Chapter Text
a minute from home, but I feel so far from it
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She’s been sitting on this curb for the past two hours, just as she’s done every day for the last week and a half, just watching and waiting for the right moment – if it even exists.
She’s waiting for her mom, though she’s not sure the woman would even recognize who she is.
She’d spent countless nights at the library, digging through the deepest depths of the internet in desperate search for the one who gave her up fifteen years ago.
Lucy Chen of Mid-Wilshire, California is the name she was given after paying two hundred bucks of her savings to a classmate, who has a promising future of becoming either a stalker or CIA agent with his impeccable skills of hacking illegally into every database known to man, to find her parents.
He asked her if she was sure she wanted to open a Pandora’s Box to find her mother when she can just wait another three years and get the unsealed birth records herself, and the only answer she could give was a curt nod and an ‘I’ve never been more sure of anything’.
So, here she sits, a faded and tattered photo clutched in her sweaty hand and glassy, auburn eyes feasted on the white-picket suburban home with toys scattered in the yard underneath a giant oak tree and well-aged rocking chair slowly swaying with the gentle, California breeze.
“Is there something I can help you with?”
She jumps out of her skin and nearly busts her face into the concrete as she stumbles onto her feet, the deep, gravelly voice startling her.
She’s seen him before coming and going from the house on a daily basis, and she can only assume by that, along with the ring on his left hand, that he’s married to Lucy.
“I–No, I…I was just–”
“Whatever handouts you’re looking for, we don’t have any to give you.”
She squints her eyes, and the glassiness is replaced with darkness because she just can’t figure out who the fuck this man thinks he is to assume anything about her.
“I’m not looking for a handout. And this is a public fucking sidewalk, so if I want to sit here all day, I can and I will.”
He seems to be amused by her annoyance and it only makes her more annoyed.
“You’re here when the sun’s coming up and you don’t leave until just before it goes down, so whatever, or whoever, it is that you’re looking for, you might have better luck just knocking on the door.”
His voice is quieter now, with no accusation or assumption on his tongue. She wonders if dots are connecting in his mind — he keeps scanning her features, specifically her eyes, over and over to try and place where he recognizes her from — or if he’s actually just kinder than he came across.
Her irritation withers away just as quickly as it came about and her shoulders sag as she glances over her shoulder at the house once more, a longing gaze at the life that she may never get to live blowing away with the wind.
“I can’t,” She mumbles with a lump in her throat before turning back to him, “Not yet.”
She hears him call after her as she pulls her jacket tighter around her, but she can’t turn back because she’s too inclined to believe the voice in the back of her head telling her this was all a mistake.
She’s lived fifteen years without her mother. What’s fifteen more?
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He hears her soft voice echo through the cracked door of the nursery as he ambles down the hallway, the smile he reserves only for her gracing his lips.
“...somewhere over the rainbow, bluebirds fly…”
He peeks inside and his eyes land on her, her body swaying back and forth with the rocking chair as she brushes her hand gently over their daughter’s head full of dark curls while the baby girl nurses.
God, he’s so in love with her.
“...birds fly over the rainbow, why then, oh, why can’t I?...”
He slowly pushes the door open just enough for him to step through it, and his grin widens when she looks up at him with those eyes he gets lost in every minute of every day.
They’re the same eyes that bear a striking and uncanny resemblance to those he saw on the young girl he’d met only a few minutes ago, but despite the feeling in his gut, he chalks it up to only a coincidence.
“Hi, sweetheart. How was your run?”
He kneels next to her chair and kisses her head softly.
“It was fine. It’s finally getting cooler out, so I should be able to take both kids with me tomorrow.”
“Thank god because Gus threw the biggest tantrum when he saw you try to sneak out the back door without him and then fell asleep in one of the kitchen cabinets because he thought you were playing hide-and-seek.”
“You’re kidding.”
She smirks and looks back down at the baby snoring softly on her chest as she adjusts her shirt to cover herself back up, “When you go in there, don’t open the cabinet under the sink.”
“You left him in there?!”
She lifts a perfectly sculpted brow, tilting her head to the side, “Would you want to wake the three-year-old who last week had a mental breakdown because I threw away the month-old cookie he stashed in the couch cushions?”
He purses his lips, “Good point.”
She eyes him curiously when she notices him staring at their daughter with an expression she can’t quite make out, and it’s evident that something is bothering him.
“Tim, honey, are you alright?”
“Hmm?” He hums, and then brushes her off with a slight shake of his head, “Oh, yeah. I’m fine. I was just thinking about how much I love you.”
“We love you, too, but that’s not what you were thinking about. You don’t typically look like you’ve seen a ghost when you’re thinking about me.”
She watches the wheels turn in his head for a good while before he speaks again.
“I was coming back from my run and there was this young girl sitting on the curb down the street, and I’d seen her before in the exact same spot, but she just sits there and stares , like she’s waiting for this life-changing moment to happen in our front yard or something,” He tells her, remembering the feistiness he’d brought out of her, “I never got her name, but I feel like I know her from somewhere. I just can’t recall where.”
“Is she a suspect you’ve picked up before or maybe the vengeful girlfriend of one?”
“No, I remember the crazy girls because they’re usually throwing objects at my head when I try to detain their boyfriends.” He deadpans, and she giggles, “She just seemed so…familiar. The way she looked, the way she talked. She reminded me of…”
“Of who, sweetheart?”
He sees the concern in her expression and the way her nose scrunches up when she furrows her eyebrows, and he’s starting to think that it was more than just a coincidence.
“…Nobody. It was probably just a little exhaustion on my part. Forget I said anything.”
He kisses her cheek and mumbles something about a shower before practically running out of the nursery, leaving his wife more confused than ever.
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It’s nearing two a.m. and she has yet to succumb to the sleep her body has been begging her for over the last four hours.
But she’s not sure if she’ll ever be able to truly sleep now knowing her mom is laying in her own bed only five blocks away from her.
She wants to talk to her so badly, just hug her and soak up her warmth like she’s longed to do her entire life.
She wants to ask why, why she chose to give her child up and not go looking for her, and she wants to ask if she regrets it, leaving her child behind in a life not worth the heartache it brings.
“You’re thinking too loud,” A voice whispers next to her.
She turns on her side to face her friend and finds the blonde staring back at her intently.
“Thinking about her again?”
She nods, and contemplates her next words.
“Is it wrong to miss someone you’ve never even known?”
“Of course not, but it is wrong to give up on the chance to finally meet that someone. You need to go and knock on their door and talk to her.”
“Funny, her husband said the same thing.”
“You met the husband?!”
“Sorta. He saw me staring and I guess he’s caught me before. He told me to go knock on the door, but…but I just couldn’t.”
Her eyes burn and her throat is full of emotion because she just can’t understand the way the universe works sometimes, taking babies away from their mothers and leaving the babies with a life full of unanswered questions that may never be solved.
“Her life seems…good. Who am I to mess that up?”
She feels a hand reach across the gap between their beds and rest on her arm.
“But haven’t you ever wondered if you might be the one thing her good life is missing?”
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