Triplets

It was Christmas Eve morning and I was sat in the kitchen poking at my breakfast without really eating it. The cereal was all soggy and when I pressed down with my spoon it became squashed. I really had no appetite for the food but my father had been in the kitchen when I came downstairs and watched me get the bowl down and fill it with milk and cereal before he left the room, satisfied that I was going to be eating. Well two bites later and that satisfaction is going straight in the bin along with the food.

The sink was full of last night's plates so I placed the bowl next to it and left the kitchen. For some reason my mother was coming over for Christmas even though both she and my father couldn't stand to be in the same room as each other. They hadn't been in the same room in over two years so I didn't see how they thought it would be different this time, especially as my father would probably decide to bring up me going off to hers in the summer and her not sending me back like he would have assumed she would.

Rachel was away on a holiday with her parents so she couldn't be reached for a chat when I got up to my room. I wanted to find something to do which meant that I could avoid the arrival of my mother, not to mention avoid my father for the time leading up to her arrival. I was still feeling weird about them, even though it had been a few months since my father had told me I was adopted. I should have accepted it and gotten on with my life, and maybe I had gotten on with my life but I hadn't accepted it, at least not truly accepted it because it was hard to look at my father in the eye or even speak to my mother on the phone. I wouldn't have any problem with them if I had accepted it.

With a sigh, I flopped down onto the bed and stared at the ceiling. Who was I? Sure, my name was Louise Jenkins but was Louise always my name or did my birth mother choose a name for me before giving me up? If she named me Louise, was there any reason behind it? And why did my parents decide to rename me? Or did she just not give me a name at all because she died?

Was it just me or did she have more children? Did I have an older sibling? A young sibling? More than one? I didn't know the answers to all these questions but I wanted to. Each day that passed produced a new question that needed any answer that I did not have. Most of them didn't even have answers that my parents could answer.

There was a knock on my door before my father spoke through it. "Your mother's coming in five minutes. We'd like you to come down please."

His footsteps went along the hallway and to his roof where they disappeared for two minutes before coming back along the hallway and going down the stairs. I heard him reach the downstairs floor before the doorbell went, signalling that my mother was finally here and that I was expected to be downstairs. So with a sigh, I sat up, rubbed my eyes and got off the bed in order to follow their request and show my face so that maybe they could pretend not to have an entirely broken relationship and that maybe I could pretend that I don't have any problems with them considering my avoidance nature towards them as of lately.

My mother was sat on one sofa while my father was standing by the window, a tell-tale sign that they couldn't get past their whole disliking of each other enough so that they could sit in close proximity to one another.

"You wanted me down," I announced, drawing their attention to me as I stood with my arms crossed over my chest.

My father nodded. "Well, yes, we want to give you something."

"What?"

"A picture," my mother replied, glancing between my father and I. "We wasn't sure whether to give this to you tomorrow as a present, but we talked about it again and worked out that it may not be a suitable gift for the day."

I looked between them both, unsure as to what the picture could be. My mother held out her hand and offered me to take the envelope inside it. With reluctance, I took it and slid the flap open to pull out the picture inside.

It was a woman with brown hair and a smile on her face. She looked happy and content and I hadn't seen her before in my entire life. She wasn't someone from my father's side of the family because they all had a distinguishable nose as well as the fact that I'd met them all throughout my life, and she definitely wasn't someone from my mother's side of the family because a lot of them were dead and had glasses.

I looked back up at them. "Who's this?"

"It's your birth mother, Louise," my father answered, making me look back down at the picture again.

This woman was my birth mother. She's the one who didn't want to keep me and decided to put me into the state's care in order to find a new family. She was the one who I knew nothing about and it messed with my head knowing that everyone else I knew had their birth mother and biological father living with them. They had their real family – I had the family who raised me like their own. There's a difference between the two.

"Where did you get this?" I asked, not looking up from the picture.

"When we adopted you, we asked whether your mother provided a picture just in case you ever wanted to know. This was what they gave us," my mother said.

I nodded. "Do you know her name?"

"We don't. Sorry."

But that didn't mean I wouldn't find my roots. I had a picture now. I could find the answers to my questions. And I was going to, no matter how long it took me.