It was no secret that William Van De Kamp was adopted. He knew it, his friends knew it. All it meant was that he had twice the parents anyone else had at Westside Elementary. He knew his other mother and father were out there somewhere. Once a year, on May 19th, the day before his birthday, a small box with no return address would arrive at the white farmhouse.
Attn: W. Van De Kamp
c/o Rocky Mountain Adoption
Greater Wyoming Branch Office
1204 4th St.
Laramie, WY 82072
It had happened since before he could remember, and the content were always the same, more or less. There would be a snow globe from a some seemingly random location, a book, and a very brief letter.
There were fifteen snow globes now. The first had been from a podunk town in Georgia and the most recent was Washington DC, but the other fourteen were from all over the East Coast. The books varied hugely, from a Golden Book about a fox the first year to a world atlas.
He kept all the letters. They were all very similar, which annoyed him now. A few years back, he had realized the letters were reiterating the same facts and rarely revealed anything new.
His mother wrote them. He knew that in part from the neat, looping cursive. She never signed 'Mom' or 'Mother,' let alone her name. It was a simple 'X'. She mentioned his father, though, and she had William's address.
The letter told him work was going well, that she was well, his father was well and as annoying as ever. She was glad the weather turned warm again, and she hoped he was well.
There were few variances. In 2008, she had said she changed jobs. In 2014, she said she let her hair go back to its natural color, that being a blonde just wasn't right for her. Somewhere in the middle, she'd said his father had sung happy birthday for him, as she couldn't carry a tune.
She at least kept in touch with his father, she'd had two jobs over thirteen years, she couldn't sing, and she wasn't blonde.
That was all he knew.
Sometime after his fifteenth birthday, he'd finally asked his parents what they knew about his birth mother.
His mother looked slightly resigned, but not surprised.
It had taken the Van De Kamps the better part of a week to decide what to do. It was December, so they told him they'd give him everything they knew about the mysterious 'X' at Christmas. It would take a few weeks to get everything together.
William had tried not to get his hopes up, but he was still disappointed when everything about X fit into a manilla envelope. He had thanked his parents, and put the envelope aside until evening. He didn't want to ruin the Christmas spirit for them any more than he already had.
It wasn't until several nights later that he spilled the envelope's contents over his desk.
There was a birth certificate, his original one, with his birth parents' names and social security numbers removed. It was an odd certificate, from Washington DC, but naming some other town that sounded familiar as his birthplace. It took William a minute to realize his first snow globe was from the same town. When he looked down the certificate, the space for the doctor's name had been left blank.
He frowned. Why would the attending doctor be relevant to anything?
There were a few emails back and forth between the Van De Kamps and an adoption agency. William was excited when he found a forwarded email from his birth mother, but her email address was missing.
"Why should anything be easy?" he muttered.
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Van De Kamp,
I will being flying into Denver on November 15th, Friday, and driving up to Laramie from there. The agency has provided me with the address we'll meet at. I understand it's their Wyoming branch office.
I cannot begin to tell you how much it means to me that you're taking William in. It tears my heart in two to know that I cannot provide for his safety or mine while he is in my care. I think it will be for the best that he is raised with you, far from me.
I will not come to visit. I suppose you know that, given that this is a closed adoption, but I want to tell you I will never renenge on the anonymity it provides us both. I cannot conceive of a circumstance where it would be necessary for my identity to be revealed. Nonetheless, if you ever find yourselves in a situation where you need me, do not hesitate to contact me. This email address is checked regularly, if not by me, then by someone I trust.
It's up to you to tell him- or not- about this adoption, but if he ever asks, please tell him his father, grandmother, and I all love him to the end of the earth and back.
Sincerely yours,
Dana
Dana.
Dana.
Her name was Dana.
There was little else of use in the envelope, save for a blurry photograph of himself as a baby in Mrs. Van De Kamp's arms. It was him, a porch railing and a little bit of grass.
He stared at it, suddenly realizing that the blob on the edge wasn't a finger on the lens. It was a person.
