Chapter Three Charlotte
CHAPTER THREE
CHARLOTTE
My inner critic is such a belligerent bitch
I WAS SIX YEARS OLD WHEN I FIRST REALIZED WHAT IT “ MEANT ” TO BE adopted. It dawned on me during a playground argument with another girl in my class. Stacey. Goddamn Stacey. I don’t remember how it started, but it was the most asinine fight, each of us arguing that our parents would buy us anything we wanted. Which was an absurd sentiment because I was in no way a spoiled child.
Stacey bragged that her parents would go buy her ice cream in a blizzard if she asked. After I gave an equally ridiculous comeback, she argued, “Yours would never do that.”
And then, with a smirk, she threw out the careless remark that shattered my world.
“You’re not even their real daughter.”
Her words were like tiny daggers into my heart. I’d known I was adopted since I was old enough to ask why I looked more like my friend Daisy Jeong and her parents rather than my own family. But I don’t think I ever truly grasped the concept, not until that fight with Stacey.
I ran away, tears streaming down my face. I was so upset that the teachers had to call my parents to come pick me up. It was Dad who drew the short straw of leaving work in the middle of the day. I refused to tell him what was wrong, refused to let him console me. But later that night, when he was tucking me into bed, I burst into tears, finally breaking down and confessing what Stacey had said. Mom came rushing into my room, and the two of them proceeded to comfort me and explain that just because we weren’t related by blood didn’t mean I wasn’t their real daughter.
But their words couldn’t erase the terror that had taken root in my heart.
What if they decide they don’t want me anymore?
I tried to bury those fears, but growing up, they always found a way to resurface. Every time I misbehaved, every time I brought home a bad grade, a voice inside me whispered that they might send me back. I began to watch their every move, analyzing their words and actions, searching for signs that their love for me was conditional.
Now, I’m twenty-one, turning twenty-two next summer, and for the most part, those fears have vanished. It’s been a very long time since I looked at the family photos lining our mantel and questioned if I truly belong in them.
But it’s times like these, when we’re going around the dining room table and everyone lists one goal they’ve set or an accomplishment they’re proud of this month, that I wish the people who adopted me weren’t so fucking perfect.
I love them dearly, but my entire family is a bunch of overachievers.
Mom can whip up a soufflé from scratch and has a PhD in mathematics. She doesn’t make people call her doctor , though. She’s not that pompous.
Dad runs his own multimillion-dollar cybersecurity firm from his upstairs office.
Ava, who’s four years older than me, landed her dream job right out of college, with a salary so high she can afford to live in a two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan instead of a roach-infested studio.
Oliver, six years older, is on track to become the youngest partner at the firm where he practices family law.
They’re nauseatingly successful and well-adjusted, every last one of them. Even Katherine, Oliver’s wife, fits that mold. Kat works for an organization that fights child trafficking and reunites survivors with their parents. Oliver literally chose to marry the one person who’s even more perfect than he is.
“That’s fantastic news.” Mom is beaming at Ava, who just shared the news that she’s in line for a promotion. Because of course she is. “I’m so proud of you, honey.”
“What about you, peanut?” Smiling at me, Dad slices off a piece of apple crumble using the side of his fork. “Any accomplishment or met goal?”
“I got an A on my last bio test.”
The answer feels like a cop-out.
But what else am I going to say? I accomplished a car hookup with a wide receiver?
Dad would probably choke on his dessert. He’d be all right, though, since everyone in my family is trained in life-saving techniques, including the Heimlich maneuver. It was Mom’s idea to take a family CPR and rescue skills class one summer—for fun. Her idea of fun differs greatly from mine.
You can always tell them you accomplished sending a DNA sample to a genealogy site.
Ugh. My inner critic is such a belligerent bitch.
Fine. Fine, okay? I suppose this is a solid opening. Segue from accomplishments to an exciting new development in my life.
Guess what! I’m looking for my real family!
Oh my God. What if they take it that way? I don’t want them to think I’m ungrateful or like they’re not enough for me.
This is just something I’m compelled to do. Something that’s haunted me for the past few years. I was adopted when I was eight months old. I have no idea where I came from. And for the longest time, I didn’t care to find out. There were questions in the back of my mind, of course, but seeking answers didn’t feel necessary, critical. I was happy with my friends and my family and my life. I’m still happy with all those things.
But lately, the need for answers won’t quit nagging at me.
I want to understand, I suppose. I want to know who my birth parents are. Or were, if they’re no longer alive. I want to know why my birth mother abandoned me. Why she felt it was the only choice for her.
My parents said she dropped me off at the orphanage in Seoul in a plastic laundry basket, a blue stuffed bunny tucked against my side. I still have that bunny. His name is Tiger. Oliver named him. My parents told me that when they brought me home and introduced me to Oliver and Ava, my new siblings were besotted with me almost immediately.
And they are my siblings. They are my parents. I’ve never referred to any of them as “my adoptive brother,” “my adoptive mom.” Screw that. They’re my mom and dad. Oliver is my brother. Ava is my sister. They’re the only family I’ve ever known, and I love them dearly.
A groan gets stuck in my throat. Damn it, why did I join that site? I hate emotional chaos. Or any chaos, for that matter. Only when I’m living my other life, the one where I’m not expected to be flawless, am I allowed to welcome the anarchy. That life is chock-full of risk and excitement.
This one…not so much.
I snap out of my thoughts, realizing my perfect opening has closed and the spotlight is now on Kat, who says she reached her goal of walking ten thousand daily steps for a week, and then we’re done.
Our table tradition is cheesy, I know, but it’s not as pretentious as it sounds. My parents want us to feel proud of ourselves and what we do, even if the accomplishment is something minor, like I went for a walk today, and the air felt nice on my face . The exercise is about embracing the positives.
As we clear the table, Oliver and I chat about a brutal custody case he’s handling at his firm. It’s uncanny how much he looks like our dad, down to the natural part of his sandy-blond hair and the shape of his fingernails. And Ava is a carbon copy of Mom—same thick, light-brown hair, impossibly long lashes, even the flecks of gray around her blue irises.
Then there’s me. When I was younger, I used to stare at my reflection in the mirror and wonder which one of my biological parents I looked like. I don’t think it matters, though. They didn’t want me. So why would I want to look like them?
I’m not bitter about it. Not really. I know some people harbor complicated feelings about their adoption, but I’m genuinely grateful for the life I’ve been given and the family into which I was welcomed. They treated me like one of them, a full-blown Kingston, from the moment they laid eyes on me.
Oliver and I carry the dirty dishes into the kitchen, where Mom is rolling up her sleeves in front of the sink.
“Go hang out with Dad,” I tell my brother. “I can help Mom in here.”
“Thanks, kiddo.”
Once he’s gone, my mother and I stand side by side at the sink, rinsing plates. She makes the mistake of asking about Delta Pi, causing me to groan and complain about Agatha for a good ten minutes.
“You think she’s bad?” Mom says when I come up for air, passing me a plate to load into the dishwasher. “Her mother is a hundred times worse.”
“That doesn’t surprise me in the slightest.”
Agatha’s mother, Lillian, is one of our alumni advisors. She’s there to “support” the executive board, but really, she uses the monthly check-ins as opportunities to stick her nose into every minute detail of the house and lecture us about what we’re doing wrong. The apple did not fall far from the tree in that family. They’re so alike they’re still sharing the same branch.
“God,” Mom says with a groan. “Lillian used to conduct this thing called a shine test.”
“What do you mean? Like for your shoes?”
“For your hair.”
“Seriously?”
“Yup. Before an important dinner party or an event, she’d have all the sisters line up outside our bedroom doors while she moved down the line and examined our hair. She’d make us tilt our head until it caught the light in just the right way and assess how shiny it looked. And if you didn’t pass the shine test…”
“What would she do? Beat you?” I gasp.
“Yes, Charlotte, she beat us.”
“What?”
“No! Of course she didn’t do that!” Mom starts to laugh. “If there was enough time for us to redo our hair, she would allow that. If there wasn’t, we wouldn’t be permitted to attend the event.”
“That’s all it takes to skip out on those boring things? Have your hair at eighty percent shine instead of a hundred? Why can’t Agatha be like that?”
After we finish loading the dishwasher, I wash my hands, then reach for a floral-patterned dish towel to dry them off.
“You know,” I tell her, “the only reason I’m even paying attention in these meetings is for you, Madam President.”
“And I very much appreciate it.”
She comes up behind me, wrapping her arms around my shoulders to give me a tight hug. Then she smacks a kiss on my cheek and goes to wipe down the counters.
Do it now, when she’s in a good mood , an inner voice implores. Tell her you want to find your biological relatives.
Another opportunity has presented itself. We’re both calm and content—the perfect time to drop a bomb like the one I’m sitting on.
Do it.
Tell her.
“Come on,” Mom says, heading for the doorway. “Let’s go see if your sister and Kat still want to go for that walk.”
The opportunity once again slips through my fingers.
I chickened out again.
Disgusted with myself, I check my phone while she ducks out of the kitchen to find Ava. There’s a notification from my hookup app informing me I have a new match.
Curious, I tap it to discover I’ve matched with the owners of the two ludicrously ripped chests. I open the chat thread, assuming I’ll see a picture of a veiny penis or some lascivious line like Hey baby, show us your tits .
Instead, they throw me for a loop.
LARS & B:
Do you believe time travel is possible? And if the answer is no, how does it feel to be so monumentally wrong?
I bite my lip to stop a wave of laughter. I…was not expecting that. I actually have to think about it for a minute before formulating a response.
ME:
I think it’s possible, but I don’t believe you can change the past. Otherwise there’s no way to reconcile all the time-travel paradoxes. There’s this physicist, Novikov, who has a whole theory about it.
To my surprise, someone starts typing back immediately.
LARS & B:
Holy shit. You know about the Novikov self-consistency principle?
ME:
Who doesn’t? I feel like it’s just common sense.
