“What if he’s your donor?” she asks, covering my daughter’s ears despite the fact that she’s still very much a baby and wouldn’t be able to comprehend any of this. “Remember his donor name? Ambitious Athlete? And he was half Italian. Isn’t Catalano an Italian surname?”
“There’s no way.” This kind of thing doesn’t happen. For starters, it’d be a careless and expensive move on the clinic’s part. And one as advanced as Wickham surely has a system in place to prevent this kind of privacy breach.
I steal her phone and scroll through the images again.
Lucia came out with a head of thick black hair when she was born—a far cry from my God-given chocolate-dirt locks. My dad called her Priscilla Presley the first week and thought it was the funniest thing in the world.
But lots of people have black hair. It’s not like it’s rare or anything.
“Did you save the sheet?” she asks.
“What sheet?”
“The Ambitious Athlete one? With his donor number and description?” Carina points to my filing cabinet. She knows damn well I save everything. I’m an informational pack rat.
Rising from my desk, I head over to the cabinet where I keep all of Lucia’s medical records—and every piece of paper the fertility clinic ever sent me home with. Bloodwork. Test results. Appointment confirmations. Follow up schedules. Sliding the drawer out, I pluck out Lucia’s file and flip to the pack, where I kept the original sheet describing Ambitious Athlete.
“Let me see.” Carina reaches for it, but I swipe it away.
“If it is him,” I say, “and it isn’t. It’s not going to change anything.”
She bounces Lucia on her hip, eyes wide and impatient. “Come on. Let’s see.”
“I don’t know if I want to know though.” I chew my bottom lip. “The whole point of this was for it to be anonymous. And then what, when Lucia gets older, I’ll have to make the decision of either telling her who he is and explaining that even though we know who he is, he’ll never be a part of her life—or lying to her and acting like I don’t know. I don’t want to be put in that position.”
“Don’t you think the cat’s already out of the bag?” she asks. “Either it’s Fabian Catalano or it’s not. From here on out, you’re going to hear his name and think of this moment. This question. It’s going to haunt you and you know it. Don’t you want to put your mind at rest? It’s not like it’ll change anything. He’s not going to suddenly have parental rights or be a part of her life. Your day-to-day isn’t going to change. You’re still going to be a single mama doing your thing with the most beautiful baby girl this world has ever seen. Whether or not you know the name of her father won’t change that.”
I place the sheet of paper next to my laptop and fold into my chair, tugging fistfuls of hair and exhaling.
“I’m happy to compare the numbers for you … I could keep that information safe until you decide you want it someday,” she says. It’s not unlike the gender reveal we did last year. Carina accompanied me to my twenty-week scan and the technician wrote the baby’s gender in an envelope, sealing it and giving it to my sister for safekeeping until we could reveal at a small friends and family gathering at my parents’ house.
When I first decided to have a baby, gender wasn’t important.
And I’d have been thrilled either way.
But I’ll never forget the way I felt when that pink confetti flew through the air after I popped the balloon. I was plucking it out of my hair for days after, smiling every time as I daydreamed about a little mini me. About mommy-daughter mani/pedis. Barbies and babies. Lazing by the pool together in matching swimsuits in the summer. The enormous collection of dresses and hair ribbons I was about to start for her. I’d have been just as excited to have a baby boy, but being able to visualize this next chapter of my life without effort quashed any tiny voices in my head telling me I was crazy for doing this.
“You realize the irony in all of this, don’t you?” Carina asks. “You’re a genealogist. You study family histories and make family trees for a living. Legacies are your jam. Now you’ve got the opportunity to fill in the other half of your daughter’s family tree and you’re content just to leave it … leafless?”
She has a point, but I’d accepted that half of her tree would be bare the second I agreed to go the sperm donor route. It was a trade-off I was willing to make in the grand scheme of things. Plus with DNA technology advancing every year, it’s not like she wouldn’t be able to figure out her heritage when the time came.
Lucia coos, clapping and reaching for me.
Typically we have a no-baby-in-the-office-during-work-hours policy, but I can’t not hold her when she gives me that look.
Carina slides her into my arms, and I kiss her warm, pink cheek before studying her deep brown eyes.
My sweet, perfect, beautiful, brown-eyed girl.
My whole world, really.
It’s funny, despite being thirty-five, I hardly remember life before her. All those memories feel like they belong to someone else. The rebellious college years. My brief marriage to Brett. Launching my genealogical services business. Starting over single, fabulous, but still aware that something was missing …
“Nonna always says everything happens for a reason,” Carina quotes our vivacious Italian grandmother. Though the cliché words don’t belong to her, it’s something she says all the time, about everything. If it rains, it means the grass needs watering. If a guy ghosts Carina, it’s because his presence in her life would’ve thrown off her entire path. After my husband left me for another woman, she swore it was because my soul mate is still out there.
I don’t know about all of that—but she’s never been wrong.
The things that don’t work out for us are because something better is waiting in the wings.
Lucia is worth every painful moment of my failed marriage, every tear, every headache, every embarrassed explanation I had to give friends and family.
“She kind of looks like him,” Carina studies my baby’s face.
“You did not just say my nine-month-old baby girl looks like a thirty-seven-year-old Greek god.” I snort.
“The hair and eye color,” she says. “It’s his.”
“A lot of people have that combination …”
Pulling out her phone, she taps something into the screen and flips it to show me. “Look at his eyebrows. The shape of them. Those are Lucia’s brows.”
“I don’t know why you’re trying to hard to sell me on this when it doesn’t matter.”
Carina blows a puff of hair between her lips and slides her phone away. “Fine. You’re right. It’s none of my business. I just think …”
“What? Everything happens for a reason?” I finish her thought.
“Exactly.” She gathers Lucia in her arms and kisses her temple before brushing her jet-black hair from her forehead. “But it’s your life. And Lucia’s. And it’s not my decision. I just would hate for you to spend the rest of your life wondering …”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” I swat her away. “I really need to get back to work.”