The Lavender Butterfly

Chapter 32

I was all alone. I felt like I had been sitting in this room for ages. It may have been a mere ten minutes or so, but the time seemed to drag on. Here I was, locked in a room with nothing but my folding chair, a small table, and three other folding chairs on each side of the table. A plain white room with nothing adorning the walls but a mirror. Most likely one of those one-way mirrors that you would see on TV on one of those crime dramas. You know, the ones where someone would be in the next room watching the interrogation through the mirror. I wondered if someone was watching me at that moment, waiting for me to crack. Other than that, the room had no windows, no fancy designs on the walls or floors, nothing. The room was as bleak as my future seemingly was. The silence in the room was deafening. It was so quiet; I could hear my own heartbeat. I could hear my breathing. I could hear both slowly speeding up, escalating with my own sense of fear. I couldn’t stop thinking about Meredith, about what they were doing with her. They could have been taking her to jail and charging her with kidnapping for all I knew. I sat in silence, alone with my thoughts. I thought about what my future could hold, now. I had nothing. I wanted to know what my place was in all this. Meredith and I were going to get on that plane. We were going to go back home to Chicago. We were going to live together happily, just us, mother and daughter. I had plenty of years of growing up ahead of me. I was going to go into eighth grade in the fall. I was looking forward to going to high school again, graduating and going to college…...again, and making new friends along the way. I had the prime of my life ahead of it and I was lucky enough to live it as the wonderful girl I had become. Despite losing my identity as Chris and re-emerging in life as Olivia, I felt like I already had everything I needed to live out the rest of my youth. I thought about Chloe. What we had was something special. I adored her as Chris, but now I felt like she looked up to me. I already felt like I was her big sister. I was looking forward to growing up with her, becoming best friends with her. She was a truly delightful girl, and I was starting to really miss her. I was also already missing how Stella was always doting on me, like she would always be doting on Chloe and Evan. Her kids meant the world to her, and she showed it. I missed her outgoing, quirky personality. I tried to stop the emotions from seeping in, but then I thought about Evan. We were going to be great friends. We were going to even be best friends, we could talk baseball and art together, we had so much in common. Maybe that’s why things happened so easily between us. I had no intention of us being together romantically, but I could tell right away that he was very attracted to me. While there was no question that he was physically attracted to my beauty, I felt that he really appreciated me as a person. Strangely enough, while I was looking for a friend, with all the affection he was showing me, I started feeling the same about him as he did about me. We could sit and talk for hours and get lost in each other’s eyes. I could really see a future for us, as boyfriend and girlfriend. Maybe something more, further down the line. But now…. now I found myself longing for his embrace. His touch, his lips. I just wanted to be near him. I just wanted to tell him how much I loved him. Tears started welling up in my eyes. And then my thoughts wandered back to Meredith. Without her, I was nothing. I had nothing without her. No one to confide in, no one to kiss me goodnight, no one to take me in and care for me. She was everything to me. At that moment I wanted nothing else but to tell her how much she meant to me. But also, at that moment came the crashing reality that I may never see her again. I may never see any of them again. I could no longer contain my sadness. I burst out crying. I saw my reflection in the mirror – I looked absolutely miserable. I felt absolutely miserable. I put my head down on the table and sobbed to myself for the next several minutes. I was interrupted when the door abruptly opened and in walked three people. One man was a heavy-set man. An older heavy-set gentleman with a large grey mustache. The second person was a slightly younger woman with glasses, who was carrying around several manila folders and notebooks. The third person was a younger man, looked like he was just out of college. He carried his laptop into the room, and he placed it on the table alongside the other two people. “Olivia,” the heavy-set man said to me. “My name is Mike Patton with the NSA – the National Security Agency. To my right is Susan Kline, with Volusia County Human Services.” The man didn’t even introduce the man with the laptop. The man with the laptop was typing away the entire conversation so I believe he was just transcribing the entire conversation. “Listen, Olivia, we’re going to do everything we can to help you, but can you please promise to be one hundred percent honest with us?” the man continued. I didn’t reply. I just put my head back on the table and sobbed. “Olivia?” the woman chimed in. “Can you promise us that?” I gently lifted my head off the table and looked at the man and the woman indifferently. “I want to leave. I want to go back to my mother,” I said. Mike looked at me and shook his head. “That woman was not your mother.” “Yes, she is!” I interrupted. “Listen, Olivia, she claimed that she adopted you, but she couldn’t back her claims up. There was no paperwork. No proof that she had adopted you,” the man continued. “She did adopt me. I’ve been in and out of foster care my entire life. I don’t even know my real parents,” I replied. The man sighed again. After a pause, he began to speak again. “Listen, I know that she didn’t adopt you. You need to be honest with us, Olivia,” the man replied, starting to look a little agitated. “Okay, okay, okay,” I said. “Meredith didn’t adopt me. She found me out on the boardwalk last week, all by myself. I had just escaped my last foster home. She took care of me unlike any person who has ever taken care of me. She is my mother and I want her to adopt me.” I said firmly. The two looked at each other and whispered to each other. Susan leaned to me and said, “Olivia, Meredith admitted that she lied about the adoption as well. Thing is, she gave us the exact same story you just did, so we have every right to believe you.” Mike chimed in and said, “Thing is, what foster care did you recently break out of?” he asked. “I don’t know, all I know is that I left, got on a bus, and ended up here in Daytona Beach,” I replied. The man sighed. “That doesn’t really help much. First off, what is your last name, Olivia?’ I replied immediately. “Olivia Parker,” I said confidently. The man put his hand up to his face in frustration. “You just admitted you were never adopted. I’m going to ask you again, what is your real last name?” I thought for a moment. “Foster,” I replied. “My name is Olivia Marie Foster,” I added. Mike sighed in frustration. “So…..you’ve been in a seemingly never ending circuit of foster homes…..and your last name is Foster. Do you think that I’d actually believe this story?” “Foster….” Susan said thoughtfully. “Can you please tell me where the last foster home you lived at? The one that you stated that you ran away from,” Susan continued. I simply shrugged my shoulders in response. Mike and Susan looked at each other and started to whisper to each other. I couldn’t make out what they were saying. The last thing I heard Mike whisper was “I’ll see if I can find her name in the database.” Susan nodded. Susan and Mike both sat up in their chairs. “We’ll be back soon, we just have to go over a few things,” Mike said, as he and Susan left the room. The only people left in the room were me and the transcriber. The man sat silently and didn’t speak a word the entire time. I sat there, planning my next move, worried about what would happen next.