To Tell Or Not To Tell - 3

The adoption agent called them about three days later and told them that Lucy didn’t have anything alarming in her pregnancy history. In fact, when her mother was still alive, she made sure that Lucy ate enough healthy food, took her pre-natal vitamins, and had no contact with her “bad” boyfriend. The baby seemed to be healthy, developing normally. The agent also said that Lucy was determined to give up the baby now that she saw them. Before the call, Julie and Paul have talked through all possibilities and decided that even if the baby could develop some health problems in the future they’d still adopt him. “We’ll just watch everything carefully, and sign him up for all possible sports,” Paul said. They ultimately decided to go through with the adoption. Within a couple of days, they furnished the paperwork, and had Lucy sign all the documents. For the rest of Lucy’s pregnancy, they took her into their home and made sure she had everything she needed. Paul and Julie were present during the birth and when the baby was born, he was so defenseless and perfect at the same time, they both fell in love with him right away. They decided to name him Mark after Paul’s father. After a day in the hospital and no complications, Paul and Julie came home a happy young family.

Lucy found a job at some grocery store and a shared apartment for rent. She promised she’d go back to high school in the new school year and disappeared from their life. Julie and Paul were completely and utterly happy as new parents. Mark was a remarkably calm child and already in the third month started to sleep six hours a night. Julie by that time was a mid-level manager at a big accounting firm, and when Mark was about four months she decided to go back to work, first part time in the mornings with the plan of going back full time after Mark turned one and they could enroll him into an infant daycare program…

***

Leaving to Doordash after dinner, Mark reminded his parents to take their saliva samples. Paul and Julie cleaned the table and went upstairs for the evening, to watch some TV as they told the kids. Their master bedroom was on the opposite side from the kids’ bedrooms, they turned the TV on so Alice and Nick did not hear them talking and arguing almost all night about whether they should tell Mark the truth.

Julie finally managed to convince Paul that they had to tell him he had been adopted, but they couldn’t agree upon when.

“We need to do that sooner than later,” Julie was saying. “Delaying it would make it more painful. You know I don’t do well under stress and uncertainty.”

“So when would you tell him?” Paul challenged her.

“Tomorrow, when we give him the samples,” Julie responded.

“Tomorrow?! I’m not ready to do it that soon!” Paul said.

“Why? It’s like ripping off the band-aid, the faster you do it the sooner the wound will heal.”

“He’d be shocked.”

“Of course, he would be. Imagine your parents told you you’d been adopted, and after you just turned 21 at that.”

Paul shook his head, as if trying to shake off his parents’ breaking the news to him.

“That’s why I was always against keeping this a secret,” Julie reminded.

“There’s no use to discuss it now, dear,” Paul said, “We kept it a secret for all these years, so we can’t change anything.”

“That’s why we have to tell him now.”

“Damn this DNA test! I wonder what in the world moved him to do this,” Paul said, clearly annoyed.

“He told you, he was curious about the family history, and he has the right to be.”

They both were silent for a little while.

“Were we bad parents to him?” Julie broke the silence first.

“Of course not, honey! We made every effort to treat him as our own son. Why would you even ask this?”

“Well, it’s like… they always show in movies, remember, once people find out they’d been adopted, they suddenly start re-evaluating their life and relationships with their adoptive parents and siblings. They start remembering all those moments when they think the parents were unfair to them and suddenly it becomes only because they were not their biological parents. Kinda starts making sense…”

“But Mark is not like that! We’ve raised him well, he knows what’s fair and what’s not.”

“I hope so. But what if he doesn’t see it that way? Did we ever treat him differently from Alice and Nick?”

“If we did, it was because he was the oldest one and we wanted him to learn respect and responsibility for the younger ones. They all know we love them.”

“Right,” Julie sighed and then gasped, “What if he wants to find his biological parents?”

“I’m almost sure he will. Anyone would, in this situation. That’s why I didn’t want to tell him in the first place.”

“I get it, but now we’ll have to, Paul.”

“Well, if we are going to tell him the truth, we’ll have to also tell him that they stole him from us. Maybe that will make him think harder.”

