They Said I Was Adopted, but I Was Always the Real Daughter novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Ten Past Three

Her father admits she was never adopted and that he stood in the hallway eighteen years ago and said nothing; when Inés asks if it is about Paulina he answers too fast, and her mother walks into the cafeteria.

"I'm not sure of anything," I told the hematologist.

Then I hung up and sat in Gael's van with my hands flat on the teddy bear's head.

Gael turned off the engine.

He didn't ask what she'd said.

"I need to see my father," I said. "Alone. At the hospital, tomorrow, before my first treatment."

"I'll drive you," he said, and left it at that.

The hospital cafeteria opened at seven.

My father was already there on Monday, at a table by the window, with a coffee he wasn't drinking and a manila folder under his hand.

He looked like a man who had slept in his clothes.

I sat down across from him and put the bear on the table between us.

He looked at it for a long time.

"The hematologist called you," he said.

"Yes. She said a father and daughter would look exactly like this."

"Inés."

"Say it," I said. "Say it in plain words, Dad. I'm done guessing."

He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

"You are my daughter," he said. "Mine and your mother's. You were born at the Santa Lucía clinic at ten past three in the morning, in a thunderstorm, and I cut the cord myself because the nurse was afraid of the lightning."

My hands began to shake.

"You were never adopted," he said. "Not for one day."

I had waited eighteen years to hear someone tell me I belonged somewhere.

Now somebody had, and all I wanted to do was throw the bear at his head.

"You were in the hallway," I said. "When she dragged me into the laundry room. I was six. You were in the hallway, Dad. I remember your shoes."

He closed his eyes.

"Yes."

"You heard her."

"Yes."

"And you went to work."

"I went to work," he said. "And I came home, and you were fine, and she was fine, and I told myself that one bad afternoon would blow over. Then it was a week, and then a year. By ten I was a coward who had been quiet for four years, and by sixteen I was a coward who had been quiet for ten."

He said it flatly, with no attempt to make himself look better.

I almost respected it.

"Why?" I asked. "Why would she say that to a child? What did I do?"

"Nothing. You did nothing."

"Then why?"

He pressed his palms flat on the folder.

"She had a reason," he said. "It's a bad reason, and I think she's been wrong for a long time. But it isn't only mine to tell, and if I tell it badly I'll lose you again before I've earned you once. Give me until I can say it in front of her."

"That isn't an answer."

"I know."

"Is it about Paulina?"

His head came up fast.

It was only a second.

"Paulina doesn't know anything," he said.

I heard that sentence and held onto it, because it wasn't what I had asked, and because he'd answered the wrong question so quickly.

I kept it, and I didn't push.

"Fine," I said. "Then tell me this. Will you give me your marrow?"

"If the doctor says I can, I'll do it tomorrow," he said, and he took my hand across the table.

His fingers were cold and trembling, and I let him hold mine.

"I don't forgive you," I said.

"I'm not asking you to."

"I'm only saying it so you know."

"I know." His mouth did something that was almost a smile. "You sound like your grandmother."

"Why?"

"She'd have already hit me with a shoe."

I laughed.

It came out of me wrong, wet and short, and I covered my mouth with my hand.

At the next table a woman in a green hospital badge looked over, and looked away.

The folder under my father's hand held his lab results.

He slid it to me, and I opened it.

The typing numbers meant nothing to me, but at the bottom, in the doctor's tidy writing, was a line that read: Biological father, consistent. Daughter, consistent.

"The hematologist wrote that on Sunday," my father said. "She asked me to look at it before I showed it to anyone. She said you'd want to see it first."

"I want a copy."

"It's yours."

"I want one that your wife can't lose."

I wasn't being unkind.

I was telling him a fact about the woman we both knew.

My father nodded.

Then his eyes went past my shoulder, and the color left his face.

I turned in my chair.

My mother was walking across the cafeteria in a camel coat and low heels, with the leather handbag held against her ribs.

She walked as if every person in the room was a step she was going to climb.

She stopped at our table, and she looked at the bear.

"Humberto," she said. "Not here."

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