new york city
june 2005
On a shaded bench in Union Square, Rachel focused on the ink trailing from her pen’s tip as it bled into the textured paper, outlining the skyline. Along the avenues, buildings saluted the afternoon sun. Off-duty taxis filled clogged streets with horn blares. Summer was beginning to expand through the city, pushing down onto rooftops into cross-street crevices. Floor-to-ceiling bistro windows bloomed open in response, their tables brimming with colorfully dressed patrons. The air hung still and hot as bus exhaust.
Rachel pressed harder with her pen, anchoring herself to the moment. She’d been trying to regain her footing since receiving the phone call from Dr. Marisol Rey the previous evening. She replayed the conversation in her mind, sorting out questions she was prepared to ask: How did you get my contact information? Do you know my birth mother? Do you know where my biological family is now? She would be direct, revealing none of the fundamental anxieties accompanying these inquiries, the prospect of learning precisely who abandoned her. She’d conducted an online search for “Dr. Marisol Rey” after the party and navigated a few profiles in Spanish until she reached a single thumbnail photo: a woman in her thirties, full lips and a billow of soft, dark curls—only a couple of years older than her, far too young to be her birth mother—smiling above a brief biography. Dr. Marisol Rey held a PhD in Latin American Studies and worked as an adjunct professor for an international university in Miami.
Rachel set down her sketchbook. Her father would not approve of her being here. But it was broad daylight. She didn’t have much money on her. From her bag, she exhumed her miniature Magic 8 Ball key chain—a birthday gift from her roommate—and shook it, the blue liquid revealing a proclamation: you may rely on it.
Does this woman really have answers?
A triangle emerged through blue liquid: ask again later.
She shook it again.
better not tell you now.
Beneath the scaffolding on Fifth Avenue, Mari’s face, which perfectly matched the photo online, emerged from the shadows. She wore a cotton skirt and sleeveless button-up, her thumbs hooked through the straps of a drawstring backpack. Rachel shook the key chain at length one more time and glanced down as the response surfaced: it is decidedly so.
She threw the key chain back in her bag.
“Rachel?” Mari’s espadrilles picked up pace, one hand splayed across her chest as she approached. She carried a pleasant, fruity scent.
Rachel stood up. “Dr. Rey.”
“Oh my God, I’m—oh, I’m sorry.” Mari extended her hand, which was warm and soft when Rachel took it. Mari’s eyes brimmed with tears. “I wasn’t sure you’d come,” she said. “Here, let’s sit. Please. And call me Mari. I’m just Mari to you.”
Rachel cleared her throat. They both sat down. Mari set a plastic bag on the bench beside her, crumpling its “I ♥ NY” insignia. A nectarine tumbled out.
“I’m so happy you came,” Mari repeated. Rachel caught the stray fruit as it rolled toward her on the bench, then passed it back to Mari.
“Thanks,” said Mari. “I just love farmers’ markets. And everything is so ripe right now.” She scanned the produce stands, the artisans, the farmers from New Jersey and upstate moving crates of fresh greens from the back of trucks. The sun caught her curls and the curve of her cheek as her gaze landed on a stack of ripe tomatoes nearby. “Look how fresh those are! I wish I could grow tomatoes that beautiful.”
Rachel shifted her weight, arranged her hands in her lap. “My mom has a garden,” she offered. The words my mom echoed, but Mari didn’t flinch.
“I love that,” Mari said encouragingly. “We had a few fruit trees growing up in Florida, but that’s about as close as I’ve gotten to having one myself.”
“But you still live there?”
Mari nodded. “Since I was four years old. I go back and forth to Buenos Aires for work now. My sister lives in Argentina. Have you been?”
Rachel shook her head. “I did a semester in Spain.”
“Qué lindo.” Mari pointed to the sketchbook. “You draw?”
Rachel slipped the book into her bag, her shoulders high and tight. “Nothing serious. What brings you to New York?”
