Would You Rather: A Novel

Mia stood at the foot of the bed in the guest room, staring at the sealed envelope on the comforter. A standard-issue white envelope, it was nothing that should have caused her such deep turmoil.

To be fair, it wasn’t the envelope so much as what was inside. And the familiar handwriting scrawled on the outside.

Her mother’s handwriting.

It had arrived in her and Claire’s mailbox shortly after the transplant discussion, when Mia had refused all contact with her parents. It had no address, which meant it had been hand delivered. Apparently, she’d made her point and her mom didn’t bring it to the door. It was another year before Mia reopened the lines of communication with her parents, carefully maintaining a level of caution and distance.

Still, she’d never opened the letter, fearful of what she’d find inside.

Then, while getting her tattoo, she’d had a realization. When she was in the chair listening to Noah’s playlist, there had been a song that reminded her of her mom, and for some reason in that moment she’d thought about the bouquet of flowers that had arrived every year on her birthday since she’d turned eighteen. They were different every year, each more beautiful than the last, and they all had one thing in common: lilies. The very thing she was permanently marking to her skin.

Tonight, I’ll finally read it, she’d thought.

But then Noah had gotten that call from work, and when he came back they’d fought, and by the time she’d gone back inside that night—to the guest room—she’d figured she’d been through enough shit for one day.

That was two weeks ago and things had been…decent between her and Noah. Better than she’d thought they would be, especially after the way he’d reacted at the end of their argument. He’d gone to his parents that next morning and stayed there all weekend. She’d been worried he might move in with them temporarily, unwilling to even share the same space with her, but he came back Sunday night with an order of Wings To Go for both of them, and she’d taken it as a peace offering. She was still sleeping in the guest room and they hadn’t done so much as kiss, but at least they were talking.

Even so, she was lonely. She missed the familiar routine she and Noah had fallen into. She’d told Claire about the argument with Noah, but her friend had been working a lot and hadn’t been around much. The last few weeks had been lighter than usual at school, so she couldn’t even rely on that to fill the time.

Which meant she’d been thinking about her parents, bringing her to this very moment.

Noah was out shopping for camping gear with Graham, and she was in the house alone. She didn’t bother closing the door.

Taking a deep breath, she sat and picked up the envelope, sliding her finger across to open it.

Mia,

I have no idea how to start. Your dad says I shouldn’t be writing this at all—that this isn’t a conversation to be had via pen and paper no matter the circumstance—but it’s been weeks and you haven’t allowed me to explain in person. And I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t want to see me, either.

But I just want you to have all the facts. I also want to say I’m sorry for how you found out. I’m not sure I’m sorry about not telling you. Maybe I am. I don’t know. Every time your dad and I talked about it as you were growing up he wavered, but the answer always seemed so clear to me. Time and time again I chose protecting you over hurting you. Maybe it was the wrong choice. It certainly feels that way now, with the way I’ve lost you. This is never what I intended. In fact, this is exactly what I was trying to avoid.

Anyway, right or wrong, this is where we are. I think about you every day. I love you and miss you. And I want you to know everything, and maybe have at least some explanation for why we handled things the way we did.

Your dad was a security guard once. I don’t think you knew that, and it will probably come as a surprise. For a little while he was interested in going into law enforcement, but something happened that changed the course of his life—our lives—forever.

He worked the night shift at a community college, doing building checks and responding to alarm calls. One night he was walking the campus, and as he passed the auditorium he heard a sound. He thought it was a cat at first, or some other animal. But you know your dad, he can’t stand the thought of anything being in pain, even a stray.

That’s when he found you. Best we can guess, you were a few hours old. Wrapped in a blanket, still bloody, and crying your eyes out. It was March, and cold.

He found you abandoned in a dumpster—and that right there—that’s the sentence I never wanted you to hear. I never wanted to say it or even write it, or have it be a reality that existed in your universe. Because no matter how we found you, you’ve been the joy of our lives, and our daughter. You’re our true family and the reason for everything. Saying we wanted you feels like such an understatement. From the moment he first held you in his arms and wrapped his jacket around you, calling for help and then calling me in the middle of the night, we wanted to keep you.

We never could find your mother, or any information from anyone. I don’t know what happened to her, and why she felt backed into a corner where she thought her only option was to leave you there. I can only imagine her fear and heartbreak. At least, that’s what I try to focus on, otherwise I get insanely angry at her.

But if she hadn’t made that choice, you wouldn’t be mine. And it feels weird to say, but I’ll always be thankful to her for that. I wish it would have happened differently, but I’d still want to end up with you as my child.

So there’s the truth. The ugly part is we don’t know where you came from, why someone left you there, or even when your actual birthday is. He found you a little after two in the morning, so it could have been the twelfth or the thirteenth. I never told you because I couldn’t bear the thought of breaking your heart. Maybe that’s selfish of me, but it’s always you I’ve thought of.

The beautiful part is you felt like ours from the first moment. Your father said he felt an overwhelming need to protect you right away, and it tore his heart out when they took you to the hospital. We checked on you every single day, and immediately pursued adoption. Once we knew you’d be ours, your dad changed career paths and went into business administration. He didn’t want to have a job where he’d be gone half of your life, working weird hours and at the risk of not coming home.

We would have handled things differently if it had been an open adoption, or even a closed one where the family surrendered you to an agency. In those situations you’d have the option to get in contact with your birth family, if both of you wanted to.

