Sweet Shadows

“Come on.” I tap my fingers lightly on the keys, thinking. “Be smarter than the system. Be logical.”

Okay, so if there’s no connection between our records and hers, maybe I’ll have to search just for her. I create a search using what information I do know. I’m looking for a female, a mother of triplets, who participated in an adoption sixteen years ago. I also make a guess at her age, thinking she could have been anywhere between twenty and thirty-five when she had us.

I click submit and wait while the computer thinks.

Maybe this is pointless. She might have had her record wiped clean, or those who want me and my sisters to fail might have done it for her. To prevent us from ever finding her.

I get up and start pacing.

For sixteen years—or at least as many of them as I can remember—I’ve known I was adopted. I’ve known Mom and Dad were my parents in every way that mattered. And I’ve never felt that desperate urge to find my birth mother. Until now.

It’s not just the mythological thing either. Thinking about her, imagining her and what her life has been like since she gave us up, has made me curious. I want her help, yes, but I want to know her too.

Beep-beep.

I stop and turn to stare at the computer screen. Even from several feet away I can see that there is a result.

Racing back to my desk, I bang my knee against the wood as I fly back into my chair. There, on the screen, in digital black on white, is a single entry.

Cassandra Gregory

I bite my lip to contain my excitement. With a shaking hand, I reach for the mouse. When I click on the name, it takes me to a scanned profile record. The data is limited. Her age and address at the time of adoption. She was twenty-four and lived somewhere in the Mission district.

I scroll down, past dozens of empty fields. No phone number, no father’s name, no next of kin, no physical description. At the bottom there is a notes field. Two comments are scribbled in that field in two different handwritings. They look like they were written years apart.

Requests daughters be given following names: Greer, Grace, and Gretchen.

Contacted agency, requested access to adoption records. Request denied, per California Family Code § 9203.

After the second note is a date—four years ago—and a phone number. A phone number! It might not be much to go on, but people have been found using less. It’s a place to start, anyway.

I’ve just sent the profile to my printer when I hear the front-door lock click open.

My heart pounds. Dad will be at work until late. Mom said she wouldn’t be home for a few more hours. Who could it be? My imagination comes up with all sorts of possibilities, none of them good. All of them monster filled.

Since the hall outside my room leads straight to the front door, I can’t sneak out and get in a better position. Instead, I press my back up against the wall next to my open door, listening for sounds of the intruder.

At first, I don’t hear anything. I wonder if I imagined the sound. I was pretty focused on my search. Maybe I—

Squeak.

A floorboard in the hall, just outside my bedroom, creaks under the weight of a footstep. My heart punches against my chest.

I can do this. I’m trained. I can face whatever monster has come to get me.

I squeeze my eyes for a second, take a deep breath, and then leap out into the hallway as the intruder walks by.

“Aaaarrrrggh!” I scream as I land on his back, tackling him to the ground.

Using one of Gretchen’s moves, I shove his face into the carpet, grab one arm, and twist it behind to his back to get leverage.

“What do you want?” I demand.

“Grace?” a deep—familiar—muffled voice asks.

I jerk back. “Thane?”

“Yes.” He heaves a heavy breath. “Let me up.”

“Omigosh.” I release his arm and jump to my feet, quickly rushing to help him. “I didn’t know it was you.”

He shakes his arm and gives me a wry look.

For a moment, I just take him in. He’s been gone only a week and a half, but it feels like a lifetime. He looks older. The skin around his left eye is yellow, like a healing bruise. His lower lip is split and—I glance down at his hands—so are his knuckles.

“Thane, what happened?” I reach out to take one of his hands, but he pulls away. “Were you in a fight?”

He rolls his shoulder and doesn’t say anything.

When he starts to walk past me, like he’s going to his room or the bathroom as if nothing’s happened, I grab his elbow.

“Leave it, Grace,” he says, shrugging out of my grip.

Well, doormat Grace might have let him get away with that, but she’s long gone. I reach for him with both hands, wrapping them around his arm and yanking him back to face me.

He winces in pain and I almost let him go.

“You said you were going to be gone for two or three days,” I say. “You’ve been gone a week and a half. Do you know how hard it was to keep Mom and Dad from going to Milo’s to find you?”

He stands there, silent.

“I lied for you,” I say, getting louder. “I covered for you.”

I have the urge to punch him.

“You have no idea,” I say, “what things have been like since you left.”

My eyes water, and I guess that finally breaks through his tough-guy act, because he shakes off my grip on his arm and pulls me into a hug.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“Don’t be sorry,” I say, stepping out of the comfort of his hug. “Tell me where you were. Tell me what happened.”