Page 50 of Wish I Were Here
“Hey,” I protest. “My label maker is actually very useful.” I check out the boxes again, and then something occurs to me. “Wait. How did you know I have a label maker?”
“I didn’t until right now.” His shoulders shake.
I give him a light shove on his shoulder and turn around to survey the room. It really is a complete mess.
“We can do this,” Luca says, walking over to a pile of boxes and scanning the labels. “We just need to find the Ls, right? For Lipton?” He shoves two boxes to the side and peers at the ones behind it. “How hard could it be?”
An hour later, we finally locate the Ls, but of course they’re in the very back of the room, shoved up against the wall, and with a whole row of other boxes in the way. Luca begins dragging them to the middle of the room, and I move in to help him. My shoulder bumps his, and I feel that same heatzing through me as I did when he took my hand earlier, and when his palm landed on my stomach in the dark.
Luca drags the Le-Ll box to the middle of the room and tosses the lid to the side. I peer in, flipping through the files. Libby… Lily…
And then, there it is. Lipton, Catherine Moonstone.
I pull the file from the box and wave it in the air. “Found it.” I sink down on an F box to take a closer look.
Luca sits next to me on H and peers over my shoulder. “Wait.” Luca reaches for the file. “Your middle name is Moonstone?”
I yank the file away. “Maybe.”
“When were you going to tell me that?”
“Approximately never.”
He makes another grab for the file. “I mean, you know my nickname is Elbow, yet you didn’t feel the need to share that you have the most amazing middle name ever?”
“You already heard my dad call me Kitty Cat. What more do you want to know about me?”
“Everything, Moonstone.” He leans in. “I want to knoweverything.” There’s something in his voice, a slight edge to it that tells me he’s not joking.
I look away and flip the folder open. The first paper is a document listing basic information about newborn Catherine Moonstone Lipton. My name, obviously. Date of birth, birth weight, and height.
Next are my parents’ names. I scan past them. But then I stop.
Wait.
I go back.
Parents’ names.
My eyes widen. Because my father’s name is listed just as I expected. Andrew John Lipton. But where my mother’s name is supposed to be…
“Oh my God, Luca.”
“What? What is it?” He leans in.
“Look at my mother’s name.”
Luca’s eyes roam across the page and then snap to mine. “Shouldn’t it say…”
“Yes.”
Except it doesn’t.
Luca stares at the page. “Didn’t the copy of your birth certificate say your mother’s name is Michelle Jones?”
I manage a tiny nod. “It did.”
“So, who is Melanie Jankowski?”
