The drive to Modesto went by quickly, and I concentrated on the road during the drive. The music was loud, and Felix and I held hands. Occasionally I glanced down at the seemingly innocent touch and marveled at how lucky I was to have finally broken through the barriers that had kept us at arm’s length. Remembering last night, I started to grin slightly and felt a small slap on my hand. I looked over at Felix, and he grinned back, also remembering.

“Why did you slap me?” I asked.

“Concentrate on the drive,” he said, wryly.

There was a pit in my stomach as we approached Dad’s street, but I also felt a determination to try and plow through the barrier I’d been up against. I was still a long way from normal, but at least I wasn’t having suicidal thoughts. At least, not that much. My birth mother passed through my thoughts a few times, as well as some strangely intense anger at my adoptive mother for having left us. I felt really alone, most days. Felix certainly helped to battle that, but he didn’t have any more answers than I did. Which is why it was time to go through the garage and find out as much as we could.

We pulled up in the driveway, and instead of automatically going into the house, I turned off the engine and sat in the car, staring straight ahead.

“You want me to wait here?” he asked.

“No, I want you to come in, but give me a minute, ok?” I said.

“Of course.”

I stepped out of the car and hesitated outside the battered wooden sliding door. I thought of how much my Dad had loved it in here, how it contained the essence of his passion and comfort. How much of the little kid in him was in here still. And it pained me that he wouldn’t be in here again, tinkering away. How we wouldn’t watch Star Wars together again. How he would never again pilot a plane or make those terrible puns he loved so much. Tears welled in my eyes. But I wanted to drink in these parts of him, to swim through the pain and feel him around me again. I took a deep breath, gripped the handle hard, and yanked the door.

I fumbled for a moment in the dark and found the switch for the overhead lights. The room was immediately bathed in a warm glow from above. I activated the smaller, sharper halogen lights over the workbench where Dad assembled his model airplanes. The desk was both wide and long, a converted workbench moved to the middle and facing the door. The top of the workbench held a scattered variety of tools as well as outdated bills and a few plane sketches. His computer was also there, the tower and his filing cabinet tucked underneath. The shelves on the side of the garage were packed with boxes of all sizes, marked ”Christmas Decorations”, “Model Parts”, “Doorknobs”, and “Knick-Knacks”. Dad had never let me into those boxes, saying they were not for children.

There were a few chairs, a liquor cabinet, a fridge with brick-hard sandwiches, and a few blankets. I was overwhelmed by the gentle masculinity in here; I felt as though I was seeing this room for the first time.

Felix was a few moments behind me, and was standing near the door, taking it all in.

“Are you ok?” he asked.

“Yeah. Whatever that means,” I replied, shaking my head.

He nodded silently, and headed over to one of the boxes on the shelves marked “Model Parts”, as I leaned down to the filing cabinet and opened it up. I pulled out a variety of marked files, and stacked them on the desk. I figured I might as well check and see what he kept around, see if there was anything in there I needed to worry about.

A few minutes later, both Felix and I said simultaneously,

“You need to see this.”

I grabbed the files and came over to the box he was peering into. Instead of model airplane parts, there was a huge pile of newspaper clippings, all apparently following some traveling circus show. In the files I found and passed to Felix, there were a variety of letters between the adoption agency and Mom and Dad, as well as baby pictures of me, report cards, essays, and other projects.

“Pale, did you see these?” Felix asked, astonished.

“Yes. It looks like Dad was actually in correspondence with…my birth mother all these years. I’m not sure what this means; I thought the adoption was closed.”

“Did you two ever talk about your adoption? Didn’t you search for your birth mother?”

“Dad explained it to me when I was very little, and though I brought it up a few times, it was clear he didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t want him to feel betrayed any further. I mean, after Mom left ... ” I staggered slightly and felt light headed. Felix grabbed my arm to keep me from falling backwards.

“Ok, maybe this is enough for one day,” he said firmly.

“No! I can handle this. I want to know everything. He lied to me. He lied!” I could hear that I was shouting, but I didn’t care. Felix gave me a long appraising look and sat down a little ways from me.

The next few hours were both painful and illuminating. As Felix and I pored over letters and newspaper articles, reports, court papers, and other legal documents, I found an entirely different man than the one who raised me.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

The adoption was actually semi-closed, where the birth parent still had contact with the adoptive parents, though it was kept fairly limited. Dad made duplicates of everything I did and sent along relevant stages of my childhood to my birth mother. There were letters back and forth between them, where my birth mother asked a few times if she could see me, but my Dad always told her “No.” After my adoptive mom left, I think he felt that he couldn’t handle the risk that my birth mother would’ve posed, inserting another mother figure into my life. Plus, I bet he felt threatened that she might petition the courts to reverse the adoption. Such things can be done in California. Dad had a whole FAQ on adoption in California in one of those files. There were several newspaper articles that tracked where the traveling circus went, and all of her correspondence was from different towns, coinciding with the newspaper chronicling he had done.

Reliving my childhood, seeing the secret relationship between them, finding out my mother was in the circus, was staggering. I kept shaking my head and rubbing my temples. Felix gently pulled me away after six hours, and we went down the street to my favorite Mexican restaurant to process and eat something.

