CHAPTER 6
I sit on the edge of my bed and stare at the image of Teresa Huerta’s condo on Google Maps. Our motel is fairly close to the water, not far from the restaurant we’re playing at tonight. Teresa Huerta’s address is fifteen minutes away, on the edge of a town called Goleta. If I order a car now, then I can be back before we need to leave for our gig. The guys might not even notice I’m gone. The alternative is to go in the morning, but it might be harder to get away then.
The guys are in the room next to mine. Through the thin wall, I can hear them arguing about who has to share a bed with whom tonight. Flynn turned eighteen last month, and Cameron has a very convincing fake ID, so they were able to check into our rooms for us. But then after an awkward pause in the hallway fifteen minutes ago, the boys all filed into room 212, leaving room 214 all to me. This strikes me as incredibly stupid.
After I order my ride and see that I have seven minutes before it gets here, I bang on the wall and say, “One of you can sleep in here. There are two beds.”
There’s a pause, and then the murmuring resumes, a bit quieter this time. Finally, Flynn says through the wall, “Who would you want as your roommate?”
Cameron’s voice comes through next. “Me! You know I’ve got the best hygiene.”
Flynn cuts in. “No way. He might have more hair products than a Kardashian, but you know he’s a slob.”
Cameron again: “Please don’t make me share a room with Dan. He’s literally in a fetal position right now.”
“Well, I don’t want to share a room with him,” Flynn says. “Besides, I drove. I should get preference.”
“Unfair,” Cameron says. “You wouldn’t let one of us drive your van if we begged you.”
“Fine,” I say. “Daniel can have the extra bed in here, and then neither of you has to deal with him.”
There’s silence on the other side of the wall, punctuated, eventually, by a quick knock on my door. I open it and find Daniel standing on the outdoor walkway, carrying his duffle bag and somehow looking both glum and triumphant.
“Thanks,” he says. “Those two are impossible.” The door swings shut, and suddenly I’m very aware of the two double beds, separated by a narrow nightstand. “And I was not in a fetal position. I was just resting.”
“No problem.” Does he look this happy because we’ll be sleeping in the same room tonight, or because he loves beating Flynn in anything? I don’t have time to try to figure it out; the car will be here in two minutes. I step toward the door, holding up my phone. “I’m gonna make a call.”
I have my hand on the doorknob when he says, “Do you have a bed preference?”
“What?”
He points to the beds. “Do you care which bed you sleep in?”
“Not really.”
“Are you sure?” He sits on the uncomfortable-looking peach-colored chair by the window. “Darcy would make up a preference just to make sure she got her way.”
I shouldn’t be surprised he’s bringing her up, but it still irritates me. I can’t keep all the frustration out of my voice as I say, “Then maybe she isn’t as perfect as you thought she was.”
“Yeah.” He draws his knees in toward his chest: the fetal position. I almost wish I’d asked Cameron to be my roommate. The last thing I need is to spend the next five days listening to Daniel moan about Darcy. He starts to say, “You know, she used to tell me—”
But I hold up my phone and cut in, “I’ve really got to make this call.”
He hesitates, then says, “Yeah. Of course.”
I open the door. “It might take a while, but I’ll be back before we need to leave.”
“You’d better be. Without you, Blue Miles is three guys on a stage holding instruments and looking stupid.”
I’m just vain enough for this to soften my frustration. Besides, they just broke up, and I don’t really know the circumstances yet.
I lean against the door frame. “Are you going to be okay on your own for a little bit?”
He’s been staring blindly out the window, but now he looks up at me. “Yeah, I’ll be fine. Thanks.”
As I hurry down the stairs toward the silver Mazda that matches the image on my car-ordering app, I imagine coming back to the room with Daniel tonight, too wired for sleep. Maybe we’ll sit up late talking about the future of Blue Miles, then all the reasons Darcy was never right for him. Maybe to distract him, I’ll suggest we play music, and we’ll sit together on one bed as we invent something together, a new song, something lovely and lilting. After the final note rings to silence, maybe he’ll look at me through those eyelashes and say, Where have you been all my life, Bass Girl?
But by the time I reach the car, my daydreams about Daniel fade to a background hum—not the current priority, but not completely gone. As I slide into the backseat, the driver asks, “Are you Nora?”
“Yeah,” I say. Though, in my mind I add, Well, sort of.
I guess that’s what I’m trying to find out.
The driver isn’t very talkative. The next thing he says to me after “Are you Nora?” is “Is this it?”
