March 2015, Charlotte, North Carolina

Madison ran a hand nervously through her long, brown hair. She knew she was old enough to make this decision and old enough that telling her parents what she was going to tell them on her birthday shouldn’t matter. In fact, her mother had told her time and time again that whenever she wanted to search for her birth parents, she was more than welcome to do it. But it still made her stomach churn thinking of what she was going to say.

She only lived an hour away from them but every time she came home, her parents acted as though she’d gone to school in California and not a state school in North Carolina. She could understand, she supposed. Madison was an only child and adopted at that. Even though her first choice for college had been the University of Miami, her father deemed it too far (and too expensive) for her to go. Plus, she’d been offered a full ride at NC State and she knew she would’ve been crazy not to take it.

And truth be told, she was having a great time with her major – Communications – and her sorority – Kappa Delta – so all thoughts of heading south to Florida had disappeared.

Madison finally opened the front door after standing there contemplating exactly how to broach the subject. She walked inside the large, two story home that Melodie and Paul Boen had lived in for the better part of twenty-five years now. It hadn’t changed much since Madison’s fifth grade year of school when her mother decided to hire a decorator.

“Maddie, is that you?” her mother called from the kitchen.

Madison placed her duffel bag at the bottom of the stairs and walked down the hall into the kitchen. Melodie was pulling out a pan of chocolate chip cookies from the oven.

“Hi, Mom.” Madison stood in the doorway of the kitchen. Her mother turned around and smiled at her, placing the cookies on the cooling rack on top of the stove.

“It’s good to see you, baby.” Melodie walked over and held out her arms to her daughter. Madison returned the hug and then pulled away. “Good to see you too, Mom.”

“How was the drive?” Melodie went over to the oven and turned it off. “I decided tonight we’d go out for dinner and then come back for cookies and ice cream. I know they’re your favorite.”

“Thanks mom.” Madison had never preferred a birthday cake on her birthday. Singing the birthday song was always awkward to her and she’d rather have her mother’s homemade chocolate chip cookies and vanilla ice cream than cake any day of the week. “The drive was fine.” Madison sat down at the kitchen table while her mother moved the cookies from the cooling rack onto a plate. She hesitated, wondering if she should ask her mother now or wait until dinner. She tried to imagine sitting across from her parents in a public place and bringing up the subject of meeting her birth parents. Would her mother start crying? Would her father get quiet and not want to say anything else about it? Maybe it was better to ask now than wait until –

“Hello?” Her father had just come in from work. “Maddie, are you home?”

Madison held her tongue. She would wait until they were home for dessert.

Nashville

“You are coming tonight, right?” Ashton’s best friend, Alicia, was asking her over the phone.

Ashton had been pretending to be busy at work typing up a draft for her boss to approve the latest idea she’d had for a local beer commercial. She knew Alicia wanted to go out and celebrate the engagement to Patrick, but Ashton was exhausted. Then again, it wasn’t everyday that her best friend got engaged to the man she’d been dating for the past five years.

“Of course I am.” Ashton had tried to be excited in her response but Alicia read right through her.

“Are you okay?” Alicia asked.

“Yes, I’m fine. Work’s just been crazy today.” Ashton looked at the time on her computer screen. “And I still have another hour.”

“If you were doing what you loved you wouldn’t be miserable.” Alicia always had to point that out to Ashton.

“Unfortunately what I love requires too much work and a lot of ‘no’s’ and I’m too old for that right now.” Ashton sighed into the phone. Her boss came out and gave her the once over with a blink of his eye. “I have to go. I’ll see you at seven.”

Ashton hung up and pulled up the document she’d been working on. It shouldn’t have taken her that long to pitch this idea, but the graphics weren’t cooperating and today her mind had been a billion other places.

“Ugh.” She heard her co-worker, Byron, groaning on the other side of her cubicle. Ashton popped out of her seat and stuck her head over the side.

“What’s wrong?” She rested her arms on the side of the cubicle.

“I can’t be creative today.” Byron stretched his arms above his head. “And I’m supposed to have this blind date with some Match girl and I don’t want to go.”

“Why?” Ashton was intrigued. Byron was a guy who looked somewhat like a cartoon character. Big glasses, a long, protruding nose, and comical facial expressions. He wasn’t handsome or cute by any means but he always had a date because he was on every single dating website, including Farmers Only. And he was the first to admit, he hadn’t a clue about farming.

“Because she sounded cool at first but now she’s been emailing me every hour telling me how excited she is.” Byron rubbed his eyes. “It’s annoying.”