“My work.” Mari slid her arms from the straps of her backpack and pulled open the drawstring. “And you. You’re kind of a big deal to us.”
Rachel squinted. What contact form had she filled out that might have landed her on Mari’s radar?
“What is it that you want to tell me?” Rachel asked.
Mari reached into her bag and unwound the thin leather strap of an overstuffed Filofax planner. She leafed through its loose pages to extract a plain envelope. From it, she slid a stack of small documents—postcards, several photos—and handed Rachel a three-by-five color print.
“I’ll get straight to the point,” Mari said. “Here.”
In the photo, Mari stood in a small yard flanked by palm trees. She wore sunglasses and a ponytail, her arms latched affectionately around the waist of a young man in a blue-and-white-striped polo shirt. The stranger’s face stirred something unexpected in Rachel, a heightened awareness at a cellular level. He looked to be in his early thirties, a lock of brunette hair flopped partially over one eye. She felt a prickle of recognition.
“I think I’ve seen this guy before.”
“He looks familiar?”
“I don’t know—maybe. Who is he? Why are you showing me this?”
Mari smiled. “His name is Mat Ledesma. He’s very dear to me, and he’s been looking for you for a long time.”
They sat in silence for a few tense beats.
“Mat and I think he’s your brother,” Mari said.
Rachel stared at the photo. Deep in her core, a tingling sensation began spreading out through her limbs. Mat smiled up at her from the paper. Did they look alike? Rachel quickly handed the photo back, forcing distance between herself and the stranger it depicted. The questions she’d planned to ask seemed suddenly irrelevant, embarrassing. She’d been expecting information about her adoption, not something this imminent. Not a brother.
“I don’t understand. How did you find me?”
Mari spoke slowly, doling out her words as though from a dropper. “Mat’s mother was kidnapped from their home in Argentina when he was two years old.”
“God, that’s horrible,” said Rachel.
Mari nodded. “And we believe she gave birth to a baby girl in June of 1977.”
“You think that was me?”
“We have reason to believe that may be the case, yes.”
Rachel turned her head away and smiled nervously. “Argentina? You have the wrong person. I was adopted in Virginia.”
“I know,” said Mari. “You were abandoned at the Joy & Light Family Center, which is where your adoption was processed—isn’t that right?”
A sinking sensation entered Rachel’s sternum, like barometric pressure dropping before a storm. “How do you know that?”
“Mat’s been looking for you for as long as he can remember. We’ve been trying to find out as much as we can about the circumstances of your birth. He really wants to meet you.” Mari’s hand hovered in the air just above Rachel’s forearm. Her tone was gentle, somber. “Can I ask, how much do you actually know about your abandonment?”
Rachel met her gaze directly. For a long moment, the two women assessed one another. Mari’s brown eyes were kind. Rachel’s instinct was to trust her, but her instincts could be wrong—her father warned her about this constantly. Mari knew things that Rachel didn’t, which meant she had a certain power over her. Rachel had to be careful.
“The person who abandoned me didn’t want to be found,” said Rachel. This was true, as far as she knew. It had been her aunt Daphne—her father’s sister-in-law, a longtime social worker at Joy & Light, about twenty miles northwest of Howell Grove—who’d found Rachel on the porch that summer morning. She was only a few weeks old, left outside in a baby carrier covered with a little blanket and wearing a clean diaper. The pediatrician from the department of health and human services determined that Rachel had been born prematurely, but was otherwise healthy—recently fed, no traces of prenatal drug exposure. Years later, when her dad hired a private investigator at Rachel’s request, they’d found no hospital records of live births in the surrounding counties, no pregnant women who’d carried to term under a doctor’s care within three hundred miles of the shelter. No one anywhere who could’ve possibly been her birth mother.
But this was the first time anyone had mentioned Argentina.
“Was there anything left behind with you when you were found?” asked Mari. “A blanket, maybe?”
Rachel steeled herself, trying not to react.
