your mom never goes to the doctor?”
“Never.”
“So were you, like, born at home?”
“I was adopted.”
“Oh yeah?” He was quiet for a few moments. “Do you know who your real parents are?”
Laurel snorted. “Nope.”
“Why is that funny?”
Laurel bit her lip. “Promise not to laugh?”
David raised his hand in mock seriousness. “I swear.”
“Someone put me in a basket on my parents’ doorstep.”
“No way! You’re totally messing with me.” Laurel raised an eyebrow at him. David gaped. “Honest?”
Laurel nodded. “I was a basket child. I wasn’t really a baby, though. I was, like, three and my mom says I was kicking and trying to get out when they answered the door.”
“So you were a kid? Could you talk?”
“Yeah. Mom said I had this funny accent that stuck around for about a year.”
“Huh. Didn’t you know where you came from?”
“Mom says I knew my name but nothing else. I didn’t know where I was from or what happened or anything.”
“That is the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“It made for a huge legal mess. After my parents decided they wanted to adopt me, they had a private investigator looking for my birth mother and all sorts of stuff about temporary custody and whatever. Took over two years before everything was final.”
“Did you live in a foster home or something?”
“No. The judge my parents worked with was pretty cooperative, so I got to live with them through the whole process. A social worker came out to see us every week, though, and my parents weren’t allowed to take me out of the state till I was seven.”
“Weird. Do you ever wonder where you came from?”
“I used to. But there are no answers, so it gets frustrating to think about after a while.”
“If you could find out who your real mom is, would you?”
“I don’t know,” she said, pushing her hands into her pockets. “Probably. But I like my life. I’m not sorry I ended up with my mom and dad.”
“That’s so cool.” David gestured towards a driveway. “This way.” He glanced up at the sky. “It looks like it’ll rain soon. Let’s drop our bags and hopefully we’ll have time to see the tree.”
“Is this your house? It’s pretty.” They were passing in front of a small white house with a bright red door; multicoloured zinnias filled a long bed that ran along the front of the house.
“Should be,” David said, turning up the front walk. “I spent two weeks this summer painting it.”
They dropped off their bags by the front door and walked into a neat and simply decorated kitchen. “Can I get you something?” David asked, walking into the kitchen and opening the fridge. He pulled out a can of Mountain Dew and grabbed a box of Twinkies from the cupboard.
Laurel forced herself not to wrinkle her nose at the Twinkles and looked around the kitchen instead. Her eyes found a fruit bowl. “Can I have one of those?” she asked, pointing to a fresh green pear.
“Yeah. Grab it and bring it along.” He held up a water bottle. “Water?”
She grinned. “Sure.”
They pocketed their snacks and David pointed towards the back door. “This way.” They walked to the back of the house and he opened the sliding door.
Laurel stepped out into a well-kept, fenced backyard. “Looks like a dead end to me.”
David laughed. “To the untrained eye, perhaps.”
He approached the breeze-block fence and, with a quick, leaping bound, pulled himself to the top and perched there.
“Come on,” he said, holding out his hand. “I’ll help you.”
Laurel looked up at him sceptically, but extended her hand. With surprisingly little effort, they hopped over the fence.
The tree line came right up to the fence, so with that one small jump they stood in a forest with damp, fallen leaves forming a thick carpet under their feet. The dense canopy hushed the sound of cars in the distance, and Laurel looked around appreciatively. “This is nice.”
David looked up with his hands on his hips. “It is, I guess. I’ve never been a big outdoors person, but I do find a lot of different plants in here that I can look at under my microscope.”
Laurel squinted up at him. “You have a microscope?” She snickered. “You really are a science geek.”
David laughed. “Yeah, but everyone thought Clark Kent was a nerd too, and look how that turned out.”
“You telling me you’re Superman?” Laurel asked.
“You just never know,” David said teasingly.
Laurel laughed and looked down, suddenly shy. When she looked up, David was staring at her. The glade seemed even quieter as their eyes met. She liked the way he looked at her, his eyes soft and probing. As if he could learn more about her just by studying her face.
After a long moment he smiled, a little embarrassed, and tilted his head towards a faint path. “The tree’s this way.”
He led her on a path that wound back and forth, seemingly without purpose. But after a few minutes, he pointed to a large tree just off the path.
“Wow,” Laurel said. “That is cool.” As David had said, it was actually two trees, a fir and an alder, that had sprouted close together. Their trunks had merged and twisted, resulting in what looked like a tree that grew pine needles on one side and broad leaves on the other.
“I discovered it when we moved here.”
“So where’s your dad now?” Laurel asked, sliding her back down a tree and settling into a soft pile of leaves. She pulled the pear out of her pocket.
David made a low laugh in his throat. “San Francisco. He’s a defence lawyer with a big firm.”
“Do you see him very often?” she asked.
David joined her on the ground, his knee resting gently against her thigh. She didn’t scoot away. “Every couple of months. He’s got a private jet and he flies into McNamara Field and takes me back with him for the weekend.”
“That’s cool.”
“I guess.”
“You
