Free The Bullet by Mary Louise Kelly Page A

sometime after 3 p.m., Atlanta police said.
    â€œThis may have been a robbery that escalated into a shooting,” said Lt. Steve Meadows, commander of the Atlanta Police Department’s homicide unit. “We’re working all angles right now.”
    Investigators had made no arrests as of Tuesday night, Meadows said. He urged the public to come forward with tips about the shooting on Eulalia Road, just south of Peachtree Road in northeast Atlanta.
    Jessica bit her lip. “You said you needed this for personal reasons. Did you know them?”
    I had a hard lump in my throat. “They were my parents.”
    She jerked around in her chair and stared at me in horror. “Your parents ?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œJesus Christ. I’m so sorry.”
    â€œIt’s okay. I mean, obviously, it’s not okay. But I was really young. I don’t remember it.” I coughed. “I grew up somewhere else and only just found out about all this, to be honest. Long, strange story.”
    â€œJesus.”
    â€œAnyway.” I avoided her gaze. “Anyway, I wanted to see what had been written about them. Could you print me a copy of that?”
    â€œSure.”
    â€œAnd check for the other articles?”
    She found all four of the stories that mentioned my birth parents. The next day, November 8, 1979, a follow-up story had appeared. It divulged no new details on the police investigation. But the reporter had done some digging and learned that the Smiths had been college sweethearts in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and had been the parents of a three-year-old daughter. No mention of her name, or what had happened to her. What had happened to me.
    The third story had run the following Monday, November 12. The day of the funeral. Several neighbors and family friends were quoted. But it was the photograph that made me gasp. A grainy but large photo, showing a young couple, arms around each other’s waists, standing beside a backyard barbecue grill. The man had tongs in one hand and a grin on his face. He looked pleasant. I did not recognize him. But her. God, her . I felt the dizzying sensation of looking into a trick mirror. The kind you find in the dressing rooms of discount stores that reflect you either ten pounds lighter or ten pounds heavier than your true self and distort your features just enough that you appear both recognizably yourself and disconcertingly foreign.
    Or perhaps that is too cryptic a description. The simple fact is, she looked just like me. Her hair was different—darker than mine, and sculpted into Charlie’s Angels wings, which would have been the rage back then. She might have been a few inches shorter, too, although it was hard to tell. The eyes, though. The lips, the smile. Identical. Thecurves, too, on display in a tube top and bell-bottom jeans. You could show this photo to any of my friends today, and at first glance their only questions would be why I was dressed for a seventies theme party, and who was the guy beside me flipping burgers.
    I reached up and touched the screen. “I’ve never seen them before,” I whispered.
    â€œShe looks like you. Or I guess, you look like her. You really do.”
    I began to cry. Quietly at first and then great, wrenching sobs. I had perhaps not believed it until that moment. There is a difference between knowing something in your mind and knowing it in your heart. I had by now seen my original birth certificate, and the MRI and the X-ray. But they had not packed the visceral punch of staring at a face nearly identical to my own. My mother. My flesh and blood, undeniable, her eyes smiling up at me for the first time in more than thirty years.
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    JESSICA HUSTLED ME into a conference room down the hall and brought coffee. It was scalding and carried the saccharine whiff of artificial sweetener, but I drank it anyway. I blew my nose on a paper napkin.
    â€œYou