MY THROAT closed up. It’s scary to have an FBI agent show up at your home and tell your parents she’s there to talk about you.
It wasn’t like I’d done something wrong. I knew I hadn’t broken the law or anything, but I still felt a little zing of fear go skittering down my spine. Why in the world would the FBI be interested in me? Instinctively, I leaned closer to the door, even though I could hear the conversation just fine.
“Zavier?” Mom and Dad responded together, as if they had more than one son.
“Yes,” said Agent Henley. “I have a few questions I’d like to ask you. And let me say in advance that I’m sorry, but this won’t be easy.”
“Well, now you’re really worrying me,” Mom said.
That definitely made two of us.
Agent Henley cleared her throat again. “You adopted Zavier when he was six months old, is that correct?”
Wait.
Adopted.
Adopted?
I expected one of my parents to tell this FBI woman she had the wrong information, that she had the Beckhams mixed up with some other family, or that she was just plain crazy in the head. Any one of those responses would have made complete sense to me because they fit neatly with the world I’d known all my life. The last thing I expected was a long, tense pause, broken finally with Dad saying to the agent in a very quiet voice, “Yes, that’s right.”
No.
That wasn’t right. No way could that be right.
Suddenly I couldn’t breathe. It was like I’d been punched in the chest or something, and I almost slid down to the floor. I shook my head, refusing to believe what Dad had just said. I’d misunderstood his words; that had to be it. Then I felt the pain, a steady squeeze deep in my chest.
No.
No!
“And you made the adoption through the Clinefeld Agency?” Agent Henley continued.
“Yes,” Mom answered impatiently, “but what does this have to do with anything?”
“That agency’s records show that the birth mother signed away her rights and provided a death certificate for the birth father,” said the FBI woman.
“We’re aware of all that,” Dad confirmed.
“I’d like for you to look at this picture.”
There was more rustling, followed by a long stretch of silence.
“That’s Zavier as a baby,” Mom said at last. “But I’ve never seen this picture before. Where did you get it?”
“It was provided to the authorities as part of a missing person report.”
Now I was totally confused. I frowned. None of this made any sense.
In the living room, Mom gasped.
“Wait,” Dad said, his voice hushed. “Are you saying… are you saying our son was kidnapped?”
“Yes, Mr. Beckham. He was. Those documents at the Clinefeld Agency are forgeries. Both of Zavier’s birth parents are alive, and they’ve been looking for him for a very long—”
Something went off in my head, a bomb. It blew open the door, and I went charging into the living room, right up to that FBI woman. “You’re lying!” I screamed at her. “Everything you said is a lie, and you’d better stop saying it!”
The woman didn’t flinch or anything. She got this really sympathetic look on her face. “Zavier, I think maybe you should let your parents finish talking with me, and then they can speak with you—”
“No!” I shouted. “You stop talking! You stop talking to them! You’re a damn liar!”
I felt Dad behind me suddenly, his hands grabbing my shoulders. “Zavier, son, stop it. Come here.” He tried to pull me into his arms. I tore away from him.
I only vaguely remember running down the hall to my room and slamming the door behind me.
I HUDDLED in the little space between the wall and my desk, knees drawn up to my chest, arms wrapped around my shins. When I was smaller—five, maybe six years old—that was my hiding place when I got scared. I’d pull the quilt off the bed and cover myself, and that had always made me feel safe.
Nothing could make me feel safe now.
I stayed in my room as the daylight grew dimmer with the setting of the sun. During that while, the quiet drone of voices in the living room went on and on. I couldn’t make out any of the words, but that was okay by me. I didn’t want to know what they were saying anymore.
I wanted to scream.
I wanted to break things.
MY ROOM had gotten pretty dark when the knock came. “Zavier?”
It was Mom’s voice. I didn’t move or answer her.
The door opened slowly and she came in, followed by Dad. She flipped the wall switch, filling the room with light. Her eyes looked so sad. Dad’s mouth was pulled in tight, and his jaw worked hard, as if he were trying to bite a nail in two. Mom walked over and sat on the bed near me. Dad stayed by the door.
“Is that FBI lady still here?” I asked.
“She just left,” Mom said.
“What she said about me… is it true? Am I adopted?”
Mom looked me right in the eye and nodded. “Yes.”
I felt that crushing pain in my chest again. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“We were going to. The plan was to tell you when you turned thirteen. We thought you’d be old enough to handle the information by then. You turned thirteen and somehow your dad and I let it get pushed to the back burner again. I’m sorry. This doesn’t change how your dad and I feel. We love you no matter what.”
I didn’t know what to say after that. Mom and Dad didn’t seem to know what to say either. Dad wouldn’t even look at me. He was staring at the wall over my bed as if he wanted his gaze to burn a hole in it. Everything felt wrong somehow. Being in my room now, in my home with my parents… it seemed awkward and empty. I kept thinking this was how it would feel if the walls and the roof and the furniture—all the things that made our house familiar and comfortable and secure—had been ripped away.
And it was because of her.
“Why’d that lady come here?” My voice sounded strange and broken.
Mom sighed. “She was just doing her job. Zavier, there’s something you have to understand. Your father and I didn’t know it, but you have… another set of parents, your biological parents, who—”
“They can’t just take him,” Dad snapped furiously at Mom. His eyes were locked on her as if I had disappeared from the room. The blaze in those eyes wasn’t just anger; it was also fear. “Zavier’s been our son for almost fourteen years, and the FBI can’t just waltz in here and expect to take him away from us!”
Mom turned to him at once. “Charles, I can’t have you in here upset right now. Step outside, take a walk around the block, and let me talk to Zavier.”
Dad put a hand over his mouth. His eyes shifted wildly, and then he hurried out of the room. Seconds later, I heard the front door slam. I’d never seen him afraid before, and that scared me even more, but not nearly as much as what he’d said.
I could feel myself shaking. “Mom… what did Dad mean? What’s happening?”
She held out a hand to me. “Come here, sweetheart.”
I got up and sat next to her on the bed. She put her arms around me and pulled me close.
“When your father and I got married, one of our biggest dreams was to bring a child into our family. We found out later that we weren’t able to have children, so we went to an adoption agency where we got you, a baby who needed us the same way we needed a baby. You know how very much we love you, and nothing will ever change that.”
“Yeah, I know, Mom.”
“Good.” She squeezed my shoulder. “Now, at the time of the adoption, there was a birth certificate for you listing the names of your natural mother and father. There was also a statement signed by your mother giving up her parental rights, and there was another certificate showing that your natural father had died. Those documents made it possible for your father and me to adopt you. But today, we found out those documents are fakes.”
“So what does that mean? Is the adoption fake too? Do you have to do it over again or something?”
Mom shook her head. “Things are a little more complicated than that. The woman who signed that statement and turned you over for adoption was not your natural mother.”
“Who was she, then?”
“The FBI doesn’t know. Agent Henley said they are doing everything they can to track her down. They believe she stole you away from your real parents so she could collect money from the adoption agency. At that time, the agency paid big sums of money to a mother who signed over her child, supposedly to reimburse her for medical expenses and such. Agencies like that are essentially buying babies. But what matters most here is that your real parents called the police when you disappeared. The police and the FBI have searched for you for years.”
“So Agent Henley found me here.”
“Yes. And now that you’ve been found, your natural parents want you back.”