Not by far.
“So…” Frankie glanced at Harper. “I decided to look for our birth parents.”
No inhale followed Harper’s last exhale and, for a moment, she couldn’t remember how to breathe. Frankie’s words had knocked the air out of her, stopped her brain from working, and temporarily shut everything inside of her down.
Harper blinked a few times as she gathered herself. She slid her feet forward to tuck her toes under Archie’s fluffy shoulder. “Why would you do that?”
“I just told you. I felt the need to know more about my medical history. I have kids. They deserve to know, too. Not just their medical history but their family history. Where they come from. But more than that, I guess I’ve always been curious. Haven’t you ever wondered?”
“Sure, but not enough to do anything about it.” Harper gulped her wine. “They left us. They walked away from us. Why seek out the parents who clearly didn’t want us?”
Frankie was back to staring into her glass. “We don’t know the circumstances. Something beyond their control might have happened. It was a different time then. I think finding out the truth is important.”
Harper set her nearly empty glass on the coffee table and leaned forward. “The truth is our mother gave up two children she had obviously already been raising. She had a family and then, one day, she decided, ‘Nope, not doing this anymore. Too much responsibility for me!’ and she took off. Our father cared even less because he did nothing to try to stop that from happening. If you want truth, there it is. Neither of themcared.”
Frankie shook her head. “I know you have a lot of anger about this. I do, too. But I’m a mom and—”
“And I’m not, so I wouldn’t understand.”
“Harry, I didn’t say that.”
“Harper, please.”
“I’m sorry, Harper. But the thing is, being a mother has made me realize raising kids is incredibly hard. I don’t think I could have done it on my own. And we don’t know the thing that caused our mother to reach her breaking point. Wouldn’t you rather the life we did have than one that could have been so much worse because of a mother who was struggling? Who couldn’t cope? Giving us up had to be hard for her. As a mother, I can’t imagine it.”
The familiar hollowness that Harper had felt her whole life opened up inside her. She had always wondered about her biological parents. What could have driven them to abandon their children to the mercy of the state?
She twisted to face the television, pulling her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. “I never wanted kids. I never saw the sense in bringing new life into the world when there were so many already in need.”
“You never had a serious relationship or married, either,” Frankie said softly. “Maybe if you had, you would have felt differently. A lot changed for me after my kids were born. The way I felt inside. The way I saw the world. My understanding of what love really was.”
“So you’re an expert in love now?”
Frankie took an audible breath. “Well, I know enough about the love of a mother for her child to know that if something happened in my life that left me incapable of taking care of my children, I would want them to go to someone who could. As hard as that would be on me.”
Harper shook her head. “Not me. I can’t even imagine letting anyone else take care of Archie. Forget giving away my flesh and blood.”
The dog lifted his head at the sound of his name, then put it back down again.
“I didn’t say I thought it would be an easy decision. But if you were dying of some terminal illness, you wouldn’t want to make sure someone you trusted was going to look after Archie when you were gone?”
“Frankie, our parents turned us over to thestate. They had no clue who was going to look after us, forget the part about it being someone they trusted. They dumped us. There’s no romanticizing it. Maybe you can because it makes things easier for you, but I can’t. You were younger, so I know you don’t have the same memories I do, but it was devastating. Trust me.” Harper sniffed, feeling the ache of emotion behind her eyes. “We were separated. I will never get past that.”
“But we’re back together now.”
“Only because we were adopted by people who made it happen. If our mother had kept us, no matter how bad things were, we’d have been together. We’d have had each other.”
Frankie’s chest expanded and she slouched back. “I know this is hard. And I understand that your experience was different than mine. I don’t really have a memory of our parents. I remember standing in the foyer of a church holding your hand. That’s about it.”
“I remember our parents. Not well, but I do. And you, too, of course.” Harper bit the inside of her cheek. Her memories were thin and degraded, like old film footage. A woman in a tight red dress with a drink in her hand. A man in a brown suit, smoking a cigarette next to a gaudy Christmas tree. Music playing in the background. Both of them laughing. Dancing. Loud. Stumbling into one another.
For years, she’d thought of it as a happy memory. Then, as she grew older, her impression of it had changed. Now that memory felt sad and pathetic. She saw her parents for who they really were. Two people focused on each other and their own desires instead of their children.
Frankie had been crying in her crib in that memory. There had been no presents under the tree. And after one drunken dance, her parents had fought. Her father had stormed out of the house. Her mother had cried and cursed.
All of her memories of them were pretty much the same. But Frankie wouldn’t want to hear it.
“I know you do,” Frankie said. “Is it so awful that I’d like to know who they are now? What happened in their lives all those years ago?” She touched her chest. “I have this emptiness inside me, this intense curiosity to know the people I came from. I can’t help that.”
