Page 2 of The Wandering Season

“So how long have you known?”

Avery asked later that night. She was dressed in pajamas, probably designer but not fussy, and her long dark hair was up in a messy bun. She didn’t look so much like the New York fashionista but more like my kid sister this way. I liked her so much better like this. Less polish, more Avery. Mom had gone to bed, too upset to cope with the rest of the evening. Dad had enveloped me in a hug, then went to tend to Mom.

I’d assured them both that I was fine with it, but it didn’t seem as if they liked the idea of my knowing after all these years.

“I began to suspect in high school when we learned basic genetic inheritance in science. My college science classes backed it all up. I have dimples, a dominant trait, and our parents and grandparents don’t. The red hair is recessive, but it’s rare to have no others with it in the family. Same with green eyes. Height, body shape . . . It all added up.”

She reached over and grabbed my hand. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Because, honestly? I didn’t really care. Mom and Dad raised me. They’re my parents. Biology doesn’t matter.”

I’d said those words to myself a million times over the years, figuring if I repeated the line often enough, I might convince myself it was true.

I leaned back on the mountain of pillows in the room designated as mine when I came to stay in Estes. It boasted a rough-hewn log bed and a comforter adorned with black bears. Mom leaned into the cozy mountain motif without being kitschy, and I’d always found the room restful.

A knock on the door preceded my best friend since grade school, Stephanie Conway, breezing in without waiting for a reply. She was dressed for a chic Denver party, in a red sequined 1920s retro dress, but had a posh weekender tote, which probably cost as much as a year’s worth of my rent, slung over her left arm and a high-end bottle of Australian Shiraz in her right hand. Armed for battle. She was only two months my senior but seemed ages more sophisticated than I was.

“You did not have to leave your Christmas Eve party and drive almost two hours in the dark for me.”

My words were muffled into her shoulder. Like Avery, she was tall, but she was all golden blonde and Nordic features to Avery’s Italianate beauty.

“This seems like a level-ten crisis. And is it not in the bestie handbook that any emergency level eight or higher requires immediate personal attention and decent liquor?”

“Point well-taken,”

Avery responded for me, patting a space on the bed for Stephanie.

The two got on so well, I was surprised that they weren’t best of friends, but the two never bonded to that degree. Was it simply too much personality between the two of them to spend extended amounts of time in the same room? They needed the freedom to absorb the light, so they surrounded themselves with people who could eke out survival in the shadows. People like me.

“I want every detail you didn’t cram into the text.”

Stephanie’s face was solemn as she went into damage-control mode. Calculating and rational at all times. Given that she was in PR, it was more or less her natural state. While Avery and Stephanie had loads in common when it came to clothes and lifestyle, Avery was more of the calm, creative “things will work out better if I don’t get in the way”

type when it came to anything that wasn’t her work. Stephanie was always on duty, always problem-solving, even when she was supposed to be having fun, and I knew firsthand her consumption of black cold-brew coffee was more than any doctor would consider healthy.

I stammered out the whole embarrassing DNA-kit ordeal, complete with Mom and Dad practically needing CPR at the sight of them.

“Okay, so that is a huge thing to be going on with.”

Stephanie gently swayed back and forth as she did when pensive. “The fact that you haven’t spontaneously combusted is amazing.”

Always lead with a positive. Boardroom Rule #1.

“Oh, I’m sure Avery has had to throw water on me a couple of times when she saw the smoke billowing from my nostrils.”

Steph glared, impatience rippling off her like steam off a hot sidewalk. “Ha ha. Seriously. Are you going to be okay?”

I shrugged. “Yes. I mean, it is what it is, and I’ve had a long time to adjust to the idea.”

“But have you really?”

Stephanie widened her eyes in her signature I could smell your BS all the way from Denver look. “You never once mentioned this to me, your best friend since fifth grade. That doesn’t seem like particularly ‘fine with it’ behavior.”

“You’re close to the family,”

I reasoned. “I didn’t want to make things weird.”

“So you just bottled it up and didn’t process it at all,”

Stephanie countered. “This is too big to hold in. I don’t care how strong you think you are, Vero. That’s too much for anyone.”

“It was hard, okay . . . I mean, it was a million slow realizations. It didn’t happen all at once. What kid doesn’t go through an ‘I must be adopted’ phase? Mine just didn’t present any contradictory evidence when I searched for it. I mean, sure, Mom and Dad’s names are on my birth certificate, but they amend those after adoption. Thanks to the internet, I learned that years ago.”

“But surely you have other questions,”

Avery prodded.

