See Jane Run

Chapter Five

“I found this birth certificate hidden in a slit in my baby book. I’m almost positive it’s me. I don’t even look like my parents. They won’t let me do anything. I had to beg for a month to get them to let me on the school trip to look at colleges.”

JD looked around the pizza parlor. “Well, in hindsight…”

“You know what I mean!”

“So all that adds up to kidnapping but not to adoption.”

Riley grabbed the slice from her plate and took a big bite. “My parents would have told me if I was adopted.”

“Because the parents who you think are kidnappers, who changed your name and your birth date, wouldn’t lie to you.”

Riley chewed her pizza, considering. “I know it sounds weird, but I know them. I know I’m not adopted. We talked about adoption all the time. The family across the street from our old house adopted a kid from Vietnam. We were friends with them. I remember having a conversation with my dad, though, before Thuy came home. I asked him how I could make the little girl feel welcome and he didn’t say, ‘you can tell her you were adopted too.’” JD picked up his slice again. “Well, that seals it. You, Riley Spencer slash Jane O’Leary, were kidnapped because your father didn’t say you were adopted.”

Riley threw down her pizza. “I knew I shouldn’t have told you. You’re a real ass, you know that?”

“OK, OK, I’m sorry, Ry. It’s just kind of a big thing to wrap your head around, isn’t it? There have to be a million other explana- tions for that birth certificate.”

“The bigger thing is that nothing came up at the hospital or at the hall of records. Even if baby Jane isn’t me, why did this family just disappear, and how would my parents be involved?”

JD straightened. “Involved? Like, you think your parents may have made Jane’s parents disappear?”

Riley put her chin in her hands, frowning. “I don’t know what

I think anymore.”

“Well, you said you found the birth certificate in your baby book. Don’t you have pictures of yourself as a baby with your parents? My parents have them all over the house. It’s ridiculously embarrassing.”

Riley warmed, thinking of JD as a smiling, round baby in the arms of his doting parents. But the thought was immediately replaced by something cold and dark. “There aren’t any pictures of me as a baby. Nothing until I was about three.”

JD sipped his Coke. “Really?”

Riley started to feel clammy and panicky again. “Not a single one. My parents said that the house we used to live in flooded and we pretty much lost everything. That’s why my mom started making the new baby book.”

“Do you remember anything about the old house?”