15. Liv
Liv
Iwatched Theo leave, convinced more than ever that I couldn’t just let this go. He’d seemed so sad, so resigned. If I didn’t at least try to sort out the mess between our families, how could I live with myself?
The question nagged at me as we cleaned up, as I made small talk with my mother. When Chloe begged to go back to my parents’ house, I took it as a sign. The three of them drove away, the flowered cashmere scarf tied jauntily around my daughter’s neck, and I gathered my courage.
Grandma Ella sat on the back porch, her legs up on the wicker ottoman, the butter-yellow chenille throw we’d given her for her birthday tucked around her so only her head stuck out.
She looked, I thought with a sudden tenderness that pierced my heart, like a wispy, fragile dandelion puff.
Maybe we were both dandelions in our own way, adrift and out of place.
Or maybe, this was exactly where my grandmother belonged.
“Hello, dear,” she said when I stepped outside, bearing fresh cups of tea.
“Darjeeling,” I said, setting hers down. “Your favorite.”
She raised an eyebrow, then sipped the tea, the fragrant steam rising to obscure her face. “I appreciate the gesture, Olivia dear. Now, what’s on your mind?”
I sank down on the sofa beside her, clutching my teacup so tightly, I worried I’d snap the handle right off. “How can you tell?”
“I did help to raise you,” she said mildly, reaching out her free hand to smooth my sweater. “Out with it, then. What’s troubling you? It’s not Brock, is it? I hope he behaved himself like a gentleman.”
I’d forgotten all about Mustache Man. “He was fine, Grandma. Not for me, but fine. This is something else. But I…I don’t want to make you feel bad.” My voice trembled.
“You couldn’t possibly. What is it?” She leaned forward, trying to read my face.
Was I really going to do this? Maybe I could ease into it, test the waters. That was reasonable, right?
“I’ve been thinking,” I said, choosing each word with caution, “about my biological parents. How I wasn’t in time to find them. I’ll never really know who they were. And I wondered. Do you ever think about what happened to you when you were a little girl?”
She fell silent, stroking the weave of the blanket with her fingertips. At last, her voice barely audible over the rustle of leaves through the grass, she said, “I do think about it sometimes, yes. Between your father and your Uncle Jamison, I lost a baby, you know.”
I hadn’t known this, but now didn’t seem to be the time to say so. Instead I made a sympathetic sound, pressing her hand in mine.
She looked up at me with a sad smile. “Not a day goes by I don’t miss that little one, or wonder who he or she would’ve grown up to be.
It gave me a greater understanding of my own mother’s perspective—how terrified she must have been when I disappeared, and how protective she became when she had me back again.
But it also made me wonder. If it was that hard for me when I never even got to see my baby’s face, how awful must it have been for the poor woman who thought I was her own? ”
“Do you ever think,” I began, my heart stuttering, “that maybe you were that woman’s daughter after all? What if it was all a terrible mistake?”
My grandmother startled upright, her body jerking.
“Oh, no, Liv dear. Not in a thousand years. My parents would’ve been monsters, to take a child from her mother that way.
My father was the kindest man you could hope to meet.
Even though he had his heart attack when I was only seven, I remember his compassion well.
And my mother…she was a bit high-strung, to be sure, but she was a good person,” she said, her eyes fixed earnestly on mine.
“I’ve been dreaming of her lately, come to think of it, Olivia.
She loved music so much, and in my dreams, she’s always playing the piano.
When she stops, she looks right at me, like she’s trying to tell me something.
I know it’s odd, but I can’t shake the feeling.
” Her expression turned wistful. “She was difficult, but she had a good heart. If she could do such a thing—”
Her hands shook, the liquid in the teacup trembling. She set the cup down, clutching the blanket tighter around her and looking younger than Chloe—like the little girl she’d been so long ago.
Maybe I was the monster, pushing her like this.
If my grandma were one of my clients, would I drop the issue?
Or would I wait for her to be ready, to want to explore her past?
Where was the intersection between my own longing for connection to my biological family, my desire to see justice served, and my complicated feelings for Theo?
This was the problem with being a chronic people-pleaser. When you were torn between pleasing more than one person, and the consequences could be dire, what were you supposed to do?
