“Thank you.”

I paid the cab driver and made my way to the front of the house. Front of the manor actually. From the outside, it looked pretty big. I walked to the door and reached for the doorbell. Would she recognize me? Of course she wouldn’t. Would she? What if she tells me to leave? I decided I wasn’t going to let these thoughts stop me. Besides, how will I know if I turn away? My hand made for the door and my thoughts went back to four years ago when I found out I was… well… adopted.

Four Years Ago (1998)

Adopted. Adopted. The words kept playing in my mind. For over a week, all I could think about was that I was adopted. Adopted

One-Week Ago:

I had just finished the chores my parents had given me. I’m 12 and it’s the only way I could get any cash. I was told to come down to dinner after I was done. I guess I finished a little earlier than I expected cause my mother and father weren’t setting plates. They were having a conversation. I turned around to return to my room. I was always told it was wrong to eaves drop. I was about to make my way back to my room when I heard my mother begin to talk again.

“What if he finds out and leaves? He’ll want to know where he came from, won’t he? No. We won’t tell him. Alex will never know he is adopted.”

Adopted. I couldn’t believe I was adopted. I wasn’t a Warren as I grew up to believe. As if it weren’t enough, I was already going through some personal stuff to begin with.

“We have to tell him. We owe it to him. He needs to know the truth,” said my father. My mother let out a sigh of frustration. She put her hands on her face. “Melinda, I love our son very much and you know that, but we can’t keep this from him. He deserves to know the truth.”

“I’m afraid, James. What if we tell him and he forgets about us and goes with his real family? What then?”

She had tears in her eyes. I couldn’t see her now but you could hear it in her voice.

“Look, I’m not saying he won’t want to know who his real parents are but I do know he won’t just leave us. Melinda, put your self in that position. If you found out you were adopted, wouldn’t you want to find out who your family is?”

Like a reflex, she answered, “No.”

It was my father’s turn to sigh. “Look, we won’t tell him if you don’t want to but I got to be honest. I do not like lying to our son.”

I felt lost. I didn’t know who I was anymore. Up to now I was Alex Warren, son of James and Melinda Warren. Now I was just… just Alex. Don’t get me wrong, I still love my mother and father, but I felt alone now for some reason. I went to my room and lied there, thinking about what I was going to do with this information.

Back To Present (1998):

I made up my mind to tell my mom and dad that I had heard them talking and knew I was adopted. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do then. I thought I’d do it over dinner tonight.

Lunch came and I went to sit with Michael. He was about my height. His hair was dark like mine’s and went down to his ears and it was parted down the center. His eyes were green. Not normal green but a pale green. We were friends for a few months now, but I always felt closer to him than friends. I didn’t know what it was. I always wondered if he felt the same.

“Mike, what would you do if you found out you were adopted?”

“And you’re asking me this why?”

“Just wonderin’.” I didn’t want to tell him yet because I still didn’t know what I was planning on doing.

“Alex, you always ask me the weirdest things, but to answer your question, if I found out I was adopted I would want to find out who my parents were. It’s a lot of work though and takes some time.”

“Really?” I imagined this would be true but I didn’t know for sure. “How long do you think?”

“Probably a couple of years. Depends on the situation.”

---

That night, I decided I was going to tell my parents I knew it all and that I wanted to find my family. I also made a mental note to tell them that I’d still love them no matter what happened.

Mom called us to dinner. We sat at our usual places: dad at the head of the table, and mom sat across from me. Every day at dinner, my mother always made us tell about our day.

Dad had just finished telling his day. It was my turn. I figured now would be a good time as any to tell them.

“And Alex, how was your day?”

I sat there, quiet, trying to gather the courage I had to tell them I knew I was adopted. A few seconds past and my father repeated the question.

“Anything wrong son? Come on tell us about your day.”

I took a deep breath. “I um… I know I’m adopted.” I kinda froze at that point. I wasn’t sure what to expect after this.

“Adopted. Alex what are you talking about?”

“Son, you’re not adopted.”

“Please don’t lie. It took me all day to get myself to tell you. I heard you talking about it last week. I was coming down to dinner when I heard you talking. I know it was wrong to listen but when I heard mom say I was adopted, I had to listen to the rest.” By their looks on their faces, I could tell they were trying to figure out a way to counter that last attack. “Um… I want to find my family. I want to know where I came from. But I also want you to know that I will always love you, no matter what.”

