Awakening (Children of Angels) (10 page)

This time, there was no mistaking.
He
was standing there, in the background but close enough for her to make out his features clearly, and to know it was him. She stared at his face and frowned harder, wondering how on earth this boy she had dreamed about could have been there when she was just a tiny baby. In her dream he seemed a little older than her, but she would have guessed he was no older than sixteen or seventeen. In the picture, he was exactly as he had been in her dream.

She struggled to make sense of it, to figure out a logical explanation. Involuntarily, a voice slipped into her mind, Leonara’s voice, telling her that human logic was foolish and silly, that there was only Truth. She pushed the thought away, squashing it as quickly as it had risen up.

“
What is it, Mia?
”
her father asked.

“
Hmm?
”
she had almost forgotten they were in the room with her, they had been so quiet and so still while they watched
“
Oh
…
nothing I just
…
I thought I saw someone I knew, that
’
s all.
”

Her parents exchanged a confused glance, which was not missed by Mia, who then felt all the more obliged to come up with a reasonable explanation.

“
Who did you think you saw, honey?
”
asked her mother.

“
Oh
…
no-one, really. Just a face I recognized. I meant I think I
’
ve seen him before, not that I really
know
him. Do
you
recognize him?
”
she asked, handing the clipping over to her father.

“
Who?
”
he asked, scanning the picture.

“
The boy - in the background.
”

“
What boy?
”

“
He
’
s right at the back, just in the corner.
”

“
I don
’
t see any boy, Mia - what are you talking about?
”

Mia felt an irrational surge of annoyance, and shoved a chair out of her way with more force than was really necessary. She walked around the table to where her father was sitting, with her mother peering over his shoulder, squinting at the picture too.

“
He
’
s right
…”
Mia jabbed a finger at the page, to point to where the boy was standing, but stopped midway when she realized he was not standing there.
“…
may I?
”
she asked, taking the clipping from her father and scrutinizing it closely. The boy, it seemed, had simply vanished from the page. She hastily leaned over the table to pick up the pile of other clippings, and found the one from the first day, the day she had been born. The person in the background, who had been too smudged to make out clearly, had vanished.

“
Mia?
”
her father prompted.

“
Sorry
…
.I must have
…
.I don
’
t know. My mind
’
s playing tricks on me or something.
”
she muttered quietly
“
Anyway, what else is in the box, Mum?
”
she asked brightly, dropping the cuttings on the table as though they had burned her.

“
Just these.
”
her mother replied, pulling out a rough looking blanket, out of which a scrap of paper fell. “This is the blanket you were wrapped in, inside the box
”
she handed it to Mia, and bent down to pick up the scrap of paper which had fluttered to the floor.

Mia held the blanket and tested it’s weight. It was fairly heavy, and it was almost as rough to the touch as it looked. She turned it over and over, but it was just a blanket. It did not yield any clues as to where it might have come from, or where
she
might have come from. It certainly was not a nice soft blanket meant to wrap a baby in, of that she was sure.

“
..and this
”
her mother said, straightening up and holding out her hand to Mia
“
is the note.
”

Mia dropped the blanket onto a chair to free up her hands, and took the piece of paper her mother was offering to her.

“
Note?
”
she asked, confused. She had never heard anything about a note before.

“
Yes, when you were found, there was a note, in the box, just resting in the top fold of your blanket.
”

She looked at the piece of paper, which seemed to be more smudge than writing.

“
It got wet that night, everything was drenched through
”
explained her mother apologetically.

“
Oh
”
Mia nodded absently, and returned her attention to the note in her hand once more.

The majority of the words, written in blue ink, had been lost to the rain. A few, however, were badly smudged but readable. Mia read the fractured sentences, scanning these too for any clue as to who she was.

This child
…
.I give
…
she is
…
mia
…
forgive me

The only readable words on the page told her very little, but she stared in wonder at one particular word - Mia. She had always assumed that the people who adopted and raised her, the people sitting before her in this very room, were the ones who had given her her name. But now that she thought about it, no-one had ever
told
her that, she had simply assumed. Assumed that a mother who could not be bothered to raise her, or even take her to an orphanage or to social services, would have bothered to give her a name. But now it seemed that her mother
had
cared about her, at least enough to name her, and to ask forgiveness.

