17 #2
was particularly devastated, since he’d always wanted lots of kids.”
The only child of parents who’d died when he was in his twen ties, killed at a crosswalk by a reckless driver, he’d craved— needed —noise and chaos and connection . A big family to love and raise with his beloved wife, however that family came to be.
“So no more pregnancies.” Peter’s thumb tapped the edge of the plastic-covered page. “But that didn’t mean no more children.”
She smiled. “Exactly.”
Silently, they flipped through the rest of Vincent’s photos, watching him transform from a red-faced, squalling newborn to
a chubby infant chewing on plastic keys and a bright-eyed toddler standing on his own two feet.
A flip of the page, and there was Filip. Eighteen months of age, his black hair choppy and tousled, his brown gaze wary. Fresh
off the plane from South Korea, where he’d spent his entire infancy in an orphanage.
“My parents were waiting at the gate when Filip arrived, and they fell in love with him the moment they saw him,” she said.
“Well, yeah.” Peter touched Filip’s small, solemn face. “Who could blame them? I’m not even a kid kind of person, but he’s
fucking adorable. One look at him, and I’d have scooped him up and fed him ice cream until he smiled.”
She had to laugh. “That’s pretty much what they did. As Vincent always points out, you can actually see his cheeks get chubbier
and chubbier with each picture.”
Some of that was the food, but not all. His cheeks plumped when he smiled. And after a few months, when he’d settled in and
grown to trust his new family, he’d begun smiling all the time. A quiet, sweet smile that looked almost exactly the same more
than three decades later.
She flipped through more photos and basked in her brother’s growing contentment, the happy glow that said he’d found his place
in the world at long last.
“I’ll be damned. You really can track the cheeks.” Peter sounded tickled by that. “By the end, his face is like a little moon.”
It really was. “When he shot up during puberty and lost those cheeks, my mother was devastated.”
“I’ll bet.” He turned to the next page and took a moment to study the photo of a sleeping infant with a surprisingly thick
head of brown hair, clad in green footed pajamas. “This is Astrid, right? Why is she next? You’re older than her.”
“She was adopted as a newborn. I wasn’t. So she became part of the family before me.”
Something she’d tried her hardest not to envy growing up, more or less successfully. And the last traces of longing and resentment
had disappeared altogether when Astrid got older, and Maria finally understood: There were many ways to feel like an outsider,
and not all of them involved family.
Most early photos of Astrid showed her playing in the sunshine, because from what their parents said, she’d always hated being
cooped up indoors. It hadn’t surprised any of them when she became a hiking guide after a couple of unhappy years as a hairstylist.
“Astrid was an outdoor cat from the very start,” Stina would say when they were growing up, then proceed to ruffle Astrid’s
hair until her teenage daughter squawked in outrage and ran off, generally to her tree house.
Several pages later, Peter paused. “Hold on. Why did your sister get fewer photos than your brothers?”
“A lot of the pictures taken before she transitioned make her uncomfortable.” Even though Swedes generally weren’t as attached
to sex-specific clothing as Americans, some of her sister’s earlier outfits and hairstyles had virtually screamed her assumed
gender identity. “Pappa only put in photos she approved.”
“Gotcha.” Peter nodded, entirely unfazed, as she’d both hoped and expected he would be. “That makes sense.”
Maria tried not to tense up in anticipation of what he’d see next. What she’d have to explain to him, and what it would reveal
about her.
It wasn’t that she felt shame about it anymore, or blamed something intrinsically wrong with herself. Really, there was no
one to blame. Over time, she’d come to sincerely believe that.
But pain didn’t require a guilty party, and Maria didn’t often display her vulnerabilities for the scrutiny of others. Outside
her family and a couple of her closest girlhood friends, only her ex Hugo knew the full story of how she’d become an Ivarsson.
Not that knowing it had stopped him from causing her yet more pain.
After the next flip of the page, Peter went quiet for a moment. “And here you are.”
There she was. Wearing jeans and a tee. Already tall for her age, solidly built, with her blond hair in neat braids by her
ears. Expressionless, her stare bold and cold.
“Sweetheart.” Through the plastic covering the photograph, Peter’s forefinger smoothed over her girlish cheek, again and again.
