Before We Were Yours

Avery holds in her hand the envelope she’s coveted, the one that purportedly contains a key to her grandmother’s secret life, and it is “surprisingly ordinary” (161). She feels badly that she’s hounded Trent since she notes that he “looks as if he’s failed at something” (161), namely keeping a trusted document away from prying eyes. Trent warns her that she might not get the answer she wants. The secret contained within might be disappointing or upsetting. Trent tells her that his grandfather hunted down secrets and people, and he did this because events in his own life propelled him to finding out truth. When he was 18, he found out he was adopted ,and when Trent’s grandfather “learned he’d been lied to all his life, that was the last straw” (161). After that, Trent’s grandfather never spoke to his adoptive parents again.

Inside the envelope, Avery finds information that she doesn’t know how to decode. It is “a copy of a case history sheet on Baby Boy Foss” (162). There are details about birth date, weight, and height as well as information about the mother and father. All of this information is presented as “[c]ause for release to T.C.H. Society” (165). Avery doesn’t know what to make of the details but admits “this might’ve been around the year [her grandmother] was born” (165), even though “Grandma Judy’s age changes every time you ask her” (165).

In addition to being confounded by the information she finds in the envelope, Avery is also thrown off by the feelings she suddenly harbors for Trent. She catches herself “checking for a wedding ring” and later catches herself “focusing in on [Trent’s lips], almost losing track of what he is saying” (167). An attraction clearly exists between them. Avery feels a pull between him and this detective work and her neatly established “old life” (172).

Rill still is not told what happened to Camellia or where she is. The days pass and still no answers are discoverable. All Rill hears is for one older boy, a bully called Danny Boy because of his red hair, who says, “Camellia died after they put her in the closest” and that they “saw Riggs carr[y] her body out to the truck to dump it in the swamp” (173). Rill can’t believe this. Instead, she hopes a new, kindly worker named Miss Dodd “will tell [her] the truth” (173).

Miss Dodd is the antithesis of the other workers in the home, with “brown eyelashes [that] flutter over soft gray-green eyes” (174). She hugs Rill and tries to console her about Camellia, promising to find out answers for her. Rill learns that Miss Dodd’s “daddy died last year and her mama’s sick with dropsy and she’s got four little brothers and sisters living on a farm” (174) and feels immediate kinship with her. She even trusts Miss Dodd to keep Fern’s bedwetting a secret.

Out in the yard, Rill gets in a fight with Danny Boy who tries to bully Stevie, who is something of a surrogate brother to Rill, especially now that Gabion is gone. She is out fighting Danny Boy, trying to defend Stevie and Fern who gets caught in the middle, when she suddenly realizes her sister Lark is no longer with her. Stevie tells her she is inside with a lady and Rill hurries inside, realizing that someone is about to take her sister away.

Inside, Lark “is wearing a frilly white dress. She looks like a tiny ballerina” (179). A pair of strangers are fussing over her. Rill speaks up, or tries to, calling out: “My sister!” (179), but Miss Dodd stops her. Miss Dodd tells her not to be sad, that Lark is going to a new home and a better life because they are just orphans. Rill then “babble[s] out the truth” (179) telling Miss Dodd all the details of her life. Miss Dodd is horrified and tells Rill to “keep quiet” and that she will “learn about it all” (179).

Later that night, after Lark is taken, Miss Murphy appears in her room. She yells at Rill for telling Miss Dodd all that she told her about her identity and her siblings’ identities. She tells Rill that she has cost Miss Dodd a job and that Miss Tann will “be picking up all the little Dodd brothers and sisters soon enough”(182). With that, she drags Fern out of Rill’s arms. She disappears with Fern and leaves Rill locked in her room.

For days, Rill is locked inside, only offered water occasionally. “Days and days pass” (183) before someone comes to release her. Then she is taken to Miss Murphy’s office. She is beaten and forced to apologize for what she’s done. She is told “there never was any Camellia” (185) and made to agree to this statement. She is also told that Fern is gone, adopted. “You’ll never see her again” (186), Miss Murphy informs her.