I shrugged again. “To what end, really? I don’t need to know the details about why Mom and Dad chose to adopt me when clearly they were capable of having kids.”

I nudged Avery for emphasis. I’d been too little to remember kissing Mom’s expectant belly or Dad holding me up to see Avery in her little plastic bassinet at the hospital. But they had pictures of it all. Pictures of Mom with a baby bump with Avery, but none with me. That had been one of the clues that tipped me off.

“I never cared what agency they used, or if they met my birth parents. Maybe that makes me weird.”

Stephanie exhaled. “There has to be something you want to ask.”

“I do want to know if my birthday is accurate. That one has gnawed at me a bit.”

“I get it. I mean what if you grew up thinking you’re a Gemini only to find out you’re really a Cancer? The world would cease to make sense.”

We dissolved into a pool of giggles, none of us being all that keen on astrology but fond of blaming our foibles on it all the same. Avery was the classic social Libra and Stephanie the visionary Leo. I was passionate Aries, and it did feel like a fit.

“Go ask. You know they aren’t asleep yet.”

Avery pushed on my shoulder.

I gripped one of the bedposts so I didn’t slide off. “It’s not that big a deal. I can ask after Christmas.”

A knock sounded at the door, which wasn’t fully closed. Dad swung it open a beat later. “I came to ask if Stephanie needed anything to eat before bed, but I couldn’t help but overhear the last bit of what you were saying. What do you want to ask, Veronica?”

I tossed a pillow at Avery, which she expertly dodged. “If someone had a volume setting slightly lower than a jackhammer, you might have been able to help overhearing.”

Dad looked like he wanted to chuckle but wasn’t equal to it. “I’ve missed the sound of you three laughing more than I realized. Your sister emitting a sonic boom notwithstanding, what is it that you want to know? Your mother and I want to help you through this.”

I looked down at my hands, as if somehow I might find courage in the speckles of green glitter in my drugstore holiday nail polish. “Is my birthday really April third, or was that the day you adopted me?”

“Yes and yes,”

Dad replied. “We met you minutes after you were born and stayed with you overnight in the birth center like any other new parents and brought you home on the fourth. It was a three-way tie for the best day of my life, along with the day your sister was born and the day I married your mother.”

His head bowed to punctuate his sentence, the emotion thick in his voice.

I stood from my bed and enveloped him in a hug. “It doesn’t change anything, but it’s nice to know you were both there from the beginning.”

“Thanks for that, shortcake. We wanted to tell you a long time ago, but all the records are sealed, and we had to fill out one hell of an NDA. No photos were allowed until we left the birth center grounds. It was a whole thing. We only met your birth mother for a few minutes and were never given her name for privacy reasons. You look just like her.”

“So why adopt?”

I couldn’t help but ask.

“Well, your mom and I tried for a long time with no result. Then we let them run a few tests and we tried a few medications, but nothing worked. Rather than putting ourselves through an emotionally draining series of more invasive fertility treatments, we decided being parents was being more important than being pregnant, so we started the ball rolling with adoption.”

I cocked a thumb in Avery’s direction. “So explain that one.”

Dad’s face split into a genuine grin for the first time since Avery had produced the infernal kits. “Common enough tale. If a fertility-challenged couple adopts, the worry about having a baby goes away. When worry goes down, fertility goes up. We’d resigned ourselves to being a family of three, but Avery wasn’t having it.”

Avery winked at Dad. “Hey, I knew even then I wanted in on this party.”

I tossed a pillow she’d deflected earlier back at her and turned to our dad. “Thanks, Dad. I appreciate hearing this from you.”

He nodded, his voice still husky as he croaked out, “I’d better go check on your mom.”

Avery wrapped an arm around me as I reclaimed my place on the bed. “You’re taking this really well.”

“Too well,”

Stephanie interjected. “Listen, I get that you’re in shock, but you will need to process this at some point. If you bury it, it will eventually demand to be dug up. And it will be so much worse. Trust me.”

Stephanie knew of what she spoke. She’d lost her dad when she was in her final year of college and was so focused on graduation, internships, and jobs that once she’d helped her mom and siblings manage the funeral, she “powered through”

her grief and graduated summa cum laude in public relations from USC. She also had a breakdown a year later that nearly ended her career, but in true Stephanie inimitable fashion, she spun it and came out with her career intact.

“I know,”

I said. But it was mostly to appease them. It wasn’t the same as losing a parent suddenly, like Stephanie had. I’d adjusted to the idea over a number of years.

“Have you texted Jonathan about all this?”

Stephanie asked. “I’m amazed he’s not here, despite hating the drive.”