It wasn't much to go on, as the person had their back turned to the camera, walking away.
William flipped the photo over. There was a date on the back. 11/15/02. He flipped the photo over again and stared. The person was more likely than not his birth mother. She looked small, not much taller than the car parked in the road behind her. Her hair- at least in the photo- was copper, and he wondered if it was her natural color, the color she preferred over blonde. There wasn't any snow on the ground, but it looked windy, and her dark coat flapped around her ankles.
He stared at her, unseeing. Why had she given him up?
She didn't look like any kind of crazy lady. From the little of her that was visible, she looked like a normal person, maybe even a well-to-do sort of person. The coat was a little odd, but he supposed plenty of people probably wore coats like hers. Just because he'd never seen any in Laramie didn't mean much. Most of the people he knew wore Carhartt and Columba jackets, but that was because it was below freezing more often than not, and it didn't pay to muck up nice coats calving or working outside.
Then the likely truth hit him. She looked like a city person. A nice, long coat was probably an urban thing.
Not-blonde Dana probably lived in a city where it got fairly cold on a regular basis.
That was what he typed into Google after he got the computer booted up. The desktop downstairs ran slowly, but it worked. He'd gathered his papers and crept down the stairs, careful not to wake his parents.
US cities with snow
There were thousands of results, far too many to be useful. William chewed his lip, and then typed in Washington DC + Dana.
It was a long shot, even assuming she lived in the city his birth certificate had been issued in. She hadn't said anything about moving, but that didn't mean she hadn't.
There were fewer results now, but it would still take weeks to go through the data, even if he had the time to do so. He sighed.
Are there any other search terms I can use?
He fanned Dana's letters out across the desk, hunting for key words, locations, names. He grabbed a highlighter from the pen cup near the desktop screen and began splashing his best Christmas gift with yellow-lime ink.
Mother's birthplace: Arlington, Virginia.
Birthdate: 02/23/1964
Father's birthplace: Chilmark, Massachusetts
Birthdate: 10/13/1961
William was surprised. His mother was 51, and his father only a few years older. He didn't know what he'd been expecting, maybe that Dana had been too young to care for him or too old, but- to the best of William's knowledge- 51 was a fine age for the mother of a fifteen-year-old.
He tried again.
Dana + born + feb 23 1964 + Arlington VA
Fewer results again, but still far too many to go through. Maybe it would be possible to cross reference this search with the Dana + Washington search.
He sighed. There were too many options right now. Even if he figured out her last name, it wasn't like he could call the operator and ask to be connected to every Dana X in Washington DC. Well, he could, but his parents would have something to say about the phone bill.
What else did he know? He ran over the facts in his head and decided to write them down. The white-blue light of the desktop monitor was enough to write by. He pulled out a notepad.
Dana. 51 years old, born in Arlington, maybe lives in Washington DC. Has a dangerous job? Not blonde. Maybe red hair? Maybe an only child because she only ever talked about my father and grandmother?
Father.
Grandmother.
Her email seemed to insinuate that the Van De Kamps had her email address, but it was past two in the morning now, and he couldn't wake them up and ask that. Besides, there was no guarantee that she'd answer him, even if the address was still valid. She said she checked it regularly, but that was fifteen years ago.
He abstractly returned to the Google page.
What kind of dangerous job could she have in Washington? She said it was dangerous.
A grin crept over his face, and he fought the urge to laugh. Maybe she was FBI or CIA or the President's bodyguard. He did laugh. It was absurd. Nonetheless, he typed Dana + Washington + FBI agent into the search bar.
Results still flooded the page. It was a few thousand hits still, and he bit back a sigh of disappointment. Nonetheless, he skimmed the first few entries as he had done with the other searches. There were a few odd headlines among the more normal, all trailing off after the first few words.
Special Agents Dana Scully and Fox Mulder are leading up an investigation into the disappearance of. . .
X-Cops' Thanksgiving special to feature FBI manhunt for werewolf. Special appearances by Da. . .
