chapter twenty-three

“Their names,” Del says, shortly after we cross the New Hampshire line, “are Ron and Melinda Zimmerman. They don’t have any other kids.”

“Del,” I say, shaking my head, “how do you know all this?”

He shrugs. “I told you, all you need’s a computer.”

“That’s not true! It’s a closed adoption.”

“Don’t worry about it, Emily. Just prepare yourself. You can’t go falling apart once we get there.”

“What are we going to do?” I imagine knocking at their front door, saying, “Hi, I’m Emily Meckler, and this is Del Sugar. We’re the parents of your baby.” Then I imagine the police showing up in about fifteen seconds to haul us away.

“We’ll pretend to be going door-to-door. Before I crumpled that one up, I got a few extra pamphlets from the guy in the bathroom.”

“We’re going to pretend to be Bible-thumpers? That’s your big idea?”

He smirks. “You got a better one? What, take the baby and run? You know how long you’d end up in jail, for that?”

“I don’t want to take the baby,” I say. “I just want to see her.”

He pauses. “I know that. I’m sorry. I just thought it would be an easy way to get inside the door, you know? I can be persuasive.”

I snort. “So I’ve noticed. But what if the baby’s not there?”

“She’ll be there. It’s the middle of the day.”

“What if she’s sleeping?”

“Then you ask to use the bathroom, you sneak into her room, and you wake her up. While I’m talking to the Mrs. about God, you can do that, you know? Then she’ll have to go get the baby, and we can see it. I mean her.” He hesitates. “I don’t have any other ideas. I don’t want to break in. I don’t want to scare them.”

I nod. “Okay. All right. How far are we?”

“Not far. Ten minutes, maybe.”

As soon as he says it, the fact that this is really happening begins to overwhelm me. Up until now, I have never seen my baby. Like my real father, she’s almost an abstraction, something I’ve been missing constantly these past few months while knowing there’s nothing in the world I can ever do about it. Except now I really am going to see her. What is that going to accomplish? I almost tell Del to turn around and forget about the whole thing. But I can’t. I want this more than anything.

“Look,” I tell him, taking a deep breath. “We’re going to do this, okay? I know that. I want that. But, Del, I swear, if you try anything crazy, I will run away so fast and leave you behind and get to the nearest pay phone to call my parents.”

His mouth drops a little. “Is that so?”

“Yes,” I say, my voice growing stronger. “I came with you willingly. This is our baby, and it’s my life, but things aren’t going to get crazy.”

He raises an eyebrow at me. “Look at you. All grown up and bossing me around.”

I don’t say anything. I pull the blanket more tightly around my body. It is freezing in the truck.

We turn onto a narrow street lined with middle-class houses.

“Is this it? Is this their street?” I ask.

Del nods.

“It’s not nice.” It’s true; the houses are all small, brick ranches, not your usual New England architecture. It’s obviously a lower-middle-class neighborhood. The lawns are all snow covered; some of them have crooked, lumpy snowmen in the front yards.

“It’s 1168 Foster Street,” he murmurs. “1100 … 1122 … it’s gonna be on the left up here, Emily.”

In spite of the confidence I’ve shown, I couldn’t be more nervous. “There it is,” I say, trying to keep my voice calm. “I see it.”

He pulls the truck over to park in front of a tiny ranch house with almost no front yard. Somebody is home; there’s a rusted blue pickup truck in the driveway, along with a maroon sedan. Del hands me a pamphlet. “Come on. Don’t worry, I’ll do most of the talking. Just follow my lead.”

When I glare at him, he quickly adds, “I know what I’m doing, Emily. I promise, things will be okay.”

A woman answers the front door. She doesn’t peer through a crack like any sane person would if two strange teenagers rang their doorbell; she opens the door wide and says, “Hi, there. Can I help you?”

She’s pretty in a kind of plain way. Behind her, on the sofa, sits what I assume is her husband.

He’s holding a baby. The baby has wispy red hair. When she sees us, she smiles. I feel my knees start to buckle.

Before I have a chance to answer her, Del interrupts with, “Yes, ma’am. My name is Steven.”

I swallow. “My name is Emily,” I say. I can’t lie to this woman. I won’t.

“We’re from the Church of the Open Door,” Del continues. He hands her a pamphlet. “We’re expanding our congregation here in New Hampshire, and, why, we just thought maybe you’d be interested in having a conversation about Jesus for a minute or two.”

Man, he’s good. The woman glances back at her husband, who gives her a reluctant shrug.

“Well …” She hesitates. “I’m not sure that we’re interested, but at least come on in out of the snow. What did you say your names were?”

“Steven,” Del says, reaching out to shake the woman’s hand. “And this is my friend Emily.”

“Emily, Steven, I’m Melinda. This is my husband, Ron.” And with a big smile, she says, “And coincidentally enough, this is our new little girl, Emily.”

I freeze. I feel like crying, but I know that I can’t, that it would ruin everything and they’d probably put two and two together and call the police. But I can’t help myself from asking. I say, “You named your daughter Emily?”

Ron and Melinda glance at each other again. “Yes,” Ron says. He bounces my daughter lightly on his knee. “You see … well, never mind.”

“It’s okay, sweetie. You can go ahead and tell them,” Melinda says. She beams at me. “We’re new parents. We can’t help but gush over her.”

“She’s adopted,” Ron says, “and we never got to know the birth mother. But we were so grateful for the gift she’d given us, that that’s who we named our baby after.”

“Someday,” Melinda says, “we’ll tell our daughter that we named her after the woman who loved her so much that she did everything she could to make sure she would have a happy life.”

