Somewhere Out There Read online

  She lost sight of that dream somewhere along the way and instead, ended up doing what her parents expected of her. She went to law school. Which in some ways was good for Natalie, who at her core was a little shy. It forced her to push through her insecurities and interact—to argue case law with her classmates and become, at least on the surface, a well-spoken professional. But it wasn’t until she worked up the courage to leave her father’s firm that Natalie started to follow her true passion. She became known among the other mothers in her mommy and me classes as the baker of the best cookies and other sweet treats, and was often called upon to provide the dessert for any group function. For Natalie, baking offered a way to connect. She lived for the looks on people’s faces when they bit into one of her lemon drop cupcakes or caramel honey-pot pecan bars. Expressing their love of a sugary treat was a language everyone knew how to speak.

  Soon, she started receiving offers to be paid for her talent. Encouraged by her customers’ overwhelming positive response, she took several classes at the local community college to hone her skills and started Just Desserts catering company last year, when Hailey began first grade and Henry started a full-day preschool program, which, because of his later birthday and the fact that he didn’t seem quite ready to make the transition into kindergarten, Natalie and Kyle had decided to keep him in for one more year. She relied mostly on word of mouth to gather new clientele, and wasn’t making a fortune, but she loved the flexibility running her own business allowed. “You went from torts to tarts,” Kyle liked to say, which always made Natalie roll her eyes.

  Now, Natalie waved and smiled at the man in the blue Honda Accord behind her, hoping he wasn’t about to ram her for her lapse in attention, which would undoubtedly ruin the cupcakes. “Sorry!” she said as she shut the trunk and rushed back behind the wheel. Throwing the car into gear, she pulled forward as far as she could, then glanced at the clock. Two forty-five, and she had to have the order delivered by three. “Where are you, munchkin?” she murmured, and then, as though Hailey had somehow heard her question, Natalie heard her daughter’s voice.

  “Mommy!” Hailey yelled. Natalie turned to her right and smiled at her little girl, who at seven, was not so little anymore. Her long curls bounced as she ran toward the car; Natalie couldn’t bring herself to cut them more than an inch or two, so they looked like a mass of slender, brown Slinkys coiled down Hailey’s back. Her hair color she got from Kyle—Natalie was blond—but Hailey was petite, like Natalie, with delicate features and startling violet-blue eyes that weren’t a gift from either of her parents. Both Kyle’s and Natalie’s eyes were brown. At five, Henry’s previously light mop of hair was beginning to darken to match his eyes, as well. He was looking more and more like his father.

  “Mommy!” Hailey said again as she jerked open the car door and swung like a monkey into the backseat, dropping her backpack beside her. She quickly fastened her belt. “Guess what!”

  “What?” Natalie asked, still smiling as she pulled away from the curb and onto the street. “Guess what” had recently become the preface to everything Hailey told her. “Guess what, Mom? I saw a bug!” and “Guess what? My socks don’t even match!” Kyle found it a little annoying, but it amused Natalie, especially when Hailey and Henry got going on the “Guess what” game together. “Guess what?” Henry would ask his big sister. “My feet smell like farts!” Hailey would giggle, then reply, “Guess what? Your face smells like farts!” Basically, any mention of farts sent her children into hysterics, but regardless, it filled Natalie’s heart with unspeakable joy when the two of them laughed and played. As an only child who tended to keep to herself, Natalie had always wished for a sibling; she’d promised herself that if she ever had babies, she would have more than one.

  “I got an A on my spelling test!” Hailey said now. “I didn’t even miss one!”

  “That’s great, sweetie,” Natalie said, glancing in the rearview mirror at her daughter. “You studied hard with Daddy. Good job.”

  “Um, Mommy?” Hailey said. “I think you’re going the wrong way.” She peered out the window at the stores lining California Avenue. “Did you forget where we live? Are you getting Olds-heimer’s?”

  Natalie laughed. “No. I need to drop off a cupcake order before we pick up Henry. I’m running a little late.” She pushed down on the accelerator, keeping a watchful eye out for cops.

