My adoptive parents gave me the home and belonging I’d always longed for. After they were gone, however, I was forced to confront a silence that felt louder than anything their lawyer said.
The smell of ink and old paper still lingered in my hair sometimes. Even years after I’d stopped visiting the print shop every day after school. That smell was Dad. It was also home.
I was 12 when Elizabeth and Stan adopted me. For the next 13 years, they never once called me anything but their daughter.
Mom tucked little notes into my lunchbox all through middle school. Dad never forgot my birthday, not once. Not even the year he had pneumonia and showed up at my dorm with a grocery store cake and a fever of 102.
“Jenny-Bean, I once drove 11 hours for a printer part. You outrank a printer part.”
Jenny-Bean. That was my nickname.
I hated it publicly and loved it privately, the way you do with the things that mean you’re somebody’s.
***
I remember the first time Dad let me run the old letterpress at the shop. I was 14 and terrified I’d break it.
“Both hands. Steady pressure. She’s older than me, so respect your elders.”
“The machine is older than you?” I squeaked, horrified.
“By about 40 years. Watch your fingers, kiddo. I like them attached.”
Mom sewed my prom dress from scratch because I’d fallen in love with a design we couldn’t afford. She pricked her fingers so many times she joked the dress was legally half hers through blood loss.
I had three older siblings.
Nicole, warm and quick to laugh, who braided my hair before school picture day. Nathan, quiet and steady, who taught me to parallel park in the church parking lot. And Brandon, the oldest, who smiled at me the way you do a coworker’s kid at a company picnic.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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