“Here,” Mari said quickly, removing another wallet-sized photograph from the pile. It had a white scalloped border that hearkened back to another era. Rachel’s hand trembled slightly when she took it. A peculiar version of her own face stared up at her: a cautious smile with dark hair pinned loosely at the temples, calm eyes smiling beneath thick lashes. The set of the eyes, the arch of the hairline—they were just like Rachel’s. Blood pumped in her ears. The woman in the picture watched patiently, waiting. Rachel flipped the photograph over. On the back, in cursive pen, a faded caption read: Lore, 1975.
“This is Mat’s mother,” said Mari. “Lorena Ledesma.”
The churning in Rachel’s core flooded her with a storm of vulnerability that terrified her. She studied Lorena’s face and felt drawn toward something she knew but didn’t yet understand.
“Is she alive?”
“She’s a desaparecida,” said Mari. “One of thousands who went missing and has never been found.”
Rachel covered her forehead with her palm and let out a single, sharp laugh. “Is this a joke?”
Mari looked at Rachel as though she were a child—precious, impressionable, naive. “I’m not sure how much you know about this, but when we were young, there was a dictatorship in Argentina. The government ran a ‘process’ to eradicate subversion. Thirty thousand people disappeared, many of them innocent—and Lorena Ledesma was among them. The psychology behind it was very effective at creating a state of terror—the families had no answers and no closure.” Mari handed her an image of a crowd of women standing in the street with anguished expressions wearing white kerchiefs tied around their heads. They held photos of young men and women around Rachel’s age. “There was a group of mothers who stood up against the regime to break the silence. Some of their children were pregnant women, like Lorena, and about five hundred babies were born inside prisons or kidnapped along with their parents. The government believed that subversive parents would raise rebel children, so the babies were given up for adoption, often to families and friends of the military. The children were raised without any knowledge of their birth family.”
Mari handed over another piece of cardstock about the size of a postcard. It was a black-and-white flier, a grainy image of a human palm splayed open and blanched as though someone had photocopied it. Each fingertip was wrapped in a piece of white cloth and held in place by a spiral of wire. On each piece of cloth was the oily image of a fingerprint. A small line of words marked the heel of the palm: La identidad no se impone.
“This was one of the campaigns,” said Mari. “And here’s another—”
She passed Rachel a second card, this one a colorful image of a little boy curled up and hugging his knees. Below him were the English words: My grandmother is looking for me. Will you tell her where I am?
“The Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo have found seventy-four of their missing grandchildren so far,” said Mari. “Lorena’s mother, Esme, is still searching as we speak. But they’re getting older, and time is running out. There are still hundreds of missing grandchildren yet to be located. I work for their identity archive. Our job is to keep the memories of the desaparecidos alive so that their children will have a family heritage to discover even after the Abuelas are gone.”
“And the people who disappeared—?”
“Many were killed by the junta, but many were never found. They were officially considered ‘absent forever.’”
Rachel shivered. “How did you find me?”
“Last month the Argentine Supreme Court ruled some of the long-standing amnesty laws unconstitutional.” Mari collected the fliers. “In preparation for repeals, they reopened cases against members of the military. A woman reached out to the Abuelas’ office with a testimony that she’d been keeping to herself for decades. From her story, we learned that a US soldier may have been involved in transporting a child of desaparecidos from Argentina to the United States around the time you were born.” Mari paused, something complex and uncertain flashed across her eyes. “It’s only a secondhand account, but there were very few US military officers in South America at that time.”
Rachel took a breath. The air smelled sweet and filthy—glazed nuts roasting in a nearby street cart. She lifted her head up toward a snarl of twiggy branches against the blue afternoon sky.
“Did your adoptive father ever tell you that he was stationed in Argentina?”
A floating sensation passed over Rachel. She envisioned her dad in the expansive backyard of her childhood home moving bags of soil to the greenhouse for her mom, whose florist business supplemented his military pension.