Julie plunged into the sea of memories again. She remembered that awful day as if it happened just yesterday. Mark was a little over six months then. Julie picked him up from the daycare on the way home from her part-time job, came home, and started prepping for dinner while Mark was taking a nap. It was a nice day, so after Mark woke up she decided to take him for a stroll in the local park. In about half an hour, Mark signaled that he needed a diaper change and Julie realized that she forgot the diaper pack at home. There was a grocery store nearby, so she decided to pop in there just to pick up the diapers. She left the baby in the stroller outside, hoping for a quick run. There were a couple of people in line before her, and when she came out of the store Mark was gone from the stroller.

Julie’s body physically reacted to the memory just like on that day: Her limbs felt numb and cold, her heart dropped to her knees, and she started to gasp for air. She grabbed Paul by the arm.

“What is it, honey?” Paul asked.

“It all came back to me, that day… I was running around, up and down the street, asking everyone if they’d seen anyone with a baby that looked like Mark. It all happened so fast, I was in that store not longer than five minutes!”

“I know, dear, I’m glad you called me almost right away.”

“Yes, and remember that policewoman, chastising me for leaving the baby outside the store instead of doing her job and looking for Mark?”

“Yes, she made me so mad, I wanted to hit her. All she did was file the effing report! Utterly useless!”

They both were deep in the memory hole now.

“Remember where we found them three days later, on our own, with no help from the police?” Paul asked.

“Of course I do, the filth, the stench of that abandoned warehouse, all those junkies in there, and our poor baby in dirty and smelly clothes because she had no change for him, didn’t even grab Mark’s bag in the stroller, no money for food or anything!”

“Yes, they were both just sitting there, in a trance, I still doubt that he even registered what was happening. And Lucy, with her crazed look, demanding five grand in exchange for the baby? I still wonder if she’d have come through with her threats had we not given her the money.”

“She had a knife to our baby’s neck, Paul, we couldn’t have risked it, in her condition.”

“Yeah, I know, honey, but I still believe we were crazy just to give her the money. Should have called the police.”

“But then they would have disappeared, ran away. I couldn’t stand Mark crying and her just sitting there, threatening to kill both him and herself if we called the police.”

“I was so worried about you, staying there with them while I went to the bank to get the cash. Also, I’m glad she didn’t ask for fifty thousand, we would have been screwed then,” Paul smirked bitterly.

“But remember how relieved she was to get the money? She almost threw Mark at me after she grabbed the money and started counting it.”

“Yes, and we just left! Should have called the police.”

“They were just kids, honey, young and stupid kids. They were younger than Mark now!”

“For sure, and Mark has so much more character and maturity. That kid, his father, had the audacity to come back and demand more money from us when they ran out again.”

“Yes, yes, and when you refused, he simply waited for everyone to be out of the house and stole everything of value he could find!” Julie shook her head.

“Yep, and that’s when I decided it was time to move. They would have not let us alone and you didn’t want to call the police on them…”

They reminisced more about the details of their past life that was catching up with them now. They hardly slept that night, going back and forth on what and how they should tell their son. In the morning, they collected their saliva samples, put all the tubes back into the box and decided to tell Mark before he mails them back.

When Mark stopped by in the evening to pick up the samples, they did not have to talk him into sitting down for dinner with them. It was the full family dinner, just like the ones they had regularly before Mark moved to campus. Everyone was happy, chatting and exchanging news and banter. Julie and Paul threw looks at each other, hoping that the other one will start the conversation. When the dinner was almost over, Julie finally said, “Mark, dad and I have to tell you…”

“That we nearly screwed up the samples!” Paul exclaimed and laughed, shooting a look to Julie not to tell anything. Julie played along.

When Mark left with the DNA box, Julie asked Paul why he stopped her from telling Mark.

“I had an idea,” he answered, “Remember how worried you were that he might want to find his parents?”

“Yeah,” Julie said, confused.

“Well, I want to find them first…”

“Not again, Paul,” Julie said, visibly frustrated.

“No, honey, just hear me out. Before we tell him the truth, let’s find out what is happening with them. If we know about them, we’d be prepared to answer his questions. Maybe he won’t want to know them if they continued on that path…”

“All right, so when are we going to tell him then?”

“Well, he said it takes 6-8 weeks for the DNA test results to come in, so we have time. We’ll tell him right after I find out about his parents…”

Continue to Part 4 below: