Chasing Abby (3 page)

Lynette wipes tears from her face as she steps away from Abby and I take a step back to get a wider angle of the hospital bed. The lighting in this critical-care room is terrible. This isn’t something I ever imagined I would care about in the countless days we’ve spent in hospital rooms.

I take a few shots, feeling sick with myself as I walk around the bed to see which angle makes her look best. Every year, a few days before Christmas, we drop a memory card containing pictures of Abby into a joint safe-deposit box in Raleigh. The Knights also leave a memory card with pictures of themselves, and I can only assume it’s because they haven’t given up hope that we’ll introduce Abby to them. This is the first year we’ll be handing them the pictures in person as we beg them to save our girl.

Finally, I have to stop taking photos when I realize I’m about to lose my composure. Turning away from the hospital bed, I silently ask Abby’s forgiveness for photographing her while she’s in this state. She hates taking pictures, especially Christmas pictures, unless she’s had time to fix her hair and put on a nice outfit. The things thirteen-year-old girls worry about baffle me. I often wonder if she inherited this and all the traits I love so much about her from the Knights.

I turn around and Lynette is holding Abby’s hand again. “She’s lucky we adopted her,” she says. This time her voice is a bit louder than a whisper, as if she’s trying to convince me—or herself. “She probably wouldn’t have survived this long. She’s lucky to have us.”

“She needs to see those pictures,” I insist, but Lynette doesn’t look up or acknowledge my words.

Suddenly, Abby’s head jerks a bit harder and her fingers begin to move. My heart races as I rush to her side. Her eyes are still closed as tears begin to slide down her temples.

“What’s wrong?” I ask instinctively. 

A soft whimper sounds in her throat where the breathing tube prevents her from speaking. She shakes her head, her eyes still closed as the tears come faster.

“Call the doctor!” I shout at Lynette, who is dumbfounded. Abby has been in a coma for seventeen days.

Abby’s cries become more high-pitched as she struggles to be heard through the tube. “Don’t try to speak, honey. The doctor’s coming. Just stay calm. Are you in pain?”

She shakes her head even more adamantly and finally she opens her eyes wide.

“Don’t be afraid,” I whisper as I reach for her hand, but she slaps my fingers away. “Abby, what’s wrong?” She reaches for the tape holding her breathing tube and I grab her hand to stop her. “Don’t do that.” She leans her head back and her muffled cries cease as she closes her eyes. “Honey, are you okay?”

She squeezes her eyes tightly shut and now it looks as if she’s in extreme pain. The nurse rushes in and I lock eyes with her. “I think she’s in pain.”

Abby’s cries begin again and she continues to shake her head. She wants us to know she is not in pain.

The nurse is confused. “Then what’s wrong, dear? Is it the tube in your throat? Because we can’t take that out. We’ll have to wait for the doctor to get here. He’s been paged. Can you wait a few more minutes?”

Lynette wears a guarded smile as she rounds the foot of the bed and reaches for me. She didn’t see what I just saw. 

Abby’s cries grow stronger and the nurse appears worried. “You want a piece of paper to write something down?”

Finally, Abby nods and the nurse quickly leaves the room to retrieve a pen and paper, but Lynette beats her to it. She takes her phone out of her purse, opens up the notes app, and hands it to Abby. As she takes the phone from Lynette, she seems to be refusing to look at her. Her hand shakes as she types a few words then lets the phone drop onto her blanket.

The words on the screen break my heart into a million pieces:
I want to see the pictures.

CHAPTER FOUR

T
HIS
IS
THE
THIRD
family dinner in as many days that Abby has refused to speak to us since we returned from the hospital four days ago. I want to shake her to force her to speak, but I know there’s only one thing that will bring back her voice. And I can’t give it to her.

She sits across from me, stabbing her dinner salad over and over again, oblivious of the shrill sound her fork makes every time it grates against her plate. She eats quickly, eager to get away from the parents who betrayed her. Brian also remains silent and, for once, I’m not happy about that.

When I met Brian my senior year at UNC Chapel Hill, he was working as an electrician for a company the university had hired to upgrade the lighting in the campus theater. I was twenty-one, talkative, and thin as paper. He was twenty-five with broad shoulders and hardly spoke a word the first three weeks we dated. There was a quiet gentleness about him that I found so completely enthralling. I wanted to crack open his shell and devour his secrets. He’s still a quiet person, but he’s been very vocal about Abby’s right to know her parents lately.

Still, I wish he would say something instead of just shoveling salad and steak into his mouth. I wish he’d show me just a few words of support. More than anything, though, I wish he’d come off this idea that Abby is old enough to know Chris and Claire Knight. She’s only
thirteen
.

She’s struggling to push the last few bites of salad into her mouth. She hasn’t been able to eat much with the new medication they have her on, but it seems she’s determined to put all that food away so she can leave.

Her new meds may make her sick, but they saved her life. Brian didn’t want to try this drug, afraid the risk of more liver toxicity outweighed the possibility that she would come back to us. But I was right. And I’m not the type to say I told you so, but this would be the perfect time to say it. I was right about Abby being too sick to continue playing in that soccer game. I was right to take a risk on this new medication. And I know I’m right about keeping her from meeting her biological parents.

