The Abandoned Girl

My name is Kelly Miller, and I was raised with the affection of my adoptive parents until I turned eighteen. What they gave me was the standard image of a 'happy family.' The towering bookshelf in the study was built by my adoptive father himself; the seasonal wardrobe in the closet, my adoptive mother would always iron and organize by color well in advance; Even the pink electric scooter in the garage was a limited edition that they had to search the entire city to find. Yet deep inside, I always felt as if a piece of the puzzle were missing. That afternoon, the lawyer pushed a DNA report across the table: "Your biological parents are from Carter Family Village, a remote area in the northwest mountains — Larry Carter and Leah Lee." His voice was soft, yet it shattered my eardrums like thunder on a stormy day. When I slammed the report onto the coffee table, my adoptive mother was standing by the floor-to-ceiling window, arranging flowers. The white rose in the celadon vase had fallen onto the creamy-white carpet; two petals lay scattered. "Kelly, where are you going?" Her hand trembled as she bent down to pick the rose. "To find them." I stared out the window, the blur of traffic below weaving into a ribbon of light, hiding the bloodline I hadn't touched for eighteen years. "But we..." The adoptive father came out of the study, his glasses sliding down the bridge of his nose; he always did this when nervous. "You are good people." I cut him off and turned toward the bedroom. "But I need to know where I come from." As I packed, my fingertips brushed the metal zipper of the suitcase. This suitcase was custom-made for my eighteenth birthday, engraved with my initials. Touching its intricate patterns now, I suddenly find it bitterly ironic—using such a case to carry my hopes of finding my birth family is like wrapping crude pottery in silk. My close female friend Bella Young burst into the room just as I was stuffing cash into my canvas bag. "Are you crazy?" She snatched my wallet. "Those people abandoned you on a bench outside the hospital outpatient building back then. How can you possibly feel at ease looking for them now?" "Maybe they had their reasons." I reached out to grab the wallet, my fingernail scraping against the back of her hand. "Could their desperation have driven them to wrap a newborn baby in tattered cloth and leave her out in the freezing December wind?" Bella's voice rose, "Kelly, you've been in the incubator too long!" "Those are my biological parents." I zipped up the canvas bag, my voice steadier than I had imagined. "Are you seriously going to sever ties with the Miller family?" She gripped my wrist so tightly her nails nearly pierced the skin. I gazed into her tear-brimmed eyes and gently nodded, "I will come back, but not as a daughter of the Miller family." As the car left the city, I rolled down the window. The wind swept in the dusty smell of the suburban construction site, mingled with the sweet scent of rapeseed flowers, starkly different from the cedar aroma at home. I took a deep breath, as if this unfamiliar fragrance concealed the secrets of my bloodline. The mountain road was so rough it felt like shaking dice. The driver, chewing betel nut, glanced at me through the rearview mirror: "To reach Carter Family Village, we have to cross three mountains, and the mobile phone signal dies halfway up." "Looking for relatives." I gripped the paper tightly, the address wrinkled and creased. A few years ago, a family from the city came searching for their daughter, but within six months, they ended up at the police station, arguing over demolition compensation. He smacked his lips and spat the betel nut residue out the window. I didn't reply, turning my gaze toward the window. The asphalt road turned to cement, then to a bumpy dirt path, and finally gave way to stretches of yellow earth slopes, sparsely dotted with wild jujube trees. At the end of the dirt road, several children clung to the mud brick wall, watching me. A woman in a blue cotton shirt was holding the hand of a girl so thin that her wrist bones protruded, her right leg noticeably shorter than the left. "You are..." The woman squinted at me, her eyes flashing with surprise and anxiety. "I am Kelly Miller, looking for Larry Carter and Leah Lee." When I gave my name, my throat tightened, and my heart pounded like a drum. The woman suddenly covered her mouth, tears streaming down her cracked cheeks: "Heaven bless, it really is my Kelly!" She reached out to hug me, but quickly withdrew her hands when she saw my cashmere coat. Seven or eight people suddenly surged into the yard. A dark-skinned man squatting on the doorstep smoking sprang up with a "whoosh" when he saw me, dropping his pipe with a clatter. "It's good that you're back, it's good that you're back." He repeated it, his voice trembling like leaves caught in the autumn wind. I looked at these parents, both familiar and strange — the mole at the corner of Mother's eye resembling one near my left eyebrow, and the curve of Father's back as he bent mirroring the shape I make when I'm angry. "Dad, Mom" — these two words had rolled on my tongue for eighteen years, finally settling softly. At night, I lay on the innermost earthen bed. The quilt was made of coarse cloth, with lumps of cotton batting inside. In the darkness, I could hear the neighbor's snores, coughs, and the rustling of a mouse running across the beams. Is this where I come from? I ran my hand over the rough texture of the quilt, half filled with hope, half with unease, as if walking on thin ice.