Bombshell. Lynda Curnyn

was nothing to grieve, right?

      I had also come to a decision, despite Angie’s prodding that I meet this newfound aunt and sister. Although I was more curious about them than I let on, I decided I didn’t want to know them. Didn’t want to care for the family who had only contacted me out of a sense of obligation.

      “That was delicious, Grace,” Angie said, leaning back in her chair, having eaten so heartily of the stir fry once she had been assured the chicken wouldn’t kill her, she looked ready for a cab ride downtown and a pillow. That was fine with me. I was more than ready to be alone.

      Unfortunately, Angie had other ideas. “So, I brought over a toothbrush and a change of underwear….” she began.

      “Oh, Angie, you don’t need to stay,” I immediately protested. But feeling bad at the hurt look in her eyes, I relented.

      She beamed. “Great. I’ll run out and get us some Double Chocolate Häagen-Dazs. This is gonna be fun, Gracie. Just like old times when we used to do sleepovers back in Brooklyn….”

      It was more like old times than even I expected, especially when Angie forewent the sofa bed, insisting instead on sharing my bed.

      So there we were, lying side by side in the dark, just like when we were in junior high. We had indulged ourselves on ice cream while Angie talked excitedly about the location Justin had found to shoot the opening scene in his film. We eventually moved on to other topics we shared in common, like men.

      Angie listened quietly while I expressed my relief over having Ethan out of my life. “I don’t think he would have handled this whole business with Kristina Morova very well….” I said, unexpectedly bringing up the subject I had studiously avoided all evening.

      I felt Angie’s eyes on me in the dark. As if she sensed the unease I was feeling. Without saying a word, she took my hand in hers. And despite this independent front I was trying to put on, I was painfully glad I wasn’t alone right then. Even so, it wasn’t until I heard Angie’s breath fall in the deep, rhythmic pattern of sleep that I allowed myself to weep.

      I’m not sure how long I let the tears roll quietly down my face, my body shaking with the effort of holding back any sobs that might wake Angie, but the tide eventually stopped, allowing me to turn and look at my sleeping friend with a sad smile. I really hadn’t lost a thing, had I? I still had my best friend. My family, whom, I realized with a sudden shiver of unexpected anxiety, I needed to call.

      There was no hurry, I thought as I felt myself slip into sleep. And I was nearly submerged in a blissfully unconscious state when the sound of a cell phone ringing jarred me awake once more.

      “Shit,” I heard Angie mutter. She glanced at me as I eyeballed her groggily. “Sorry, Grace,” she said, scrambling from the bed.

      I watched her shadowy form move across the bedroom and out the door, which in her hurry to get out of the room, she had left ajar. Open just enough for me to hear her rummage through her pocketbook, locate the still-ringing phone and silence it.

      “Hey, sweetheart…” I heard her say.

      Justin, I realized drowsily.

      “I know, I know. I miss you, too, baby….”

      I felt my insides soften along with Angie’s voice as I imagined Justin in their apartment alone, longing for Angie just as surely as she was longing for him.

      To be so loved—

      My heart sank with sudden swiftness.

      I realized I had lost something tonight. Something even greater than a fifty-one-year-old woman I had never known, yet was bound to in the most intimate of ways.

      Hope.

      6

      “You may admire a girl’s curves on the first introduction, but the second meeting shows up new angles.”

      —Mae West

      The last person I expected to revive my spirit was Irina Barbalovich, but when I stepped into the office on Monday morning and found a seven-foot-tall cardboard effigy of her staring me in the face, I felt oddly bolstered. Maybe it was the way her pretty blond hair blew in the nonexistent wind, or the way she stood, hip jutting, chin tilted as if she had every reason in the world to be happy.

      I suppose she did, judging by the amount of money the Dubrow clan was dangling before her pretty blue eyes, hoping to lure her in.

      “What’s with the Irina doll in the lobby?” I asked Lori, who was already at her desk.

      “Dianne ordered it,” Lori replied. “I think she’s planning on inviting Irina up to the offices for a tour.”

      I nodded at this bit of information, studying the face of the woman everybody wanted to call their own.

      “She’s pretty amazing, huh?” Lori said, coming to stand beside me. Her gaze roamed from Irina’s cardboard face to mine. “You know, you could be her mother.”

      Her mother? Alarm shot through me and my hand went to my cheek, as if my advancing age was suddenly apparent for the entire world to see.

      Lori blushed, probably because she realized her comment had landed right on my thirty-four-year-old ego. “What I meant was, you two kinda look alike. You know, similar coloring, the shape of the face…”

      I smiled. As a face-saving comment, it was a good one. I suppose it’s not every day a woman gets compared to the reigning supermodel.

      I studied the image more closely, then realized that whatever faint resemblance Lori saw likely had to do with the fact that we both had roots in Eastern Europe. I guess there was a similarity in our facial structure and in the slight tilt to our eyes, but she looked more Slavic than I did. “My mother was Ukrainian,” I said, unthinkingly. Then I realized that was probably the first time in my life I had ever referred to Kristina Morova as my mother. And in light of the new revelations I had had over the weekend, the word stabbed at me.

      Lori blinked, then frowned. “Really? Didn’t you tell me your parents were Irish?”

      Now I was frowning. I suddenly remembered that no one in the office knew I was adopted. Mostly because I didn’t feel a need to share my personal history with anyone, outside of Angie, Justin, the DiFranco family and the few boyfriends I had allowed myself to open up to. According to ninety percent of the world, my parents were Thomas and Serena Noonan, a retired history professor and his lovely musician wife, living in New Mexico.

      “My father is Irish,” I said, backpedaling. That was true. Black Irish. My adoptive mother was, technically, a mix of Irish and German and a bit of English thrown in. I bit back a sigh as I thought of my parents, realizing that I still needed to call them—had assured Angie I would do so.

      But suddenly I wondered what telling them would accomplish. Nothing had changed in my life. Not really. In fact, once I let go of the harrowing disappointment the letter sent through me, I found myself feeling lighter. More free. I suppose there was something to the notion of living without expectation. If you had nothing to look forward to, you had nothing to lose.

      “Her hair’s longer than yours. And not as blond,” Lori was saying now.

      “Yeah, well, that’s a good hairdresser for you,” I said, a hand moving to my chin-length locks as I tried to engage myself. “Her eyes are bluer,” I added absently, my thoughts still on all that I did not want to talk about.

      “Still, there’s something there,” Lori persisted, as if sensing some unease in me and hoping to cover it over by raising me to the heights of Irina’s beauty.

      I stared hard at the effigy, suddenly wanted to resist any link to the supermodel. Any link that might somehow tie me to Kristina. But as I studied Irina’s cool confidence, I realized there was something I could learn from her. What was Irina Barbalovich but a farm girl from Russia with a pretty face? She had started her life afresh the moment she had landed in this country. I could start anew,