“Yeah, no. We broke up a few weeks ago.”

“What?!”

Avery sat up at attention, nearly upending her glass of wine on my bed. “I just thought he had stuff with his own family.”

“Nope. It was hard, our schedules always being at odds. Retail and finance don’t play nice together. It was wearing us both thin, really.”

“Okay, I’m going to pass over the fact that you didn’t tell your sister and best friend some pretty heavy news right away . . . but that is a pretty shoddy excuse for ending a four-year relationship.”

I leaned my head back against the pillows. “We got to the ‘all or nothing’ precipice of our relationship, and we decided ‘nothing’ was the right path for us. Better now than five years down the road with a kid or two in the mix.”

“That’s true, but why do I get the feeling that ‘we’ is really just ‘he’ in this case?”

Stephanie leaned forward, giving me her trademark no-nonsense stare.

“He initiated things,”

I admitted. “But that doesn’t mean he was wrong.”

“Maybe not, but you’d have tried if he wanted to, right?”

Avery took another sip of Shiraz.

“For sure.”

I didn’t hesitate, because that’s how I was made—one didn’t just bail on a relationship, especially a long-term one, without heroic efforts to make things work. But I was pragmatic enough to know I couldn’t be the only one making them if it stood a chance of working.

Avery sat up straighter, indignant on my behalf. “All the better, then. Not to be mean or anything, but I always thought you were selling yourself short. He was okay, and I’d have loved him like a brother for your sake, but he was never worthy of your level of awesome.”

Stephanie raised her glass and clinked it against Avery’s. “Amen to that. Keep fishing, Vero.”

“If either of you gives me a single platitude about all the fish in the sea, I will personally tie-dye those ritzy pajamas in red wine.”

The glare I shot Avery could have probably turned her to stone.

“Oh gawd don’t. She’s in fashion. I could not handle if wine tie-dye became a thing.”

Stephanie rubbed her temples, as if the very idea was threatening to give her a migraine.

“Well now I have a concept to pitch in January, thanks.”

Avery flashed me a wink that earned her yet another pillow in the face from Stephanie. Stephanie’s expression warned that if the designer labels were carrying a line of wine tie-dye next spring, there would be consequences.

Despite their levity, my head drooped onto my bent knees. “I’m sorry I’ve screwed up the holidays.”

“Come on.”

Stephanie now lobbed the pillow at my bowed head. “You didn’t ask for any of this crap. Jonathan is an idiot and doesn’t know what he’s missing. And we have to credit Avery with bringing up the adoption issue.”

“I do feel like an idiot.”

Avery’s expression grew somber. “I knew you and I looked different, but I never thought of you as anything other than my big sister. It literally never occurred to me.”

Tears threatened in my ducts, and I was losing the battle to keep them at bay.

“Love blinders,”

Stephanie supplied. “You saw the family as you imagined it.”

“I saw the family as it was.”

Avery’s tone was absolute. “It doesn’t really matter what the test says. Vero is one of us. She’s a Stratton with some borrowed DNA.”

I wrapped an arm around her. “That means a lot. Thank you, Stinkerbell.”

She stuck her tongue out at me, but Stephanie was pensive. “Why don’t you take the test, Veronica? I’m not saying you need to go make Hallmark-esque memories with your birth family, but it could be interesting to know some of the details. Medical history if nothing else.”

“Why not?”

I wiped my face on the pillow, making a mental note to wash my linens before I left to spare Mom the trouble.

Avery fetched the box I’d left, long abandoned in the living room. “I’ll take your sample back with me and pull some favors to get it run quickly.”

I accepted the box, peering dubiously at the bright colors, then took a steadying breath. “You don’t have to go to any trouble.”

“Oh trust me, they would love to do this for me.”

She batted her eyelashes demurely, and I could all too easily imagine a bevy of genetics nerds tripping over themselves for the honor of being in Avery’s debt. It had been that way since middle school.

I opened the box and read the directions. Ugh. I would have to fill a vial with saliva. Not a fun process. I waited thirty minutes for the wine residue in my mouth to dissipate and prepared my sample for Avery to take back to New York. All while Avery and Stephanie laughed hysterically at my attempts to produce enough spit.

“So, thanks for hauling my drool back to New York,”

I said lamely, handing her the sealed tube with my sample.

“It seems like the least I can do, given that I basically sent Mom into vapors like someone out of an Austen novel.”

She tucked the pouch safely in her bag.

For the rest of the night, I thought about the sample and what it might reveal and hoped I wouldn’t be too disappointed with the results—whatever they might bring.