“Dakota,” she says, blinking surprised eyes at me. “Oh, Dakota.” Interestingly enough, I can see Saffron sitting at a lounge chair behind my grandmother. Saffron and I haven’t spoken since I saw the documentary four months ago. Seeing her there, the woman I used to call mom, the woman who turned the lives of so many people upside down, I’m not sure what to think.
She smiles at me, but it’s the smile of a broken woman.
“Honey, your grandfather and I have been wanting so badly to talk with you.” Grandma Carmen waves her husband over as I swallow a lump of nervousness and try to still the shaking of my hand. I can see from the tiny thumbnail of myself in the corner of the screen that I don’t look so good.
“Kota!” my grandfather calls out, like we’ve been separated for eons. The sound is enough to choke me. He slides into the chair beside my grandmother, blocking Saffron from my view. “Are you alright? I’m so sorry about the talk show. We wouldn’t have agreed to go on if we’d known what was going to happen.”
“I don’t blame you for that,” I say, trying to get used to this strange discomfort. Saffron. I guess I hadn’t realized how fucking mad I was at Saffron. There’s empathy in me for her, but there’s also this deep-seated rage I hadn’t realized I was holding onto. “But I do blame you for calling that hotline. I hate that I do, but I do.” The words come out in a breathy rush, and I close my eyes tight, thinking about how they might’ve known for two years that I wasn’t their bio grandkid. Two freaking years. What changed? “I’m not even angry that you might’ve known I wasn’t really Saffron’s kid. I don’t care about that. I care that you didn’t love me enough to be selfish.”
The tears brim then, the ones that I promised I wouldn’t shed when I first got here but that keep coming and coming anyway.
“Dakota,” my grandfather starts, exhaling sharply and then glancing over at my grandmother. “I don’t know if this helps any, but I … I regret it, too. I regret it so much.” He drops his face into dirt-stained hands, and my heart clenches so tight that it feels like it might never beat again. He’s been working in the garden and I’m not there to help; he regrets it. He regrets. He regrets it.
“I’m so sorry, Kota,” Carmen chokes, just barely managing to keep herself together. “I didn’t think it would be like this. I thought … well, I thought we’d at least be able to visit each other. But I couldn’t do anything different than what I did. Tess might not be any of our favorite people, but she’s your mother. She’s a woman who lost her baby through no fault of her own.”
I blink through the tears, but it’s hard to tell how much of the wetness is from the rain, and how much is salty sadness.
“Let me talk to Saffron,” I say, my voice hardening slightly. “I want to hear the story from her lips.”
There’s a brief pause as my grandfather lifts his head up and turns to give my grandmother a look.
Before either of them get a chance to reply, there she is, snatching the phone away. Her face is so familiar, so maternal to me. Even though she was never really a mother, she was the only one I ever really had. Her eyes are dark; her hair is dark. We could very well be related. If it weren’t encoded in our DNA … But that’s one thing nobody can hide from, is it? It can’t be wished away or erased; I am Tess’ daughter and that’s a fact.
“Has she told you about your father yet?” Saffron asks, her voice on the edge of hysteria. She doesn’t look well. Actually, she’s never looked well, not once in my whole life. She’s always been sick and sad and broken. Always.
I just blink at her, because what could she possibly know about my bio dad? What does she even care?
“Why did you pick me?” I ask, because that matters. It matters because there’s no way she just happened to stumble upon a child with such similar looks to her own. Clearly, she’d been watching Tess and me for some time before she pounced. “Did you know my sperm donor or something?”
She owes me answers to such simple questions, surely. Instead of offering them up, Saffron snaps at me.
“Has she told you? If she hasn’t, she should—before he finds you.” Her eyes dart to the side, as if she’s looking for someone.
“Saffron!” Carmen reprimands, but her daughter ignores her, moving into the house and locking the door before either of my grandparents can stop her. I’m torn between putting her words down as a psychotic rant … and being deathly curious about them.
