The Saints of the Cross (17 page)

Morgan General Hospital

Martinsville, Indiana

Announces the birth of:

Evangeline Grayce Hamilton

Born this Thirty-first day of October, 1998

to:

Mother:
Amelia Hamilton

Father:
XXXXXX

I sit down hard on the rolling office chair, almost tipping it over and falling to the floor. I grab the desk to balance myself and sit, gaping at the document. My mind reels, trying to make sense of it. Suddenly I realize why I do not look like anyone else in my family. I’m trying to remember the year my parents were married, but then I surmise that I never actually knew. Things that have gnawed at my subconscious my entire life are starting to surface and make sense. My father was always slightly more interested in the twins, and somewhat distant and authoritative with me. Not even my grandmother regarded me with as much emotion, compared to the twins.

“Evie! I found them!” I hear Grandma Winnie’s footsteps as she descends the stairs. I fold the birth certificate and place it in my front pocket. I frantically stuff everything back into the drawer and lock it, and place the key back in its proper spot. I sit straight up in the chair just as Grandma enters the office.

“Here you go, Eve,” she says, handing me the passport and familiar Indiana state-issued birth certificate on which my name is printed as
Evangeline Grayce Sweeney
. My mother is listed as
Amelia Sweeney
and my father as
Nash Michael Sweeney
. The birthday and year are correct, but typed at the bottom is an issue date of November 22, 2001, the year my family moved to Japan when Dad was transferred to Okinawa.

“I wonder what happened to my original birth certificate—the one with the baby’s footprint and mother’s fingerprint,” I say and watch her face for a reaction that may give me some indication of her level of knowledge.

“Well, I don’t know. I imagine it has been lost over the years, with all the moving your family has done.” Her demeanor is relaxed and innocent enough.

“Grandma, what year were my parents married?” I try my best to appear casual, but I’m no actress.

“Well,” she puts her hand to her chin and looks up as if she’s thinking really hard, but the gesture strikes me as a little phony. “I don’t remember. My memory isn’t that great anymore. Why?”

“Oh, just curious.” I don’t want to show her my discovery just yet. I have a lot of thinking to do before I confront them. “Well, I have to go if I’m going to make my appointment time.”

“Do you need a ride to the license branch?” Grandma Winnie smiles, but the sudden and deliberate change of subject does not escape my attention.

“No, thanks, Camilla is going to pick me up,” I say, and as if on cue, I hear the toot of Camilla’s car horn outside. “Well, better go.”

“Okay, good luck.”

“Thanks.” I shove the documents she gave me into my purse, and I try to smile as I walk past her and out the front door.

Camilla is checking her teeth in the rearview mirror when I jump into the car.

“Hey,” she says as she applies hooker-red lipstick to her lush lips.

“Oh, my God, Camilla. Look at this!” I pull out the folded certificate from my front pocket and hand it with trembling hands to her.

“It’s a birth certificate,” Camilla says, unimpressed. She tosses the paper back to me and turns her attention to the mirror again.

“Look closer, Camilla!” I say, waving it in front of her face. I feel myself nearing hysterics.

“Whose is this?” Camilla stares closer at the certificate.

I shout this time. “It’s mine!”

“Wait . . . I don’t get it,” Camilla says, frowning.

“Evidently, it’s
my
birth certificate. I’m the only Evangeline in the house.”

“That means . . .” A look of realization surfaces on Camilla’s face. She holds back, but I finish the thought for her.

“I’m not a Sweeney. It means Nash is not my father. Winnie is not my grandmother. Ethan and Emma are not my siblings. It means this family has been a lie!” I feel the tears starting, but I fight them with a quivering lip.

“Evie! Have you talked with your dad about this? Maybe it’s fake.”

“Camilla, it is
real.
And no, I haven’t talked to them about it because I just found this, like, five minutes ago. I was too shocked to say anything to Grandma Winnie. I just stuffed it in my pocket and ran out of the house.” I can’t hold back the tears anymore. I raise my arm and sob into my bare elbow. She puts an arm around me, hugging me against her bony shoulder.

“Evie, do you want to reschedule your driving appointment?” she asks in a hushed voice. I angrily dry my eyes with my forearm.

“Hell, no!” I assert. “Nothing, and I mean
nothing
, is keeping me from getting my license. Let’s go!”

“Are you sure you’re up to it, Evie?” Camilla says, concerned. “You don’t want to fail because you’re upset.”

“Absolutely,” I say to reassure my friend, but I’m really just trying to convince myself. “I’ve never been surer about
anything
! I will talk with Da—Nash about it tonight when he gets home from work.”

“All right then,” Camilla says and eases the car into the street.

***

As I sit on my bed, staring at my freshly printed driver’s license, I’m wrestling with what I should do about today’s discovery. Although I’d spent the entire drive to the license bureau crying, I am grateful that my photo turned out okay. My face isn’t too noticeably blotchy, but the tears did wash away my make-up. The picture does make me look young, though, which is appropriate considering I feel like a lost, scared child right now. It’s the same vulnerable feeling I had after my mother died, and I constantly worried about what would happen to our little family.

I’m waiting for my father to return home and trying to come up with a way to inform him of my discovery. What will he say? Will he tell me the truth? I can understand why my mother kept the truth from me, because I was very young when she died in that horrible crash. But why hasn’t Dad told me the truth? Did he think I couldn’t handle it? I should at least have had the chance.

Dad is home. I hear his baritone voice praising Emma for a job well done on her science test. My heart races as I try to decide how to bring up the topic at the dinner table while still maintaining civility. I am sure he’ll be livid that I went through his papers in the locked, roll-top desk.

“Evie! Dinner’s ready!” Grandma Winnie calls. I grab the yellowed, frayed birth certificate from my dresser top and fold it small enough that I can easily hold it in the palm of my hand. I clench my left hand in a fist and head down the stairs to the dining room. I take my usual place next to Emma, and as if on cue, we all bow our heads while Dad says a short grace.

We begin our usual conversation of the occurrences of the day. I stay quiet. I see each person talking, but I don’t hear their words. I can’t bear to look across the table at Ethan as he bites into Grandma’s award-winning fried chicken. His spiky, blond hair and piercing, green eyes—blatant reminders of our unshared heritage—are enough to make me feel like bursting into tears.

I watch as Emma hands her math test to Dad, the bright-red A+ visible at the top corner of the page. I look at Grandma Winnie, her curly silver hair neatly coiffed as though she has just left a salon. She smiles at Emma, showing coffee-stained teeth behind her red lipstick. So many emotions course through me, that sorting out how I feel about the whole situation is almost impossible.

On one hand, I’m furious at my father for having not told me the truth for my entire life. On the other hand, I’m grateful for everything he has done to care for me after my mother passed away. Part of me wants to scream out the truth right now, hoping that Dad and Grandma will feel guilty for what they’ve done to me—so that all the pain, grief, and confusion tearing me up inside to be transferred to them.

Another part of me wants to burn the evidence and just go on as we always have. But I know that isn’t going to happen. I can’t look at them the same way anymore, because they aren’t my real family—we don’t share anything. As I realize this fact, something inside me dies. I feel this pain as real as if someone has staked my heart. The sorrow and the loss are overwhelming. I lower my eyes from the dinner table scene in front of me and press my lips together to stifle the sob caught in the back of my throat. I don’t want my family to see me cry, because they’ll know something’s wrong, and I don’t want them to know just yet what I discovered this morning.

That’s right
, they aren’t my real family. Somewhere out there, my real father is alive and I need to find him. But how? Why was my mother not married to him, and why has he not tried to find me? The thought that I am not truly Evangeline Sweeney is mind numbing.

“Dad—” I blurt out, interrupting their conversation, but I stop dead in my tracks, eyes wide, because suddenly an idea comes to me. I’ll travel to the town on my birth certificate to look for my family. Dad will never go for it, which is why I need to keep my plan a secret. I need to devise a way to travel to Indiana without Dad or Grandma Winnie finding out. The solution? I’ll have to enlist the help of my friends.

“Yes, Evie?” Dad’s voice breaks my hurried thoughts. I realize I’ve been sitting quietly staring into space for a few minutes. Every eye at the table is trained on me.

“I got my driver’s license today,” I say as I reach into my jeans pocket, trading out the folded birth certificate for my license. I make the decision to forego confronting my father in favor of gathering more evidence of my discovery—of the truth. I pull the license out of my pocket and hand it over to my father, fronting the most convincing smile I can muster. Dad takes the license from me and examines it closely. There’s an expression on his face that I’ve never seen from him before—one full of unabashed fatherly emotions. It’s a look that threatens to unhinge me.

“Absolutely gorgeous, Evie.” He looks up and smiles warmly at me. With a wistful look in his eyes, he adds, “Your mother would be so proud of you. Congratulations, darling.”

Inside my chest, my heart breaks into a thousand, irretrievable little pieces.

CHAPTER 13

After dinner I run across the street to Camilla’s house. I’ve figured out how I’m going to get to Indiana to find my real father. I’ll tell my dad that I’m spending the weekend with Camilla, then she and I can drive to Indiana. I already Google-mapped the distance on my cell phone and found that it would only take twelve hours to drive to Martinsville, Indiana on the major highways. Because this weekend is Fall Break, we’ll have four days off in which to make the trip—plenty of time.

“I can’t Evie. I’m sorry,” Camilla says when I tell her about my plan. “We’re going to New York for the weekend for my aunt’s wedding. I’m a bridesmaid. There’s no way I can back out of it now.”

