Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
T he man who’d just arrived had red hair. His hair was a darker, more brownish shade than Ivy’s, but definitely red. He also had Ivy’s light skin color and freckles. His face was handsome. His height, tall. He looked to be the right age.
He’d spotted her and was walking toward their table dressed in jeans and a white Nike golf shirt. She could feel Sloane and Max coming to their feet beside her as she stood.
Seth’s focus touched on the adults before returning to her face. “Ivy?”
She nodded, finding it hard to speak over the emotion swirling inside her. This man was the only biological parent she had left.
“I’m Seth. It’s nice to meet you.” He stuck out his hand.
She shook it.
Those familiar words— nice to meet you— and shaking hands with him helped this feel more normal, more like meeting any adult for the first time. “Nice to meet you, too.”
He exchanged introductions with Sloane and Max, which gave her a chance to pull in some deep breaths. Her hands were shaking so she interlaced her fingers in front of her as they all sat.
“Thank you very much for meeting with us,” Sloane was saying to Seth, “I know this means a lot to Ivy.”
“You’re welcome.” He glanced at Max. Then at Ivy. She had the sense he was absorbing the details of her just like she was doing with him.
It was fascinating to see him in person.
“This is interesting, isn’t it?” Seth said.
Nodding, she felt more of her anxiety melt. “Yeah.”
Silence followed. Her mind blanked. She didn’t know what to say.
Seth cleared his throat and adjusted his position. “How are things for you, Ivy? With your family, school?”
“Good! I have a great family. An older sister and two older brothers. They’re all out of the house now, so it’s just me left with my mom and dad, who are geologists. On assignment overseas. Which is why I’m spending the summer with my Aunt Sloane.” She pointed at Sloane, then thought, That was dumb. He knows who Sloane is, so I didn’t need to point to her.
To Sloane, Seth said, “You’re Harper’s sister.”
“Yes.”
“She told me about you.”
Sloane smiled.
“You resemble her,” he said.
“That’s a lovely compliment.”
He glanced at Max. “Did you know Harper?”
“I did.”
“When you reached out to me,” he told Sloane, “I was sorry to hear that she’d passed away. What happened to her?”
“She died of a drug overdose.”
“I see. That’s really sad. She was . . . wonderful.”
“She’s greatly missed,” Sloane said simply.
A memory of the last time she’d seen Harper flashed through Ivy’s mind. Harper’s long brown hair. Gorgeous face. She’d worn lots of necklaces, a leather vest with nothing on under it, and bell-bottom jeans.
“What kinds of things are you into?” Seth asked Ivy. “Sports? Video games? Student government? That kind of thing?”
“I’m into rats. In fact, I own two.” She pulled up a photo on her phone and aimed it at Seth.
“Wow.”
“I play lacrosse, but I’m not very good. I like to hang out with my friends, watch YouTube videos, and read.”
“What are your favorite subjects in school?”
“English and history.”
He nodded.
“Ivy,” Sloane said gently. “Do you have some questions for Seth?”
“Um. Yes!” She’d planned her questions and, thankfully, they finally dropped back into her head. “Can you, um, tell me about how you knew Harper?” That hadn’t come out exactly right but good enough?
“She and I met at a party when I was a senior in high school. She’d recently moved here to Boston and was living in an apartment with a bunch of other girls. She was a year older than me and working at Union Oyster House, which is the same place where a buddy of mine was working. My buddy invited her to the party and she and I hit it off. I . . . She was amazing. My first love.”
“My dad,” Sloane said to Seth, “mentioned to me that Harper told him her relationship with you was not public.”
His face fell a little. “I’m the oldest of three kids. My parents were more relaxed with my younger siblings, but they were all over me during my high school years. I didn’t tell them about Harper when we started going out because I knew they wouldn’t approve. I snuck Harper up to my room one night and my mom caught us in a pretty . . . intimate situation. They told me I couldn’t see her anymore. Which of course made me want to see her more. From then on, we kept our relationship secret.”
“How long did your relationship last?” Ivy asked.
“Three months or so. I thought things were going well. But then, one day in the spring of that year, she just . . . broke up with me out of the blue. She said she’d had fun and thought I was a good guy. But just”—he shrugged—“didn’t feel that way toward me anymore.” He seemed to lose himself in the past for a second, frowning. “After that, she cut off communication. I had a really hard time getting over her.”
