Where We Belong by Emily Giffin Read Free Book Online Page B

birthed me and had given them the “treasure” they always claimed I was. Yet the worst part was that suddenly, it all rang true to me. Their theories about my birth mother would certainly explain a few things, that’s for sure. Maybe she was the root of my problem—she and my birth dad. And so now, along with the rage, I realized I was feeling shame, too. A lovely combination.
    “Do you think we can talk her into going to college?” I heard my mother say.
    “If she even gets in.”
    My mother said even if I did, it made no sense to pay all that money if I wasn’t going to try. It was bad enough that they had to pull teeth to get me to fill out the application for Missouri. They weren’t going to keep spoon-feeding me. I’d have to find out on my own what the world was like.
    That’s when they took it to a whole new level, saying you couldn’t really make someone change. My dad said he would have killed to go to college. My mom said if only I tried half as hard as Charlotte. Then they circled right back to where they started, blaming my biology, coming right out and saying it’s the only thing that explains the difference between the girls. In other words, nature over nurture. I wasn’t their fault; I was her fault. I felt myself blaming her, too, while a sad irony washed over me. Even though she had given me away, this was the first time in my life that I had truly felt rejected, disowned, downright unloved. And it was my own parents’ fault.
    Devastated, I returned to bed, putting my face under the covers, clenching my fists, telling myself not to cry if only because it would make me look like shit in the morning. I couldn’t afford to be one drop more ugly than I already was.
    I squeezed my eyes shut, thinking of her as I often did at night, a rapid succession of faces flashing in my brain, until I settled where I usually did: on a cross between Meryl Streep and Laura Linney. But this time, she was a sickly, crackhead version of the two actresses, my fantasies of a glamorous, successful mother quickly fading.
    In that moment, I decided I was going to find her. I was going to find out the truth about who she was and why she had given me away. I would turn eighteen in just a few months, and the day I did, the very morning I did, I would call the agency and get her name and address. Until then, I would save up for a ticket to wherever she was. I would show my parents, show everyone . Show them what, I wasn’t exactly sure, but I would figure that out once I got there.
    *   *   *
    So on April Fools’ Day (the biggest joke of a birthday), I called the agency, then, as directed, sent them a fax with my social security number and signature. Two minutes later, I had an answer in my in-box. My hands shaking, I read: Marian Caldwell, along with a New York City address. It took everything I had not to Google her, but I worried that if I did, I’d somehow find an excuse to chicken out, even if it was as simple as her looking mean in her picture. I didn’t want anything to sway me from my plan. I didn’t want to write her a letter and wait for months for it to be answered—or worse, not answered. I didn’t want anything to be on her terms when everything had been on her terms in the beginning. It was my turn. And this was my way.
    So right after my birthday, and before a long, four-day weekend, I put the genius plan that Belinda helped me orchestrate into action (genius because it was so easy). I simply asked my parents if I could join Belinda and her mother on a road trip to Mobile to visit Belinda’s aunt (after planting a few offhand fibs about said aunt being a former Catholic missionary). I got permission after they called Belinda’s mom to confirm the trip. Then I told Belinda’s mom that I wasn’t feeling well, banking on the only element of luck—that Mrs. Greene wouldn’t phone my parents to discuss the cancellation. Sure enough, she did not, and the next day I went down to the bus station on