Picture This by Jacqueline Sheehan

body therapists who had the entire body from which to understand clients.
    A soft breeze lifted off the bay and found the bench. A nearby food cart sold organic, freshly squeezed lemonade and hot dogs. What two things could be farther apart on the nutritional scale? She stuck out her hand to Natalie, who had still not spoken a word.
    â€œI’m glad you could make it,” said Rocky, wrapping her fingers around Natalie’s hand. She detected an effort on the girl’s part, right after a pause. She could almost hear a voice in the girl’s head that said, Give a firm handshake.
    â€œNow it’s your turn to say something,” said Rocky, smiling with encouragement.
    The girl pulled her hand back to the canvas bag. “Thanks for coming. This is so important to me. It’s weird, like I missed my one chance to find out who my father is and I was too late. He was really out here, I had a father, and I missed him. That kind of fits my life, you know what I’m saying?”
    â€œHold on, let’s back up. What makes you think Bob was your father?” Rocky looked longingly at the lemonade, but she didn’t want to break the spell of the moment.
    â€œI grew up in foster care. When you turn eighteen, you can get your own records. I was legally emancipated when I was seventeen. No, that’s not right. My caseworker said it wasn’t really emancipation, but it felt like it to me. Do you know what that is?”
    â€œI do. It’s not easy to go through the court process. I know you had to have a way of proving that you could support yourself financially, which is incredibly hard. Was it worth it? You would have been on your own at age eighteen anyhow.”
    â€œI guess you’ve never gone through foster care. Yeah, it was worth it.”
    The sting of Natalie’s words found a tender, unprotected spot in Rocky’s chest.
    â€œSo again, what makes you think my husband was your father?”
    Natalie bit down on her lower lip, as if she was hesitating. “I have two different copies of my birth certificate. One went with my records and didn’t list a father. My mother must have refused to list a father. And that’s the one that has traveled with me. But then there’s this birth certificate. Look at this one.”
    Natalie pulled the satchel close to her body and dug into it, extracting a manila envelope. She opened it and slid out a folder. She opened the folder on her lap and peeled off the first page, handing it to Rocky.
    The horn on a ferry sounded a departure blast. A man pushed a shopping cart filled with a sleeping bag and a small backpack surrounded by bottles and cans; he rolled to a stop under the shade of a small tree. Two boys jumped their skateboards down the wide, low steps of the park, and the hard wheels smacked the concrete. Rocky took the paper from the girl and pulled it toward her as if the air had turned thick and resistant to movement.
    She forced herself to start at the top. “Birth Certificate.” “Live Birth. Eight pounds, three ounces. Female.” She saw that Natalie had just turned eighteen a few months ago. Mother: Paulette Davis, age twenty-one. Father: Robert Tilbe, age twenty-four. Ames, Iowa.
    Robert Tilbe. The sight of his name in print, on something official, disoriented her. Rocky took a sharp breath in through her nose and felt the muscles along her neck tighten. He would have been enrolled at the University in Ames when he was twenty-four.
    â€œWhy do you have two birth certificates? Can I see the other one?” said Rocky. She gripped the birth certificate with Bob’s name on it. She rubbed her pointer finger along his name.
    â€œHere,” said Natalie. “You can look at the original, because that’s the one that I thought was right for a long time. Like, my whole life. But when I asked for my records, because I just wanted to see everything that had happened to me and what Protective