“You can’t cancel. That’s douchy of you.” Ashton reminded him. “Just go. Have a coffee and be done with it.”

“Fine.” Byron leaned back in his seat and yawned. “God this job is draining.”

“It’s a job, though.” Ashton muttered and looked at him. “I think the same thing, then I remember how many people I know of that are out of work.”

They worked in an advertising agency and what should have been a fun use of Ashton’s marketing degree had now been turned into tedious work, coming up with commercial ideas for different clients. It used to be fun when she’d started twelve years ago. But the fun had quickly worn off and now it was more or less sitting behind a computer, looking at graphics, and deciding which ones would be best used for beer.

“Yeah, yeah.” Byron shook his head. “You’re right and all that, but don’t you just wish sometimes you’d pursued a dream?”
Ashton nearly cringed. She’d wished it all the time. She wished she would’ve gone onto major in music or theatre or dance like her other MMC friends. She’d seen Ryan become a fast A-lister and went to support all of his movies. She’d watched every episode of Felicity just to see Keri every week. And just last year, Lindsey had come into town with her one woman show and Ashton had met her backstage. Lindsey worked a lot of hard hours and barely got recognition but she was happy and wasn’t afraid to tell Ashton that.

And of course there was Justin who was bigger than anyone ever had dreamed. Ashton had yet to catch him in concert but she reckoned that he was so big now he probably had forgotten anyone in MMC besides Ryan, Matt, and JC.

Ashton hadn’t talked to JC in a long, long time. She would Google him every so often just to see what he was up to since he’d more or less fallen off the planet when his album went south. When Nsync was big, she’d gone to a concert with Jennifer McGill but hadn’t breathed a word to her about the baby she’d given up for adoption. Jennifer had gone backstage but Ashton conveniently got a migraine and had to go home. She caught up with Jennifer the next day and she’d told her that JC had asked about her but that was it.

She knew she hadn’t been the only one to be out of the spotlight. There were countless others from the show who were doing just fine being at home or working in a different career path. But she missed performing and she’d missed it for a long time.

“Sorry.” Byron broke the silence. “Didn’t mean to make you all silent.”

Ashton shook her head. “No, I was just thinking about…something.” She smiled at him and then ducked back into her cubicle. She looked at the document again and started to type.

Dinner with her parents had seemed to drag on and on. Normally, Madison wouldn’t have been so anxious to get home but she knew when they got home that she would be able to ask the question she’d been wanting to ask for years now. Her parents didn’t seem to notice that she was fidgety. They were laughing with each other about their first few years with Madison, talking about how they couldn’t believe she’d grown up so fast, or that they now had a 20-year-old child and were they even old enough for that?

“Next year you can have champagne.” Her father winked at her from across the table and Madison just smiled. The countless parties she’d been to with her sorority sisters had made up for all the underage drinking she’d missed in high school. She never got plastered, but she was tipsy enough to where she had a great time at every Kappa Delta party thrown.

“Yeah.” Madison cleared her throat. “Dinner was great. Thanks, Dad.”

“Happy Birthday, honey.” Paul smiled at his daughter and squeezed Melodie’s shoulder. “Here.” He slid a small box across the table. Madison opened it and gasped when she saw the Pandora bracelet complete with an “M” charm and the Greek letters for Kappa Delta.

“Thank you!” She immediately took it out of the box and tried it on, holding out her wrist. She’d wanted one for years. It fit perfectly on her wrist and she shook it as it dangled in the light. Looking up at her parents she knew she couldn’t wait until they were at home.

“Um, there’s something I want to ask you.” Madison cleared her throat and watched as her parents waited for her to continue.

“What is it, hon?” Melodie leaned toward her. “Is everything ok at school?”

“Oh yeah, everything’s great.” Madison nodded her head, thinking that school was the least of any of her worries. “It’s just, well, I guess I was kind of wondering, um, if you guys would mind if I looked for my birth mom and dad?”

Ashton was exhausted by the time she got home. Her head was throbbing with a slight headache and her wrist was aching from typing so much that day. She immediately went into the kitchen and poured a glass of red wine, then leaned against the counter, staring at the refrigerator. She walked over and opened the door and stared at the small pink cupcake that she’d bought that morning on her way to work. Taking it out of the box it was in, she set it on the counter, rummaged through a drawer for a match and a candle, then brought it over to the kitchen table and sat down with the cupcake and the glass of wine.

“Happy Birthday, Elizabeth.” Ashton blew out the candle just as she had every year this time for the last 20 years.