Cindy glanced helplessly at Shannon, then shook her head. “I can’t. You’ll have to.”
Ava shocked Shannon by looking directly at her. “When your mother was pregnant, she considered giving you up for adoption. Understandable, of course. She was only seventeen and had her whole life planned out. A baby was a complication. My husband and I were trying to adopt. Cindy chose us to be your parents.”
Shannon felt the ground shift underneath her as she heard but didn’t understand the words. Adoption? No way. Her momwouldn’t do that. Only Cindy’s shocked expression had turned guilty, and that Ava person continued to talk.
“But when you were born, she couldn’t do it,” Ava said, her voice thick with an emotion Shannon couldn’t identify. “She kept you, as was her right. And that was that.”
Cindy flinched. Victoria stared at her mother, obviously stunned by the explanation. Javiar moved close to Shannon and put his arm around her waist, as if holding her upright.
She wanted to protest she was fine, only she wasn’t. Her mom had planned to give her up? Sure, it made sense—in theory at least. But to hear the information was upsetting and confusing. Her mom loved her. They were a team. How could she have wanted to give her away? But even as she thought the question, she told herself not to judge. Cindy loved her. She’d just been a kid herself.
“Mom?” she said, then paused when she realized she had no idea what to say.
Cindy looked from her to Ava and back, then shook her head. “I can’t. I just can’t.”
Before Shannon knew what was happening, she’d turned and run back toward the bungalow and the parking lot beyond. Shannon glanced back at Ava.
“I’m sorry,” she said, wanting to add something, but honestly, what was there to say?
She turned to follow Cindy, Javiar at her side. Thoughts crowded in her head, but none of them made sense.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Not even close.”
“You never knew?”
“That my mom was going to give me up? No. It’s not exactly a normal thing to discuss.” She rubbed her temple. “It makes sense. She was a pregnant teenager. But it’s still a shock to hear.”
She found her mom waiting by Javiar’s car. He quickly unlocked it, and she slid into the back seat. Shannon got in next to him and turned to stare at her mom.
Cindy looked away. “Don’t ask me anything. I can’t deal with this now. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“But, Mom—”
“No! Just let me be.”
The harsh tone was unfamiliar, as was the refusal to talk. In their world, honest conversation solved nearly every problem.
Javiar started the car, then reached across to squeeze her hand. His kind eyes told her he got that everything was messed up and that he was on her side.
She appreciated the silent support but wasn’t sure it was going to help. Her mind couldn’t settle on just one thing, instead jumping from revelation to revelation. Her mom had been planning to give her up for adoption. Another couple had wanted her as their own. Ava’s brief recounting of what had happened hadn’t told the entire story.
Cindy had picked Ava and her husband and then had changed her mind, no doubt devastating them. Because people waiting for a baby wanted kids desperately. They’d wanted her. But so had her mom. She’d been unable to go through with it—Ava had said Cindy had changed her mind after she’d been born.
What must that have been like? To disappoint the couple she’d already chosen, to decide to keep a baby when she was barely eighteen? To turn her back on all her dreams and plans. Had her mom been going to college? Cindy was smart—she always had been. There could have been a scholarship and a career. But she’d walked away from all of that to keep Shannon. To raise her on her own, because the guy who was her father had bolted at the news of the pregnancy.
At least that was what she’d always been told. Suddenly Shannon wasn’t sure about anything. Not her past or her mom’s.They’d always been so close, yet she was starting to see she didn’t know her mother at all.
Victoria watched the other people walk away. Her heart was pounding in her chest, and there was a weird pressure in her ears. She told herself that the day had taken a turn for the interesting, and wasn’t that fun? Only she couldn’t breathe, and her inability had nothing to do with ribs.
She’d always known she was adopted. She’d grown up with the knowledge, hadn’t thought much about it. Occasionally she’d asked her dad for details about her parents, but he’d been vague, saying he didn’t know much. That unsatisfying answer had always been followed with an earnest discussion about how she’d been a wonderful gift. He’d explained Ava had found out she couldn’t have children when she was still a teenager and had immediately known she wanted to adopt.
When he’d married her, he’d been fine with the plan, and they’d gone looking for the perfect little girl. Her. It was an explanation designed to make her feel loved and safe. Only it hadn’t been the truth.
When she was fourteen, she’d been assigned a genealogy project for school and had asked for a copy of her birth certificate. On it she’d seen the name of her mother and the single wordUnknownby the space for the father’s name. A little online research had her realizing that her mother had been a maid in the house. She confronted her father, and he’d admitted that she had been.
One of the maids had come to them about an unexpected pregnancy. She was frightened and alone and didn’t want her family to know about the baby. She’d been asking for help, but Ava and Milton had decided to adopt her child instead.
