Page 30 of Forever, Maybe
It sounded so simple when he said it. Too simple.
Go on, sell your cakes, Chrissie,he urged.I’ll help. You’ll need photos, won’t you?
Dad, the ever-enthusiastic amateur photographer, had plunged headfirst into the rabbit hole of food photography the moment she said yes to his idea. Now, he spoke the jargon like a pro. “Beauty shots,” he’d informed her with the seriousness of a seasoned professional, referred to photos taken directly above or in front of a dish to showcase it in all its glory. They were a must-have for anyone advertising a food business online.
Her father had always had an artistic streak, which frequently manifested in creative home projects. Chrissie’s bedroom, where she sat now, had undergone countless transformations over the years, each one brought to life by her dad following her exact specifications. From the pink princess explosion of her childhood to the modern-day statement wallpaper on the back wall, offset by the plain, muted tones of the surrounding walls, every phase bore his signature touch.
She’d even broached the subject with the family-appointed counsellor once.Do you think he does this to compensate?
Infuriatingly, the counsellor had flipped the question back at her.What do you think?
She’d rolled her eyes at the time but knew the answer. Probably. Dear old Alan Gordon, overcompensating for the fact that her biological parents had given her up for adoption as a newborn. He’d tried to fill every gap, every imagined deficiency, by giving her exactly what she wanted.
“Daddy, I want unicorns!” she’d demanded as a starry-eyed six-year-old. The next weekend, he’d painted a mural on her bedroom wall featuring a parade of unicorns so lifelike you could almost hear their hooves clatter. Some looked fierce, others bewildered, some even amused or frightened. It was magical, if a bit unsettling to fall asleep under the wary gaze of a startled unicorn.
Then, when as a snotty teenager, unicorns were no longer cool, he painted the wall black, adding gold stencils and uttered not a word when she covered one newly blank wall in black and white posters of musicians, photographs of polar bears and sayings she thought were cool. These days, she preferred the simple elegance of a dark red flowers patterned wallpaper on the back wall, her queen-sized bed pushed up against it, book shelf above, a two-seater sofa at the end and a corner desk.
And the counselling? Long gone. The woman had helped her work through the deeper layers of rejection but not nearly as much, Chrissie might argue, as being adopted by two exceptional human beings: open and honest, kind and endlessly understanding.
She hit the refresh button once more, grimacing as her screen flashed up the same message.This user only allows friends to see their posts.
Never mind, there was more than one way to drown a cat.
She typed the woman’s name into Google. The search engine burst into activity, returning five results with the name at the top, all of which were on LinkedIn. The first ran a human resources consultancy business in the Lake District. Chrissie’s thumb hovered over the link. If she clicked on it, the woman would be able to tell someone had checked her out and might be able to figure out who that person was.
Unlikely, but a potential risk.
The other LinkedIn woman ran a dog-walking service. Now that was more like it. Chrissie typed the woman’s name into Google along with ‘dog walking’ and quickly found a small New York-based business.
“Your doggie is my doggie,” the earnest woman assured the camera in a promotional video as she strolled the streets, picking up excitable pooches from brownstone apartments. A chorus of yaps followed her, tails wagging like metronomes. The age checked out, but there was one glaring difference—this woman was Black, whereas Mikey, as Chrissie often teased him, was so Celtic-pale he could probably get sunburned under a full moon.
Blast it. And the woman seemed lovely, too. On her website, she urged dog owners to think beyond their pampered pups, drawing attention to the plight of stray dogs in less fortunate countries—ribby, mange-ridden creatures left to fend for themselves. She’d even established a charity to help them.
Chrissie, always a sucker for a sob story, sighed and sent ten pounds to the PayPal account, typing a quick note as she hit ‘send’:Good work! XX.
So, nope, LinkedIn would not lead Chrissie to Mikey’s mother. Other tactics were required. Something struck her and she cursed herself for being an idiot. What if she was looking for the wrong name altogether? If the woman had married, she’d likely have taken her husband’s name, in which case finding her would prove much harder than she’d anticipated.
Chrissie met her biological mother at twenty-four, her heart hammering and her feet scuffing the platform as she waited for the train, the sudden weight of doubt pressing down. Was this such a good idea?
It had turned out fine. Carla Souza—her own face, aged twenty years—had even met Dad a few months later, clasping his hands in a fierce grip. “Thank you,” she’d said, voice thick with something Chrissie couldn’t name. “Thank you for raising my child.”
Chrissie flinched at the phrasemy child,glancing quickly at her father to gauge his reaction. Would the possessive sting? But he simply smiled, calm and steady as always. “Chrissie is my pride and joy. Mikey, too, of course.”
That was Dad—unshakable, unfazed by anything.
Chrissie didn’t dislike her mother, exactly, but every meeting left her with the same unwavering thought:Thank God that woman didn’t raise me.Carla, whom Chrissie could never bring herself to callMum,radiated chaos. Every emotion was turned up to eleven, every gesture expansive, as though she were performing on stage rather than having a conversation. Two hours in her company felt like running a marathon on a caffeine overdose.
When they parted, Chrissie always felt a profound sense of relief, retreating gratefully into the quiet steadiness of the life her dad and late mother had built for her.
“Honey, I’m home!” Mikey’s voice rang out downstairs. When their father returned to the house after a day at the local Trading Standards office, he’d always announced himself in that manner, and Mikey kept it up, a custom the small family clung to, now that Mum was no longer on the scene.
Chrissie leapt up, slamming her laptop shut. She hadn’t told Mikey what she was up to; he wouldn’t approve. They had both understood from an early age that they were adopted. Mum and Dad never hid the fact, turning it into a bonus.We were looking for a lovely little girl and a lovely little boy, and as soon as we saw you, we knew…
But when the eighteen-year-old Chrissie had first expressed serious interest in seeking out her biological parents, her mum had told her that was absolutely fine, and then later that evening, she overheard her and Dad, talking in low voices in the kitchen, believing she was asleep upstairs.
“I know they want to know, and it’s their right, Alan,” she said, her voice thick with tears, “but I’m so frightened we’ll lose them. What if their proper parents live abroad or, or…”
“Shush, love. That’s not going to happen, and we’ve always suspected they’d want to find out, haven’t we? We have to let them.”
