The Woman in the Photo Read Free

bathroom and shut the door. Eyes half closed, she avoided examining her face. She knew how she looked—irises like espresso beans, a jaw sharply angled in a determined sort of way, dark hair so dense it somersaulted down her back. She didn’t even slightly resemble her champagne-haired parents or her brother with the Nordic eyelashes. They needed sunglasses when someone turned on a light. Even a stranger could tell she was adopted. Not that it was ever a secret.
    Leaving the toilet unflushed to save water, Lee washed her hands and splashed cool water on her face. Twice. Shelby had nailed it. Lee Parker was not a morning person. Not even this morning when the world as she knew it was about to change. Again.
    New nonidentifying background information has surfaced regarding the medical history of the above-referenced adoptee.
    That sentence had tumbled through Lee’s mind ever since the letter arrived from Social Services.
    Limited genetic information . . . after eighteenth birthday.
    Over and over, like a balled-up sheet in the dryer, phrases from the letter spun through her consciousness.
    Background information . . . above-referenced adoptee.
    Though the official envelope had been addressed to her parents and mailed to the house where they used to live, the letter was meant for her—the adoptee. Handwritten in the space below their zip code was Lee’s previous name . No last name. No identifying background information. Just the original name her birth mother had given her: Elizabeth.
    Valerie knocked softly on the bathroom door.
    â€œMrs. Adell needs me for a luncheon up at the house tomorrow,” she said, her forehead pressed up to the jamb. “But I should be free by, say, two thirty or three. Is that too late to join you?”
    Lee’s shoulders drooped. A sarcastic retort popped into her head: What’s the rush to drive downtown in endless L.A. traffic to a government office that closes at four thirty? Reaching for the knob, she curled her long fingers around it. Rotating her slim wrist, she opened the door.
    â€œYou don’t have to come with me, Mom. I’m okay on my own.”
    A cloud passed over Valerie’s eyes. “You don’t want me there?”
    â€œIt’s not that.”
    â€œI mean, if you’d rather not have your mother by your side . . .”
    Lee frowned. Why did she test her?
    â€œYou know you’ll always be my mom no matter what, right?”
    â€œRight.”
    â€œAnd I love you. No matter what.”
    â€œRight.”
    In her mother’s expression, Lee read her mind: I can’t bear another loss. She understood the feeling. If you didn’t cling topeople, she now knew, they could slither away in the night. You could end up living in a moldy pool house with your sunny mother.
    Lee reached out to encircle her mother’s upper body. She felt the doughy softness of Valerie’s upper arm, the padded ridge of her scapula. Curling into her, she rested her cheek on her mother’s cushioned shoulder. The maternal pillow on which she’d leaned and cried and slept from the first day Valerie claimed her as her own. She inhaled the clean, uncomplicated scent of the only mother she’d ever known. Valerie Parker was the woman who applied Neosporin with a Q-tip so gently Lee barely felt it on her bloody scrapes; she jostled her tenderly when the alarm clock was beeping and young Lee was still floating atop a vast, warm ocean, buoyant, tucked into a blanket of stars. Not the slightest bit afraid of the gilled beings swimming beneath her. When she was sick, Valerie would press her forehead against her daughter’s sweaty forehead to gauge her fever. She froze grapes to feed her when her throat was her sore. Every night she carefully folded back the top edge of her blanket and smoothed it over Lee’s chest, whispering, “What fantastical journey will you take tonight?” She was there day in and day out, not just