For a moment, all her anger at this woman slipped away, and she allowed her thoughts to run away with her. Perhaps her mother had been a frightened teenager, or in an abusive relationship, perhaps she had wanted Mia with all her heart, and it broke her to let her go. The words that popped out of Mia’s mouth next seemed completely unconnected to this train of thought, yet at the same time, very much connected.

“
You didn
’
t name me.
”
It was not a question, it was a statement.

“
Well, no, we didn
’
t. Not exactly. We assumed, from the note, that your mother had meant to name you Mia - it
’
s hard to tell, the whole thing was so smudged. We looked into names, we wanted to give you a very special name. We looked up the meaning of Mia, it was a pretty name and we thought we should at least
consider
honouring your biological mother
’
s choice. It
’
s a variant of Maria, and means
‘
longed for daughter
’”
- it was perfect, so no, we did not pick out the name ourselves, because your birth mother had already picked out the perfect one for us - just like she gave us the perfect daughter.
”

“
I thought it was Italian. It means
‘
my
’
, doesn
’
t it?
…
I Googled it when we did a school project
”
she explained, in response to the questioning faces of her parents.

“
That
’
s true, it does also mean
‘
my
’
in Italian. I suppose in a way we were honouring your birth mother in that way too. You are
hers
, but at the same time, you are very much
our
longed for daughter
”
smiled her mother.

Mia nodded slowly, digesting this. Oddly, it helped to know that her adoptive parents had not been the ones who had named her. She felt as though a small piece of the puzzle that was the very beginning of her life had fallen neatly into place. She
was
Mia, and she always had been. It was as good a starting point as any, and having just that one little answer and piece of knowledge helped her to know this was not a complete wild goose chase. There
was
information out there, there
were
things she could learn about herself. She only hoped that she would not find out anything worse than she already had.

There was nothing else in the box, and nothing else her parents could tell her. She scrutinized all of the newspaper clippings, paying particularly close attention to the pictures, for any signs of the boy lurking in the background, but no - he was gone. Or more likely had never been there in the first place, her mind had simply played tricks on her. She wished she could shake off the memory of that ridiculous dream, and in truth was beginning to fear for her sanity. Seeing that woman everywhere was starting to freak her out, and now she was seeing the Dream Boy in old photographs? It did not look good, and if someone had told her
they
were experiencing things like this, she would have likely directed them to the nearest mental health care facility.

Something was still bothering her though, something at the back of her mind. Something the woman had said. Or was it something her mother had said? Or was it both? That night, she took a long time to fall asleep, after seemingly endless hours of semi-awkward silence and small talk with her parents which, for some reason, tonight felt forced and artificial. It never usually bothered any of them to be sitting in silence, but tonight it seemed as though everyone felt they ought to make a special effort to chat about “normal” things, the way they might do on any other night. As she slipped into a restless and dreamless sleep, she was grateful on some semi-conscious level, to just have silence and not have to think any more.

CHAPTER EIGHT

T
he night
’
s sleep, although broken and restless, seemed to allow her
mind time to work through the details and process the information she had. The moment she awoke in the morning, she instantly sat upright and realized what had been bothering her the night before, as she tried to drift off to sleep. Of all things, it had been the note. She had
known
about the note, before she had seen it – even though it wasn't mentioned in the articles. Why that thought had not occurred to her the previous night, she didn‘t know. Now, she could scarcely think of anything else. How had she known?

She snatched up the clippings from where she had left them the night before, on her bedside lamp table. Had she seen them before? Did they mention the note after all? Maybe she had seen them when she was younger, and just forgotten? She felt no jolt of recognition beyond knowing she had looked at these the night before. She instead began to study the tiny fragments of other stories in the parts of the clippings surrounding
her
story. These she had not looked at last night, so if they seemed familiar, then she must have seen these clippings before. But she did not recognize any of them, or the smiling half-face of a man whose story was adjacent to her own in one clipping. At any rate, there was no mention of a note.