  “Ohhhh,” Hailey said. Natalie heard the rustling of paper, and then her daughter spoke again. “Guess what else?”

  “What?” Natalie came to a slow stop at a light, pumping her brakes, not wanting to jostle the boxes in the back and risk smashing the frosting she’d spent hours perfecting. She bit her lower lip, silently willing the light to turn green again. Her wipers squeaked across the windshield, sending goose bumps across her skin. Natalie was always the person who showed up fifteen minutes early to appointments or events. Being late went against everything her parents had taught her about respecting other people’s time as much as her own. Kyle, who had a tendency toward tardiness—except to court—didn’t always appreciate her persistent prodding to get him out the front door.

  “Mrs. Benson says we have to do a family tree this week! I have to make a big poster and draw a tree on it and the names of all the people in my family!”

  “Oh,” Natalie said. “That should be fun.” She attempted to sound enthusiastic, but her words came out stilted.

  “Yeah,” Hailey said, seeming not to notice her mother’s reaction. “But I need to get some new markers so I can do it.”

  “What happened to your old ones?”

  “Henry left the caps off. He’s always messing up my stuff.”

  A block past Hiawatha Park, Natalie took a left turn onto Admiral Way, deciding that now was not the time to get in a debate with her daughter over who was at fault for the dried-out markers. She remembered how she’d had to complete a similar family tree assignment once. It hadn’t gone well. She felt a sharp twinge in her gut, as she always did when she was reminded that there was a woman out there somewhere in the world who had given birth to her, and then had given her up.

  Natalie hadn’t known that she was adopted until she turned ten. She wasn’t aware of it at the time, but what had spurred her parents’ decision to finally tell her about her lineage was an article that her mother had read in Parenting magazine. The author, a child psychologist, suggested that in the long run, adopted children ended up emotionally better adjusted if they were told about their adoption—if they understood that someone else had given birth to them, but they had been chosen by their parents.

  Natalie’s mind still held the vivid memory of the night her parents sat her down in the living room and told her the truth. She remembered that the greasy smell of the Chinese food her mother had ordered for dinner hung in the air; she recalled the peach-and-blue–swirled pattern of the couch upon which she sat. She saw her father’s black suit, his broad shoulders and dark, wavy hair; she remembered the long jean skirt and blue oversize cardigan her mother wore. She could still hear the way her mother’s voice shook. “We need to tell you something, honey,” her mother said. “Something important.”

  Natalie kept her hands folded tightly in her lap. She thought about the stash of candy she had hidden beneath her bed and wondered if her mother had found it. But before she could say anything, her father spoke.

  “You know how much we love you,” he began, and Natalie nodded, wondering what loving her had to do with Laffy Taffy and Jolly Ranchers.

  “We loved you so much,” her mother said, “that when you were a baby, we adopted you. Out of all the other babies in the world, you were so special, we chose you to be our daughter.”

  “I’m . . . adopted?” Natalie said. She didn’t know how to feel. Her eyelids fluttered, and she wondered if she might start to cry. She looked back and forth between her parents, not for the first time struck that she didn’t look like either of them. They both had dark hair, while she was blond. Her eyes were brown w
hen theirs were both blue. Natalie was petite, with a birdlike frame, and her father was muscular and six foot three; her mother was five foot seven with a tendency to bemoan her less than slender waistline and thick thighs.

  “Yes,” her mother said. Her blue eyes were glossy with tears. “You are. The girl who carried you in her belly was too young to take care of you. You lived your first six months with her inside a car.” Her mother’s tone reflected her deep dismay. “That girl did the best thing for you, honey. She gave you up. She gave you to us.”

  “She didn’t want me?” Natalie asked in a small voice. She felt as though something in her chest had cracked open. Like a thousand hammers were banging around inside her head.