“Stop doing that. You’ll make yourself sick,” I say, putting down my fork as I’ve suddenly lost my appetite.

She gags as she swallows the last bite of salad and rises from the table with her plate in hand. She disappears into the kitchen without a word and I stare at her empty chair as I listen to the faucet come on in the kitchen, then the opening and closing of the dishwasher door. Then silence.

I glance at Brian and his elbows are resting on the table as he stares at Abby’s empty chair. I want to ask what he’s thinking, but I don’t want to know. Soon, he stands up and reaches for my plate.

When the dinner dishes are clean, I lean against the counter in the kitchen and Brian leans against the island across from me. I stare at his feet for a moment before I look up. He’s wearing that expression I fell in love with twenty years ago, that hardness that masked the vulnerability underneath.

“She’ll get over this,” I whisper, hardly able to bring myself to say the words aloud. “Eventually, she will get over it.”

“Will
we
?”

“Don’t say that.”

He takes a step forward, his bulky frame towering over me as my back is pressed into the counter. “I don’t want to lose either of you,” he says gruffly as he lifts my chin. “But it looks like that’s exactly what’s happening. And you’re the only one with the power to stop it. It’s not too late to make the right decision, Lynette.”

He lets go of my chin and leans over. I close my eyes as I anticipate his lips on mine, but the kiss never comes. When I open my eyes, he’s gone.

If I give in to Brian, Abby will find out her birth parents are young, rich, and famous: a rock star and an author. How can a middle-class electrical contractor and stay-at-home mom ever hope to compete with that? I know we’re not competing for Abby’s love, but that’s exactly what it will feel like once Abby finds out their identities. Every time she speaks of them excitedly, I’ll wonder if she speaks about us like that to Chris and Claire. And she
will
speak of them that way. 

They’re practically perfect. They donate millions to charity; they’re in their mid-thirties and still look like they’re in their twenties; and they’re still madly in love. You can see it in every photo of them ever taken. And the worst part: They live twenty minutes away. She’ll be able to see them whenever she wants.

I push off the counter and head upstairs. As I reach the second floor, I hear a sound coming from Abby’s bedroom. I tiptoe toward her room then I close my eyes as I listen. She’s playing her guitar and my eyes instantly well up with tears when I realize she’s singing “
Blackbird
” by The Beatles, a song about learning to fly with broken wings.

It’s the first time I’ve heard her voice in four days. I want to go in there and hold her and tell her everything will be okay. But if I can’t tell her everything, then that will just be a lie. I can’t tell her the reason she feels like a caged songbird. I can’t let her fly away.

CHAPTER FIVE

I
LAY
MY
GUITAR
on top of my bed and grab my laptop off the nightstand. I sit cross-legged as I set the computer on the bed in front of me. Flipping open the screen, I type in my password then open my browser to my bookmarks. I stare at the name of the website for a moment before I click on it:
birthrecords.com
. 

I know my dad’s credit-card number. I have it saved in a text file because my dad was tired of giving it to me every time I wanted to download a new movie. But my parents will definitely notice a charge on their account made to
birthrecords.com
. Then I’ll lose my credit-card privileges and they’ll probably move us to a remote island in the South Pacific with no Internet access. Well, my dad will probably protest for a couple of days before he gives into my mom, as always.

I open up my “Saved Orders” page and stare at the “Submit” button. Just a few more clicks and I can have the name of the agency that handled my adoption. That doesn’t mean they’ll give me the names of my birth parents, or that the agency still exists. All it means is that I’ll have one more piece of the puzzle. One tiny piece of a puzzle that’s missing half its pieces. It may seem insignificant and pointless, but it means the world to me.

Why can’t my mother see that?

If I knew what hospital I was born in, or what time I was born, I could go to the county courthouse and search the birth records myself. But my parents have already admitted to lying about this information when I asked them about it years ago in casual conversation. 

“Mommy, where was I born?”

“In a hospital, of course.”

“What hospital?”

Mom and Dad exchanged shifty looks as they used their ESP to come up with a lie. Always covering their tracks. God forbid I should want to know anything about my true identity.

I wonder if I look more like my biological mom or dad. I wonder if they play music like me. I wonder if they live here in North Carolina or somewhere cool like New York or Hollywood. I wonder if they broke up or if they had more kids after they gave me up. Maybe I was the only one they didn’t want.

Most of all, I just wonder if they ever think of me.

I open up a new tab on my browser and begin a new search: abigail jensen adoption decree. I hit go and, of course, nothing related to me or my parents comes up. But that hasn’t stopped me from repeating this same search string a billion times over the past three days. Since
he
gave me the idea.

I open my email next to check for new messages and I’m relieved to find I have two. I already feel like a ghost in this house. I don’t think I could handle being invisible to my friends. 

I check Amy’s message first. 

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]
 

Subject: Lameness

Vanessa’s party isn’t gonna be a sleepover anymore. Her parents flipped out when they heard boys were coming. Her parents are the worst.