The apartment looks shabbier in person than it did on Google Street View, but the light is gorgeous right now, with the sun drifting toward the ocean just a few miles away. When I open the car door, the air smells misty and floral. It reminds me of the opening notes of a song, though I can’t place the title or the artist.
“Yeah, this is it. Thanks.” I get out of the car, and as it pulls away, it occurs to me that this is an extremely stupid thing I’m doing. Even if Teresa Huerta actually lives here and is home, the odds that she’s my birth mother are ridiculously small.
A beat-up green truck moves slowly down the street behind me. A few houses away, a man and a woman are arguing. I briefly wonder if police would be able to find me, using the location tracker on my phone, if I disappeared.
For some reason, the voice that pops into my brain is Irene’s. As clearly as anything, I hear her say, I would never go chasing after parents who demonstrably didn’t want me. I have better things to do with my time.
I respond to Irene-in-my-head with, But you don’t know what it feels like to be missing the instruction manual to your own DNA. You’re an owl being raised by owls. I need to find my geese.
To which she says, Nora, you’re not making sense.
To which I say, See. That’s my point. To you, I don’t even make sense.
She starts to respond, but I cut her off by marching determinedly toward Teresa Huerta’s front door. I hesitate for only half a heartbeat before knocking.
Through the door, I hear a man’s voice, then a woman’s. Crescendoing footsteps. What instrument would that be? How would I write this music?
The door opens, and I’m confronted by a man in tattered shorts and a grease-stained T-shirt. I smell something cooking; the flavors are spicy and familiar.
“Can I help you?” the man says. His hair is dark and shaggy, framing a youthful, brown face; his eyes are blue green and narrowed suspiciously at me.
A woman steps into view behind the man. “Who is it, babe?”
My stomach leaps into my throat, because she at least looks like she could be my biological mother. She seems to be the right age, the right build—tall, skinny—though paler than I thought, from her picture online. But I remind myself that if she’s it, then she’s only half.
“Are you Teresa?” I manage to say.
The man looks back at her, and the woman steps forward. She hesitates, then says, “Yeah.”
Why didn’t I figure out what I was going to say? I have no words at all.
“Are you selling something?” the man says. He doesn’t sound annoyed, more like he’s trying to be helpful. “Because we’re probably not interested.”
I shake my head, then force out, “I just—I wondered—I’m looking for—” I close my eyes, take a deep breath. What’s more frightening? The idea that this isn’t her or that it is? “Is there any chance that you could—”
They’re both looking seriously worried right now. They seem so nice, like a really great couple.
“Are you okay?” the woman says. “Do you need us to call someone for you?”
“No,” I say. It’s now or never. “I just wondered if you ever had a daughter named Summer.”
The man looks back at Teresa, who’s shaking her head. But something has changed in her expression; she’s looking at me with dewy, tear-heavy eyes.
“It’s just—” God, this is going to sound insane. “I was wondering if it’s possible that you could be my biological mother.”
The man puts his arm around the woman’s shoulders. “Sorry, kid,” he says. “But that’s impossible. We tried to have kids, and couldn’t.”
From the way the woman looks at me, I can see that this is the truth.
“Oh.” I feel like such an enormous ass. “I’m really sorry.”
Teresa’s shaking her head. “No, don’t be,” she says. “I wish we could help you. I wish we were what you’re looking for.” She looks past me to the street. “Are you here alone?”
“Yeah.”
The man widens his eyes. “You probably shouldn’t be knocking on strangers’ doors by yourself.” For someone who looks so scruffy, he sounds an awful lot like my dad.
“I know.”
Teresa squeezes the man’s waist. “Come inside. Let us call you a ride.”
“She definitely should not be going into strangers’ houses, though,” the man says. He looks at me. “You’re lucky we’re good people, Summer.”
“Actually, my name’s Nora,” I say. “My parents changed it when they adopted me.”
“Do they know you’re here?”
I shake my head.
The man sighs. “Well, you’re welcome to come inside, but don’t do this again.”
I feel like such an idiot. And I really do need to get back to the motel as soon as possible. “I’ll wait out here,” I say, feeling like my insides have been punctured, like if someone cut me open right now they wouldn’t find actual organs, but a handful of popped balloons.
Teresa steps past the man and joins me on the porch. “I’ll wait with you.”
The man hesitates, then heads into the house, closing just the screen door. Once we’re alone, Teresa says to me, “Marty would have been a good dad.”
I look at her. “Is his name Martin?”
She nods. “We’ve been married almost eighteen years. High school sweethearts. Everyone expected us to have a gaggle of kids, since we hooked up so young and everything.”
