I swore I saw a smile as he started the car. The throaty purr of the engine made my girly parts tingle.
“You know what sounds really good?” I prompted as he backed out of the driveway.
“What’s that?”
I waited until he was driving down the street to say, “Chipotle.”
He glanced over at me. “Seriously?”
“What? You have something against Mexican food.”
“Not at all.”
“Then why are you surprised.”
“I didn’t take you for the fast food sort.”
“Ah.” I nodded and stared out the window as he pulled onto Sunset Blvd. “You figured I preferred escargot and caviar for dinner?”
“Something like that.”
“Apparently, taste in food isn’t passed down from mother to daughter.”
“I guess not.”
“I didn’t get a lot of traits from my mother, actually,” I continued simply because I had someone to talk to. “What about you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Meaning you’ve never paid attention or…?”
“I don’t have parents.” His eyes remained locked on the road in front of us.
Since everyone technically had parents—at least from a biological perspective—I approached the subject with sensitivity.
“Were you adopted?”
“I guess that was the plan when they left me in the front lobby of a police station when I was two.”
He said it as though he was stating a fact, not reflecting on a traumatic event in his life. Not that I expected more from Rule. He wasn’t exactly the emotional sort.
“Oh.” I wasn’t sure what to say to that, but I didn’t want him to stop talking. “Were youlateradopted?”
“No. Foster care, mostly. Group home when I was a teenager.”
“What’s it like?” I asked, staring out the window. “Not knowing where you came from?”
He didn’t respond, but I hadn’t expected him to.
“I have some idea how it feels since I don’t know who my father is. Sometimes, I imagine he’s an actor with a family of his own, and he and my mother had something temporary while on set. Other times, I think maybe he’s a world-renowned chef in Paris and met my mother by chance. In both cases, she ran out on him, and he never learned of my existence because if he had, he would’ve been there.”
“She never told you?”
“She doesn’t know.”
At least, that was what she said. When I tried to get her to narrow it down to a manageable list so I could have some idea, she said it was during a time she didn’t remember. My mother didn’t have a monogamous bone in her body, so I didn’t expect anything less.
“I just don’t understand why she kept me.” I had never admitted that to anyone. “Her life would’ve been so much easier without me, I’m sure. As it was, she hardly raised me. My nannies did. Even those weren’t consistent because she has a hair-trigger temper and takes it out on people who work for her.”
