“What were you planning?” I asked, holding my breath.
My papa shrugged. “Honestly, I didn’t know. I just knew that my husband and I wanted a family desperately and I had a daughter I’d never once seen.”
“She owed you,” Jasper whispered. “For Suda Kaye. She owed you.”
My papa looked at my best friend and nodded once. “She owed me.”
“So one day, Catori, in all her glory, shows up at our house with a big suitcase. She walked in, took in the place, went right to Ian, grabbed his cheeks and kissed the daylights out of him. Then she turned around and did the exact same to me.” He laughed, scratching at his red beard. “She was fire and ice, the wind and the earth and everything in between. A true beauty the likes of which I have never seen.”
“You guys had sex with her!” I stood up and covered my ears. “No, no, no, no, no!”
I felt hands tugging at my biceps and I opened my eyes to see my dad, his hazel eyes twinkling with mirth. “Baby girl, you know women don’t do it for me. Besides, your papa and I had committed to each other and only each other for better or worse. His days of bedding women were long over.”
I frowned. “Then how did I come to be?”
My papa smiled and put his ankle up on his opposite knee, tapping his fingers on his leg. “Catori said after our call she had a dream and she knew what needed to be done. She was going to be our surrogate and donor. Said in her dream she’d given birth to a fire-haired porcelain beauty and the Creator demanded she follow through. Something about karmic debt being paid. I gave her a child, so she gave us one. But there were rules. Hers, not ours.”
I sat back down and chewed on my bottom lip. Jasper snuggled up close to my side and pressed his bony chin to my shoulder.
“She said she’d get pregnant, and then go back home until she was showing. Then she’d come back and stay only until she knew the baby was healthy, home and safely with her parents. Then the universe would be balanced.”
“And you took her up on her offer.”
My papa shrugged. “We were desperate. Only had enough money to go through the in-vitro process once more. If it worked, fate intervened.”
“And it did,” I said softly.
“And it did. We were never so happy as the day Catori took a pregnancy test and it was positive. Shortly after, she left to be with her daughters as we prepared for our baby. We talked often until she appeared again seven months later, you in her belly. We organized all of her doctor’s visits and she stayed in the room that would be yours one day. We had a day bed put in there, the one you slept on when you were out of your crib.”
I smiled, remembering the swirling white iron curlicues of the metal head and footboard I used to trace with my fingers as I fell asleep.
“She was so proud to give you life. Said her girls gave her meaning and you were special.”
My heart warmed and a sense of peace filled me from within.
“Then she only asked for three things of us in exchange for you.”
My mouth went dry and my chin trembled as I waited to hear what the three things were.
“Your name would be Isabeau. She said it means ‘God is my oath’ or ‘pledged to God.’ Catori believed it was her destiny to do this and that you were fated to be born. A gift from the Creator. And in her culture, you don’t deny God or Fate.”
A tear fell down my cheek as I listened to my father tell me my mother believed I was a gift from God. A gift she was meant to bestow on two childless fathers who wanted a family.
“And the other two things?” My voice cracked but I swallowed down the emotions in order to hear the rest.
My papa closed his eyes. “To accept that one day she would be gone from our lives. We were to accept the act for what it was. A gift made by a woman who loved far greater than any other we’ve ever known.”
Dad reached for my papa’s hand and held on to it before he looked at me. “The gift that would give back to us our whole lives long.”
I sniffed and wiped my runny nose. “And the third thing?”
“To have you know love every day of your life, but to not know of her,” my papa whispered.
That had my shoulders quaking as the pain of that admission shot through my veins like burning acid. My birth mother didn’t want to love me. Didn’t want me to know her.
“Exactly three months to the day, when Catori would normally be up nursing you when the sun kissed the sky, we heard you crying. An angry wail that spoke of your hunger for your morning breakfast. Catori had solely nursed you for the first six weeks. The next six we’d been weaning you on to formula and getting you used to us. That morning you had your first day of nothing but formula. We entered your room, her room, to find her gone. Clothes, toiletries, everything just gone. She’d left us a note.” My papa dug through the box once more and brought out a ratty-looking envelope. He pulled out a small piece of lined paper that had seen better days and handed it to me.
Ian and Casey,
Your love knows no bounds. Teach our daughter that gift.
Be well. Be happy. Be a family.
With all my heart,
Catori.
I folded the letter back up and handed it to my papa. He placed it carefully back into the envelope as though it was a treasured correspondence from a loved one. And I guess in their way it was, for Catori Ross gave them me, made us a family.
“And Suda Kaye?” I asked and my papa’s eyes filled with tears once more.
“Today was the first day I’ve ever set eyes on her.” His voice was ravaged with pain and grief.
“Why? Why couldn’t we all have known each other? Be a family with Suda Kaye and Evie and this—” I waved my hand in the air “—this Adam guy.”
“It’s hard to grasp, harder to explain, but Catori wasn’t meant to be in any one place with any one family. She belonged to the wind, the stars, the earth. She had a hunger inside her that could never be quenched by staying still.”
“Then what you’re saying is, Evie and Suda Kaye had her love and sometimes had her in their lives, but mostly she left them, too?”
My papa swallowed and closed his eyes. “I don’t know their story, but I trust that Catori would never harm nor hurt her children intentionally. She gave up everything to give us you. Perhaps she did the same for her husband, Adam, with Evie and Suda Kaye. We sent pictures of you every so often to a post office box she’d given me once. She never sent pictures of Suda Kaye. That was my cross to bear. I accepted you in lieu of a relationship with her.” The admission seemed to gut him as he winced and more tears fell.