LARS & B:
Will you marry me?
ME:
It depends. Who am I speaking to right now? Lars or B?
LARS & B:
It’s B. Lars is around here somewhere.
ME:
Do you guys go to Briar?
His current location is now far enough away that it tells me he’s likely back in Hastings. When we matched, we were only a couple miles apart, so it stands to reason he and Lars live near Briar.
B:
Yeah, we both do. How about you?
ME:
Same.
B:
Junior? Senior?
My age on the app is listed as twenty-one, so I could be either. I decide to say I’m a junior, since I always tell a few little white lies when it comes to these types of apps.
ME:
Junior. You?
B:
We’re both seniors.
He’s typing again. I hear my mom and sister in the hallway.
The next message appears.
B:
You read our profile, right? Just wanna make sure you won’t freak out if Lars pops on here later and starts chatting with you.
ME:
I read it.
B:
And?
ME:
And what?
B:
Have you been with two guys before?
I’m about to respond when Ava pokes her head into the kitchen.
“You coming—” She stops, narrowing her eyes. “Why are you blushing?”
I have been genetically cursed to transform into a tomato when one, I’ve consumed more than half a glass of alcohol, or two, I’m embarrassed. And since it’s the middle of the afternoon and all I’ve been drinking is water, my older sister correctly deduces the cause.
“Are you texting with a boy?”
“No,” I lie.
“You are! Those cheeks reveal all.” She groans. “Oh no. Are you and Mitch back together?”
“I love how you prefaced the question with oh no .”
It’s no secret that Ava was not—and still isn’t—a fan of my ex. I suspect my parents didn’t love him either. They’d never say it to my face, but I used to catch them exchanging displeased looks whenever Mitch spent time with our family. Usually when he was being overly clingy, a behavior that manifested closer to the end of our relationship and that I also wasn’t thrilled about.
“He wasn’t right for you” is Ava’s response.
“I don’t disagree with that,” I say lightly. “Which is why, no, we’re not back together. I was texting with Faith.”
I tuck my phone in my pocket after closing the app. This conversation will just have to wait until later.
“How did they take it?”
Faith pounces the moment I walk through the door that night. She’s in a pair of pajama pants and a Delta Pi hoodie, her curls swept away from her face with a neon-yellow headband. Her dark-brown complexion, completely devoid of makeup, doesn’t boast a single blemish. I’d kill for her skin.
As I head for the staircase, Faith trails after me like an eager puppy.
“They were cool with it, right?” she pushes. “Just like I said they’d be.”
I stop on the second-floor landing, sighing. “I didn’t tell them.”
“Charlotte!”
“I know! But there wasn’t a right moment.”
I take off walking toward my bedroom, but Faith stays on my heels.
“You don’t need a right moment. You’re overthinking this. They’re not going to care that you want to track down biological relatives. Like, if Ava sent in a DNA sample to try to find some long-lost cousins, they wouldn’t even blink, right?”
We’re stalled at my bedroom door because I stick the key into the lock upside down. I make a mental note to reraise the issue of installing keypad locks at every door at the next exec meeting. Agatha and Sherise vetoed the idea last time because they felt it would give our house “penitentiary vibes.”
“What I’m doing feels ungrateful,” I confess once I finally get the door open. “Like I’m not happy with the life they’ve given me. Like there’s something missing.”
“There is something missing,” Faith says bluntly.
She hops up on my bed and stretches out, reaching for my stuffed bunny. Yes, I brought Tiger to college with me. He travels everywhere with me.
“You want to know where you came from,” she continues, playing with Tiger’s floppy ears. “That doesn’t take away from the fact that your family is fantastic. They love you, and they are your parents. But there’s this whole other part of you, a piece of your history floating out there somewhere, that you need to find.”
She’s right. This is something I needed to do.
My phone chimes.
When I check it, I’m provided with real, indisputable evidence that our phones are listening to us.
“Oh my God,” I tell Faith. “I just got a notification from BioRoots.”
She sits up. “What does it say?”
“‘Search completed. See your results.’”
She gasps. “You have results! That means the site must’ve found a relative or two, right?”
“Well, the results could be ‘zero matches,’” I answer in a dry voice.
“Open it. Let’s look!”
“I was going to wait until I told my family before I logged back on.”
“No, I think it’s better to look at the results first. Maybe there won’t even be anything to tell them about.”
Good point. I flop down beside her and open the app, logging on with facial recognition.
Welcome back! the screen greets me.
Underneath that is a button that says See your results .
“Go on,” Faith encourages.
Biting my lip, I tap the button. It brings me to a new page, which features a list of all the genealogical connections associated with my DNA. I take one look at the first entry and gasp.
“Holy shit,” Faith exclaims.
BioRoots had touted its comprehensive search engine’s ability to uncover links going back generations. I expected to find a great-grandparent maybe. A third or fourth cousin who’s vaguely related to another cousin. Someone who in turn might be able to point me in the direction of the biological parents who abandoned me at an orphanage.
The last thing I expected was a full biological brother.