Page 37 of Someone Like You
With too much force she slammed the gearshift into park.
Then she leaned her head against the steering wheel and tried to breathe. She had to be dreaming. That was it, she would wake up and all this would be an unbelievable, impossible nightmare.
Of course she wasn’t adopted.
People always told her she looked like her little sister, Hayley. She didn’t look just like her mom, but most girls didn’t. Her mind raced back in time. How often had she heard her father say, “Maddie is the mirror image of my mother.”
A grandma Maddie rarely saw because they lived overseas.
Her heart pounded and she tried to grab a deep breath. She hadn’t gotten one since the bizarre conversation played out at the kitchen table. She had only told them about the guy at the zoo because she was worried he might be dangerous.
She wanted her parents’ opinion.
Forever she would remember the blank stare on herparents’ faces when Maddie laughed at the strangeness of Dawson Gage thinking she was adopted. The way her parents had looked at each other. Their hesitation and guilty eyes. They had lied to her about everything.
How did they expect her to respond?
Chuckle a few times and brush it off?Interesting, Mom and Dad. I never knew that. Anyway, what were you saying about your day?Like really?
Was that how they thought she’d handle this?
Maddie lifted her head and stared out the windshield. Everything about her life was different now. She wasn’t a Baxter or a West. Hayley wasn’t her sister, and her parents weren’t her parents. They had lied to her all her life. Her eyes settled on a pretty oak tree across the street.
Why hadn’t she noticed the tree before? Even Bloomington looked different.
Her eye caught the piece of paper on her passenger seat. The one with Dawson’s phone number. What if the stranger hadn’t come to the zoo this week? Her parents said they were planning to tell her, but when?
A year from now? A decade?
Maddie left the park. It would be dark in an hour or so and she didn’t want to be alone. Not when her entire past had unraveled in a matter of minutes.
Big questions took the place of her anger. Who actually was she? What was this biological family Dawson had spoken about and what did he want to tell her about her real sister? London, right? Wasn’t that her name?
Maddie drove as fast as she could to Connor’s place, an apartment downtown where he lived with a few buddies. She waited till she was parked outside the building before she called him.
He answered on the first ring. “Hey!” People were talking in the background. “How was the zoo?”
Where was she supposed to begin? She breathed out and closed her eyes. “Connor. I’m out front.”Don’t cry, she told herself.Stay calm.“Can you come down? I … I need to talk.”
“Sure.” Connor knew her well enough to know something was wrong. Her tone couldn’t hide that much. “Is everything okay?”
“Please … come down.” She dabbed at a stray tear. “I’ll tell you then.”
Three minutes later, Connor hurried out his apartment door. He was still tucking in his shirt as he slid into the passenger side of her car. “Maddie?” He took her hand and searched her face. “What … what happened?”
“Can we go somewhere?” The busy street had a stream of pedestrians and any minute one of Connor’s roommates might come out and see them. “Lake Monroe, maybe?”
“Of course.” He searched her eyes. “I’ll drive if you want.”
“Actually, yes. Please.” Maddie shielded her face with her hand and then let it fall to her lap again. “I can’t focus.”
Only then did Connor look worried. “You’re scaring me.”
She shook her head. “This isn’t about us.” She held his hand more tightly than before. “You’re the only one I can count on right now, Connor.”
“Okay. It’s just … I haven’t seen you like this.” He brushed a tear off her cheek. “Let’s go.”
They switched places, and fifteen minutes later they pulled into the parking lot at Lake Monroe. Connor took her hand again and they walked to a picnic table at thewater’s edge. The place where Maddie and her family had shared so many Fourth of July picnics.
