By nine that night, the party had resumed as if nothing had happened. Gerald was laughing. Donna was refilling glasses. Megan was showing the birthday guests the video she had taken of me getting slapped. I went downstairs, pulled my faded backpack off the wall, and packed everything I owned that mattered: two shirts, a pair of jeans without holes, a toothbrush, my charger, three hundred forty dollars in cash, and an envelope I had found months earlier in a box Gerald had thrown away.
It had a Virginia state seal on it and the words adoption assistance disbursement summary. I had never understood exactly what it meant. I just knew my name was on it, and Gerald had hidden it from me.
I walked out the front door without telling anyone.
No one stopped me.
The October air was cold enough to sting the welt on my face. I walked down Patterson Avenue with my backpack cutting into my shoulders and no plan beyond away. I made it two miles before headlights slowed behind me.
A black Cadillac Escalade rolled to a stop.
The rear door opened. A tall man in a dark coat stepped out, followed by a red-haired woman carrying a leather portfolio. The man’s hands were shaking. Under the streetlight I saw his eyes first—hazel green, wide-set, the exact same eyes I saw every morning in the bathroom mirror.
He stopped a few feet away and said, very quietly, “I’m sorry to frighten you. My name is Richard Whitford.”
Then his voice broke.
“And I believe I’m your biological father.”
