“To Angie, you mean,” she said. “Not to me.”
“She felt itwasyou, Angie. Arriving, returning, right on the cusp of Christmas Day, like a child in a manger. And your mother saw it as a sign. A very powerful sign. She believed you had been sent back by angels, and that we had to do everything in our power to claim you, adopt you, bring you rightfully home to us.”
“That’s crazy—that’s insane.”
He looked down into his glass again. “She wasn’t well in her mind. I know. I ... I don’t expect you to understand what happened, how it happened, but in believing you were her baby come home, and in going through that adoption application process, in her desperate desire, herneedto prove herself worthy to the authorities as a potential adoptive mother, she pulled herself together. She managed to appear normal again, and her depression of the past was put down to PTSD and sheer, all-consuming grief. We fostered you for a while. And when we were selected to be your parents—”
“Because no one else wanted me, right?” she interjected. “A four-year-old isn’t exactly the easiest thing to adopt out. Plus there was my questionable history and inability to speak or remember on top of it all. So you got lucky.”
He chose to ignore her jabs. “In finally bringing you home, your mother really did begin to shine again. She had purpose. She had love and laughter and energy. My Miriam came back tolife, Angie. You brought her back tome. And I ... I don’t know if you can ever understand love like I have for her, but she ... she’s my everything. She’s my world. And seeing her become whole again ...” His voice drifted. He cleared his throat. “I just let it be. I let her believe.”
“You called meAngie?” she said with disgust. “You gave me the same name as a dead child? How could you do that?”
“I didn’t see the harm,” he said, his voice suddenly small. “It made your mother better. And you were starting to thrive. Learning to speak, to sing. To laugh. I—”
“You inserted some abandoned kid into a dead child’s life? How can that benormal? How can that do no harm?”
“Itdidn’tdo harm—youdidstart to thrive. We became a family. We moved out of town, to the island—to Victoria, just before Christmas in eighty-seven, and when we arrived here, you were just our Angie.”
“And that’s how you introduced me? As the child in the photo album? All those early pictures that led from birth up to Italy—that’s not me? And then you just continued plunking in my pictures after the real Angie passed?”
Silence.
“And you were never going to tell me that you and Mom are not my biological parents?”
He rubbed his knee. “I thought we might, you know, tell you one day, when you were older. Or if some medical need arose. But ... it didn’t happen. You really did become our Angie in our minds, and why should we hurt you with such terrible news—the truth of where you really came from? No one knew anyway. All the leads to that case just dried up. There was no one to even test for paternal DNA. So why not just let it be?”
“Because it’s not the truth.” She lurched to her feet, dragged her hands over her hair, her whole world tilting dizzyingly on its axis. Everything she knew to be true suddenly was not. Her whole life would now have to be reexamined through a different lens. That person she saw in the mirror was someone else. Her sense of self had to be recalibrated. She wanted to run. To escape. She wanted to bust out of her own body, get blind drunk, go fuck herself senseless at the club.
“So I have real parents—biological parents—out there somewhere.” It wasn’t a question. She was just stating it out loud as a way to process this. “They might be dead. They might be alive.” She paused, glaring at him, an anger rising fierce inside her, and it was cut through with pity, with sympathy, because he, too, was so alone now. It was like they’d shattered their entire past as a family on this night. And it was all over. Gone forever.
“Where doyouthink I came from? You must have a theory. Was my mother Polish? Did I ever say Polish words when I eventually learned to speak again?”
He shook his head. “No. Just English. You’d forgotten everything that came before the Christmas Eve that you were found in the cradle. No one knows, Ange. The local police, Interpol, other agencies—they all tried working at the case, but no relative ever came forward to claim you or to offer a DNA sample. And none was ever found. You were just there, Angie. The Angel’s Cradle baby. Waiting for us.”
Something struck her suddenly. “Tell me one more thing. Why did we stop going to church?”
“Because one Sunday service just before Christmas your mother saw a look in your face when the church bells rang, and she ... I think she was worried that church might make you remember something. We never went back after that.”
CHAPTER 62
Merry opened the door to her tiny apartment and stilled. The air felt changed. Someone had been inside. She clicked on the hall and living-room lights. A drape wafted in a slight movement of air.
Quickly, she moved to the window and drew back the drape. The window was open a crack, cold night air seeping in. Her heart kicked to a stutter. She had not left the window open. She rammed it shut, brain reeling. She spun around. Listened.
No other sound. Apart from the thud of blood against her eardrums, her own rapid breathing. She eyed her front door, across the living room, the expanse suddenly seeming huge. Maybe she should make a dash. In case someone was inside the bathroom, her bedroom ...
Cautiously, she moved, and a floorboard creaked underfoot. She froze. Nothing. Then she saw it.
On her tiny dining table abutting the kitchen counter was a small baggie containing white crystals, a glass pipe, a Bic lighter.
She swallowed, her gaze shooting to the door to her bedroom. She waited, listening. When nothing sounded, she moved carefully across the room and edged open her bedroom door. Nothing. She checked the bathroom, behind the shower curtain, the closets, under the bed. Returning to the table, she stared at the baggie. There was a plain white envelope under it. She had to touch the bag in order to get to the envelope. Merry picked it up, opened it.
Inside were two grainy photos, taken at night. One of her VW Beetle driving along the bay at the Uplands Marina. The other was a photo of herself wearing a toque and down jacket, crouching between a truck and a Sorento, her massive telephoto lens aiming right at whoever shot this photo. She flipped it over.
YOU ARE DEAD
Merry began to shake. She stared at the baggie in front of her. The old, edgy hunger roared its head, fierce like a dragon reawakened from slumber. Panic tightened like a lasso across her throat. Hurriedly, she made her way to the door where she’d left her backpack. She fumbled to open the side pocket where she’d stuck Angie Pallorino’s card. Merry found it and dialed the number.