It takes all of my energy not to cry. I blink back the tears.

“Emily?” Melinda peers at me, concerned. “Are you all right?”

“Yes.” I nod, doing my best to come up with a quick explanation. “It’s just that I’m adopted, too … and that’s such a beautiful story. You didn’t have to do that. It was so thoughtful of you.”

Melinda smiles. “We just knew it was the right thing. Didn’t we, Ron?”

Even Del seems at a loss for words. I realize that he wasn’t planning to surprise me with this. He didn’t want to throw me off guard; he genuinely didn’t know our baby’s name.

“You can sit down if you want,” Melinda offers. “Would either of you like something to drink?” She smiles. “Maybe some hot cocoa?”

I can hardly talk. “Uh … sure.”

“That would be great,” Del breathes, staring at Emily. At our Emily.

The Zimmermans are friendly. With almost no prompting from me or Del, they explain that Melinda is a night-shift nurse, while Ron shovels snow in the winter and paves driveways in the summer. Since the current snowfall has been frozen for the past few days with no new precipitation, Ron hasn’t had much to do but stay home and help out with the baby.

“It changes you forever, you know,” he tells us. “You kids are way too young for babies, but let me tell you—adopted or no, there’s just nothing more incredible than feeling the love for your own child.”

I can’t stop staring at Emily. “I can’t imagine,” I say.

“Ron and I tried to get pregnant for years and years,” Melinda explains, putting two mugs of hot cocoa in front of me and Del on a stained, chipped coffee table. “Emily here is the second baby we thought we’d be getting. But the first one … it was a little boy … his mother changed her mind at the last minute.”

Why are they telling us this? I don’t need to know their story. I don’t think I really want to know. But maybe they need to tell it.

“We were heartbroken,” Ron continues. “Especially Melinda. It was the mother’s right, though … we knew what we were getting into when we decided to pursue a domestic adoption.”

“Ron,” Melinda says, “these kids don’t want to hear all of this.”

“I’m sorry. But now we have Emily, and she’s just … well, she’s just the most perfect, happiest little thing you’ve ever seen in your life. I know she was meant for us.” He gives her a kiss on the cheek. “Now, what did you kids want to talk to us about? Church?”

And just like that, I can’t lie to them again. I can’t sit in their house, across from their baby, without telling them who I really am.

Beside me, I can sense Del tensing up. “We wanted to talk to you about … uh, well, have a look at the pamphlet, sir.”

“Wait,” I blurt.

“Emily, be quiet,” he says, still smiling.

“No,” I say. “We’re not here because of church.”

Ron and Melinda exchange a hesitant glance. I notice that Ron holds Emily a little tighter. “Then what are you here for?”

But as much as I want to, I can’t tell them the whole truth, either. In a swift moment, I remember what my life was like before I met Del Sugar, before I got pregnant and learned that my father is not my father. Looking at this family, looking at my baby—who will never really be my baby—I realize that I wish I’d never seen her. There are some things that should be left alone.

Swallowing hard, unable to take my eyes off Emily, I say, “We were going to try to sell you something.”

“Oh. Oh.” Ron stands up. “Well, it wasn’t right for you kids to do this. What are you selling?”

“We’re taking donations, really,” Del rushes. “For our church. But you’re right—we should have been honest.”

There is a long pause. I notice that Melinda is staring at me, as I continue to hold back the tears that will come, hard and fast, as soon as I walk out the door.

“I, uh, I don’t have any cash. I’m sorry,” Ron says.

“Then I guess we should leave,” I say, putting down my hot cocoa. I still can’t take my eyes off Emily.

We go to the front door. There are so many things I could do—shout the truth, turn around and grab her … but I don’t do anything. I just walk, my hands shaking, Del’s arm wrapped tightly around my waist.

Melinda has followed us to the door. She still appears to be studying my face. “You kids … stay warm,” she says.

I nod. “We will.”

Then, looking me in the eye, she asks, “Emily. What did you say your last name was?” Before I can answer her, she says, “I’ll bet people tell you all the time that you have such beautiful red hair. I just love redheads.”

And in an instant, right there: I know that she knows. Like I knew that Emily was a girl, even though I’d never laid eyes on her. And I know that Emily belongs to Ron and Melinda. I know that it’s how it should be.

“I didn’t,” I say. “But it’s Emily Meckler.”

“Emily Meckler,” she repeats. “And this is your boyfriend?”

My voice is so soft, so strained, that I almost can’t speak. “He used to be. Last year.”

“And where do you live, Emily Meckler?”

“I live in Stonybrook, Connecticut,” I say.

She nods. “You’re a long way from home.”

We stand there for what feels like an eternity. Ron walks away, down the hallway and out of sight, carrying Emily with him. I know I’ll never see her again. It’s okay. I know that she’s loved, that she’s safe. That’s all I needed.

“You two go home now, okay?” Melinda says, her voice cracking. “Go back to Connecticut.”

Del tugs me closer to the door. I feel the cold wind in my face, the sudden cruelty of the reality that we’ve created, such a contrast to the warmth inside the happy Zimmerman home.

We get in the truck. Melinda stands, watching us from the front door, until we drive away.

Once we’re back on the highway, Del asks, “Emily, why did you do that? They could have called the police.”

“I don’t know,” I say, crying. “They deserved better than a bunch of lies.”

“They knew. At least, she knew.”

“I know.”

It is unusual to see Del so flustered. “Do you think she’ll do anything about it?”

“No.”

“You’re sure? She could call the cops, or the adoption agency, and tell them what we did.”

“She won’t do that,” I say. “I’m sure of it. But she’ll remember my name forever.”