Phyllis offers us both when we enter.We follow her to the kitchen where Jamie is sitting, already sipping iced tea and eating his daily allowance of two sugar-free cookies.
“To what do I owe this honor?”Phyllis asks, pouring me a tall glass of lemonade.
Finn hands her the envelope.“This arrived today.I haven’t opened it.”
She frowns.“What is it?”
“Finn says it’s answers,” I say.
She looks at him questioningly.
“No, I haven’t told Emma what the questions are.I’m worried she’s going to be mad at me.”
I squeeze his hand.“I could never be mad at you.I love you.”
“Let me translate.”Jamie points a cookie in Finn’s direction.“That means that since Emma loves you, she’s allowed to get as mad as a bag of rattlers and you’re just gonna have to suck it up.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
Phyllis rips open the envelope.She studies it for a moment and then stares straight at me, her eyes flooding with tears.
“So, what’s this about?”I ask.
“I wanted to know who your parents are.Were.”Phyllis leans a hand on the table to steady herself.“If you want to know, I can tell you.”
I’ve said for years that I don’t want to know who my parents are.It doesn’t matter.They abandoned me.They didn’t want me.They don’t deserve for me to want to know who they are.
But now I’m nervous.And curious.I look to Finn, and he nods.I know it’s up to me.So I close my eyes a moment and decide there’s nothing to be afraid of anymore.No point I need to make, to myself for anyone else.I am wanted.I am loved.And whatever that envelope holds, I don’t have to face it alone.
“I want to know.”
“It’s exactly what I thought,” Phyllis says and continues to stare at me with pinpoint focus.
“Oh shit,” Finn breathes.“That’swhy I had a wicked case of déjà vu when I looked at Cindy in your family photos.”
I don’t know what he’s talking about, but Phyllis nods at him.
I throw up my hands.“What is going on?Who’s Cindy?”
“You’re my granddaughter,” Phyllis says.
“What onearth?”Jamie stands up so fast that he drops his cookie.
I half fall onto a kitchen chair and steady myself with my hands planted on the table.“Are you joking?”
Phyllis shakes her head.
Everyone gives me a moment to collect myself.She makes me sit down and eat a piece of coffee cake and wash it down with lemonade.When my heart stops pounding in my chest, she tells me the short-story version of her wayward daughter, Cindy, and her boyfriend, Clay.
She tells me that she and her daughter had been estranged for years, and she didn’t find out about the deadly car accident that took my parents’ lives until weeks had passed.There was never mention of a baby.
“I didn’t know a thing about you, that you even existed.”She slides a document my way so that I can read it.My eyes immediately find my mother’s date of death—it’s my birthday.
I’m crying.
I look up in shock, my eyes going from face to face around the table.Jamie’s crying.Phyllis is crying.Finn’s doing his best not to.
Phyllis grabs both my hands in hers.“If I’d known, if I’d had any idea…” She shakes her head.“I’m so terribly, terribly sorry.I just didn’t know.But as soon as you got here, I kept looking at you, and I swore to myself that I was looking at her, and the more I got to know you…” She looks to Finn.“Now we know.”