“That’s actually how I found you. My birth parents’ names are Martin and Teresa.”
“It’s strange, isn’t it?” Teresa studies her hands. “Around the same time Marty and I were trying to get pregnant, there was another Martin and Teresa giving their child away.” She looks at me. “We could have traded lives.”
I order a car, and I’m almost disappointed when I see that it’ll be here in only a couple of minutes. I’m feeling reckless and hurried as I ask her, “Would you have wanted to?”
She shakes her head. “You know, even back then, when we were trying, and things were so emotional, I knew that if we never had kids, we’d be fine. We’re”—she seems to consider her next words carefully—“content, just the two of us.” She looks at me. “The people who adopted you, they must have wanted you pretty badly.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I think they did.”
The truth is, I know they did. My parents could have had more kids biologically if they’d wanted. On the rare occasion when they talk about it, they’ve said they simply knew their second child was already out there somewhere, trying to find her way home. When my dad tells the story, he usually tears up.
None of this is making me feel better.
A blue Prius pulls up in front of Teresa’s home, and its license matches the one on my app, so I stand.
Teresa stands, too, and walks with me toward the curb. She asks, “Do you live nearby?”
“No, I’m in a band, actually, and we’re just passing through.”
The left side of her mouth curls up in a half smile, and I realize that we don’t look as much alike as I initially thought. Her lips are fuller, and her nose has a little dimple on the end. “Marty’s in a band, too. He plays bass.”
“I play bass.”
We look at each other for a moment, and finally, she asks, “Are you playing somewhere tonight?”
“Yeah, a place called the Cove—”
“By Stearns Wharf?”
“Yeah,” I say. “We start at seven and play until close.”
The guy driving the Prius opens his door and asks, “Do you need help loading anything?” which I take as a subtle/not-subtle reminder that I’m wasting his time. I open the rear passenger-side door and say to Teresa, “I’m sorry for bothering you.”
She holds the door for me as I get into the car. “It was no bother.” Before she closes it, she adds, “Good luck, Nora.” She stands there on the curb until the Prius reaches the end of her block and turns out of sight.
When I get back to the room, Daniel is sitting in the same peach-colored chair, but he’s no longer staring blindly out the window. He narrows his eyes at me as I step toward the bathroom.
“Do you need to get in here before we leave?” I say, even as I’m shutting the bathroom door behind me.
“No.” I hear him get off the chair and follow me. When he says, “That was a pretty long phone call. Were you talking to your parents?” it sounds like he’s standing right outside.
“Uh, yeah.” I will call my parents before we go to bed tonight, so this doesn’t feel like a total lie.
I’m rummaging through my gig bag for my toiletries when Daniel says, “Then why did you need to drive somewhere?”
My hands freeze. If the guys find out about my plans for the week, they’ll know that there was no misunderstanding about the gigs in Reedley and Watsonville; they’ll know that I dragged them miles out of our way and made them miss an extra day of school for my own massively selfish agenda. I need to deflect, so when I can move again, I open the bathroom door and glare at him.
“Were you spying on me?”
“No.” He squares his shoulders defensively. “After you left, I decided to go for a walk, and I saw you get into that car.”
“That is none of your business,” I say, hoping that Daniel will just let it drop. Any minute, Flynn will come say it’s time to leave, but I feel like a mess. I splash water on my face, then grab my eyeliner.
“It’s my business if you’re lying to me about it.”
“No, it’s really not.”
When I finish with it, my eyeliner looks a little shaky, but whatever. I reach for my mascara next, even though it seems risky to put it on tonight, since I already feel on the verge of tears.
Daniel’s gone silent behind me, but somehow this makes me more uncomfortable. I pull my hair out of its bun and try brushing it, but that only makes it look limp and greasy. What I really need is a shower, but there’s obviously no time for that.
Someone knocks on our door, and I hear Flynn’s voice say, “Time to go. We’ll meet you at the van.”
I pull my hair back up into a tight ponytail and then turn toward Daniel, who’s still staring at me with an expression I can’t decipher. “What?”
His eyes search mine, and even though I’m half-panicked and more than a little irritated, I can’t help thinking that I’ve never seen eyes quite so blue, or so kind, or so worried. Finally, he says, “Just tell me one thing.”
“Maybe.”
“If you needed help with anything”—his eyes narrow; I can tell he’s trying to decode my reaction, so I keep my face as blank as possible—“you’d tell us, right?” I can’t tell if he steps forward, or leans forward, or if the room just shrinks, bringing us closer together. “Or at least you’d tell me.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I would.”
After a pause, he steps aside, letting me lead the way to the door.