Free Bombshell by Lynda Curnyn Page A

office on Monday morning and found a seven-foot-tall cardboard effigy of her staring me in the face, I felt oddly bolstered. Maybe it was the way her pretty blond hair blew in the nonexistent wind, or the way she stood, hip jutting, chin tilted as if she had every reason in the world to be happy.
    I suppose she did, judging by the amount of money the Dubrow clan was dangling before her pretty blue eyes, hoping to lure her in.
    â€œWhat’s with the Irina doll in the lobby?” I asked Lori, who was already at her desk.
    â€œDianne ordered it,” Lori replied. “I think she’s planning on inviting Irina up to the offices for a tour.”
    I nodded at this bit of information, studying the face of the woman everybody wanted to call their own.
    â€œShe’s pretty amazing, huh?” Lori said, coming to stand beside me. Her gaze roamed from Irina’s cardboard face to mine. “You know, you could be her mother.”
    Her mother? Alarm shot through me and my hand went to my cheek, as if my advancing age was suddenly apparent for the entire world to see.
    Lori blushed, probably because she realized her comment had landed right on my thirty-four-year-old ego. “What I meant was, you two kinda look alike. You know, similar coloring, the shape of the face…”
    I smiled. As a face-saving comment, it was a good one. I suppose it’s not every day a woman gets compared to the reigning supermodel.
    I studied the image more closely, then realized that whatever faint resemblance Lori saw likely had to do with the fact that we both had roots in Eastern Europe. I guess there was a similarity in our facial structure and in the slight tilt to our eyes, but she looked more Slavic than I did. “My mother was Ukrainian,” I said, unthinkingly. Then I realized that was probably the first time in my life I had ever referred to Kristina Morova as my mother. And in light of the new revelations I had had over the weekend, the word stabbed at me.
    Lori blinked, then frowned. “Really? Didn’t you tell me your parents were Irish?”
    Now I was frowning. I suddenly remembered that no one in the office knew I was adopted. Mostly because I didn’t feel a need to share my personal history with anyone, outside of Angie, Justin, the DiFranco family and the few boyfriends Ihad allowed myself to open up to. According to ninety percent of the world, my parents were Thomas and Serena Noonan, a retired history professor and his lovely musician wife, living in New Mexico.
    â€œMy father is Irish,” I said, backpedaling. That was true. Black Irish. My adoptive mother was, technically, a mix of Irish and German and a bit of English thrown in. I bit back a sigh as I thought of my parents, realizing that I still needed to call them—had assured Angie I would do so.
    But suddenly I wondered what telling them would accomplish. Nothing had changed in my life. Not really. In fact, once I let go of the harrowing disappointment the letter sent through me, I found myself feeling lighter. More free. I suppose there was something to the notion of living without expectation. If you had nothing to look forward to, you had nothing to lose.
    â€œHer hair’s longer than yours. And not as blond,” Lori was saying now.
    â€œYeah, well, that’s a good hairdresser for you,” I said, a hand moving to my chin-length locks as I tried to engage myself. “Her eyes are bluer,” I added absently, my thoughts still on all that I did not want to talk about.
    â€œStill, there’s something there,” Lori persisted, as if sensing some unease in me and hoping to cover it over by raising me to the heights of Irina’s beauty.
    I stared hard at the effigy, suddenly wanted to resist any link to the supermodel. Any link that might somehow tie me to Kristina. But as I studied Irina’s cool confidence, I realized there was something I could learn from her. What was Irina Barbalovich