Chapter Twenty-Nine Charlotte
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHARLOTTE
Unfamiliar world
O N THE T UESDAY BACK ON CAMPUS AFTER T HANKSGIVING , I DO THE unthinkable.
I skip class.
Classes plural, in fact. I’m not only bailing on Climate Policy, but I’m not planning on attending my engineering lab either. Beckett’s message has been haunting me for days. I don’t want to see him or Will today. My emotions are too raw.
And what better balm for the affliction of raw emotions than lunch with the biological brother you never knew existed until a month ago?
Maybe I should have just gone to class.
But it’s too late to back out now. Harrison is already waiting for me outside Della’s Diner when I round the building from the parking lot. He’s bundled up in a black down jacket and plaid scarf, his cheeks reddened by the frigid wind. When I approach, he greets me with a tentative smile.
“Hey.”
“Hi.”
We stand there for a moment, eyeing each other. This is…a lot more awkward than I anticipated.
“Should we go inside?” Harrison finally asks. The amused note in his voice cuts through some of the discomfort.
“I don’t know. I figured we would stand outside in the cold for this,” I quip. “Really heighten the intensity of the moment.”
He snickers and reaches for the door handle.
We find a quiet booth in the back and shrug out of our coats, sliding in across from each other.
“Green tea, please,” I tell the waitress when she arrives to take our drink orders and deliver some menus.
“I’ll have a coffee,” Harrison says. “Thanks.”
Once she’s gone, he clasps his hands together on the tabletop. Neither of us speak. We’re back to eyeing each other, as if we’re both trying to discern the resemblance. Or at least that’s what I’m doing.
He doesn’t look like the male version of me, but I do note similarities. We have the same mouth. The way it turns slightly upward at the corners, like we’re sporting a perpetual smirk. His hair is the exact shade of black as mine. His eyebrows are the same shape, though mine are thinner.
Tears prick my eyelids.
I finally have someone who looks like me.
My throat closes, clogged with emotion. I don’t want to cry in front of him. He might be my brother, but he’s also a stranger. I don’t cry in front of strangers.
The silence drags on. It’s heavy, weighted down by all the things we don’t quite know how to say yet.
Finally, Harrison makes the first move.
“I’m sorry I freaked you out last week. I hopped a flight to Boston not long after you messaged me on the site,” he admits. “I wanted to scope you out before I approached you, and then once I decided you seemed like a normal person, I was trying to figure out how to approach you, but every time I saw you, I chickened out.” He looks sheepish. “I swear I’m not some creep. I really wanted to meet you, but I…ah…I don’t trust a lot of people. I didn’t know if you were running some sort of scam, and I just had to be sure.”
“So you’ve been lurking?” I ask, still processing.
He scratches the back of his neck, grimacing. “Yeah. Not my best plan. I’m sorry.”
“Where are you staying?”
“I was at a motel in Boston, but now I’m at the one here in Hastings.” He runs a hand through his hair. It looks soft. I wonder if it’s as silky as mine. “This is a great little town. I take it you didn’t grow up here, though? You’re only here for college?”
I nod. “I grew up in Hamden. Connecticut,” I clarify at his blank look. “And you were raised in Nevada?”
“Not quite. That’s just where I’ve been living the past few years. I moved all over the place when I was growing up.”
“Did your parents have to move for work? Military?”
“Work. My adoptive father was between jobs a lot. We moved wherever he could find work.”
His adoptive father. The qualifier stands out to me because I’ve never once used it to describe either of my parents. And the flat intonation behind the words is hard to miss.
“What about your mom?” I ask.
“My adoptive mom died two years after they brought me back from Seoul. Car accident.”
His voice lacks emotion, and I wonder if that’s because he doesn’t give a shit or because he’d known her such a short time before she died that he never had time to properly bond.
“She was the one who wanted kids,” Harrison continues, his expression shuttered. “She pushed Brian—my adoptive father—into going through the adoption process after they struggled for years with infertility. To be honest, I don’t think he wanted kids at all, biological or otherwise. He did it for her.”
And then she died and left him with a kid is the unspoken implication.
“How about you?” he counters before I can respond. “How was it? Growing up, I mean.”
I note the tension in his jaw, the way his gaze fixes on his fingers. “I had a great childhood, actually. My parents—they’re wonderful. I never wanted for anything.”
