“You wanna come with me, kiddo?” Julia knows molly’s answer before she says it -- it’s still worth a try, though to get her to change her mind. “I know your brothers will be there.”
“No,” Molly says, just as Julia expects. “I’ll be fine. You can go without me.”
There are things Julia could say as she turns the omelette over in the pan. She could point out that Molly’s cut her hair again, the way she has every time it gets close to being as long as it had been when she'd had the baby, that Julia worries after her more than she thinks Karen does, and that one day, she’ll have to talk to Karen again.
Julia, however, knows the art of keeping your mouth shut. She nods, “Alright, well -- I’ll be back in a few days. Don’t do anything particularly stupid.”
Molly laughs, more of a snicker than anything. Karen is missing out.
She hits the road pretending she hadn’t seen Molly slowly withdraw into herself as the days had gone by. It’s been three years since Julia and Karen had come home to the sight of her curled up in the bathtub, burning up with a fever, clutching her baby with glassy eyes. If she shuts her eyes, she knows that she can smell the blood, the fluids, and the snow from that day.
It was too much to really process at the time, and she and Karen had done everything they could that night. They’d run back and forth from the house to the car, wrapping Molly and the baby up as well as they could, calling for help and receiving none.
for all the arguing she and karen had done that weekend, it felt like it was under the bridge when they’d gotten them into the car and barrelled to the hospital. her sister was always steelier than she, and the laser focus for the drive while julia had panicked in the backseat? she wasn’t going to forget that, ever. by the time they’d gotten both inside, julia had lost track of time. She’d babbled when they’d taken Molly and the boy, left with fingers streaked with cold and blood.
most of the hours after blended in, sitting in that waiting room. She’d been dozing off when karen had finally sent her home, saying, “i’m her mother. i can deal with this.”
It had taken days of cryptic updates before she’d gotten the news over the phone that molly had been discharged, and the adoption had gone through.At the time, she hadn’t questioned anything; why would she? Molly wasn’t her child, as long as she’d lived with her. Karen was her mother, and Karen knew best.
And now, years on, Molly hadn’t gone home. She’d stayed with Julia, racing in town as if Julia didn’t know every inch of town gossip, sometimes disappearing for days on end before she turned up in bed, dozing off and reeking of beer. She does her best with her, petting her hair, turning a blind eye.
Except times like these, where julia finds herself in her father’s living room during a hustling and bustling get together that she isn’t sure why she said yes to it in the first place. everyone’s given up on asking her about kids or a partner, but they do still act confused about her business and the fact that she doesn’t indulge in the gossip of molly’s time with her. It’s easier for people to come to her over Karen, given Karen’s general icy demeanor. Julia was less intimidating on the outset, until they realized ten minutes into the conversation that the two shared the ability to keep their mouths shut when required.
Fending off suitors and gossips got boring, just as much as the questions regarding a baby or a partner. Julia wonders at times, why she even came, up until her father’s laugh filters through the house and she feels calmer.
There is no laugh now; he’s busy, talking in a corner with Karen. And David is trying to make a beeline for her again. Julia excuses herself as fast as she can -- why karen kept inviting him to this was beyond her -- upstairs to the more than opulent office karen still keeps up. All these years after moving out, and Julia still found it amusing that Karen insisted on coming back to their father’s home just to get a breather. She shuts the door as quickly and quietly as she can, turning around to the opulent inside of the office. the degrees lining the walls makes her roll her eyes; their father still didn’t pay Karen a lick of attention that wasn’t work. And yet, all these damn degrees were still displayed like trophies.
She doesn’t waste any time to fish a cigarette from her purse, lighting it. The murmur of the party wafts up; she can tell that someone’s told a joke with the volume of her father’s laughter. Julia tilts her head back, looking around the room, at this place she’d used to dread walking into as a little girl and that her sister has done everything in her power to remodel for her own purposes from the walls to the ceiling.
at least, she reflects, karen had good taste in wood paneling, and the books she had were more interesting than simply financial law. Trendy perhaps, and transparent, but not that bad. her fingers run over the books, able to hear the party dully going on below. she takes another drag on her cigarette, and with a huff, realizes that there isn’t much left.
“come on, karen, i know you have a trash can here somewhere,” she moves around the desk, and finally spots one. It blends in impeccably, annoyingly with the decor.
grasping one of her sister’s many trophies scattered about the room, she dabs out her cigarette on it -- really, Julia should have known not to leave something so tempting out -- and throws her cigarette in the trash.
or, she means to. when her eyes follow her cigarette to the trash, trying to make perfect aim, she can see a crumpled up letter with the name: sunshine adoption agency on the top. her mind thinks back to what karen told her: that the adoption went through the state. that it had been closed, and that it wasn’t Julia’s business. She thinks about, too, the certainty that Molly is curled up at home, sniffing into her pillow, unwilling to open her door.