“I didn’t realize how old you were when your parents adopted you.”
“Eight.” No need to belabor any of this. Just the bare facts would do. “My biological parents died in a terrible fire at a
Stockholm club when I was four. It was their anniversary, and I was with a babysitter.”
His finger stilled. “Maria.”
No, she wasn’t stopping yet. Especially not for that too-gentle murmur.
“There was no will specifying where I should go, and they were both the only children of only children, so there weren’t a lot of options.
” Her memories of those months in limbo remained tucked so deep in her mind, even she couldn’t access them.
She could only assume she’d been terrified.
Heartbroken. Utterly bewildered by what had happened to her family and her secure existence.
“Eventually, a distant relative of my biological mother took me in for two years.”
After a few months, she’d settled in. Stopped having nightmares every night. Adored their little apartment overlooking a tree-studded
courtyard. Grown to love Inga, who wore her thick hair in a graying bun.
That she remembered, although not as well as what happened next.
“Her adult daughter became very ill. Cancer. My guardian”—not mother, although she’d called Inga mamma that last year together—“was the sole caretaker, and she couldn’t meet her daughter’s needs and raise a young child at the
same time. Not with her own health issues.”
Inga had been in her early sixties and a lifelong smoker, and her cough often kept Maria awake until late in the night. Years
later, when Maria had looked her up online, she’d found both women’s obituaries. The mother had outlived her daughter by only
three months.
Peter’s arms had tensed around her, but his voice remained as soft as the chaise’s velvet upholstery. “She relinquished you?”
“Yes.” If she sounded a bit brusque, so be it. He’d have to forgive her. “I went back in the system and got sent to another
home a few months later. A couple in their late thirties. I was with them for over a year. She cleaned offices, and he did
maintenance for some local apartment complexes. He got laid off, and she found out she was pregnant. They’d assumed they couldn’t
have children, so they were shocked.”
And delighted, despite their financial woes. Effervescent with joy to have a child of their own blood, although they’d liked Maria fine.
But not enough to keep her.
Maria explained it to Peter the same way she’d explained it to herself so many nights in bed, a forsaken child desolate and
trying to cry quietly enough that no one else would hear. “They couldn’t afford two children. Even before he lost his job,
they could barely pay their rent each month. So without his income and with a baby on the way, they didn’t really have a choice.”
A few times over the year she’d spent in their apartment, she’d overheard intense, low-voiced discussions about scraping together
enough money for spaghetti and whatever fruit was on sale that week and maybe an outfit she hadn’t already outgrown.
Their decision to give her up made sense. It had made sense to her even then. They were in a difficult position with no good
options, and they’d chosen one. It didn’t mean they were bad people.
Still, when they’d called her into that tiny, cluttered kitchen and told her their big news and what it meant for her own
future, she’d been fiercely glad she’d never called them mamma and pappa as they’d said she could, never committed her heart as fully as she had with Inga. Even though her slight emotional remove
had hurt the couple’s feelings at times.
Maybe that was spiteful of her. But sometimes only spite had kept her functioning after they’d left her, kept her going to
school and smiling and trying to make friends as she bounced from home to home, none of the placements lasting long.
“So they let you go.” His chest expanded as he inhaled slowly, and his even slower exhalation tickled her cheek. “Okay.”
The words might still be quiet, but he sounded like he’d gargled rocks, and the legs bracketing hers might as well have been stone. His thumb kept whispering over the cheek of the lost, devastated, distrustful girl she hadn’t been for a long, long time.
“It is okay,” she told him, patting that restless hand.
The silence following her reassurance was absolute. So heavy it should have crashed through the chaise and the wooden floorboards
below them and bored a hole deep in the earth.
His jaw began making a weird grinding noise she’d never heard before.
“Don’t worry,” she rushed to add. “A few months later, my parents adopted me, and they didn’t fuck around. They made everything
permanent and legally binding as soon as they possibly could.”
As an adult, she’d understood why. They’d meant to declare in every conceivable way, both to her and to the authorities: This
placement was forever. They were forever. Her new family would never leave her, would always want and love her, would always choose her.
And in retrospect, she’d also understood how big a gamble that decision was, because before the adoption went through, she