Free Somewhere Out There by Amy Hatvany Page B

wardrobe strewn across the carpet. She imagined the look of shock on her mother’s face, taking some small measure of satisfaction from the thought, followed immediately by a ripple of guilt. However overly stringent some of her mother’s rules might be, Natalie loved her, and wanted to keep her happy. She tried to do what was expected of her, if only to keep the peace.
    Twenty-five years later, after dropping Hailey off at her school and then saying good-bye to Henry in his classroom, Natalie made her way to the preschool’s parking lot. Just as she reached into her purse for her car keys, she looked up to see Katie, whose son, Logan, was in Henry’s class and had invited Henry over to play that afternoon. Katie was alone now, so Natalie assumed Logan was already inside, too. Katie wore gray sweats and her brown hair was twisted into a messy bun on top of her head. She had the kind of good skin and natural beauty that didn’t require makeup, something Natalie envied. With her light complexion and fair lashes, if Natalie didn’t put on a little mascara, she barely looked like she had a face.
    “Can Henry still come over this afternoon?” Katie asked.
    “Yes, thanks,” Natalie said with a smile. “He’s excited.”
    “Logan is, too. I’ll bring Henry home around five, if that’s okay?”
    “Perfect.” Luckily, Henry wasn’t the only one with a playdate that day—Hailey was going to her friend Ruby’s house, too—Natalie had planned it that way so she could work on a dessert order she needed to finish for a party the next night without the kids clamoring for her attention.
    But first, she needed to go see her mother. Natalie had spoken to her mom earlier that morning, while she fed Hailey and Henry scrambled eggs, asking if she could come over for coffee around ten. Natalie thought about the guilt she had felt in her mother’s presence that day all those years ago when while working on her family tree. The guilt she still felt, today, when she thought about bringing up the subject of finding her birth mother. When she turned eighteen, Natalie had thought about registering with an adoption reunion organization, so if her birth mother was looking for her, she’d be easier to find. This was in 1998, before the Internet had taken over as the only way to get things done, so the process would have been more involved than simply typing her name into an online system—she would have had to go to the registry’s office and fill out hard copies of paperwork. But when she talked with her dad about the idea, he begged her to reconsider.
    “You know how your mom is,” he said, running one of his large hands through his salt-and-pepper hair. Natalie knew that no one would ever look at the two of them and suspect they were father and daughter. That was one of the disconcerting realities of being adopted—you look at your parents, your entire family, and see nothing of yourself reflected back.
    “She takes everything so personally,” her father continued. “She’ll be devastated.”
    At the time, Natalie conceded that he was right, so she let the idea go, reasoning that there wasn’t any urgency, any real logistical need for her to find her birth mother. It was more a general curiosity, a wondering about the past. So what if one day the previous summer she had chased after a woman walking in the Junction who resembled an older version of Natalie, only to catch up with her and find that other than being petite and having blond hair, the woman looked nothing like her at all. So what if Natalie sometimes felt a dull, strange sense of emptiness she didn’t know how to explain to anyone else, but often wondered if that feeling was the reason she had a harder time opening up to other people—if after being abandoned by her birth mother, she couldn’t help but be wary of letting other people in, showing them who she was, for fear that they’d leave her, too. Natalie had a good family—a family who loved and