chapter twenty-four

Del won’t tell my why we’re going to Rhode Island. We drive for a few hours in a kind of hostile silence. Then, just when I think we have to be there already, he pulls into a motel called the Sunny Side Inn. The name is ironic at best; the place looks like the Bates Motel.

“What are we doing here?” I ask. “You’re crazy if you think I’m—”

“We have to stay overnight. Your parents are looking for us. The police might be looking for us. We have to lie low.”

“Aren’t we going to see your sister? Honestly, Del, I don’t even care. I just want to go home. It’s enough already.”

He opens his door. “You’re not going home yet.”

“Why not?” I demand. “What’s so important that you have to keep me here overnight? If you think I’m doing anything with you, then you have another thing—”

“It’s not that,” he interrupts. He sighs and turns off the engine. “Emily, there’s something I have to tell you before we go to Rhode Island tomorrow.”

What has he done now? “And what’s that?” I ask.

He stares at me, his gaze somehow loving and lost and defiant all at once. “The truth. I’m going to tell you the truth.”

I’m almost afraid to ask. “The truth about what?”

“About everything.”

So here we are, at the Sunny Side Inn, sharing a room with one full-sized bed, living out of our backpacks, sharing a delivery pizza that tastes like cardboard.

We eat in almost total silence. Things are, to say the least, not the same between me and Del. I don’t have the same electric feelings toward him; all of my fantasies that he would come rescue me and take me away from Stonybrook—to what? to be a family?—are gone. Our child is safe. She has a good life. Now that I know that, I’m not sure what I’m doing here with Del.

All I want is to go home. I want to see my parents. I want to clear things up with Ethan and Stephanie. I want my life back.

After we’ve eaten, Del and I sit on the bed together and I say to him, “Okay, Del. What’s the big secret you have to tell me? I already know everything, I told you that. I know that my real father died in a fire when I was a little girl. I know that my dad legally adopted me when he married my mother. What else could there possibly be?”

He shakes his head. “You’re so naive, Emily. People tell you things and you just believe them.”

“And you think I shouldn’t?” I’m starting to get angry. “You know, people are always telling me how naive I am. I had a baby that I hid from everyone. I just met her. I’ve dealt with the fact that my father isn’t my father, I’ve lived through night after night of horrible dreams … I’m sick of being called naive. Just because my life hasn’t been as difficult as yours doesn’t mean I can’t take care of myself as well as anyone else.”

“Do you remember the night we stole those files?” he interrupts.

“Yes. Do you? Or were you so coked up that it’s just a blur?”

“That’s low, Emily. I went to rehab. I’m clean. I’m done with all that.” He pauses. “And I’m sorry you didn’t know. But that’s what I mean. You’re too naive for your own good.”

I glare at him. “It’s not my fault that you lied to me when I trusted you more than anyone else. Why should I believe anything you tell me now?” Before he can answer, I rush on. “Listen, there’s something I need to know. It’s important.”

“Okay. What is it?”

“Did you do it on purpose? Did you mean to get kicked out?”

He seems startled by the question. He stares at the ugly paisley comforter on our bed and doesn’t say anything.

“Del?” I snap my fingers beneath his face. “Answer me.”

He rubs his tattoo. He says, “I didn’t mean for things to turn out this way.”

The answer makes me feel sick to my stomach. “I should have listened to my dad,” I murmur. “I never should have had anything to do with you.”

“It’s too late to be sorry,” he says. He’s smiling. I want to punch him.

“I have something important to tell you,” he continues. “Are you going to listen?”

“Why should I?”

“Because it’s the truth,” he says simply. “And I’m the only one who’s going to share it with you. So do you want to know, or do you want to know?”

I’m not sure anymore. I’m starting to believe that ignorance truly is bliss; at least, it was before my life opened up and all these secrets came pouring out.

But before then, there were the nightmares. And they still haven’t gone away. Why not? If I know everything there is to know, then what is it my dreams are still trying to tell me?

“Okay,” I say, reluctantly. “What is it?”

“You remember the night we stole those files,” he repeats.

“Of course I remember.”

“When I handed yours over to Renee, I was hoping that she’d read it. I was hoping she’d tell you about something inside.”

“If this is about Sandy,” I tell him, “I already know.”

He seems shocked. “You do?”

“Yes. She’s my real father’s first wife. My parents didn’t want me to know about her, obviously, because I didn’t know about my real father. Del, is this the big reveal you’ve been waiting to tell me about?”

“Your father’s first wife,” he repeats.

“Yes,” I say, impatient. “Sandy Gray. It’s old news.”

He shakes his head. “Emily, no.”

There it is again: that cool, almost electric feeling of dread that I’ve become so used to.

“What do you mean, no? My parents told me—”

“Your parents lied to you.”

“They didn’t.”

“They did. Emily.”

“ …”

“ …”

When he finally speaks again, I feel like the whole world splits apart. “She’s your mother.”

I sit there listening, not wanting to believe, as Del explains everything to me in his calm, collected way, and I can’t deny that all the pieces are falling together. It all makes sense. Finally.

“My dad and your dad were college roommates—you already knew that,” he says. “And when your dad—I mean Dr. Meckler—met your mom—I mean his wife now—he called my dad to help him solve a problem.”

The room feels fuzzy. I keep listening, afraid that if I make any sudden movements the room might tilt off its axis and send me spinning into hysterics.

“What was the problem?” I ask, even though I already know.

“You,” Del says. “Your dad and mom, the Mecklers, had fallen in love. They wanted to get married. But then your mother explained that the four-year-old she was raising wasn’t exactly hers.”

“What do you mean, not exactly?”

“You were her stepdaughter, and her husband had died. She’d never legally adopted you, so she didn’t have any legal claim to you. But she didn’t want to give you back to your mother. Apparently the lady was a real mess. So your dad called my dad for a favor.”