  “We wanted you,” her father said, coming over to sit next to her. He wrapped one of his long arms around her shoulders and pulled Natalie to him. He smelled like Old Spice, the aftershave Natalie and her mother bought him every year for his birthday. “You were always meant to be our little girl.”

  “But I’m not your real daughter,” Natalie said. The muscles in her throat ached.

  “Yes,” her father said. “You are. We are your parents. Your only parents.”

  Natalie nodded, slowly, but her mind raced. She wondered what her birth mom was doing, if she had more children, and if she would recognize Natalie if she saw her now. She wondered who her birth father was, if he was tall, and if he wore Old Spice aftershave, too.

  Her chin trembled as she asked her parents another question. “If she gave me away,” Natalie began, her words stiff and halting, “does that mean you could, too?” She assumed this was a valid concern; she didn’t know how it all worked. What if her parents decided they were tired of her, or that they didn’t really want her in the first place? What if they realized that adopting her had been a mistake?

  “Oh, honey,” her mother said, taking a step toward Natalie and her father. She sat down on the other side of her daughter on the couch. “No. Never. We would never let you go.”

  “Are you sure?” Natalie asked, unable to hold back her tears. She felt them wet her cheeks, and her father cupped her face in his hands and used his thick thumbs to wipe them away.

  “We are more than sure,” he said, emphatically. He pulled his hands away from her face and kissed the top of her head while her mother rubbed circles on Natalie’s back.

  After a moment, Natalie spoke again. “Can I meet her?” she asked, but when she saw the way her mother closed her eyes and jerked her head to one side, she immediately regretted the question.

  “No, honey,” her father said. “You can’t. The adoption was closed, which means everyone keeps their privacy. You’re ours. Nothing in the world can change that.”

  At that point, Natalie didn’t tell anyone that she was adopted. Her parents had kept it a secret for so long, she assumed it was something she shouldn’t talk about with anyone else. Then one day, not long after her parents told her the truth, her teacher issued an assignment to create a family tree. When Natalie got home from school that afternoon, she dropped into a chair at the kitchen table, pulled out the large white piece of paper her teacher had given her, and unfolded it, smoothing it as best she could. Gripping her pen hard so it wouldn’t wiggle on the page, Natalie drew a brown trunk and then a long branch, outlining three green leaves for her mom, dad, and herself. Then, off to the side, she added an extra leaf right on the same branch.

  “What’s my birth mom’s name?” Natalie asked her mother, who stood at the kitchen counter, cutting up an apple and some cheese for Natalie’s snack.

  “What?” her mother said, setting down the silver knife she held. Her voice was tight. Uneasy. “Why?”

  Natalie explained the assignment in low tones, keeping her eyes on the table. Her mother wiped her hands on a dish towel, then came over to join her daughter. She looked at the tree on the paper, and then back at Natalie. “Family’s a complicated thing, honey,” she said. “It has more to do with who takes care of you, not who gave birth to you. That girl doesn’t fit in that category.”

  “Oh,” Natalie said, feeling the inside of her chest start to burn. She hated that her mom used the term “that girl” when she referred to Natalie’s birth mom. It made Natalie feel dirty, as though the woman who had carried Natalie in her belly was someone of whom she should be ashamed. “Sorry.” She wasn’t sure what she was apologizing for, but she knew she was responsible for the strained look on her mother’s face.

  “It’s fine,” her mom replied. “You can just use that other leaf for Aunt Vicki . . . okay?” Vicki was Natalie’s father’s sister, who lived on a ranch in Montana. They saw her once a year, at Christmas, and the only thing Natalie knew about her was that she wasn’t married and her clothes smelled like horses.

  “Okay,” Natalie said, even though she felt like it was wrong to exclude her birth mother from the assignment. She waited a moment before another question bubbled up inside her, escaping before Natalie could stop it. “Was I a terrible baby?” she asked. “Is that why my birth mom didn’t want me?”

  Her mother pressed her lips together and shook her head, looking like she was about to cry. “You were perfect,” she said, giving her daughter a bright, false smile. “What should we have for dinner?” she asked, making it clear that the subject was closed.