He nods, but something in his expression makes my stomach twist. “That’s good. I’m glad you had that.”
I sense the undercurrent of bitterness in his voice. “Do you remember anything about Seoul? The orphanage? Obviously, I was way too young, but you would’ve been four?”
“I remember a lot of it.” He takes a deep breath, exhaling slowly. “After you were adopted, I stayed in the orphanage for another year. Older kids don’t get picked as much. Most people want babies, especially with international adoptions. And our orphanage only worked with American adoption agencies.”
I swallow, guilt gnawing at me. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I don’t even remember—”
“It’s not your fault,” he cuts in. “You were just a baby. You didn’t get to choose.”
“But you got left behind.” The weight of those words settles heavily on my heart. “I don’t get it. Why did they separate us? Isn’t it customary to adopt siblings out together?”
Harrison’s eyes become distant, as if he’s seeing something far away. “I don’t know. I was angry at first when I found out you were gone. The babies lived on the bottom floor of the building, so I barely saw you after we got there. I used to beg them to let me stay with you in your crib, but they forced me to sleep upstairs in a dormitory with the older kids. And then one day I asked to come down to see you and they told me you’d been adopted. I didn’t understand why your new family took you and not me.”
My eyebrows soar. “You think my parents chose not to take you?”
“You just said so yourself—siblings are typically adopted together. They had to have known about me.”
He’s right. The orphanage administrators would’ve told them, no? They must have.
But…I truly can’t see my parents knowing I had a brother out there somewhere and never telling me about it. My gut says there’s more to this story, but Harrison seems convinced as he continues speaking.
“I thought maybe I wasn’t good enough. Too old for them—older kids come with more baggage, right? Babies are a shiny, clean slate.” He shrugs. “But after a while, I just accepted it. That was the way things were. It was out of my control.”
The pain in his voice is subtle, but it’s there, a sharp edge beneath his calm exterior. It makes my chest ache, knowing that while I was growing up in a warm, loving home, he had been left behind in a cold, unfamiliar world.
“I wish things had been different,” I say softly.
“Yeah. Me too.” He frowns. “They really never told you that you had a brother?”
I bite my lip. “No. But I’m not sure they knew. My parents aren’t secretive people. They’ve been nothing but transparent with me my entire life, especially about the adoption. I don’t know why they would be open about everything but leave this one thing out.”
“Maybe they didn’t want you looking for me.”
I hear his resentment again and try to steer the conversation away from my parents. It feels like dangerous territory.
“Do you remember anything about our biological parents?” I ask, wrapping my fingers around my mug. “Do you know why they left us there?”
“I don’t know if there was a ‘they.’ I don’t think our birth father was ever in the picture. Hell, I’m surprised our DNA test revealed we share the same one,” he admits. “I remember a lot of men coming in and out of our apartment before you were born.”
“We had a home?”
“Maybe? I have fuzzy memories of a cramped apartment. A dirty bedroom with one mattress on the floor.”
My heart squeezes. That sounds…bleak.
“Was our mother a prostitute?” I ask warily.
“I don’t know. Maybe. And I don’t remember having a father. No idea what his name is. I don’t know hers, either.”
“My adoption paperwork didn’t include any parent names,” I tell Harrison. “But I suppose that makes sense. I think child abandonment is illegal there, right? If the officials knew who our birth mom was, she probably would’ve been punished.”
“I have some memories of Umma—” He uses a Korean word, which he translates at my blank look. “Our mom. I remember some things about her but not a lot. I have a vague memory of her dropping us there. Leaving us. We took the bus, I remember that. And she didn’t have anything to leave you in, so she dug around in an alley full of garbage until she found, like, a plastic bucket or something.”
“Laundry basket,” I murmur, pain tugging at my gut. “My parents said the orphanage told them I was dropped off in a laundry basket.”
“Yeah, that was it. And you were screaming bloody murder.” He gives a wry smile. “I had this stuffed animal I used to drag around everywhere, so I put it in your basket. You were crying so hard, and I didn’t know how to make you stop, so I gave you the only thing I had to try to calm you down.”
“Was it a blue bunny?”
A small, sad smile tugs at the corners of his mouth. “How on earth do you remember that? You were a baby.”
