Katherine (Excerpt 1)

Jeannie is standing on tiptoes, looking at family photographs on my mantel. She had only two glasses of wine with dinner, but she's clearly tipsy. She's doing her best to disguise the fact and failing miserably. Two weeks prior, on our first date, she had a little too much vino and passed out in the taxi we were sharing. I, ever the Sir Lancelot, took her home and politely refused when she asked me to come in. I had hoped that in the morning she would remember my gentlemanliness and accept my offer for a second date. Lucky me, she did.

"Is this you?" she giggles as she picks up a framed picture of me sitting on my maternal grandmother's lap. I'm seven, my smile proudly revealing my missing two front teeth. My grandmother's hands are laced around my stomach.

"Uh-huh," I say. "That was taken a few weeks after my adoption."

I haven't had much luck with women these past few years, and I hope my slump doesn't continue with Jeannie. Like me, she's a patent lawyer. Also like me, she was adopted from a Korean orphanage. We met on Facebook. I am madly in love with her.

She picks up a few more frames, always mindful to put them back gently. Always, due to her inebriation, doing a poor job of it. The last, a photograph of the whole family taken while on vacation in Cape Cod, collapses backwards, its stand too close to the frame to support its weight. I smile as she turns her head and offers an apologetic smirk.

"Happens," I say, picking up the picture and setting it right. I pray that in her semi-intoxicated state she doesn't notice the thin layer of dust blanketing the mantel. Like my luck with women, my housekeeping skills are similarly slumping.

"Have you ever tried to find your biological parents?" she asks, and her abrupt question takes me by surprise. I was worried she might ask me about religion or politics; this, however, is an unforeseen topic I'm loath to discuss.

As I always do when I'm nervous or uncomfortable, I scratch my right eyebrow. "Some people don't want to be found," I answer. "Since I was a teenager, I've held the belief that, if they really wanted to, they'd try to find me."

And then she kisses me. Softly. Briefly. My eyes are closed, and when I open them she's staring at me cutely. I shouldn't be so flustered, but I am. Damnation.

Realizing this, Jeannie mercifully turns back to the mantel. Again she's looking at the Cape Cod photo. "I didn't know you had such a big family. Including you, I count what looks like eight kids. Tell me that's not true. Some of them must be cousins or something, right?"

"No, and it used to be nine, actually," I reply, my voice hoarse. "My sister Katie went missing when I was ten."

Anticipating Jeannie's next question, I ready myself for a long night.