But that wasn’t possible. There’s no way to track down your family—believe me, we tried. Those first few months, that’s all we did. I just couldn’t justify shattering your world like that when there was nothing you could do about it. For better or worse, we’re your only family, and you’re ours.

The only thing left to say is I’m sorry I hurt you. We love you more than life itself. I’m not sure anyone can ever understand the love of a parent for their child until they have one of their own, but we’d do anything for you. Whatever responsibility you feel for your illness and the cost of your medical care, please know you mean more to us. We would do anything in our power to keep you healthy and happy. We’d sell every earthly possession we have, forgo every trip we ever planned. Everything we’ve done has been out of love, never out of obligation. We’d do it again and again, no matter whose genes make up the beautiful cells in your body.

We love you always, and I hope someday you’ll find a way to forgive us.

Mom

The pages fluttered to the floor like snowflakes and Mia squeezed her eyes shut, tears sliding down her cheeks. She thought she might throw up, but focused on her breathing, and the sensation passed. Slowly, she crawled up the bed and pulled the covers over her body, curling into a ball and wiping her tears.

She lay there, staring at the wall. Absorbing, processing, considering.

He found you abandoned in a dumpster.

There’s no way to track down your family.

You felt like ours from the first moment.

We love you always.

Mia thought back to her life before her diagnosis, and tried to come up with any instance when her parents had made her feel unwanted or like a burden.

She came up empty-handed, remembering only happiness and love. A sense of belonging.

The guilt she’d felt after getting sick had been her own doing.

But the betrayal…even thinking about the first time she heard the word adopted was like a swift punch to the gut, stealing her breath. No matter how they spun it, they’d lied to her. About where she came from. Information that was hers and hers alone and not theirs to keep.

Sometime later she registered the front door opening, and footsteps down the hall. After a few minutes, Noah’s shadow darkened the doorway.

“Mia?” His voice was panicked and he started forward. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

He stopped at the foot of the bed, seeing the pages on the floor. “What’s this?”

She kept her eyes trained on the wall. “Read it.”

The bed dipped under his weight, and she waited while he read the words her mother had written. He remained so silent, she could only hear her own breathing and the occasional crackle of paper when he flipped the pages over.

And then he moved. He came around to the side of the bed and knelt before her, grabbing her hand and forcing a fresh sob from her throat.

“Mia,” he said hoarsely.

She gripped his forearm and squeezed her eyes shut. She wanted him to pull her into his arms and hold her, but they weren’t doing things like that anymore. They’d kept careful physical distance because it would be too much, too hard.

Even so, no matter the state of their friendship, he was there for her, and right now she could do nothing but let him be. In typical Noah fashion, he said nothing. He knelt there beside her, a steady, strong presence, ready and willing to be whatever she needed.

He lifted his hand as if to brush her hair back, almost out of habit, and seemed to catch himself. He dropped it back to his side.

She swallowed and dropped her eyes to his chest. “I think I want to go see them.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you want me to come with you?”

She almost nodded. It would be so easy to say yes. So much easier to have Noah by her side, giving her strength. But she’d just lectured him on doing things on his own, hadn’t she? Maybe he wasn’t the only one who needed to take that advice. She’d relied on him a lot throughout her life, too—and this was something she needed to do on her own.

“No, but thank you.”

If declining his offer hurt his feelings, he didn’t let it show. He nodded and stood, and she swung her legs off the bed.

“Call if you need me, okay?”

She paused in her search for her shoes and glanced up at where he remained by her bed, hands in his pockets.

“I will.”

Her stomach was in knots as she climbed the stairs to the third-floor apartment. She took a deep, shaky breath before she knocked.

Her dad opened the door and froze, his hand gripping the frame. He stared at her, his green eyes darting briefly outside and back to her.

A wayward thought crossed her mind, that she’d always been jealous of her dad’s uniquely colored eyes, and as a teenager had frequently wondered why she hadn’t inherited them.

“Mia,” he said, his voice wobbly. They hadn’t laid eyes on each other in two years.

“Hi,” was all she said.

“Hi.” He swallowed. Cleared his throat. “Do you want to come in?”

“Um, okay.”

The apartment was average sized, with two bedrooms and a decent-sized living room with windows facing the mountains. They’d moved here several years ago, before the fight, and Mia had spent many evenings here sharing meals and celebrating holidays. Everything looked the same as it had then, but this time it felt…different.

“Scott, who was it—” Mia’s mom entered from the kitchen and stopped short when her eyes alighted on Mia. She blinked several times as if convincing herself Mia was really there. “Oh.”

They both looked so much older than the last time Mia saw them. Her dad’s brown hair was peppered with gray, and her mom’s previously shoulder-length dark hair was cropped short. Her dad had put on a little weight around the middle, while her mom appeared thinner.

The three of them stood awkwardly for several seconds before her dad sat in the recliner and said, “This is a nice surprise. Is everything alright?”

She wished Noah was here. She’d glance at him now, unsure how to begin, and he’d just stand there calm and silent. It would be enough to give her confidence to proceed.

“I read the letter.”

Her mom’s brows drew together and she gripped her hands in front of her. The misery emanating from her was tangible.

“I’m so sorry,” her mom said, her voice breaking.

Mia swallowed, blinking back tears and making her choice. She took a deep breath, crossed the room, and walked into her mother’s arms.