“I still have it, Harrison.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“No. My parents brought it back with us to the States.” I stare at him, my heart squeezing. “Tiger was yours?”
“Tiger?” he echoes with a laugh. “That wasn’t his name back then.”
“What was it?”
“Tokki.” He grins. “It’s Korean for bunny.”
“Do you speak Korean?” I ask, a bit envious at the notion.
One of my biggest regrets is that I didn’t let my parents force me to take Korean classes when I was still young enough to retain the language. I scoffed whenever they brought it up. I didn’t want to speak Korean. It felt too alienating to me. Why would I speak a language that none of my friends could speak? These days, I wish I knew a second language, especially my birth tongue.
“Barely,” Harrison tells me. “I lost most of it when I came here, but I still remember some words.”
“Have you been back to Seoul since you were adopted?”
“No.” He snorts into his coffee. “We didn’t have money to take trips to Asia. Have you been?”
I shake my head. “No, but I’d like to someday. It’s funny—when I was a kid, I didn’t care to learn about where I came from. My parents wanted so badly for me to connect to the Korean culture. They would take us to Korean restaurants, read me books about the country, tried to make me learn how to speak the language. And I always resisted it.”
“I did too,” he confesses.
“Really?”
He nods. “Made me feel too different from my peers.”
“Me too. And I didn’t want to feel different. I just wanted to fit in. But the older I get, the more curious I am. That’s why I signed up for BioRoots. These past couple years, I’ve felt this need for answers. I wanted to know why my birth mother gave me up. Where is she now? Where is my father? Did he die?”
Harrison gives a wry chuckle. “And I’m no help at all, huh? I can’t offer you a single answer.”
“Maybe there are none,” I say with a sigh. “We might never know why we were dropped off at that orphanage. Or one day, we might get another DNA hit. Maybe find an aunt or a cousin who could provide insight into our birth mom’s decision to abandon us, into the identity of our birth father.”
“What if it’s the first one? Never knowing?”
I think it over. “Then at least we got something out of the search, right?” I smile shyly. “Each other.”
The waitress returns then, asking if we’re ready to order food, but we’ve been so engrossed in conversation we haven’t even looked at our menus yet. As Harrison picks one up, his sleeves slide from his wrists to his elbows, revealing his forearms. My heart stops.
Are those cigarette burns?
He doesn’t notice me looking at the scars, and when his gaze begins to lift, I hastily lower mine to my menu, pretending to study it.
When I put the menu down, Harrison’s sleeves are back at his wrists.
God. I can’t think of another reason why he might be walking around with what appear to be years-old cigarette burns on his arms. A reason other than abuse, that is. I want to ask him about it. I want to reach out, to comfort him, but I don’t know him well enough to do that. It feels like we’re on opposite sides of a chasm, connected by blood but separated by everything else.
“I still can’t believe you kept Tokki all these years,” he marvels after the waitress leaves.
Tears well up in my eyes, and I have to blink rapidly to keep them from spilling over. “I kept him because he made me feel safe. And because he was the only link I had to where I came from.”
“Well, I’m glad he helped. I’m sorry I couldn’t give you more than that.” He smiles suddenly. “Actually, maybe I can give you something else. Do you remember your Korean name?”
I suck in a breath. “I didn’t even know I had one. My parents showed me all the adoption paperwork when I was old enough to read and understand it, and my name was listed as Baby Girl followed by a number.”
“It’s Hae-Won.”
I can’t hold back the tears anymore. A dam of emotion breaks inside my chest. I have an actual name .
Even if this…whatever this is with Harrison…even if it explodes in my face like a supernova, it’ll still be worthwhile for this one gift he’s given me.
“What’s yours?” I ask through the enormous lump in my throat.
“Ki-jung.” His eyes fill with a mixture of discomfort and sadness. “I don’t like to be called that, though.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s not who I am anymore. Ki-jung is the kid whose mother didn’t want him.” He shrugs, reaching for his coffee again. “Harrison is the one who survived everything that followed.”
Pain stabs my heart. His words are confirmation that his childhood wasn’t a good one, although the cigarette burns had already told me that.
Seeing my expression, his softens. “It’s okay, Charlotte. It wasn’t your fault.”
But it doesn’t feel okay. I’d been given everything, while he’d obviously been left with so little. Yet he’s the one comforting me .
