Notice Me

Chapter 41: Foster or Perez

My entire body trembled as I sat there staring at my phone, willing for my mom to pick up. I had it on speaker in front of Tristan and I on the bed. "Hi honey, how's everything going?" My mom's voice came through the receiver. My mom or my adoptive mother's voice sounded so chipper on the phone, its the way she always sounds when talking to me. Just the very thought caused me to burst out into tears, how the hell am I going to handle the actual news if I'm wailing like a blubbery walrus now?

"Lise, honey what's wrong?" My mom asked full of concern, I just shook my head at the phone as though she could really freaking see me. I couldn't breathe as I sat there fanning at myself with my one good hand, blowing out my breath of frustration. Tristan sat there staring at me helplessly as he rubbed my back in a soothing manner.

"Hi Mrs. Foster, it's Tristan." He spoke up so that I didn't have to. He paused for a second most likely trying to get his thoughts in order. "We're calling because we need to ask you something very important." Tristan emphasized on the word important.

"Hi Tristan dear, is Lise ok?" Her motherly tone meant that she expected a straight up honest answer from him.

"She's fine, but we need to know...is Lise..." Tristan sounded unsure and I wasn't used to hearing him so doubtful. "Is she adopted?" Silence...silence...and more silence filled the line as we waited for a response of any kind from the woman I've called my mother for the past sixteen years.

Then came the audible gasp and a series of sobs, "How...how did you find out." Mom breathed into the line in disbelief. I could hear her crying in the background, my heart ached so badly to comfort her. Even if I'm adopted she'll always be my mother, but how could they not tell me the truth?

"We were going to tell her when she turned eighteen, I swear we were." My Mom uttered into the line her voice sounding apologetic.

I needed answers, now that the truth is out on the table. "Where d-did y-you get me from?" I stuttered in shock. My body was sitting there in Spain, but my mind was spinning all over the place. Just when you think things in your life are going great, there's always a monkey wrench thrown in there.

More nerve-wracking sobs were heard before mom managed to calm down enough to speak. "Your father and I were in Spain on our honeymoon. I already knew when we got married that I wasn't able to have children."

Mom's infertile, how did I not know this? I just always figured they didn't want anymore children, that me being an only child was a blessing. Only to find out now that I might possibly be the missing baby of four children who were given birth to the Perez family?

"We...we were having a picnic in the woods when we heard your cries." Mom hiccuped for air as she continued with her explanation. "You were so tiny, so tiny...just a naked newborn baby abandoned there in the woods!"

"There was no one in sight, you were just left there on a sheet. Whoever it was disposed of you like you were trash, so we did the only humane thing we could think of and took you home with us." My mom's voice sounding a bit on the defensive side. They saved me...my parents saved me. If they left me in the woods there's no doubt in my mind I would've been eaten by animals, froze or starved to death.

"I think we've found my real family." I whispered as I mindlessly picked at the comforter underneath my fingers.

"Honey, where are you? What makes you think you've found your real family up at the Evan's cabin? What's going on, do I need to come there?" My mom prattled off wanting answers.

"I'm not sure yet, but I promise I'll call you back when I get some answers." I said giving her the best form of an answer that I could.

There was still one more question I needed to ask of her before I could come to some form of acceptance. "How'd you come up with my name, Annalise?" I asked.