Page 20 of Denied

“All right,” Christine said. “We’ve got a birthmark, we look like sisters, and I might be the right age.” The dancer wiped some sugar from the top of her muffin and licked it from her finger. “What else would be proof? I don’t know where I was born, but I was left at a hospital outside Gatlinburg. That’s twenty miles or so from Ashdale.”

Kayla stirred her coffee. “Do you remember anything about your parents?”

“My mom had light hair. Blonde, I think,” Christine said. “It was so soft, and it smelled like flowers. Yours?”

Kayla nodded. “She came in every night to sing a song to us. I always fell asleep–”

“Before she stopped singing,” Christine finished, as she visibly paled. “Her voice was like her touch. Warm and gentle.”

Kayla leaned forward. “What were the words to the song?”

Christine shook her head slowly. “I don’t remember any words. She sang, I don’t know, like a–”

“Bird. She sang like a bird.” Kayla eyes stung.

Christine jumped up from the table and went to the bakery counter. As Kayla used a napkin to wipe her nose, she watched Christine talk to the cashier. When she returned she had a mobile phone and a pen.

“Yes,” she said into the phone as she sat down. “The number for social services, please.” As Christine pinned the phone to her ear with her shoulder, she wrote a number on the palm of her hand. “Thanks.” She dropped the phone into her other hand and dialed with her thumb. “This’ll just take a minute.”

Kayla sat on the edge of her seat, as Christine made her way through the social services bureaucracy.

“It’s an emergency,” she finally declared. “I need Janice Lynette’s extension. Just put me through to her voicemail.” She tapped the pen on the table as she waited. “My old social worker,” she whispered to Kayla. “She’ll remember me. We went to the same tattoo guy.”

“Even so, it’s been–”

Christine held up her index finger and forced a smile. “Ms. Lynette?” she said in a much stronger drawl. “It’s Christine Marszalek. I don’t know if you remember–” She paused to listen. “Well, I’m just fine, how are you?” Again she paused. “I know, I’ve been meaning to get in touch.”

To give her some privacy Kayla got up and went to the restroom. Truth be told, though, it was Kayla who needed the privacy. She ran warm water over her trembling hands, then splashed it on her cold face. All the wretched feelings from her childhood had come rushing back, but she couldn’t hate her mother anymore. If everything they’d pieced together was true, then she must have been trying to protect her real sister.

But why hadn’t she taken both daughters? Was it because Kayla had been somewhere else with her father, and her mother couldn’t wait? Or hadn’t she been as important as her baby sister?

Kayla dabbed her face with a paper towel, not sure she wanted to know the answers. But she took a shaky breath and returned to the café. Christine was gaping at the phone on the table. Kayla half sat, half fell into the seat opposite her.

“What is it?” she asked.

Christine finally focused on her. “I told her I might have found some family, and asked if she had any more details from the night I was dumped at the hospital. She did.”

Kayla tried to swallow in a dry throat. “And?”

“There were witnesses,” Christine whispered. “She never told me that before. In the E.R., there were witnesses.” Kayla reached across the table and grasped her hand. “My mother was blonde,” Christine continued, with something like awe in her voice. She stared down at their hands. “She drove off in an old woody station wagon. The cops found it the next day, wrecked in a ditch. The woman was all messed up, so they took her back to the hospital. They were never able to identify her before she disappeared again.” She met Kayla’s gaze. “All she left behind was a huge stain on her hospital bed.”

The world around them faded, and all Kayla could see was Christine’s face.

“My dad had an old station wagon,” Kayla said, barely able to get the words out past the constriction in her throat. “One of the woody kind.” They squeezed each other’s hands. “My mother took it the night she left us.”

In the next moment, they were up and in each other’s arms. Kayla hugged Christine fiercely, and Christine held on so tight she almost couldn’t breathe.

“Why would she take me and not you?” Christine sobbed.

Kayla felt as if her heart might burst. “I was in the city with my… with our Dad.” She choked back a strangled cry. “Maybe getting you to a safe place was more important to her.”

“Or maybe she was coming for you,” Christine insisted. Her sister drew back and sniffed. “That road, where she wrecked her car? It runs straight through to Chattanooga.”

The last knot in Kayla’s heart slowly unraveled. She took Christine’s face in her hands, staring at her through tear-filled eyes.

“You’re nineteen years old,” Kayla said in a trembling voice. “Your birthday is the thirtieth of December. When you were a baby you loved apple slices, and strawberry milk, and listening to Mom sing.”

Christine’s eyes went wide. “I remember a little girl,” she said, as the tears streamed down her face. “She had a bunch of those toy horses with long manes and tails. They were in all the colors of the rainbow.” Christine stared at her hair. “You always wore your hair in braids.”