“Did my mother ever speculate about where I might’ve come from?”
“Never. She just always said you were meant to be hers. She finally got the baby she’d prayed for.”
“Why didn’t she just get pregnant?” Ryan asked.
“She couldn’t. She was diabetic. Her doctors didn’t think she could live through a pregnancy. It woulda been too dangerous for her and the baby. Bailey here was her blessing.”
They sat quietly for a few minutes, taking in the information. Lucy went into another coughing fit for a moment, and Bailey thought she’d pass out from lack of oxygen.
She stopped and pointed her cigarette to the right. “You were named for the street you were found on. Right there.”
“It’s around here?” Ryan asked, sitting up quickly.
“Yeah, right around the corner. The house is still there. Used to be a field across the street. Now it’s an elementary school.”
Bailey and Ryan looked at each other. “Do you want to check it out?” he asked. She nodded and looked back at her aunt. “Do you mind if we go for a walk?”
Her face crinkled up into a weird smile. “No, you go on. I don’t get around much, so I’ll wait here. Just go up the street and make a right. It’s on the corner of Bailey and State Street.”
Bailey and Ryan stepped outside and took a simultaneous deep breath. “I hate to be rude,” he said, eyeing Lucy’s house sideways as they headed up the street. “But it’s wholly unfair that she’s outlived Helen.”
Bailey snickered at him, then gave him a stern look. “Shame on you.”
They turned the corner, and Bailey stopped walking to look at the street sign. Sure enough, that was her name up there. “Bailey Drive,” she whispered.
“You sure you want to do this?”
She nodded and took another deep breath. “If my parents hadn’t moved to South Lake Tahoe, I would’ve grown up in this neighborhood.”
“Instead, you grew up in the house next to mine.”
She turned to look at him. “I’m so glad we moved.”
He held a hand out for her. She looked at it then linked her fingers with his, forcing a fake smile. “I can do this.”
“I know. So, what are you waiting for?”
They turned and walked toward State Street, hand in hand, and Bailey gained more relief from touching him than she could have ever felt from anything else. For the first time in days, she felt like they might just get past what happened on the boat after all. But she couldn’t ignore how good it felt just to touch him. She shook off that thought and surged ahead to her old house.
“I vaguely remember this,” she said, staring at the house. “I remember the field across the street.”
He turned toward the school then back to the house before pulling her to the side yard. “It was right around here. I remember from one of the pictures in the newspaper article.”
The bushes were gone. Now a picket fence bordered the house. It looked like a perfect, little dollhouse, the white shutters gleaming under the sun. Everything was freshly painted, and pots full of flowers hung from the eves.
“Makes sense, too,” Ryan said, waving his finger at the school. “If all that was an empty field, nobody would’ve seen anything.”
Bailey felt a pit open up in her stomach as she stared at the side yard. That was where someone who should have loved her had left her to die. Cold, heartless—and to their own child. And if it wasn’t a parent that left her, why wasn’t anyone looking for her? “Ryan, if it was a mistake, if this was a huge misunderstanding, wouldn’t someone be looking for me?”
He squeezed her hand. “I would think so.”
“If someone was looking for me, wouldn’t they have found me by now? Wouldn’t they have found me before we moved to Tahoe?” Her throat grew tight, and her voice came out thick.
“Bailey, you okay?”
It took everything she had to keep from crying. After several deep breaths, she willed herself to get past the urge.
Ryan pulled their linked hands to his chest, then wrapped his other arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. “It’s okay. We can leave if you want.”
She rested her head on his chest and let go of her tears. She wanted so badly to stop, but with him holding her, she couldn’t fight it.
Ryan rubbed her back and whispered, “It’s okay to cry, Bay. It’s okay to feel bad. And it’s okay to let your friends help you through this.”
She shook her head and squeezed his hand as hard as she could. It wasn’t okay to fall apart in the middle of the street.
“Yes,” he said louder this time, more insistent. “Don’t fucking be a baby and stop crying.”
She snorted through her tears, laughing at him. “You’re so stupid.”
“God, you’re such a brat. When’re you going to learn to cry like a girl?”
She pulled away and tried to break free from his hand, but he held it to his chest until she made eye contact with him.
“Are you okay?” he asked, staring at her in a way that made her want to cry again.
“Fine.” She sniffled, wiping her face with her free hand. “Thank you.”
“Let’s get out of here before the neighbors think we’re casing the place.”
They returned to Lucy’s and talked for another hour before leaving. Bailey tried not to let Ryan know how discouraged she felt. The more digging they did, the more she felt like giving up. He’d worked so hard to research everything for her, and she just wanted to block the entire trip from her memory.
When they stepped into the hotel room, Ryan pulled out his notepad and started writing. Bailey couldn’t sit still. She folded Ryan’s clothes, then lined up their shoes in the bottom of
