Page 10 of Songs of Summer

In a last-ditch effort at tracking her down, Bea even encouraged her friend, an author on Fire Island, the place where she had met her child’s father and gotten pregnant by him, to include the story of the adopted child in the book he was writing—names, birthdates, and all. But it had been over a decade since the novel was published, and nothing had come of that either.

Still, Bea never strayed from that school address, and in the back of her mind she knew it was because her baby girl would always know where to find her.

In the end, she was right.

Track 4

Smile

Maggie

Maggie checked heremail, as she did every morning when she woke up, but usually not in this panicked, heart-racing way. She had since reached the two-to-three-week mark when the genealogy results were due to arrive.Would today be the day?

It was. Her results were in.

She clicked on the message with shaky hands and bated breath.

Maggie Wheeler: 50% English, 12.5% Ashkenazi Jew, 12.5% Sephardic Jew/Arabian Peninsula, and then a spattering of German, Italian, Irish, and even Nordic.

She ran to Jason, who was sitting at her kitchen table over the record shop grading final papers.

“I’m a quarter Jewish!” she yelled, placing her laptop with the news atop his stack.

“Mazel tov!” he responded. They both laughed too hard, nervous about the rest of the revelations.

“You look, I can’t.” She sat down next to him and tapped on the computer.

“OK, I got you.”

“Click on DNA relatives.” She was in agony, burying her head in her arms.

And there it was.

Beatrix Silver. Mother. 50% DNA shared.He rested his hand on hers.

“Your birth mother’s name is Beatrix Silver. She was born in 1974.” He took a beat to let it sink in before revealing the punchline.

“She lives in Gambier, Ohio.”

“Oh my God. All my parents knew about her was that she was a local college girl.”

“Kenyon College.”

She turned the computer toward her and googled “Beatrice Silver, Kenyon College.”

“Ugh, nothing.”

“You spelled her name wrong. It’s ‘Beatrix’ with an ‘x.’ ”

“Like Beatrix Potter; that’s weird.”

“It is. Maybe you should forget the whole thing,” he deadpanned.

She laughed and tried again: Beatrix Silver, Kenyon College.

And there she was.

Professor of English. Expertise in English and American literature with a concentration in Henry James.

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