The heck with it. I’d come this far. “You don’t recall any details at all?”
She knotted her fingers together in her lap.
“I do remember a bit,” she said, staring off into the yard, where the brown-and-gold leaves chased each other.
“I remember the cold, and the people who came to get me, before my parents took me back home. The woman wore the strangest hat. I remember feeling lonely, like I didn’t belong.
Like I would never belong again. I wanted to tell them who I was, but my voice…
it had been taken from me. The other children talked.
They laughed and they cried. But not me.
It was like I wasn’t really there at all. ”
Her expression was vacant, transported—as if she didn’t see the swaying magnolia and fading mums, but rather the overcrowded orphanage. Her body was still here, wrapped in the yellow throw, but the essence of her had vanished.
Disconcerted, I cleared my throat, wanting to bring her back to me. “You don’t remember anything about the kidnapping itself?” I said, hating myself for asking. “How you got to Divine Grace?”
She shook her head. “It was snowing. I remember that. The world looked so different, unfamiliar. There was a fence…I can still see it clearly. It was tall, with spikes on top. I remember standing next to it, feeling so tiny, wishing I could make my way to the other side.”
My heart picked up speed. Tall, with spikes on the top. That could well be the fence that surrounded Gramercy Park. If only she could recall more…
“But everything is tall, when you’re a child,” Grandma Ella said, her tone distant.
“What I remember most”—a shudder ran through her—“is being so alone, and so afraid. Feeling lost, not only in the world, but as if I’d lost myself.
Like I was an unmoored boat, bobbing in an ocean amidst a storm.
” She shuddered, pressing her fingers to her lips as if to keep the words inside.
For an eerie moment, it was as if I could peer beneath the surface of my dignified, Talbot-clad grandmother, sitting on her tastefully appointed back porch, to the silent, shocked child she’d once been.
It was like she was a Russian nesting doll of herself, a grandmother inside a grandmother inside a grandmother.
And at the core was a toddler, separated from everyone she loved and cared about, lacking the words to find her way home.
I made a small sound of distress, and Grandma Ella’s eyes focused on me, dark with concern. The vacant expression on her face vanished.
“Oh, honey,” she said, squeezing my hand, “I didn’t mean to upset you. It was a long time ago.”
It was just like her to worry about me, rather than the other way around.
The last thing I wanted to do was cause her more pain.
But if there was one thing I knew about trauma, it was that ignoring it didn’t make it vanish.
It hid and festered, emerging in unexpected ways: bursts of temper, chronic headaches, nightmares, trust issues.
Or, if you were me, living with the constant sense that you didn’t fit in. That you would never, ever belong, no matter how hard you tried. It broke my heart to think of my grandma feeling that way, too.
She squeezed my hand again. “Sweetheart,” she said, “since we’re talking about your history, there’s something you should know.”
I eyed her, startled. “What do you mean?”
“I should have told you this long ago.” She heaved a sigh, the throw slipping off her shoulders. “When your parents were so reluctant to allow you to look for your birth parents all those years ago, I wasn’t on the same page. In fact, we had several disagreements about it.”
My mouth fell open. “Really? You argued with them? You fought for me?”
“I thought it was your right to know. Perhaps I should have pressed the issue. But they were resolved, and I didn’t want to rock the boat.
” She lifted an age-spotted hand to stroke my cheek.
“But now you’re grown, with a family of your own, and I regret what happened.
Maybe if I’d fought harder, or if I’d spoken my mind more clearly, you would’ve had a chance to meet the woman who gave birth to you. ”
“It’s not your fault,” I started to say, but she lifted a finger, halting me.
“Your parents were afraid, I think—that if you found your biological mother and father, you wouldn’t need them anymore, wouldn’t love them the same way.
But I’ve been around a long time, Olivia, and I’m not so foolish to think family is merely determined by blood.
You’re just as much my granddaughter as your cousin Krista is, and I’ve never thought otherwise.
” Her jaw set in determination. “Family is what you make of it, sweetheart. And if you had found your birth mother, and she’d welcomed you into her life, it would have expanded the love you have from our family, not replaced it.
If there’s one thing I know, it’s that there’s no such thing as having too many people to love you. ”