“I wish I could change things,” I say, my voice trembling.
He reaches out, his hand hovering in the air for a moment before he gently places it over mine. “Look, we can’t change the past, but we can start fresh. Get to know each other as brother and sister. If you want.”
I nod, blinking back another rush of tears. “I’d like that.”
When I get back to Delta Pi, the weight of the encounter feels like it’s crushing me. I hurry upstairs and end up doing another first: napping the day away.
Around seven, I awake groggy, starving, and disoriented. I go downstairs and fix some dinner, which I eat in the dining room with Dana and a couple others. When I pass the living room afterward, I hear voices and inhale the familiar smell of popcorn that usually makes me smile. Agatha might want to keep the house sterile and cold, but she can’t stop movie night.
Normally, I would change into comfy clothes and join the girls for the rom-com viewing marathon, but tonight I want to disappear into my room again and forget about everything.
Faith returns to the house around nine after a late class on campus. She pokes her head into my room to find me snuggling with my bunny. Tiger. No, Tokki. The reminder brings tears to my eyes, causing hers to flood with concern.
“Are you okay? How did it go?”
I roll onto my back, holding Tokki against my collarbone. “Brutal. It was brutal.”
“Oh no. What happened?”
She frowns and comes to sit beside me. Groaning, I curl toward her and rest my head on her lap.
I avoid her worried gaze by staring at the ceiling instead. I try to organize my thoughts, but everything feels tangled and messy.
“We talked,” I finally say. “About his life, his childhood. It was hard to hear. I mean, I always knew I lucked out, being adopted into the Kingston family, but he really got the short end of the stick. I feel like I won the lottery, and he got screwed.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
Faith sits quietly, letting me spill my thoughts without interruption. It’s one of the things I love most about her—she knows when to just let me talk.
“I can’t stop thinking about it. He stayed in that orphanage for another year after I was adopted. And all that time, I was with my new family, being loved, taken care of… And then, when he finally was adopted, he only got to spend two years with his new mom before she died in an accident.”
“Shit,” she says again.
“It’s so unfair. And I feel so guilty, like it should have been both of us or neither of us.”
Faith squeezes my hand. “No. It’s not your fault. You didn’t choose to be adopted by the Kingstons.”
“Why didn’t they take him too?” I bite my lip. “Harrison thinks they must’ve known I had a sibling and that they made a conscious decision not to adopt him.”
“Maybe.” Like me, Faith sounds unconvinced. “But your parents are so…wholesome. I can’t see them keeping a whole-ass brother a secret from you.”
“Same,” I admit.
“Are you going to ask them about it?”
“Eventually. But that means telling them I’ve connected with Harrison, and I’m not ready for that right now.”
“You still think they’ll be upset?”
“Yes. But more than that, I don’t want…” I try to articulate what I’m feeling. “Outside influences, I guess, affecting this process with Harrison. Today was awkward and painful and emotional and a gazillion other things I can’t even process right now. I want to be able to focus on building a relationship with him—if that’s even possible—and not feel bogged down by other people’s emotions.” I sigh. “Does that make me an awful person?”
“Of course not. This is your life, babe. Your history, your future. You get to decide how to navigate it and when to tell your fam.”
“I can’t stop thinking about how different his life could have been if my family had taken him in too. He wouldn’t have had to go through all that pain and loneliness.”
“His story is hard to hear, no doubt, but you can’t take responsibility for his life. It’s not on you. What happened wasn’t something you or he had any control over. You were both kids, and the adults made the decisions.”
“I know, but it doesn’t stop me from feeling this way. Like I got everything, and he got nothing.”
“That’s not true. You didn’t win a lottery. You were both dealt different cards, and now you’re figuring out how to play them. Together, hopefully. If that’s what you want.”
I let her words sink in. “That feels overwhelming.”
“I know. But you’re not alone in this. And neither is Harrison, now that he’s found you.”
“I don’t know what to do next.”
“Just take it one step at a time. You already took the first step by meeting him, listening to him. The rest will come.”
Some of the weight lifts from my shoulders. “You’re right. One step at a time.” From her lap, I smile up at her. “Thank you. I’m obsessed with your friendship.”
She grins. “Anytime. With that said, I’ve got a terrible reality show queued up that’s just begging to be roasted. You down?”
“Always.”