It was weird, to have been conceived by teenagers who hadn’t wanted a baby. Ivy had always known that was how her life had begun. Yet that had never felt like it belonged to her because her parents had made it so clear that she was wanted, that she was planned for—by them. Her mom liked to say that Ivy was the one who’d made their family complete.
She’d been conceived accidentally. But the bigger part of her identity was that she’d been adopted purposefully .
“When did Harper let you know that she was pregnant?” Sloane asked.
“After we broke up, I worked all summer, then went to Michigan that fall. I’d been going to classes for a couple of months when she called from the labor and delivery floor of the hospital after giving birth to tell me I was a father.”
Ivy winced. He’d been eighteen and Harper had been nineteen when Harper had gotten pregnant. That wasn’t a lot older than Ivy was now.
It would be terrible to get pregnant at nineteen.
Like really, really terrible.
It kind of blew Ivy’s mind to imagine being Harper back then. It especially blew her mind to imagine having a baby the way Harper had—alone. She hadn’t told Seth, and she hadn’t told Sloane or their dad.
Before Harper passed away, Ivy had seen Sloane way more often than she’d seen Harper even though Harper was her biological mother. Sloane never cancelled their plans, but Harper cancelled their plans often. The times when Harper had come by, she’d always brought a gift, which was really sweet of her. She was a dazzling type of person yet there’d been something sort of . . . hectic inside of Harper. It was hard to explain. It had felt like Harper couldn’t just relax and be peaceful. Which had made Ivy uneasy when she was around her.
Never had Ivy thought, I wish I’d been raised by Harper . Instead, Harper always caused Ivy to think, I’m so glad for my mom and dad .
“I was totally shocked to find out I was a father,” Seth continued. “I told her that I would leave school. That we could marry and be parents together. She didn’t want that. She had her mind absolutely made up about the babies.”
“Baby,” Sloane corrected.
Seth’s forehead lined.
The longer Seth stared at them in confusion, the more it felt like a cold wind was blowing across Ivy’s heart.
“ Babies ,” Seth emphasized. “Twins.”
Shocked quiet answered.
Twins? The word bounced around inside Ivy’s skull. Instinctively, she glanced at Max, who once again gave her that unshakable I am here, and everything is going to be fine expression.
“Harper only had one baby,” Sloane said. “Ivy.”
“You didn’t know about the other one?” Seth looked between them. “I’m sorry. I thought you knew. When did Harper tell you about Ivy?”
“Five days after Ivy was born,” Sloane answered.
“And she never mentioned the other baby?”
“No. Never.”
“I’m surprised.” Seth scratched the side of his head, then dropped his hand. “During her phone call with me she said she’d decided, soon after learning she was going to have twins, that two babies would be too much for her. Months before she delivered, she’d made a choice to place one with an adoptive family.”
Ivy was speechless. It appeared that Sloane was, too.
“Was the other baby a boy or a girl?” Max asked.
“A girl. Harper called that baby Baby A and said something about how she was the bigger of the two twins. Which made her feel like Baby B was the one who needed her a little more . . . Or something along those lines. Sorry, I don’t remember all of this perfectly. It’s been a long time.”
“Baby B was me?” Ivy asked.
“Correct. She told me that she was going to name you Ivy and that you were healthy. Then she asked me to sign a document giving up my rights for Baby A. She emailed instructions to me.”
“What was Baby A named?” Sloane asked.
“No idea. By that point, the day of the twins’ birth, an adoptive family had already been lined up for Baby A and they were the ones who were going to name her.”
“Have you learned any other information about that baby over time?” Max asked.
“No. That adoption was a closed adoption.”
“You don’t know where she was raised?” Max asked.
“No.”
“Do you remember the name of the adoption agency that handled that adoption?” Sloane asked.
Seth chewed the inside of his lip thoughtfully. “Unfortunately, I don’t. I was a college kid at the time. All I remember is that, in the email, Harper explained that we had to wait four days and then I’d need to sign the document in front of a notary public and witnesses. Which was what I did.”
Ivy’s brain was still stuck on the news that she had a twin sister. I am one half of a set of twins?
“I regret to say that I was very immature back then,” Seth added. “I didn’t follow up with Harper. I just . . . went on with my life. After that, I heard from Harper just one other time, when she asked me to sign the same document, releasing my parental rights to you, Ivy. I can’t remember how many months later that was.”
“Harper placed me for adoption when I was five months old.”
“Okay, so it must have been five months later. That time, she said she was going to do an open adoption. But again, she assured me that her decisions didn’t include me. All she wanted was a signature on a paper. So, that’s what I did.”