“What’s that?”

He shrugs. “Paperwork. A plausible explanation. It was kidnapping, Emily, no matter how you try to rationalize it or explain it. They kept you when they had no right to. Maybe if they’d gone to your birth mother and gotten her to relinquish her parental rights—”

“But why didn’t she look for me in the first place? I mean, after my father died? If Sandy Gray is my mother, how come I’m eighteen and I’ve just learned her name this year?”

“Because she didn’t come looking for you,” Del says. “When she and your father split up, she let him have you.”

“So it isn’t kidnapping, then. If my mother didn’t even—”

“Emily, no. It doesn’t matter what your mother did. Sandy had a right to know that your father died. She had a right to know that you were okay, and she definitely had a right to change her mind about leaving you.”

“No,” I say, shaking my head so hard that my hair whips against my face, “my parents did not kidnap me. That’s not possible.”

“Maybe they didn’t snatch you from a strip mall, Emily. But you don’t belong to them.” He pauses. “Well, you’re eighteen now. So none of it matters in a practical way—you can do what you want. But there could be consequences, if you wanted them.”

“Consequences? For whom?”

“For your parents. For your birth mother.”

I stare at him. “And you’ve known this the whole time?”

“Yes,” he says. “Before I got sent to Stonybrook, there was this family my dad talked about sometimes. He didn’t tell me a lot of details, but it was kind of like an urban legend within our household—you know, that my dad had forged this paperwork to help out an old friend. When I told him that it was kidnapping, and asked him how he could justify that to himself, he said to me, ‘Del, there’s an old Native American expression that I like to use. “Two dogs live within me. The one that grows the largest is the one I feed the most.” She might not have started out as their daughter, but she is now. She’s loved. She’s safe. And as she gets older, that love will grow and grow until any inkling she has of the past just disappears.’ ”

“You knew it was me when you met me,” I say, feeling sick.

He nods. “Emily, it made me love you. We’re the same, you know? And I’ve always believed, for as long as I’ve known about you, that you had a right to know where you came from. You had a right to know the whole truth. No matter how much it hurts, we all have a right to know the truth.”

He’s right, I realize. If everyone had told the truth from the beginning, none of this would be happening. “What’s in Rhode Island?”

Del leans closer to me. He puts his arms around my neck, threads his callused, warm fingers through my hair, and holds me close.

“Your mother,” he says. “And tomorrow, we’ll go see her.”

I make Del sleep on the floor that night. I don’t even want to look at him, not after everything he’s told me. How am I supposed to handle the news that both of my parents are not my parents? How should I feel about the fact that my mother continued to lie to me, even as she was supposedly telling me the “truth” about my past? And do I even want to see my real mother, when she walked away from me and never looked back?

In the morning, Del sits up on the floor, looks at me with sleepy eyes, and asks, “Are you ready?”

I’ve been thinking about it almost all night. I nod. “Yes.”

“You’re sure you can go through with it?”

I nod again, this time with more confidence. I know now that I don’t have a choice, just like I didn’t have a choice to go see my baby. It isn’t that Del is forcing me; it’s that I’m forcing myself. There has to be a way to find truth. There has to be a way to get closure. Otherwise, my life is nothing but secret upon secret, lie after lie.

Today feels like an inverse of yesterday, exactly the same but somehow entirely different. Yesterday, I went to find my child; today, I am going to see the mother who I never knew existed. I don’t know what I’ll say to her, if I’ll say anything at all. Maybe I just want to see her, to see if she looks like me, if she’s living a good life. There are some things I have to know.

From the motel in New Hampshire to where we’re going in Rhode Island, it takes about two hours. We are quiet for most of the ride. Finally, I can’t stand the silence anymore.

“So you found your sister,” I say, even though we’ve talked about it a little bit already.

He nods. “I told you, she’s good.”

“What’s she doing with herself?”

He hesitates. Then, unexpectedly, it’s like I’ve reached over and unlocked a door in his heart. He gets tears in his eyes; I’m worried he won’t be able to see the road to drive as we go speeding down the highway, which is covered in icy snow.

“You know people get paid to have foster kids,” he begins.

I nod. “I know.”

“Can you imagine anything more screwed up? Nobody pays you to have kids of your own … but there’s this financial incentive for foster parents.”

“Well, it kind of makes sense. There has to be some kind of incentive to take in another child that doesn’t belong to you, doesn’t there?” As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I can tell I’ve made a mistake.

“What about love?” he snaps. “What about giving a kid whose own parents were too cracked out to take care of him, whose parents split up and whose mother had man after man after man in the house, most of whom were more interested in him and his sister … what about giving them a chance?”

“Del, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“When you sang me that song—Daisy, Daisy—I thought, ‘Here is the girl I’ve been looking for.’ It all felt like it came together, Emily. And I fell in love with you—I truly did.”

“But you fell in love with me because of my circumstances,” I say. “Not because of who I really am.”

He shakes his head. “That’s not true.”

“It’s not? Who am I, then? What do you really know about me, aside from my past?”

He hesitates. “You had a right to know the truth.”

“I know. You’re right. But I’m telling you, after this is over, we’re done. I don’t want to see you again. I don’t want to talk to you again.”

He snorts. “What do you want me to do? Drop you off back at Stonybrook? Let you walk into the headmaster’s office and explain what you’ve been doing for the past two days?”

I consider. “Yes. That’s exactly what I want you to do. You’re the one who’s always saying I had a right to know the truth. Well, I’m sick of lying. I’m not going to hide things from anyone, not anymore.”

He slows the car. He makes a left-hand turn onto an icy dirt road, leaning over to consult a set of printed directions.

“We’ll talk about it later,” he says. “We’re here.”