Page 105 of The Unraveling of Julia

“Don’t be. Nobody’s getting through Raffaella. She’ll watch him to spite you.”

Julia managed a smile. They reached the end of the hall and pushed through double doors to the elevator bank. “How’d it go in the waiting room?”

“Everyone likes you except her. I couldn’t sell her, and I can sellanybody. My mother would say, ‘she’s on a hate campaign.’”

“I’d hate me, too.” Julia crossed the bank and pressed the Down button.

“Did you do your Helen homework?”

“Yes.” Julia shuddered. “That’s the car conversation.”

“Okay, but can we get a coffee before we go?”

“Sure, I know the jet lag’s tough. Thanks again for coming.” Julialooked over, grateful. The elevator arrived, the doors slid open, and they got on.

“Not at all.”

“Am I a drama queen?” Julia asked, as the doors closed.

“Of course. We’re drama club, remember?”

56

Julia headed down the hall to the ladies’ room while Courtney went to the cafeteria to get a coffee. She wanted to wash her face, and her head pounded after the vision of Gianluca being forced off the road. She didn’t know what to do next. She certainly couldn’t go to the police.

She reached the middle of the hallway and passed a line of children’s drawings hanging on the wall. They had to be from an elementary school and they were crayoned pictures of smiling kids in white coats, stethoscopes, and scrubs. There were twenty or so, with Italian captions that the drawings helped her translate:

Voglio diventare la dottoressa.

I want to be a doctor.

Voglio diventare un infirmiere.

I want to be a nurse.

Voglio diventare un tecnico radiologo.

I want to be an X-ray technician.

Julia glanced at the last drawing and stopped in her tracks, stunned. The drawing was of a woman who looked likeher, only older. It wasn’t a child’s drawing, but a portrait done by an adult with art talent, compelling even in crayons.

What?Julia couldn’t believe what she was seeing. The resemblance was uncanny. The woman’s eyes were the most like her own, blue and wide-set, though the woman’s in the picture had crow’s-feet. Her nose was short like Julia’s, and her mouth wider, but their smiles were a lot alike.

Oh my God.Julia felt like she was looking at herbiological mother. The woman seemed to be in her fifties, which could be the age of her biological mother. The drawing had a caption, which read,Adoro essere un maestra, I adore being a teacher.

Julia reeled. On impulse, she touched the picture. A tingling electrified her fingertips. She didn’t pull away. She felt the connection. Shewantedthe connection.

Tears sprang to her eyes, of recognition, of validation, of sheer joy. The teacherhadto be her birth mother. She removed her hand, and the tingling faded away.

Her thoughts raced. Her biological mother had been here with her class. Therefore, she had to live somewhere nearby.

Julia looked around for something to identify which school the children were from. There wasn’t anything. The children had scrawled their names at the bottom of their drawings; Paolo, Dmitri, Elianna, and Francesco M. The teacher hadn’t written her name.

Julia had to find her. She took off down the hallway and hurried to the information desk, which was staffed by an older woman. “Excuse me, those pictures, do you know what school the kids were from?”

“We have a lot of pictures here. Which one?”

“The ones on the way to the cafeteria. They were drawn by children. It’s from a class.”

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