As fate would have it

Her fingers curled around the cigarette butt, and although she tried desperately, she could not quell her shaking hand. The rain fell unevenly through the thick canopy of trees, droplets absorbed by the mossy blanket beneath her feet. She inhaled, drawing cigarette smoke through her teeth and filling her lungs, while savoring the deep earthy scent created from the damp greenery.

For all of Ella's wild imagination, she was unprepared for something she had half-heatedly, jokingly dreamed up to come true. Sure, she had always felt like an outsider in her family, the odd-ball of her 3 sisters. She looked nothing like her mother, although she was a spitting image of her father- truly the only thing that kept her from genuinely believing the running family joke. She wasn't actually adopted or switched at birth, although everyone had still bet perhaps she was abducted by aliens. That theory seemed much more plausible at one point. There was no way she wasn't related to Dad. They were just too much alike, from the way they thought, to their passionate emotions, to their wide smiles, almond shaped hazel eyes, and darker skin and hair. Until the truth had surfaced, Ella comforted herself with the fact that at least she was like Dad.

Ella crumpled the cigarette against the sole of her boot, ensuring the entire thing was out, then hastily stuffed the butt into her flannel coat's pocket. She rose from her rock, took a deep breath, and opened the flap to the tent. “I'm- um. I'm gonna go take a walk,” she announced slowly, haltingly.

Ash raised her head from her work, her expert fingers still looping knots with the twine, twisting this way, tucking that way, tightening. Her brows furrowed in concern. “Sure Hun,” she replied. “I know this is a stupid question, but you okay?”

Stepping inside the tent and plopping down on a mattress, Ella sighed. “Yes...no...I don't know. How am I supposed to be okay? My whole life turned out to be an entire lie.”

Her friend frowned at her and dropped her work into her lap, letting her hands fall with a slap against her thighs. “A lie? Really Ells? You can't say your whole life was a lie. The way your parents love you is NOT a lie. The unbreakable bond you have with your sisters is not a lie. Certainly, how hard you have worked your butt off to get out of all of this” she gestured animatedly around to the tent, which was nestled in a homeless encampment in the jungle of Tacoma, “is NOT a LIE.” Ashley shook her head in disbelief. “Some of the details in your life may not be what you were lead to believe , but that doesn't make who you are or the life that you've lived any less real.”

Ella smiled wanly at Ash. “You are always so full of wisdom,” she chuckled.

Ash shrugged. “They don't call me 'mom' for no reason. I'm not old enough to actually be your mom.”

“Well, at this point I definitely appear to have an abundance of them.” Her voice softened a little. “I just wish I'd have had a chance to get to know her more, ya know? Or for her to see me doing well.”

“Hon, I love you to death, but you need to stop dwelling on the negative. What are the odds that you ran into her at all, especially all this way? That you got to know her even a little bit?”

“I mean, you're not wrong,” Ella murmured.

After all of these years, from Sacramento, all the way up to Tacoma, and to run into Susan, well, it was nothing short of a miracle. To Ella it seemed to be a direct intervention from the universe. She remembered the day she had met Sue, and the following weeks and months spent with her on the streets. “It's funny you have the same name as my mom, even your last initials are the same.” Ella didn't think anything of it at the time, it had just made her a little homesick if nothing else, but Sue apparently latched onto it, unbeknownst to Ella at the time. “When's your birthday, chica?”

That must have been the day that Sue had started to put the pieces of the puzzle together, although for her to draw the line between the dots, she must have already had questions for some years prior. Ella wondered what had started Sue's questions, what had triggered her to begin looking for answers. Her mind wandered to the little black notebook that was safely secured in her rucksack. The book contained so many answers, and yet left so many more questions.

Last week, Ella had been at home in Oregon, minding her own business- frustratedly staring at a blank computer screen trying to arrange some words for a new article- when a knock came at the door. Ella answered the door only to be handed a certified letter which contained a copy of the last will and testament of Susan L Gonzales. The will bequeathed her a parcel of land with a sprawling home in Southern California as well as a lump sum of cash to the tune of $20,000.

She was sure it had to be some error. Why would Sue bother leaving her money and property, and how did she even find Ella? After making the trip to see Sue's lawyer, it became shockingly apparent that there was no mistake. The lawyer had handed her the very same notebook that was now in Ella's possession, with the words “This will explain everything.”

Now, as Ella sat with Ash in the place her life began to unravel, she felt conflicted in her emotions. Did she want to read the rest of the notebook? Her gaze traveled down to the ruck at her feet, an action that did not go unnoticed by Ash's ever piercing gaze.

