“I did.”
“Do you look like them?”
“Maybe not, but I don’t look too different from them, either.”
“Finding out you’re adopted—that would suck.”
“It did, but everyone has challenges in life, right? I’m trying to work through mine just like you’re trying to work through yours. And I think we can both do it.”
Her open and honest response gave Lilly the courage to ask another question. “Do you like your parents—the ones who raised you?”
“I love them dearly. They’re wonderful people, have been very good to me.”
“You’re not mad at them?”
Charlotte took a moment to think. “I won’t lie to you. At times I feel some resentment, mostly because Sabrina is gone and I can’t meet her now even if I want to, you know? But they did what they thought was best for me—and maybe they were right. Maybe itwasbest for me.”
“Don’t you think they should’ve told you?”
“That’s hard to say. Would I have been any happier if I’d known? It would’ve introduced questions and issues that I probably would’ve had a hard time dealing with at a younger age. I had a great childhood. Maybe I should just be grateful.”
Charlotte was very different from Sabrina, Lilly decided. She couldn’t imagine her mother ever saying anything like that. She was pretty sure her mother would’ve been mad, felt ripped off somehow. She always seemed to feel ripped off.
“Did your mother ever mention me?” Charlotte asked.
“Mention you?” Lilly echoed, stalling for time.
“Tell you she’d had another daughter?”
Did Charlotte want to hear that Sabrina thought of her often? Missed her? Regretted giving her up? Wouldn’t any daughter want to believe that? But Sabrina wasn’t the type to ever look back. There was always too much to forget.
“Not to me,” she admitted. Afraid her sister would be disappointed, Lilly followed that up with another question, hoping to keep Charlotte from dwelling on what her answer might mean. “What’re your parents’ names?”
“Don and Penny. They live in Orange County.”
“Where’s Orange County?”
“You’ve never been there? It’s part of the Los Angeles area. Southern California. Where did you and your mother live before you came to Italy?”
“We’ve lived everywhere. Denver, Seattle, Portland, Salem, Fort Bragg, a little place called Cherokee. That’s in Iowa,” she clarified. “That was when my mom was with Steve. He was a farmer. I liked him best.” She smiled as she remembered the blind dog who’d hung out in the barn. He’d becomeherdog—until Steve had asked them to move out because he and Sabrina were fighting too much.
“Sounds like you relocated a lot.”
“We did.”
“Your mother was a bartender?”
“Yeah. If she got fired or hated where she was working, we’d just move on. She liked trying different places.” Sabrina had once made a joke that she was trying to outrun the past. Lilly hadn’t understood what her mother meant at the time, but she thought she did now. If they didn’t keep moving, it felt like everything bad in their lives would catch up with them.
Charlotte wiped away the moisture collecting on her upper lip. “Didyoulike moving?”
“Not really.” Over the years, she’d pretended otherwise—to protect her mom. Now that Sabrina was gone, she didn’t have to do that anymore. But she still felt slightly guilty, as if she was letting her mother down.
“Were you upset when she decided to come to Italy—take you clear across the ocean?”
Guilt caused her to back away from the honesty that’d just felt so freeing. “I didn’t have any choice.”
“Having no choice is different from having no opinion.”
