When I got home, the house smelled warm and spicy. Mom must have made chili.
“How’s Madeline?” she called, but her voice wasn’t coming from the kitchen, and it sounded kind of muffled.
“Good,” I called back, looking around for her. I finally found her in the living room, crouched under the desk. “What are you doing?” I asked.
She stuck her head out and smiled at me. I stuck the diary behind my back.
“Filing,” she replied, holding up a pile of papers.
“Oh,” I said. I always put my feet on the filing cabinet when I’m using the computer. I’d never thought about it serving another purpose. But . . . “What are you filing?”
“Just some paperwork about Grandma Anna’s estate. You know, boring adult stuff.” She and the papers disappeared back under the desk.
Paperwork about Grandma Anna’s estate. Could that include Grandma Anna’s adoption papers, the ones I’d hoped to find on her bookshelves? What other paperwork might be in that filing cabinet? My adoption records? If I found those, I could get the answers I was looking for without having to upset my parents at all. What’s that thing people say? What you don’t know can’t hurt you.
“We’re going to eat once I finish this,” Mom said, her head still buried. “Why don’t you go wash up.”
Would my parents keep my adoption papers here, in our own family room? My legs were suddenly tingly, like I was preparing for a tennis match. I was going to look in that filing cabinet later. The answers I’d been craving might have been here all along, filed in my large metal footrest.
But before I searched for secrets they were keeping from me, I had an important one to hide from them: the diary. I took the stairs two at a time up to my room, then scanned it for a place to hide the journal. Maybe I could hide it in plain sight. (Kind of like putting my adoption paperwork in the family room filing cabinet. . . .) I stuck the diary in the middle of the stack of books on my nightstand, then stepped back and cocked my head. Too risky.
“Dinner!” my mom shouted.
I looked at my open closet. A row of shoeboxes lined the top. Perfect.
I rolled my desk chair over and took one down. The top was dusty, but I knew the journal would be safe inside. I stuck it in, slid the box under my bed, and stood up just in time for a loud knock on my bedroom door. I brushed the dust from my hands before turning the knob.
“Dinner,” Jaime said.
“Thanks,” I said, fighting this crazy urge to give him a bear hug. “I’ll be right there.”
I’ve often wondered if Jaime wants to know about his birth family as badly as I want to know about mine. Or what my life would be like without him; like, if he’d been adopted by a different family, or still lived with his birth parents in Guatemala. A few times, when I’ve been really mad at him, I’ve even wished my parents hadn’t adopted him. But right now, watching his black hair and stocky body bounce down the steps on the way to eat chili with Mom and Dad, I’d have dared anyone to say he isn’t really my brother.
No matter what I found in that filing cabinet—and I was going to find something, I just knew it—my brother and I would still be family.