Page 80 of Daring You

Astor cuts to me, her laptop screen carefully turned away from me. “This is how I fix things. I can’t really—I’m not the best at talking through my emotions. But I’m aware of the turmoil you’re going through, of what strength it must take to know your parents’ killers are making the news and yet, you can’t read about it. Discuss it. Do anything to compromise your identity. So, I have a picture of them. A portrait. It’s what I can give you—it’s all I have to give in this situation. And I…”

Her fingers curl on the top of her laptop as she looks to the floor, and I’ve never, in all my years of knowing her, have seen her so vulnerable, so willing to expose any part of her that might help me.

It can’t just be the booze.

“I…sure,” I say, and start to lift off the couch. “Show me.”

She spins the laptop, and I freeze mid-rise, as my own eyes on another person’s face look back at me. My nose on another’s. My slightly elfish, pointy ears.

My parents.

Rose—Mom—stands a head lower than my dad, in front of that cloud-blue background everyone who’s taken photos at a department store booth is familiar with. Her hair is in that classic nineties style of more gel than natural, but it’s my shade. A brown color when indoors, but blond when it hits the sun. My dad stands stoic beside her, an arm around her waist, but there’s a tic of a grin, like my mother just muttered a joke to him and he’s trying not to laugh.

I see a lot of myself in my dad—the broad shoulders, the height, the square jaw. But my expressions, my eyes, my one dimple, they’re all Mom.

That’s the thing about being adopted. Although the Donahues loved me, treated me as their own, I felt different. I didn’t look like them, so how could I be a part of them?

It took me a long time to come to terms with the idea that one didn’t need to share blood to have parents.

Instead of summoning up the courage to say all this to Astor, I find words, more emotion than English, and say, “I wish I could’ve loved them.”

Her fingers slide from the computer. “Oh, Ben…”

I shrug off her sadness. “I don’t know them, so how am I supposed to care about them? But everyone looks to me—you, Aiden, my parents now—everyone looks like they’re waiting for me to cry. About what, I don’t know. My mom—Callie Donahue—she’s constantly bracing for when I ask to find my real parents. She doesn’t know I’m already aware who they are. Don’t get me wrong, I’m devastated over the murders, I’m fucking furious my original family was taken from me, but why the hell do I feel guilty for loving this new life of mine?”

“I don’t think that’s it,” Astor says. “Or what anybody expects from you.”

“Oh, no? Then why do I see this photo and feel nothing?” My voice is rising. “They’re strangers, you know that? That woman is a stranger who, I’m told, did everything she could to protect me. Sacrificed her body for me. Crouched over me while they beat my father so I couldn’t see. Screamed for me to run when they tore her away and threw her to the ground—”

I stop.

Because Astor’s regarding me with a heavy-lidded stare, like she already knows.

Of course she knows.

She has my fucking case file laid out for her to search through, whenever she damn well wants.

“Do you have the photos?” I ask.

I can practically see the shutters to her emotions crash down. “I’m not letting you take a look at them.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m not going to do that to you.”

“I would think that should be my choice.”

“You may not know it now,” she says carefully, “but there is more love behind these faces than you can grasp. If you see them the way they ended…you’ll never recall how they were with you—whatever snippets that remain—ever again.”

I bite my molars together, hating that she’s right. “You don’t get to make that decision.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Show me.”

“No, Ben.”

I step forward. “Show. Me.”

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