The days after the test seemed longer than the weeks before it.
I tried to keep myself busy, but ordinary tasks didn't hold my attention for long.
I would begin making dinner and forget what I had taken out of the refrigerator.
I would sit down to read something and realize I had turned the same page several times without understanding it.
My phone stayed close.
I told myself I wasn't waiting for it.
That was a lie.
Nora was waiting, too.
We spoke most days, sometimes only for a minute or two.
Neither of us wanted to ask the same questions over and over, but the silence between calls was difficult.
We had no new information.
We were simply living inside the space before an answer.
I thought about the hospital more than I wanted to.
I remembered the first moment I saw Lucy.
I remembered the nurse telling me I couldn't hold her yet.
I remembered the doctor coming into my room the next morning.
For years, those memories had belonged to a painful but settled story.
Now each one felt like a page that might have been missing something.
I wondered what the newborn identification problems meant.
I wondered why Ellie's earliest records were connected to the same hospital.
I wondered how a little girl could have entered the adoption system with a history that nobody seemed able to explain.
But I had to be careful.
Wondering was not knowing.
A preliminary report could raise a question.
It could not tell me what had happened to Lucy, who had handled her records, or why I had been given the news I remembered.
I needed the independent results.
Until they arrived, every explanation I imagined was only a possibility.
One evening, I took the small box from beside my bed and placed it on the dresser.
I opened it.
The bracelet rested inside.
I hadn't looked at it this often in years.
I used to open the box when I missed Lucy so much that I needed something real to hold.
Now I opened it because I was afraid the truth might change what the bracelet meant.
I hated that thought.
The bracelet was still Lucy's bracelet.
Whatever had happened, that part of my life was real.
I had carried her.
I had given her a name.
I had waited for her to come back to me.
I had believed the doctor when he said she hadn't survived.
My grief was real, too.
Even if the story behind it changed, those years could not be undone.
I closed the box.
Then I called Nora.
She answered from home.
I could hear the television faintly in the background.
"How are you holding up?" she asked.
"I don't know."
It was the most honest answer I had.
She was quiet for a moment.
"Me neither."
I asked whether she had heard anything.
"No. Nothing yet."
I leaned back against the headboard.
"I keep thinking that if the result confirms it, everything will be different."
Nora didn't answer immediately.
Then she said, "Some things will be."
I appreciated that she didn't try to make it sound simple.
"If Ellie is Lucy, what happens next?"
"I don't know, Claire."
She sighed.
"We'll have to find out what the records mean and what the agency can tell us."
"And Ellie?"
"We'll protect her. We'll take this one step at a time."
I closed my eyes.
That was all either of us could promise.
We talked for a while longer.
Nora told me that Ellie had been asking to wear her ribbons again.
I smiled despite myself.
"She'll have you doing her hair every morning."
"I already do."
There was a small laugh in her voice.
For a moment, we sounded like ourselves again.
Then the laughter faded.
Before we ended the call, Nora said something that stayed with me.
"I hope you know that I never would have hidden this from you."
"I know."
"I didn't know when we adopted her."
"I believe you."
She took a breath.
"I wish I could make this easier."
I looked at the closed box on the dresser.
"You don't have to make it easy. You just have to keep telling me the truth."
"I will."
I believed her.
After we hung up, I sat quietly for a while.
I realized that I had been treating the possibility of a confirmed relationship as though it would immediately answer every question.
It wouldn't.
Even if the independent test showed that Ellie was my biological daughter, we would still need to understand what had happened at the hospital.
We would still need to know why the records were inconsistent.
We would still have to consider how to tell Ellie anything at all.
A test could establish a relationship.
It couldn't explain five years of missing history.
That understanding didn't make me feel better.
It made me more determined to wait for evidence instead of building a story from fear.
The following day, I tried to return to my usual routine.
I made coffee.
I cleaned the kitchen.
I answered messages I had been ignoring.
I even managed to read for a while without losing my place.
But when my phone rang, my heart jumped.
It was only an ordinary call.
I felt foolish for how quickly I had reached for it.
I put the phone down and took a breath.
I couldn't keep living every minute as though the answer were about to arrive.
I had to let the day happen.
That afternoon, Nora sent another picture of Ellie.
She was sitting beside Tom, holding something in her hands and looking very serious.
There was no explanation with the picture.
There didn't need to be.
I looked at her face.
The dark curls.
The brown eyes.
The familiar smile.
I thought about how easily I had dismissed the resemblance when I first met her.
I had told myself it was grief making me see what I wanted to see.
Perhaps grief had made me notice it more sharply.
But noticing a resemblance and knowing the truth were different things.
I saved the picture beside the earlier one.
Then I put my phone away.
For the first time since Nora brought the envelope to my house, I managed to get through the rest of the afternoon without checking for a message every few minutes.
It wasn't peace.
It was simply a little room to breathe.
I knew the answer would come when it came.
And when it did, I would have to face it.
Click here to continue reading: PART 8: My Sister Had Finally Found the Child She Longed For, and I Began to Understand That the Truth Would Belong to Both of Us
My Sister Came to My Kitchen With an Envelope, and the First Thing She Said Made Me Fear the Worst
Part 7 of 12