Thanks for the card, Dad, she’d said when they spoke on the phone the day before.
His breath had been labored through the receiver. Oh, right. You can thank your mother. Happy birthday, kiddo. Stay safe up there.
An unexpected memory surfaced: crisp autumn leaves in flaming shades of rust and saffron. Rachel must have been nine or ten when her father raked them into careful paths, designing a custom maze that covered the entire yard. He must have been between deployments then. Vietnam, Honduras, the Persian Gulf. Maybe South America too—she didn’t know where he’d been, specifically. Whole swaths of her childhood were clustered into a collective chapter of his absences before the retirement party they threw for him when he returned from Desert Storm. His military career wasn’t something she was encouraged to ask about.
“You think my dad has something to do with this.”
Mari tilted her head, rendering Rachel a child again. “We believe the officer in the witness’s testimony is your adoptive father, yes—Jonathan Sprague. Although we’re not accusing anyone of anything yet.”
A tightness grasped Rachel’s chest. The possibility of her father hiding such a colossal secret for so many years was ridiculous. What would he say if he even heard such an accusation? Convenient. That’s what he would say, with a chip on his shoulder. Seems pretty convenient that a soldier who happened to be in the country and happens to have an adopted daughter would get accused of trafficking a baby.
She inhaled another lungful of hot city air.
“You believe it’s him just because he may have been in Argentina?”
There was a subtle shift in Mari’s bearing. “Appropriating a child is a serious crime,” she said. “There are international treaties that prohibit it.”
“Do you have any proof?”
Mari straightened the stack of photos and fliers, attempting to put them back in the envelope. “There were only two babies born in prisons that June,” she said. “From the photo of Lorena, I think you can see why we think that the baby in the witness’s testimony is you.”
“But you don’t have any proof.”
A sharp smell cut the air between them as a homeless man picked through the garbage pail next to Mari. She held out her bag of vegetables and fruit.
“Here you go,” Mari said.
The man took the bag, nodding.
Rachel’s insides twisted like a weathervane pointing to both pain and hope.
Mari pulled a long brochure from her backpack and handed it to Rachel.
“You’re the proof, Rachel. That’s why I’m here.”
Rachel scanned the list of Manhattan addresses on the glossy paper: a list of clinics throughout the city.
“There’s a very simple way to find out the truth. You don’t need anyone’s permission to take a DNA test. Your adoptive parents don’t even have to know.”
Rachel reached for her Magic 8 Ball key chain, fiddling nervously with her free hand.
Mari lowered her voice. “It seems like you have a pretty good life here. If that’s the case, I’m happy for you. I don’t know what you’ve been told all these years about who you are, but I believe that you’re Lorena’s daughter—Mat’s sister—and that your grandmother and brother have been searching for you your entire life. Mat is prepared to come to New York at a moment’s notice to meet you if you’re willing. And no matter how good you have it now, I can’t imagine you don’t want to know where you really came from. Take some time to think about it. Take as much time as you need. It’s a lot to process, I know, but it’s completely up to you.” She handed the envelope to Rachel. “Here, keep these. My card is inside. Call any time you’re ready to learn more, day or night. I’ll be here.”
Rachel stared at the envelope in her hand. She opened her mouth, then closed it again as Mari walked away. Her body felt numb.
She didn’t have to tell anyone. If Mari was completely wrong, no one would ever have to know she’d even entertained it. How could she walk away from the possibility of finding out more?
Rachel dropped her eyes to the ground and pushed an advertisement for psychic readings over the gritty pavement with the toe of her ballet flat. On the key chain, she shook the tiny oracle.
Is Mat my brother?
cannot predict now.
Am I from Argentina?
reply hazy, try again.
She opened the envelope flap with her index finger. The photo of Lorena Ledesma was face up on top of the pile.
Rachel stared at the photo.
Is this a picture of my birth mother?
without a doubt.
A thousand questions poured forth in her mind, but the most fundamental was something that only her parents could answer.