“I can hardly believe it. My birth mother is a carnie. My Dad had a secret relationship with her all these years. No wonder he wanted me to get a regular job and settle down--he was worried I would end up wild like her! And why did she give me up? Does she know who my father was? Why did she stop asking to see me so long ago? Why didn’t he let me meet her? My whole life, I could’ve had a mother? Is this why my adoptive mother left?”

I slumped over the table, exhausted by the sheer intensity of how many questions remained unanswered. Piercing through the haze of hurt and disbelief was the grief again, that I couldn’t confront him. That he wasn’t here to answer these questions, explain his thinking. I felt so totally alone all over again, I couldn’t bear it.

Felix sat through my rant in silence, only reaching out to hold my hand. I reluctantly gave it to him. It was hard to feel trust just then, and I didn’t know what was real anymore.

“Listen. Your dad loved you very much. It sounds like he kept in touch with her because he thought you might want to look for her one day, and since she’s so hard to track down, he just kept tabs, for when you did ask. We know that she wanted to see you, but we don’t know more than that. We need to look over the rest of the letters. And we certainly don’t have to do that today, or even here. Why don’t we pack up the lot of it and bring it back to San Francisco. That way you can look it over without dealing with…you know, Modesto.” He waved in a general manner around us.

I looked at him bleakly. Our food arrived, and I picked at an enchilada while he wolfed down a burrito. “I can’t believe he didn’t talk to me about it. I mean, he knew he was getting worse and didn’t tell me that either. I thought he trusted me-” I broke off as sobs caught in my throat. I covered my face and pushed away from the table, bolting outside. I sat on the curb in the shade and buried my face in my knees.

Felix came out a moment after me, and sat down next to me, not touching. He said quietly, “He was just protecting you, that’s all. That’s what this whole thing was about, Daisy. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust you. It sounds like he pretty much ONLY trusted you. He was your father. He wanted to protect you for as long as possible, until you were ready. And it’s unfair, and it sucks, but Life doesn’t wait ‘til you are ready. Which is what makes acts like this, on his part, all the more precious. I never had a dad, so I don’t even know what that feels like. But I recognize it, because my Mom was that fierce, especially since I’m the baby in the family.” He flashed a grin.

“I’m so sorry all this is happening at once. I think this crappy town brings you down. I think this crappy Mexican food isn’t working its magic. And I think we should get out of here, play music really loud, and get drunk.” He nudged my legs, and I put out a hand, to keep from falling over.

“Felix?” I said, lifting my head.

“Yeah?” he asked, looking off into traffic.

“I don’t know who I am, or where I come from. Everything I knew is a lie. Everything that mattered to me, is crumbling. If you are just here to swoop in because you see some wounded bird, then just don’t. I don’t want this thing with you, to just be happening because of all this shit going on. I want a real thing with you. I don’t think I’m up for giving much, but…” Felix leaned in to me, and gave me his shotgun look. The one that shows me he’s got me in his sights, and there’s nowhere for me to go.

“You really are a bit of an idiot sometimes, Daisy. It’s not like that at all. I trust you; I’ve told you things I haven’t shared with anyone. You let me be there for you, even though you have other friends who can help. You have a good heart, you are damned sexy, and you keep surprising me. I want the real thing, too. Let’s just get you through this, ok? Then we’ll talk again.”

I’d been holding my breath and didn’t know it. It was bad enough that my whole family and past were coming apart. I couldn’t have handled it if Felix wasn’t genuine. I had to make sure. I spent a few minutes getting my breathing under control, and Felix held me in a tight hug. It seemed ridiculous, that in a cheap Mexican food parking lot we cinched our bond together, but I had needed something to anchor me, and so I was glad regardless of the where.

We drove back to the house and put everything back in boxes and loaded his van. I called Jana on my cell and filled her in on the garage findings. She was speechless when she heard about the letters and cautiously asked if I was ok. I told her the plan to take everything back to SF, and she was relieved that I would have time to go through everything on my own. She offered to come down in a day or two, and I accepted. I had a few days off coming up and planned to dive in at that time.

We managed to get nearly everything packed up and left all the real model airplane parts behind.

Once we were back in San Francisco, we went straight to a pub and spent the next few hours forgetting my burdens. Felix and I played a few games of pinball, then tripped down the sidewalk to my place, clumsily made out and crashed. Our night before was so tender and beautiful, we had spent it leisurely exploring each other’s bodies, making out and going to ‘second base’. We had decided breathlessly we weren’t going to fully seal the deal yet. This time, I wasn’t sure if we were paying attention to such rules. But by the time we were mostly undressed and fumbling around, the sexual oomph had gone out of both of us. We were almost comically knocked over the head by the Sandman and collapsed in an ungraceful heap on top of the covers.

In the late morning, we both woke up like sleeping cats, stretching and yawning on top of each other. Without a word, we both rubbed sleep from our eyes, groped for the aspirin and headed in to brush our teeth. I finished and walked back into the main room to pick out some work clothes to get dusty in.

Felix aimed into the kitchen, poured two bowls of cereal, and sliced a banana into them. He handed me a bowl and said, “You know, I’m glad we didn’t, last night.”

“Me too. Not yet.”

We grinned sheepishly at each other, and ate our breakfast in the gloomy November light.