Mom to talk again. I’d compiled questions and fabricated scenarios in my mind in which she told me every detail she could recall about the man she’d met in France. Since her death, I’d been so focused on leaving Robert that I hadn’t had much time or energy to think about my biological father. Now, I wondered again what my life might’ve been if Mom had made a different decision. Could we have been safe and happy? Would she still be here today?
Ilona stopped a few feet from where I knelt on the living room floor. She didn’t speak for a long moment, and neither did I.
Eventually she collected the bags of food from the chair and released a deep, audible sigh. “I see you found the buttons.”
My gaze shot to her, the photograph still clutched in one hand. “You know?”
“Yep.”
I jerked onto my feet. “How long have you known?”
“Longer than you,” she said. “Before you ask, I didn’t say anything because it wasn’t my secret to tell.”
I followed her to the kitchen and collapsed onto a chair at the table.
Ilona poured glasses of iced water and arranged our salads and sandwiches on plates. “I know it’s a lot to take in,” she said. “But she did what she thought she had to do to give you a good life. She wasn’t sure she could find him again even if she wanted. She didn’t have the money for another trip. She didn’t want to move to France, away from everyone and everything she knew. She didn’t believe he’d come to America for a girl he’d only known a short time, so she decided it was best never to say a word.” Ilona pushed the glass of water in my direction. “That’s all I know about it, so drink up, and try not to be too mad. She did the best she could with what she had.”
I drank the water as she suggested, letting the coolness reduce my body temperature and my temper. Ilona was right. It was useless to be angry with someone who wasn’t around to defend herself.
But that didn’t mean I would let this go.
I struggled through my thoughts as I ate. If Mom had considered telling Bastien about me, then she must’ve had his address at one time. He was unlikely to live in the same place, but it was something to go on, assuming I could find the address. One look around this house proved she rarely threw anything away.
One way or another, I would find Bastien Allard and tell him he had a daughter.
I didn’t need anything from him, but it would be nice to know if he wasn’t the violent, unstable train wreck the man who raised me turned out to be. I’d tell him Mom passed recently and kept photos of him hidden. That I hadn’t known until recently. I wasn’t just being selfish in trying to track him down. I couldn’t imagine a world where I didn’t meet Camilla, or know she existed, until she was in her forties. Bastien deserved the truth. And he should have the chance to know me too.
Ilona’s chair scraped over the linoleum as she rose from the table and carried her trash to the wastebasket. “How do you feel about yard sales?” she asked. “Might do wonders to get rid of some of this stuff. I can help if you want to get one going. Harvey, he’s in the blue house on the corner,” she clarified, “works at the paper. He’ll put the ad in for us if we ask, and he’s got two teenage daughters home for the summer. They can make posters and put them up around the neighborhood. Real nice girls. Always asking if I need anything.”
It took a long moment for her words to register through the fog in my brain, another few seconds for what she said to make sense. I was so enraptured by the possibility of contacting my biological father that the sharp change in subject felt like being pulled up from the bottom of a swimming pool.
Part of me had completely forgotten she was there.
“Are you finished?” she asked, moving toward me, one arm outstretched.
I’d eaten my sandwich and salad, but I barely recalled doing so. “I might need to lie down.”
Ilona’s expression was patient, her smile sad as she cleared the table, then returned to stroke a gentle palm over my head. “I think that’s a good idea.”
I searched Bastien’s name online and on social media platforms until the lack of results left my mind as tired as my body. I fell asleep in the trailer, box fans propped in the windows. Then I dreamed of my mother.