Karen is capable of many things, and Julia hopes that the suspicion in her mind isn’t real.
immediately, she she snatches the letter from the bin, not bothering to think about anything besides stuffing it hastily into her purse. her heart pounds in her ears as she crouches down, hoping no one had noticed she’d disappeared. Mouth pursed, she starts digging through the trash for more. there are no more letters from the agency there, so she turns to the large desk in front of her.
It’s been years since Julia has had to break into this stupid desk. Not long enough to forget, though.
her fingers are slower than what she’d like as she finally pops it open, the wood groaning with the effort. julia has always been a cluttered person, but karen has always been very organized. and the fact that there are no letters among her neatly placed instruments means that either she’s keeping the rest of the paperwork under lock and key or that she’d already destroyed it.
julia purses her lips, staring at it all, trying to decide if she should take the letter with her or put it back in the trash. this was a dead end, and honestly, she could be wrong. maybe molly had agreed, and maybe the adoption had been put in place the way it was supposed to. maybe karen had lied to her to protect molly. it wouldn’t be the first time.
she shuts the drawer, and zips up her purse.
better safe than sorry. she makes her way down to the party again, making sure to close the door to the office as carefully as she can. she can hear mark (or was it matthew?) downstairs, cracking jokes.
she makes her way down to the front, adjusting her dress as she goes. the hairs on her neck stand up as she waves goodbye to karen, and she doesn’t breathe easy until she’s in her car, making her way back to the hotel.
Once she does, it takes three cigarettes and a shot of bourbon before she’s able to sit down and open the letter.
“Thank you, Karen Patton for your service,” she reads aloud, “The successful adoption of your Baby Theodore has been completed--”
Julia stops reading there. She just rereads the lines over and over again.
She thinks about calling Molly or Karen. But mostly, she’s blinded by anger, going through every page after. Reading how much he weighed, about how fast the adoption was. None of it lines up with anything she understands about adoptions, none of it feeling very official. The language too vague, too self satisfying---
She pulls out her laptop, and one sharp toned call later, the wifi works. Julia googles the name, and with a sinking heart, the website tells her everything she needs to know: Karen had picked this on purpose. Nothing about it was legitimate. Nothing concrete for a phone number or an email beyond an empty sign up box.
Julia despises her sister in a way she never thought possible.
”I’ll be home a little bit later, okay?”Karen looks impassive when Julia unfolds a copy of the letter in front of her. The wind picks up, her hair fluttering with it, eyes narrowing slightly. “You’ve been picking through my trash, again.”
“You sure?” Molly’s voice crackles with static.
“Promise. Won’t be long.”
“Cut the crap,” Julia snipes, “I’m not dumb, Karen. What the hell is this? You told me that the adoption had been legit not-- not this. Not something this deliberate.”
“We were pressed for time,” Karen says each word carefully, as if Julia doesn’t understand what she’s saying. It's a tatic she's used since they were children, to make Julia feel smaller, stupider. It's working. “If I let Molly spend any more time with that child, she would have wanted to keep him. I know you aren’t a mother, Julia. You wouldn’t understand it. I did what was best for her. I told her I would when she first told me she was pregnant, and unlike you, I didn’t encourage her to throw her life away.”
“Encourage-- Do you hear yourself?” Julia raises her voice, grateful she’d decide to confront her at their father’s house and not elsewhere. “I didn’t encourage her to do anything! She wanted him! You knew that!”
“Margaret wants a lot of things that are bad for her, including you,” Karen’s words are poisonous, arms folding closer in on her, Julia stunned, “I don’t expect you to understand Julia, I don’t. What I do expect for you to do, however, is to keep this between you and me.”
Julia scoffs. “Really? And how, exactly, are you going to do that? Karen, you’re toying with her life--”
Karen takes a step forward, eyes hard. Julia has never been afraid of her, keeping her ground as her sister comes almost nose to nose to her. “You’re going to keep quiet because I still know things about you that could snatch that little business you’ve built up with our father’s money right from under you. You’re going to keep quiet because if she heard this from you, she’d hate you first; she’s never been receptive to the messenger of bad news.” Karen reaches out, grasps her arm tightly, “You think that you love her? You’ve never had a child angry at you, even when you’ve done the right thing. It’s painful, Julia. And you would take it back as soon as you said it.”
Karen let’s go, and Julia hates the fact that she’s shaking. Karen frowns, and Julia thinks, almost that Karen is on the verge of tears. “I love her much more than you do because I’m willing to hurt her if it means that she’ll survive. You never could.”
Before Julia can find her courage again, the door opens to the backyard, and their father stands there, smiling. Karen smiles back in that way she’s always done -- brilliant, but without it reaching her eyes.
The worst thing is that it takes almost ten years for Julia to finally do what she should have done the instant she’d come home to find Molly drunk, watching television and unable to move from the couch. Ten years to be assure herself that she’d be financially secure, ten years to collect the little hints and information Karen had given her over the years, ten years to finally mail it to Molly knowing full well that she’d hate her for it.