My mother dropped her fork and started crying. Not loudly but enough to let you know she was crying. My father had the strangest face I had ever seen. I have never seen him so sad before. It kind of made me feel bad for having told them like this. No one spoke for a few minutes.

About ten minutes after I told them, mother had stopped crying and asked me, “Do you really want to look for your parents? If they gave you up for adoption, don’t you think they didn’t want you?”

It hurt that she brought about this realization. What if they did hate me? But I didn’t know for sure so I thought I wouldn’t worry about this now. I knew it would be something that would haunt me for the next couple of years.

“That might be the reason, but I don’t know that for sure so I’m not going to hold that against them. Please, I wanted to ask you if you could help me find them.”

“Son if this is what you want, then I uh… I’ll help you.” My father worked as a lawyer and had connections to some social service departments. “I’ll start looking into it tomorrow. After work, I’ll go to the orphanage and see what I could find out.”

It was weird the way it turned out. I expected him to reject it. Out of the two of them, I thought it would be my mother who would help me out. But as it turned out it was the other way around.

“James, why are you doing this? Don’t you love him? Why are you going along with this? So that he can leave and you’ll be happy?” She was standing up now, practically yelling in his face.

He stood up. He didn’t yell but he spoke firmly.

“No Melinda and you know it. The reason I’m doing this is because I love him. I would do anything for our son and if he wishes to find his parents, his family, then I’ll do what I can to help him. And if you won’t help him, if you forbid me to, then you are the one who doesn’t love him. You Melinda, not me.”

I wasn’t expecting that. I never really felt close to my father. I mean, he was always there to help me with something but I always felt closer to my mother. I guess I was wrong in thinking he didn’t care about me. She opened her mouth to say something, but I guess she didn’t know what to say because all she did was look at me and leave the table.

I looked at my father and I gave him a silent thank you not wanting my mother to hear. He nodded back with a smile. Some of that sadness was still there though. I got up and went back to my room.

As the months went by, I felt my family slip away from me and I began to regret the whole thing. I hated it. At dinner one night when it was just my dad and me, he reassured me that they still loved and cared for me as much as before and that mom was still working on taking in the whole thing. I knew he was just trying to make me feel better though. Things changed. They never talked. My mother talked to me but it wasn’t the same; not like before.

When I became 14, I started high school. Most of the people I went to middle school with went to a different school than I did. The only person I knew from my old school was Mike. We became better friends than before. I guess you can say we were best friends. Because of the way things were back home, I was almost always over at his house.

It was hectic back home. My mother and father didn’t talk to each other at all. My mother didn’t speak to me much either. She told us one night that the only reason she was still around was so that she could make sure we had something to eat every night. I felt bad every time she brought this up. I felt like it had been my fault my parents’ relationship was breaking apart. Things with my father weren’t going so well either. I think he also started regretting everything.

A day in December, he came home and asked me to come down to the family room. When I got there, I saw he had a folder in his hand.

“Here it is. In here is the information to where your parents live and information on your mother.”

He made to give me the folder and when I grabbed it, he didn’t give it up so easily. He had more to say.

“I know things have been a little rough between us recently and that’s kinda my fault, but know that I still love you, I still care for you and to me you will always be my son. Also, I don’t want you thinking that what’s going on between your mom and I is your fault. She just doesn’t understand that this is important to you. In some way, she feels like I’m betraying her.”

I felt a little better knowing that he doesn’t blame me for what’s going on. What he told me next though, made me hate myself more than I ever did in my life.

“Alex…”

He didn’t say anything for a few seconds.

“Yeah dad?”

“Your mom… well she um…”

“What dad, tell me.” I sorta wished I never said those words.

“Your mom asked me for a divorce.”

I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to think. Why would she do something like that, just because I wanted to know the truth? The worst thing was that she was punishing my father for it. I hated everything at that point. I hated my life. Nothing seemed to be going well. My mother was leaving. It would just be my father and I now. What I didn’t understand was why would she ask him for a divorce. He did nothing wrong, all he did was help me with something I felt important. Did she really hate me that much? So much that she would actually try to hurt me by hurting my father?

