Page 58 of All Your Life

SARAH

“Are you ok?” she asks me once Liam leaves.

“Kind of,” I answer honestly. I should be freaking out, but I feel calmer now, much calmer than I did half an hour ago.

Grace has a steady, calming presence, and doesn’t press me to talk. I have so many questions, so many that I don’t even know how to begin.

“You can ask me anything, you know.”

“I don’t even know where to start.”

“Then why don’t I just tell you about myself, give you an abridged version of my life story, and you stop me whenever you have a question. Would that be all right?”

“That sounds good.”

Grace tells me some basics, like she was born and raised in a suburb outside of Philadelphia. I stop her right away and ask how many siblings she has, and learn that she has one brother who lives out in southern California now. I ask about her parents and she tells me they divorced when she was a teenager. She shakes her head as if she’s still slightly mortified when she tells me that her father remarried a much younger woman and had twins with her. Smiling, she also tells me her mother kind of loves it that people mistake her dad for the twins’ grandfather.

“Do they know…about me?”

She nods. “I just told them,” she takes a moment to think, “around two years ago.” In response to the wide-eyed stare I’m probably sporting, she says, “I didn’t tell a soul, for so many years. Not until I met Owen.”

“Owen?”

You can tell this person makes her happy by the way she answers, “My husband. We got married last year.”

“Congratulations.”

I’m pretty sure I’m not smiling the way one should when they’re bestowing good wishes on another person, even though I’m not upset in any way. Like, I’m not upset she moved on with her life, but I feel kind of seasick all of a sudden.

Reaching over to get my glass, I gulp down a good amount of iced tea, then sit with both hands in my lap, not knowing what to do with myself. I have an urge to move, yet I’m frozen.

“Wow, I skipped ahead, like, more than fifteen years. Let me back up. So I went to school in North Carolina, and I met your father in September of my junior year.” She cocks her head to the side. “Are you heading off to college this year?”

Your father.The words trigger an image of my father’s smiling face—my real father, my dad—and I’m overcome with guilt. God, they must have been so hurt by what I said, by what I did. Suddenly I want to cry. I want to call them and take it all back. I want them both to hug me and tell me it’s all right, that I’m forgiven.

I answer her question as if I’m a computer spitting out data, “Penn.” And while I’m aware that I should be expounding on these awesome one-word responses I’m giving her, nothing else comes to me as those two words echo in my head.Your father.

I’m thankful Grace keeps the conversation flowing, as I’m currently pretty much useless in that department. “Congratulations to you. That’s quite an achievement.”

I shrug because college seems so unimportant right now. The fact that I’ll be embarking on a new chapter hasn’t registered. Seriously, since the adoption bomb dropped, I haven’t thought about college much at all.

“My parents never came out and said it, but the fact that I got rejected from Duke hit them both hard. I was a colossal disappointment.”

This revelation brings me back to the present. “I’m sure you weren’t.”

“If you knew your grandparents—” Her face pales. “Myparents. I shouldn’t have called them that.”

And then it’s me comforting her. “Don’t feel bad, please. I’m sure we’re both going to be tripping over our words. Let’s just speak freely, ok?”

She reaches over again and takes my hand in hers. “Thank you for saying that. I’m doing my best not to offend you or scare you off, and I’m petrified that I’m going to do both.”

My eyes water as I squeeze Grace’s hand. “Keep going…I want to know more.”

“Your father’s name is Damien, Damien Erikson.”

I repeat the name in my head, once, twice, then let out the breath I’d been holding.

“There was no name on the birth certificate, and I regret that. Damien was a United States Marine. He was on an extended leave when we met and was sent back overseas six weeks later.”

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