Page 104 of Until I Find You

It’s just us. Me and Camilla. Family and friends are gone. The baristas took off after their last service.

I have to turn around. Have to face it.

“Did you know that pregnancy can make your hands go numb?” Camilla asks.

I turn to look at her.

She raises her phone in the air. “I’m looking at symptoms.”

“Have your hands been numb?”

She shakes her head. “No, I just…that’s crazy.” She looks back down at her phone, then clicks the screen off. “So much is going to change. If I am. You know.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Like, hemorrhoids. I could get hemorrhoids,” Camilla says, looking off, her gaze distant.

I take a few steps toward her, sliding my hands in my pockets to avoid running to her and wrapping her in my arms to start begging for her to be happy like I am.

“And heartburn. I’ve never had heartburn.”

I say nothing, but keep approaching, careful as can be.

“I don’t…” She looks at me. “I don’t even know who I am, Jack.”

I tilt my head to the side. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,I don’t know who I am. Or where I come from or–” She stops, closing her eyes. “Um, I’m adopted.”

If she thinks that will change something in me, it doesn’t. “Okay…”

“I’ve been looking for my birth mother for a long time now. And I can’t find her,” she says. “I even hired a private investigator, and I thought that would do it. But every lead comes up empty. It’s been months.”

Camilla sighs. “And I’ve always said I’m going to find her before I ever have my own kids.”

I lean up against the counter beside her, leaving enough space for us to not touch. “Why?”

“Because I don’t know where I come from.”

“You were adopted, you have a family, right?”

She sighs. “It’s…complicated. People think I’m ungrateful. I have great parents. I love them, I really do. Just because I need this doesn’t mean I don’t love them and am not grateful. I–” Her head falls forward.

“They’re white. I’m not. And they did the best they could, but they raised me as if I was white. I don’t know Spanish. I don’t have a Mexican last name. The only reason I even know I’m Mexican is because of a DNA test.”

My shoulders sag with the weight of what she’s said. I might have my own problems, but I’ve always been able to be proud of my heritage. I know some Hawaiian, I have customs, and connections based on my heritage.

“So, I’ve never fit in anywhere, even after I knew that. When I went to college, I thought I could join some sort of identity groups, you know, get to know myself through that.”

“Yeah.”

Camilla smiles. “I never felt like I fit in. No one was mean, but there were just expectations, and I never felt Mexican enough for them.”

“That’s fucked up.”

“It is…what it is. I don’t blame them. My name isn’t even spelled the Spanish way. Two Ls instead of one. So, it can’t even be pronounced the way it should be.”

We settle into silence. The shop is bending in the late afternoon light, shadows cast across the floor.

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