Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 90524 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 453(@200wpm)___ 362(@250wpm)___ 302(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90524 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 453(@200wpm)___ 362(@250wpm)___ 302(@300wpm)
“That’s so far away from Camelot,” I point out at the same time I reach for my utensils. “How did you end up there?”
“We moved about a year and half after I was adopted,” she softly confesses.
“Why…why weren’t we…adopted together?”
“It was a stupid paperwork error that split us up.”
The cutting of my sea bass slows significantly down.
“My parents – Lucy and Richard Stass – had no idea I wasn’t an only child until much later and despite my telling everyone I had a sister, no one believed me. They thought you were make-believe and that I was just doing what any six-year-old coping with the trauma would do.”
“What…did happen to us?” Her reluctance to answer has me admitting the grim truth. “I don’t remember anything that wasn’t told to me about the situation, Nani.” Ig’s arm that’s still swung around me regardless of him shoveling food into his face tightens. “I have dissociative amnesia episodes where…my memory basically deletes itself as a defensive mechanism to protect me from…shit it subconsciously deems too traumatic to directly deal with. And the doctors I’ve spoken to theorize that this most likely stems from the childhood incident that got me put in foster care to begin with. I don’t recall where I’m originally from. I couldn’t recall your name. Hell, I don’t even remember anything about our parents.”
“You’re not missing out there,” she mumbles around a bite of salad. “I think…our birth father was a high stakes gambler or maybe it was our birth mother? I don’t…remember at this point in my life, either, to be honest, but I do remember overhearing that they owed the wrong type of people a lot of money. The type of people who weren’t above killing children, so, the day after Christmas, they stuffed us in our car, in Highland, and just started driving. We were still in our matching snowflake pajamas…You were holding the little snow globe I picked out for you as a Christmas gift and I was holding onto my brand new baby doll. It felt like we drove for hours and hours and eventually we stopped for food and gas. Our birth mother took us to the bathroom, gave us each a peppermint snack, and said she’d be right back. But of course she never came back. They just abandoned us in that gas station bathroom because they believed it was most likely the safest thing they could do.”
A grunt of shock precedes me stuffing a piece of fish into my mouth.
That was the safest?!
I feel like they had more fucking options!
“My parents – the ones who raised me – moved us to New Hampshire because Dad got a new job and when his new job did some deep background digging, they dug into me. Discovered I was one of the children of a big headline story involving a local motorcycle gang saving a pair of orphans and realized I wasn’t making shit up. I really did have a little sister that no one bothered to investigate about.” A couple bites later she continues. “Due to the move, searching the state foster care system became damn near impossible, and without much to go on, they struggled to find you, eventually…giving up. However,” Nani puts her fork down to retrieve something out of her purse, “they gave me this.” She removes a wooden picture frame. “It’s the article the local paper had done about us, and it had our picture.” Sadness does its best not to overwhelm her voice. “I kept it on my dresser until I went to college…And then I kept it in my desk drawer.” The object is transferred into my possession. “I never forgot about you, Joey. I never wanted to.”
Seeing myself so small and helpless causes a lump of tears to swell in my throat.
The sight of us in snowflake pajamas ignites a small nagging somewhere in the back of mind.
Is that why I like those types of pajamas?
Is that why I love snow globes?
Wait…is that why I love Christmas?!
Because it was the last moment, I had with my birth family?!
“Over the years,” Nani precedes, “I’ve periodically paid PIs to try to find you, but no such luck.”
My watery stare lifts to hers.
“Until recently that is. Alexeyev’s PI, Nedi, found mine – who works with Haworth Enterprises – while trying to find me. They had our DNA tested to guarantee one party wasn’t trying to scam the other, and as soon as that was confirmed, plans were made.” Her excited grin returns. “And we’re reunited at last.”
The feeling of Ig’s thumb lovingly rubbing my shoulder is what gets me to say, “I’m really glad we are.”
Returning the picture back to her is followed by Nani giving us a little more about what her life was like growing up. Ironically enough, she is a lot like many of the kids I’ve nannied over the years, from her high dollar education to expensive cello lessons to worldly travel while my turbulent foster care past she’s heard others experience is what led her to the career path she’s currently on.