The Woman in the Photo by Mary Hogan Page B

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    â€œNot all adults are meant to be parents. I’m sorry. Truly.” Tur-ew-lee.
    Lee sat there blinking. Like a pulsing blob, she felt her blood ba-blump, ba-blump through her aorta. Had she really heard what she thought she heard? Had her father quit ? Were dads allowed to do that? All this time, had he only been faking fatherhood? Pretending to love her? Was it because she wasn’t genetically his? Was he father material to her brother, Scott?
    It wasn’t remotely close to the conversation she had imagined having when her father finally called. She’d pictured tears and apologies. His . She’d envisioned herself taking the high road.
    â€œCome home, Dad,” she would say, nonjudgmentally. “We’ll forget about the past. Let’s start over.”
    Maturely, she wouldn’t mention how they’d had to cancel cable and the landline because creditors kept calling during dinner—which was now usually beans and rice. Or how hermother had lied to her father’s boss when it became clear that he’d quit his job, too.
    â€œI’m afraid he’s too ill to come to the phone,” she said for as long as she believably could. Finally, she had to come clean.
    â€œGone?” his boss had asked. “Gone where?”
    â€œI haven’t a clue.”
    â€œWhen will he be back?”
    â€œI’m afraid he’s left us.”
    Nothing is more pathetic than silence after you admit something like that. That’s what Valerie said after she hung up. And nothing is more terrifying than the abrupt disappearance of automatic paycheck deposits.
    In the gazillion times Lee had rehearsed their phone conversation in her mind, she never told her dad that Shelby’s parents gave them money for a mortgage that was already way past due. Not a word about the bankruptcy lawyer that her mom had to hire even though she had no money. And she certainly never let it slip that there were lots of days when she came home from school to find the curtains drawn, the house dark, and her mother hastily dressed in clothes from the floor—her hair flat on one side, crust in the corners of her eyes, and pillow wrinkles fresh on her face.
    Gil had ended the call with a resigned “Okay, then.”
    Lee’s cell felt like a brick in her hand. Before her father hung up, she quickly asked, “Have you heard from Scott? Do you, um, know how we might be able to reach him?”
    Shouldn’t somebody inform her brother that his family had disintegrated like cotton candy left in the sun?
    Snorting a sad laugh, Gil said, “Apparently, he takes after his dad.”
    Then the phone went dead.
    Nothing but pathetic silence.
    Just like the day her laptop crashed for the last time. She felt the same panicked loneliness when she stared at the dead machine that once contained her whole entire life.
    So, now, Lee Parker’s eyes were wide open. No longer would she look the other way. Now she noticed the gray shadow that flickered past Valerie’s sunny disposition each time Lee searched her iPhone for any possible information about the woman in the photo. True, in her initial excitement, she’d been a clod. Totally insensitive in the car on the way home from Social Services. All that stuff about her peeps. But now she was keenly attuned.
    â€œCome watch TV with me.” Valerie patted the sofa cushion. “Here. With your mom .”
    Now Lee was aware of the way Val kept identifying herself.
    â€œHow ’bout a good-night kiss for your mom ?”
    As if Lee would somehow forget.
    Lee noticed. She got it. No way was she going to hurt the only person who hadn’t left her to fend for herself.
    Still.
    No way could Lee let it go either. As any adoptee knows. The tiny pebble of information she now knew only expanded the ripples of her desire to know more. Where was she born? How had she come to be? Where had her birth mother drowned? Why the name Elizabeth?