  But thoughts of her birth mother wouldn’t leave her alone. Natalie often fantasized that her “other” mom might just show up and whisk her away to an entirely different life. Natalie made up stories about the circumstances surrounding her adoption. Maybe she works for the FBI, she’d thought. Maybe living in her car was part of her job and she had to travel so much catching bad guys that she couldn’t take me with her. Her parents said they had the paperwork that made Natalie’s adoption legal, but they wouldn’t let her see it. They swore there was nothing more detailed in it than what they had already told her.

  Now, Natalie pulled up in front of her client’s beautiful three-story, red-brick home with only three minutes to spare, and tried to erase thoughts of her adoption from her mind. “I’ll be right back, okay?” Natalie told Hailey as she pulled the keys from the ignition and unfastened her seat belt. Her client, an older woman hosting a birthday party for a friend, stood on the front porch, waiting, thin arms crossed over her chest. “Just have to run the boxes into the house.”

  “I can help,” Hailey said, momentarily distracted from the subject of her family tree project.

  Natalie turned around to smile at her daughter. “I appreciate that, sweetie, but it’s raining. You just sit tight.” She ran around to the back of her car and opened the hatch, then carefully lifted two of the lavender boxes and carried them up to the house as quickly as she could. After two more trips, her client handed her a check and Natalie climbed back into her car, shaking droplets of rain from her head.

  “See?” she said to Hailey. “Easy-peasy.”

  “Guess what?” Hailey said. “I hate peas.”

  Natalie laughed, flipped a U-turn in the middle of the street, and drove south toward Henry’s preschool, which was only a few blocks from their house. She headed down the hill toward Alki Beach, planning to take the back way to Henry’s school through residential streets instead of dealing with all the traffic and lights on California Avenue. She and Kyle had bought their two-story Craftsman on Gatewood Hill after he made partner last year, and they were still in the process of tweaking its features to make it their own. So far, they’d painted every wall with warm, natural hues, replaced all the appliances, and pulled up the carpets to refinish the original hardwood floors. Natalie had just received approval on a small business loan for Just Desserts, which would be spent remodeling the stand-alone garage they weren’t using for anything but storage into a professional kitchen so she could take on bigger jobs. She’d already found and purchased a barely used commercial convection oven, a triple sink, and an enormous stainless-steel, double-door refrigerator-freezer on Craigslist; all she needed was to hire a contractor to bring the wiring up to cod
e, put down a tile floor, and Sheetrock the walls, and she’d be in business. She often wondered if she had inherited her love of baking from the woman who’d given her up; her adoptive mother’s skills in the kitchen consisted mostly of being able to artfully arrange the takeout she’d ordered on their dinner plates. Natalie wondered if she would understand herself better if she met her birth mother. Would she know from whom Hailey had gotten her violet eyes?

  “Are you okay, Mommy?” Hailey asked, snapping Natalie out of her thoughts.

  “Of course,” Natalie said, glancing in the rearview mirror to see her daughter’s brows knitting together over the bridge of her pert nose. The last thing Natalie had expected she’d be thinking about that afternoon was her birth mother. “Just trying to figure out what I’m going to make us for dinner.”

  “Risotto!” Hailey said. She loved to watch cooking shows and had taken to making a list of all the different meals she’d like to try. After overhearing Gordon Ramsay say, “Very good, that risotto!” on an episode of Hell’s Kitchen—which Natalie had turned off as soon as she realized that the majority of the show consisted of censored expletives—Hailey was now obsessed with the idea of the dish. She’d also adopted the famous chef’s phrase for her more general use—after eating dinner, she’d look at Natalie and say, “Very good, that macaroni!” or after a bath, “Very good, that shampoo!” Always wanting to emulate his big sister, Henry began copying her, too. The other night, when he refused to eat his vegetables, he’d thrown his fork on the table, screwed up his face, and said, “Very bad, that broccoli!”