“A divorce? Mom asked you for a divorce? Why?”

He didn’t answer.

I got up and went up to my mother’s room. Before I went in, I put the folder with my birth mother’s information in my room. I closed the door and opened the one to my mom’s room.

“Mom, are you planning on divorcing my father?”

She was sitting at her desk filling out some forms. She turned to look at me and said, “Alex, I’m sorry but I have to divorce your father. He betrayed me and I told him if he did I would do this.”

“Mom, dad didn’t betray you. All he did was help me find my parents. That’s all. I’m sorry you felt it was wrong but I have to know where I came from. Please mom don’t…” She cut me off and said, “This has nothing to do with that, Alex. I’m not mad at your father for that. I was a little upset at the beginning but that isn’t why I want to divorce him.”

“Then why?”

She didn’t answer me. I asked her again and she gave me the look. I hated it. It was the same look she’s been giving me for the last two years, ever since I told them I knew I wasn’t their child. It was a look full of remorse and sadness. I left. I went to the room and I lay on my bed, trying to figure things out. I didn’t open that folder that night. To me, that folder was the cause of all these problems.

I went to Mike’s house the next day and talked to him and Jackie, one of our best friends. Jackie was blonde. She had pale green eyes like Michael did. The three of us were really close. I had other friends but from all of them, Mike and Jackie were something else.

I brought the folder with me and I didn’t open it till I got there.

“So what’s in it?” asked Mike.

“I don’t know. I haven’t opened it yet.” Jackie looked at me and said, “Why not? You had that thing for almost a whole day now and you didn’t even open it.”

“I was waiting for the right time. Plus after I got it yesterday I really didn’t feel like opening it.”

“Really? Why not?”

I sighed and looked at both of them. “My parents told me they’re getting a divorce.” They looked at each other than looked at me. Mike started to say something but Jackie stopped him, “Don’t say anything. Somehow you always manage to say the wrong things even if you are trying to cheer us up.” That was true. Mike always said something to make us feel down even when he was trying real hard to make us feel better. We learned not to hold things like that against him.

“I’m sorry, Alex. Don’t feel bad. You said things haven’t been going well with your family anyway, right?” It wasn’t Mike to say something like that this time. He looked at her and shook his head. Jackie shoved him and said, “You’re contagious, Mike. Get away.” It brought a smile to my face. I could be under anything but being with Jackie and Mike; especially Mike would make me feel better. I guess it was because I knew him longer. They are just that type of people.

I opened it; the folder that is. In front of me was all the information I needed. At the top I saw my name, my real name. Not Alex Warren like I grew up to believe. No. My name was Alexis Rowe. Above it was my mother’s name, Andrea Rowe. My father’s name wasn’t there. Below it was the address to my mother’s house.

“Alexis Rowe, huh? Well, at least you’re still an Alex.” For once, he said something that made me feel better. He was right. I was still an Alex. I wasn’t completely lost.

____

By my fifteenth birthday, my parents had been divorce for about 4 months. I never saw my mother after that. Two months after the divorce, my father died. He started drinking. He was at the hospital a lot for drinking too much. But he didn’t die in a hospital. One day he drank more than usual and went out. The next morning, the police called me to tell me that my father was killed in a car accident. I still didn’t know what the divorce was about. I went to my room in Mike’s house and went to that folder. I decided I was going to go meet my mother.

Back To Present (2002):

I wiped the tear that was threatening to come out of my eye. “Man. I shouldn’t have told Jackie not to come.”

Jackie asked me if I wanted her to come with me. I told her I would be fine and that I needed to do this alone.

I rang the doorbell and waited for it to be answered. About 30 seconds later, the door opened. At the door was an old lady. She looked like she was in her late 50s, early 60s. Her hair was dark with shades of gray and she was my height. She looked at me and said. “Yes? May I help you?”

“Hello. Does Andrea Rowe still live here?”

A look came over her face. She looked sad but kinda confused at the same time. I couldn’t understand why.

“No she doesn’t. Who are you?”

“Please, can you tell me where to find her? Do you know where she lives now?”

“Young man, my daughter, Andrea has been dead for 10 years now. Now I ask you again, who are you?”

She was dead. I couldn’t believe it. My mother was dead.

“My name is Alex. Alexis Rowe. Hey Grams.”