Rill thinks about killing herself, throwing herself out the window at night. She is contemplating this when there is a knock on the other side of the pane. It’s Silas. He explains that Briny was tricked into signing paperwork at the hospital, that “they told [Briny] if he’d sign it all, he could get Queenie’s doctor bill paid and the babies buried” (186), so he inadvertently signed his children away. Silas promises to come back and cut the bars and get Rill out. In the meantime, Rill hears Danny Boy heckling that Fern has been returned, that the people who adopted her “don’t want her after all ‘cause she’s too dumb to not wet the bed” (188).

Avery takes Trent up on the offer to look inside his grandfather’s shed, which is dirty and musty but is the spot where all his secrets are hidden. Secrets come out as they walk to the shed, namely about Trent’s life. Avery cannot help her attraction to Trent. Unexpectedly, he confides in Avery about his son, Jonah, whose mother is deceased. Avery says, “I’m sorry about your wife” (193), and Trent replies that they weren’t married. The relationship was messy and the ending painful to him. Avery admits to being “surprised by his openness” (194), and it increases the feelings of connection between them.

Together they venture into the small, cobwebbed cabin space that holds secrets they can only guess at. Avery expresses aloud feelings of guilt about “digging around in [her] grandmother’s past” (195). Trent tells her that she is going to potentially find out more than she bargained for once she reads his grandfather’s news clippings about the Tennessee Children’s Home Society, which is “not a pretty story any way you look at it” (195). He lets Avery read for herself about Georgia Tann, a politically well-connected woman who brokered deals to rip children out of the arms of their impoverished parents and sell them to the rich and powerful. Avery reads how “she duped woman into signing surrender papers while they were still under sedation” (196). In addition to kidnapping, Avery reads that “children under the care of TCHS are reported to have disappeared en masse” (197), making Miss Tann perhaps also “a prolific serial killer” (196). 

The pair next sorts through the photographs they find in this small cabin, and it is there that Avery discovers a picture that stops her. After noticing one of “four women, standing arm in arm on a beach […] each wears a dragonfly bracelet that matches[her] grandmother’s” (201), Avery again spies the photo that was in May Crandall’s nursing home room. It is clear she’s found a clue.

As promised, Silas comes to get Rill and break her out of the home. They tiptoe through the building, using the route that James once told Rill about, the way he used to take “going downstairs to the kitchen at night to steal Miss Murphy’s tea cakes” (202). Rill is desperate to get free, to see her parents, although she worries about the reception: “Maybe they’ll hate me as much as I hate myself” (202). She wonders how she will face her parents having watched all her younger siblings slip through her hands. She decides she can’t leave without Fern. She tells Silas, “I can’t leave yet” (203) and whispers in the dark that she needs one more day, that Fern will be back tomorrow, and they can break free together. Silas promised to come back the next night, kissing her on the cheek. Rill tiptoes back towards the room where she’s supposed to be sleeping. It is then that she runs right into Mr. Riggs, who is plainly intoxicated. She can smell the alcohol on his breath as “his face comes close of [her] ear” (206). He asks where she’s been, if she’s been sneaking out, and if she’s got another boyfriend. He “sticks his face in around the neck” (206) of her nightgown and grabs hold of Rill. Before anything more can transpire, a worker comes in from another room and asks Mr. Riggs if he’s been drinking again. Rill absconds to bed quickly and pretends to be sleeping.

The next day, there is a phone call and abruptly Rill is summoned and driven to a hotel with Miss Murphy to something “Miss Tann has planned” (206). Rill doesn’t know what to expect except that it won’t be good. When she arrives, Miss Tann disappears into another room. Rill hears voices of two people talking. Miss Tann tells the person: “[S]he’s all yours […] if you’re certain you still want her” (213). Rill detects a man’s voice, talking about his wife “locking herself away” (213) from him. Miss Tann sympathizes and suggests that there are other older girls they have “who are more…tractable” (213). But the man insists he wants Rill. When the door opens at last, Rill sees the man who sat beside her “at the viewing party” (213) where all the siblings were displayed and asked how old she was.