“That’s okay.” I try not to sound like my heart and soul are sinking into the abyss, but they are. I push the huge mess of clothing on Camilla’s bed out of the way and take a seat on a sliver of the corner.

“Are you sure you even want to do this?” she asks, as she continues overstuffing her Louis Vuitton suitcase. “You don’t know what you’re going to find when you get there. You may not get the fairytale ending you’re expecting.”

I absolutely hate when Camilla makes sense, because it only occurs when we’re talking about me. It never happens when we were talking about her and Christian. The situation is hugely frustrating because I can’t come right out and tell her what a creep I think he is. I just can’t bear to hurt her like that.

“I realize that things might not end up all Norman Rockwell-like, but I have to find my real family. I have to find my real dad. I could have siblings I don’t know about.” My voice catches in my throat, and I ball my hands into fists to stop them from shaking. “What if my real dad doesn’t know about me? What if my mother never told him? He deserves to know as much as I do.”

“What about Nash and your grandma? What’s going to happen when they find out about all this? What’s going to happen to the twins? This will change their reality as well, Evie.”

“As far as Nash and Winnie are concerned, I don’t care. They should have told me the truth sooner. And I don’t think the twins will understand what’s going on. They are my half-siblings, no matter what. We share a mother.”

Camilla stops what she’s doing and looks me directly in the face. In her expression is the realization that, for once, she isn’t going to change my mind. She nods at me and gives me a weak smile, but then her eyes grow wide and her face changes completely. She sits next to me on the bed, tossing the pile of clothes to the floor to make room.

“I’ve got an idea. Just hear me out,” she says, and I feel a twinge of nervousness because she’s never prefaced a statement with a warning, no matter how outrageous her words. “How about Xander goes with you? You could take his Land Rover.”

“Camilla, that would just be too weird. I mean, Xander doesn’t know any of my personal business. Especially not this crazy, family-drama crap.”

“Actually . . .” Camilla grimaces as if she’s expecting me to slug her, and it doesn’t take me but a second to figure out why.

“You didn’t!” My face grows hot with anger
and
embarrassment. Camilla slowly nods, her eyes dropping to the floor. I groan and plant my face in my palms. “What did you tell him?”

“I just mentioned that you found the birth certificate and that you were majorly upset about it.” Camilla moves closer to me and drapes her long arm around my shoulders. “I just had to talk about it with someone. I was so traumatized by seeing you like that, Evie. Xander
is
my best friend, after all.”

“How embarrassing!” I cry into my hands. I can’t believe Camilla would tell Xander. How could she betray me like this? Surely, there’s some sort of girlfriend pact that says we never tell each other’s deep, dark secrets to a member of the opposite sex, especially one as dreamy as Xander.

“He’s your friend, too, Evie, and he cares about you. He deserves to know when you’re going through bad stuff. He’ll be there for you, I promise. Just let him in.” She grabs my wrists and pulls my hands away from my face. Her dark eyes are unexpectedly sincere, and her smile is soft and warm. I exhale long and hard because I’ve already made up my mind to trust and to forgive her.

“Okay.”

“You’ll let Xander help you?” Camilla asks, a hopeful expression lighting up her face. I sigh and wonder if I’m going to regret what I’m about to say.

“Yes, I’ll let Xander help me.”

“Great! I’ll talk to him tonight. I’ll have him call you to set up the plans, if that’s okay with you.” She looks at me as if she’s trying to detect if I’ll back out of our agreement.

“Of course it’s okay, Camilla,” I say.

I go home and lay on my bed, staring at the ceiling, planning in my mind what I’ll say to my real dad once I’ve found him. Will he be happy to see me? What if he doesn’t know about me, and I ruin his life by showing up unannounced? What if he has another family and doesn’t want anything to do with me? The endless scenarios race through my mind, making sleep elusive.

I look at the world clock on my cell phone. It’s three a.m. East Coast time, which is nine a.m. Seville time. Why hasn’t Javier contacted me? I need him now more than ever. I finally surrender to the exhaustion and welcome the emotional respite that sleep brings with it.

***

Xander and I meet at Starbucks after school and map our journey to Indiana. Because he’s already eighteen, he’s able to make our hotel reservations. We devise a story to tell my family and his grandfather as to where we’ll be that weekend. Camilla agrees to cover for us, as we decide to say we’re going with her to New York City so we can check out NYU—a college day. Camilla will stop by the university during her trip to bring back some application materials and pamphlets to authenticate our story.

Xander picks me up at five a.m. on Thursday morning. As he pulls in the driveway, the headlights of his Land Rover slice through the early morning’s foggy darkness, then shut off immediately. He knows I don’t want to wake my family. I decided it was best if we leave before any of my family awaken, before I could lose my nerve and tell them the truth about where I’m going. I don’t trust that I have the guts to look them in the eyes and lie about what I’m actually going to do.