“And has your life gone well?” Ivy asked. “Since college?”
“It has. I moved back to Boston after graduation. I got married five years ago and my wife and I have a two-year-old little boy and a daughter on the way. She’s due in November.”
“Oh, that sounds really nice.”
Seth’s expression turned more serious. “My wife, my parents and siblings . . . I never told any of them about you and your sister, Ivy. There just didn’t seem to be a point. I never had a role in Harper’s life after she broke up with me. And no role in Baby A’s life or your life.”
It sounded like Seth had kept a big secret from the people closest to him. His wife would probably be very mad if she found out that he’d had children he’d never mentioned.
“That’s why, this”—Seth motioned between himself and the rest of them—“is sensitive for me. When I got your letter, I wanted to help. But I’d hate to hurt my wife or family. And they would be hurt if they learned that I’d kept this from them. I . . . I didn’t keep this from them because of anything to do with you, Ivy. I kept this from them because of some of the decisions I made along the way. I didn’t want to let them down. And I don’t want to injure them now. Can you understand?”
“I understand completely.” Ivy jumped in to extend grace. She’d never want to injure Seth or the people who loved him.
She’d been an open part of Harper and Sloane’s life. But because Seth had never told anyone about her, she couldn’t be an open part of his life. It still meant a lot to her to fill in the blank space of her biological father with an actual person. Maybe this—meeting him today—was enough?
Yeah, it was enough.
Max leaned forward. “Did you keep copies of the release forms you signed for Ivy and her sister?”
“No, I didn’t. I was scared someone would see the forms and find out about the babies.”
“Do you use the same email address you had fifteen years ago?” Max asked.
“It’s one of the ones I still use, yes.”
“Would you be willing to look back in your email inboxes for emails to or from Harper about the babies? It’s possible Baby A’s adoption agency would be included in the body of the email or the attached forms.”
“Ah . . .”
“We’d really appreciate it,” Max said firmly.
“I don’t think the emails are still there, but when I get home, I’ll check. Just in case.”
Max thanked him.
“Any other questions for me?” Seth asked.
“Is there anything we should know about your family’s medical history?” Sloane asked. “Any risk factors, for example, that run in your family?”
He appeared to think that over. “No. Not really. We’re a healthy group. All four of my grandparents are still living.”
“If you remember anything else concerning Baby A or Ivy,” Max said, “you’ll let us know?”
“Yes. How about I give you my work email? If you guys have any other questions, you can reach me there.”
“Sure.” Sloane put his contact details into her phone.
Seth hadn’t had to show up here today. He could have ignored her letter and ghosted her. “Thank you for speaking with us.”
“You’re welcome. You seem great, Ivy. I’m glad everything is going well for you.”
“Same to you.”
He rose. “Take care, okay?” he said to Ivy.
“I will. Goodbye. Thanks again.”
He weaved his way to the door. Then was gone. The sights and sounds around Ivy seemed to heighten, as if they’d been muted while Seth was sitting across from her and had now returned to their regular level. She was buzzing inside. From meeting him. From the revelation that she had a biological sister.
“Excellent job, Ivy,” Sloane said. “You comported yourself beautifully.”
“You think it went well?”
“You handled that pressure cooker so well ,” Max said, “that you’re now going to have to take a job with Libri as CEO.”
“You’re CEO.”
“You can have the job. You’d be better at it.”
“Mark down his words,” Sloane told Ivy. “That’s the first and last time you’ll ever hear him say that someone is better at something than he is.”
Ivy grinned. “You guys”—she fisted her hands and pounded them softly on the tabletop—“I have a twin sister.”
“I’m stunned,” Sloane admitted. “I couldn’t believe it when he said that. Not once did Harper tell me that she’d carried twins, that you had a sister.”
“I’ve had this nagging feeling for a while now that I needed to know more about my start in life. I thought that feeling was about meeting my biological dad. And maybe some of it was that. But now I think that nagging feeling was mostly because of her. My sister. Maybe intuition or . . . I don’t know? . . . the part of me that remembers that far back? Something was pushing me to find her.”
“I’d love to meet her myself,” Sloane said. “ I have another niece .”
“You have another niece! And I have a twin. How are we going to find her?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“Max?” Ivy looked at him hopefully.
“No clue.”
“It sounds like getting information on her might be difficult,” Sloane pointed out, “since that adoption was closed.”
“But we will try?” Ivy asked.
“Yes,” Sloane agreed with conviction. “And if it’s possible to succeed, we will succeed at finding her.”