Page 135 of Until I Find You

“I did not want to hurt you and make you wonder why her and not you. And I wasn’t sure if she…she didn’t know I had a baby before her. I felt pulled to protect both of you. But all these months have passed, and I can’t stop thinking about you.” Juana folds her hands in her lap. “So, I told her to see if it felt any different.”

She smiles, tears bubbling in her eyes. “She said she’d want to meet you someday and if that isn’t a kind of permission, I don’t know what is.”

I turn off the screen and hand Juana her phone back. Our fingers brush for a second, sending lightning bolts up my arm and to my brain. A sense in me is awakened. A feeling that has grown since I learned I was pregnant, but I didn’t know how to place it.

“So, you are meeting me for her?” I ask in a careful way.

“No, no, it just made the decision easier. My husband has been supportive from the beginning, you know. Whatever I wanted to do. It just took me some time.”

I’m happy. And I’m angry. And I’m so sad. “It’s not fair.”

“Camilla…”

“I was ready. I looked for you.” I’m shaking, like my body is sobbing without tears.

“I know, I’m so sorry.”

It’s painful to swallow, my body so tense from want and surrender and nowthis.

“I wanted–before I ever–” I don’t know where to go. Where to turn.

How do you hold someone accountable who was doing her best? Whose choice was correct?

“It wasn’t fair of me. I was scared. I should have been braver.”

But she was brave. To give me up, though she loved me. To walk away. “I thought you hated me. I thought I–”

“No, no. That is the exact opposite.” Her voice warbles. “Camilla–”

She grabs my hand and the shock returns, this time so intense I gasp.

It’s the bond. The same bond I have with my baby. My mom, Lisa, she is my mother. Through and through. Did everything a mother should and more. Loved me beyond compare as if I was her own. But no matter what she did, she couldn’t recreatethis.A feeling of belonging.

Of knowing where I come from.

The tears spill out now.

“Ay, mija…come here.”

Juana pulls me closer, into her chest and I cry. I see a different life behind my eyelids like a montage. One filled with Spanish and her scent, scenes of Mexico and a very different life than I had in Nebraska. It would have been beautiful. Maybe.

And maybe not.

We’ll never know.

But buried in her arms, so many of the tears in my fabric are sewn shut. I feel me in her. I sensed I needed this for so long but could never have truly comprehended how much of me would awaken.

I cry until my face hurts. Juana does not loosen her grip on me the entire time. She strokes my hair and my back, whispering her apologies over and over. Her other hand rests near my waist, near my baby. Her biological grandchild. They jerk about. Maybe they know. Sense the connection here.

Juana’s hand on my belly hops away. “Oh, very active, hm?”

I lift my head, eyes wide. “You felt them move?”

She laughs. “Didn’t you?”

“No one has…other than me.”

Juana’s face softens. Her cheeks are tearstained too. She must have been quietly crying while she tended to me.

---