“Are you gonna read it?”

Running her fingers through her short hair, Ella stared at the bag some more before finally admitting, “I don't know if I want to.”

Ash barked a sharp laugh out. “You want to. You're dying to. You can't NOT know.”

Flapping her hands, Ella groaned in conflicted agony and resignation. “Urgh, I know!” She dove for the bag, rummaging through it until her fingers collided with the stiff leather of the notebook. She captured it in her hand and freed it from the clutter triumphantly waving it in the air. “Well, I guess here goes nothing.”

The notebook was a compilation of journal entries dating back to the mid 90's. In it Sue chronicled the childhood of her youngest daughter, Camilla. While Sue was ferociously proud of the way her child was blossoming, something troubled her deeply. Camilla looked nothing like her parents, nor her siblings. Not only was there absolutely no familial resemblance in looks department, she contradicted her family in every way possible. Where her siblings could often entertain themselves for hours, Camilla was easily bored, never satisfied with the superficial answers that adults often give children. Her brother and sister were incredibly intelligent but Camilla's mind seemed to consistently search for the 'how's and why's' of the way things worked. Sue was constantly exhausted trying to keep up with her youngest child.

Then, in the early 2000's, the hospital that Camilla was born at fell under a federal investigation, the journal highlighted through newspaper clippings. The articles screamed things like 'Sutter Memorial's lost children,' and 'Bringing Dana home.' It was discovered that in the late 80's and early 90's, much like several other hospitals scattered throughout the country, Sutter Memorial had mixed up an egregious number of infants and sent them home to the wrong families due to an ineffective system of matching parents with their babies.

“Could it be Camilla is genetically not mine? I love my daughter no matter what, but I do wonder if this could explain so many things, her blue eyes for one?” After much investigation and a DNA test, the results shook Sue to her very foundation. “Although I think I have known it all along and could have never admitted it to myself, the DNA does not lie: Camilla has another set of parents somewhere in this world. I wonder if they have had the same questions growing up as I have, if they were ever unsure. If so, how did they not recognize that she was not their daughter? How did I not see it? Where is my daughter?” Despite her questions and poking around at the hospital, even with a pending lawsuit, the hospital could not release information due to HIPPA. Finding her lost child seemed hopeless.

Sue's writings became more infrequent and less rational and coherent as time went on. Ella supposed, knowing Sue's history, that this is when she began to traffic drugs and use them heavily. Eventually, Camilla and her siblings were placed in various foster homes and Sue went off to serve time in prison. Sue ended up in Tacoma in 2018, when fate would intersect her path with Ella's.

“I can't believe it, I can't believe I am writing this but I think I found her. All of these years and hoops I had to jump through only to come up empty handed... to think I ran into her by chance!” She penned excitedly, her usual tidy writing deliriously scribbled. Just to be sure, she had swiped a water bottle Ella had sipped from during their many days spent selling dope together and sent it to a lab. The results came just days before Ella left Tacoma for good, trying desperately to get her life back on track. Sue was devastated to see Ella go, she followed her journey on social media, eventually reaching out to the people who had raised her. She didn't want Ella nor Camilla to know, not yet. Not until she herself was able to pull herself together. She didn't want her daughters' worlds to fall apart, for them to return to the lifestyle they had both managed to escape from. Both Ella's mom and dad as well as her step mom, were all in agreement. But then disaster had struck. Sue was diagnosed with a rare disease that ended her life all too soon, before she ever had a chance to re-unite with her daughter or see the daughter she'd raised re-united with her birth parents.

“If you're reading this, it means I have crossed over to the other side. But I want you to know how very grateful I am to have gotten the chance to cross paths with you, Ella. You are a vibrant and tenacious young woman, so full of light, even when you were in your darkest hour. You reminded me much of my Camilla. It is apparent to me that fate has has meant to bring you and Camilla together- to be sisters by a force so much stronger than blood. I hope that you will move to California to pursue your dreams and to learn your culture and meet your family. As you told me when your son's father started dating someone new: 'it's just that many more people that love my child,' and for that, I am grateful. To know the bond you have with the sisters you were raised with, I know in my heart my children will be safe because you have each other. I only wish I had found you sooner so that I might have gotten to know my grand children.” The last entry was dated just days before Sue passed.

Ella closed the book with tears glimmering in her eyes.

“So are you going?”

Looking Ash directly in her eyes, Ella answered seriously, “Only if you're coming with.”

This time, tears pooled into Ash's face, and a genuine smile took hold, one that Ella hadn't seen in quite some time. “Damn straight I am.”