Read Into the Garden for Free Online Page B

can sit there and still call her your mother!" Jade cried. "You know now that she's not."
I shrugged.
"I know what she's told me, but it hasn't sunk in my head long enough I guess. It's all I've ever called her," I added when she widened her grimace.
"I wouldn't desecrate the word by calling her Mother." "You can't just erase all these years in a few minutes," I protested.
"From what you've been telling us about her," Star said, "you'd think you'd be glad not to have to call her Mother. What's her name?"
"Geraldine. I do think of her more as Geraldine since she told me the truth."
"She'd be lucky to have me call her that. I can think of a lot of better names for her. She's got no right to keep any of it secret," she added, "not now. Misty's right. You should want to know everything"
"I guess I do want to know. It's just that..."
"You're just afraid of her," Jade concluded. She thought a moment. "Did you ever think that maybe she's lying? Maybe she made it all up just to keep you under her thumb. Just from the little we know about her from what you've told us, I think she's capable of doing something like that."
Star nodded.
"What proof do you have that she's telling you the truth?" Jade demanded.
"Proof? Nothing," I said. "Except what she has told me."
"That's no proof, girl. Jade's right. First thing you do is snoop around, look for letters, documents, pictures, any- thing that will tell you something."
"You mean, go look through her personal things?" "Well sure, what else? They're your personal things too, right?"
"I don't know if I could do that. She guards her privacy religiously. I'm rarely in her room."
"You've got to find out more," Misty said, her face serious and determined. "You should be told who your real father is, for starters. It's not fair. It's not right." She looked at Star who nodded.
"Maybe she really doesn't know," I said.
"Maybe she does," Jade said. "All right," she added, straightening up and turning to them, "we have our first OWP project: to help Cat discover everything and anything about her own past."
They agreed quickly.
"What do you mean? What are you going to do?" I asked, my heart thumping. I was going to be in plenty of trouble as it was, sneaking out and coming here after Geraldine had specifically forbidden it.
"Were you born in Los Angeles?"
"I think so," I said. "I don't know."
"You don't even know where you were born?" Star cried.
"She never said where I was born."
"At least see if you can find out where and we'll see if we can check birth records, for starters," Jade plotted.
"Yeah, you have to have a birth certificate," Star said, "and your parents would be on it!"
"Maybe it was a secret birth, in a basement or an attic," Misty suggested with her eyes full of stories. "And then they forged a birth certificate. I read that in this book and--"
"Where did your real mother live?" Jade asked, waving Misty off as if she was waving away an annoying fly. "Here, in Pacific Palisades, not far from us."
"So at least you remember her?" Misty said.
"I didn't know her very well. My mother wasn't ever all that eager to take me to see her. I don't think they got along well."
"What about your grandfather?" Jade asked. "I mean, the man you thought was your grandfather," she corrected.
"He died two years later. I remember him a little better, although he wasn't really very interested in me and I didn't see all that much of him either. He was around holidays and such, but not too often otherwise."
"No wonder," Star muttered. "He always knew you weren't his, right?"
"I guess. Geraldine said he knew I wasn't his child, but I don't know."
"Will you stop with that 'I don't know' ! If I hear it one more time, I'll go mad!" Jade screeched.
"Well, I don't," I said, tears coming to my eyes. "It's something I just found out and I guess I'm still in some shock about it."
Jade looked up at the ceiling a moment as she regained control of herself.
"Okay," she said. "Okay. Your assignment is to search for and locate any