"I didn't move," Natalie said. "I just knelt there. And then Ruth came down the stairs with the onesie, singing something, and she saw me and smiled, and said, Oh good, you two are getting acquainted. And I said yes. And I went into the bathroom and threw up as quietly as I could and washed my face and came out and said I had to catch my bus. And I hugged Ruth, and I kissed Claire on the top of her head, and I walked to the bus stop. And I never went back."
She looked at Adam.
"I wasn't going to take her," she said. "I know that. I knew it then, really. I'm not that person. But I was afraid that if I kept coming back, every year, I would become that person. Or I would become something just as bad. The woman who shows up once a year and makes everybody nervous. The ghost at the birthday party. I thought, she has a mother. She has a mother who fought for me to be in her life. And the best thing I can do for that mother, and for that baby, is get out of the way."
"That's not cowardice," Adam said slowly.
"That's what I told myself. And some of it was true." She wiped her face with the back of her hand at last. "But the rest of it was that I couldn't stand it. That's the part I don't say. It hurt too much, and I wanted it to stop hurting, and the only way I knew to make it stop was to cut it off. Like a limb. And I told myself I was doing it for her. And I was, partly. But mostly I was doing it for me. And I broke a promise to a woman who had never broken a single one to me."
She had called Harbor Family Services the following Tuesday. The social worker, the wonderful woman, had tried to talk her out of it, and then, when she could not, had agreed to hold any correspondence from the Hollises in Natalie's file in case she ever changed her mind. For the first few years, Natalie knew, letters had come. The agency had sent her a single note saying so, two years later, at an address she no longer lived at; it had been forwarded to her twice and reached her, finally, in a stack of junk mail. She had read it standing in the kitchen of her apartment in Fort Collins. It said: We are holding several letters and photographs from the adoptive family. Please contact us at your convenience. She had put it in the recycling bin. Then she had taken it out of the recycling bin and put it in a drawer. Then, when she moved in with Adam, she had thrown it away for good.
"And then you," she said to Adam. "And then you happened, and I thought, here is my second chance. Here is a man who is so good that he can't even imagine anything this bad. And I wanted to be the person you thought I was. I wanted it so much that after a while I almost was. I'd go months without thinking about her. And then it would be August, and I'd be in the grocery store, and I'd see a girl the right age, and I'd have to leave my cart in the aisle and go sit in the car."