Page 37 of Mad Girl

Before you left the next day, Nic and I saw you off in the entry hall. He gave you one of those guy hugs—where you throw your arm over the other guy’s shoulder and pat each other on the back, and it’s over real quick—then asked you to text him when your flight landed in England. I hesitated a few seconds before slowly walking forward and wrapping you in a hug.

You leaned close to my ear. “Don’t miss me too much.”

“Yeah, right,” I said, even though my stupid pulse fluttered like crazy at the base of my throat.

Nic watched us, beaming the whole time.

On Christmas, the Harrises spent the day with us like they normally did. Only that year, my dad knocked back more scotch and champagne than usual, his gaze snagging on your empty chair at the table during brunch and dinner. He obviously missed you, and I didn’t know how to feel about that: happy, jealous, or somewhere in between.

Later, while all the adults were having a nightcap with Garland, Michael found me in my bedroom, lying sideways on my bed. He climbed in beside me.

“Hey,” I said. “Have you heard from Casey?”

“Yeah,” he said, propping his head on one hand. “A little bit. Why?”

“No reason,” I said, glancing down at my phone.

“Do you miss him?” Michael asked.

“Maybe a little. Not a whole lot.” A lie—and Michael saw through it.

“I miss him, too. I’m glad you two are getting along.”

I smiled. “Whatever. I still think he’s annoying.”

Michael smiled back. “Hey,” he said, reaching for his back pocket. “I have something for you.”

On the duvet between us, he placed a small stack of photos. I glanced at him, unsure, pulling them toward me.

The second I flipped them over, I gasped. “Oh my God. Where did you get these?”

“They were stuck inside some random law book in my dad’s study. I found them while looking up stuff for school.”

Tears sprang to my eyes as I stared at the top photo, my heart beating wildly out of control. “Is this—? Do you think it’s her?”

“Has to be,” Michael said, gaze flitting from me to the girl in the picture. “She looks just like you.”

The girl had dark hair like mine, flowing down her shoulders. Bright green eyes, also like mine, rimmed in thick black eyeliner.

In the photo, she sat next to my dad at his lacrosse game. She wore a black leather jacket, black jeans, and black boots. Nic wore a crimson uniform, his dark hair messy as they grinned at the camera, her leg hiked up on the bleacher, my dad’s arm wrapped around her thigh. They were teenagers, not much older than I was, but the most shocking thing about the photo was that they were together at all. My dad—your standard prep school jock—with her, clearly a rebel.

Finally, I thought. Something I’d desperately wanted my whole life. A picture of my mom. Like Michael said, it had to be her.

This girl could’ve been mistaken for me, sitting next to a younger version of my dad.

Nic almost never talked about my mom, but he had told me a few things, one of which suddenly made perfect sense. “I liked her because she was different,” he’d told me once. “We ran into each other in the courtyard on her first day, and she shoved me against the building. She gave me hell for not watching where I was going, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I thought, I have to know this girl.”

To Michael, I whispered, “It’s the leather jacket.” Another confirmation it was her.

Right after my twelfth birthday, I’d found a woman’s leather jacket stuffed inside a box of things near our trash can out back. I’d shown the jacket to Michael, folded it inside a different box, then squirreled it away inside the secret closet where I’d stashed your clothes that time.

I hid the jacket, knowing Nic would take it from me. Other than the Harvard sweatshirt I often wore—faded gray, big burgundy letters—he’d never given me anything of hers. And no matter how many times I’d asked—no, begged—him, he’d refused to show me a single photo of her.

Instead, he’d distract me by saying things he thought I needed more than a picture of the woman who’d given birth to me. Things like I love you or You’re all I ever wanted, you know that?

But what I really needed was an explanation. Why couldn’t I know what she looked like? Why was she missing from the hundreds of photos that were taken of me as a baby? Why couldn’t he answer my questions about her—where she spent her childhood, who my grandparents are on her side, what she wanted to be when she grew up?

And why did he get so weird and emotional whenever I asked about my birth?