Dr. Dana Scully, formerly of the FBI, has accepted a surgical position at Our Lady of Sorrows Hos. . .
William clicked on the last one. He was almost done with searching for the night. He was tired, but he wanted to keep looking, so he compromised. Two more links. Out of all the things he'd read, a job switch was the most normal out of the things he'd read. Though he didn't think Dr. Dana Scully, FBI would be his mother. No one in Wyoming was that cool.
He waiting for the page to load and began reading the text as the photo slowly formed on the screen. It was some article, produced by a hospital about this new doctor that they'd recruited. She was from the FBI, a pathologist, apparently, and very gifted, if the article was anything to go by. She would be a surgeon, specializing in pediatrics and unusual cases.
William frowned. How did one go from cutting up dead people to cutting up live people? He wasn't sure he wanted a former pathologist, gifted or not, to be his surgeon.
He rolled his eyes as the article extolled Dr. Scully's virtues and scrolled back up to the picture.
He gaped at the photo.
It was her.
The shot was staged in front of the hospital, with fall trees and a large sign that read "Our Lady Of Sorrows Hospital" in big font and "Washington, DC" in smaller letters at the bottom.
Dana Scully stood at the sign's side in black slacks, a white blouse, and a crisp white coat. She was still short, despite tall black heels. Her stethoscope was stunningly red and looped over her neck.
The photo was a several years old, but her hair was long, almost to her elbows and coppery orange. Her face was porcelain white with pristine make-up and huge blue eyes. She had a smile on her face, but it was tight and forced. She didn't want to be there, or at least not taking the photo.
She looked sad, William realized.
Our Lady of Sorrows?
He googled that as well, and grimaced at what he found. The Lady was the Virgin Mary, and her sorrows were mostly about the loss of her son, Jesus.
William wasn't sure what disturbed him more, the parallels he immediately drew between Dana Scully and Mary or the insulated similarities between himself and Jesus.
He went back to his first search window and searched dana scully + our lady of sorrows.
There was a flood of information. Clinical articles by his mother, news about her surgical skills, and photos. He opened a new window just for the photos.
There were many pictures of her, going back more than a decade. He poured over them. There were only a few from her time in the FBI, which he supposed was to be expected. A headshot of a young woman with orange hair and a somber expression, a few of her from some show called X-Cops, where she looked tired and annoyed. A few newspaper photos over the years. A few from the hospital's annual reports.
As time went by, her hair got shorter again and turned blonde. She looked tired, and her face sharpened even more.
He stopped on a photo of her at some hospital event. She was standing with a man who dwarfed her and neither looked happy to be there. The man had short dark hair and stubble across his chin. He was wearing a dark suit and and blue tie that matched Dana Scully's navy dress to a tee.
There wasn't a name for him in the caption, but William had a strong idea. He clicked back to the list of news headlines about Special Agent Dana Scully. Just above the article about the werewolf manhunt was a serious article about Scully and someone named Fox Mulder, another FBI agent.
William stared at the picture in that article, a dark shot of both Dana and Fox. Fox looked more than a foot taller, a lanky spaghetti noodle of a man.
He chewed his lip and searched dana scully + fox mulder.
It didn't prove much besides that Dana and Fox were apparently partners in the FBI. As the morning continued, William kept researching. He found that Dana worked for the FBI teaching, and then with Fox, was kidnapped, arrested, had cancer, quit and came back, then quit again and started working at the hospital. Fox was more mysterious. He was at the FBI even longer than Dana, was arrested a few times, disappeared a few times, quit a few times, and returned one time less before vanishing from sight. There wasn't anything to say he'd died, he'd just. . . fallen off the back of the earth.
William checked the clock.
5:30 AM
He had school in the morning. The first day back after break.
He considered his options, then ran a new google search and crept into the kitchen. A few minutes later, he returned with the phone. The search he'd run had pulled up the non-emergency number for Our Lady Of Sorrows Hospital in Washington DC. He tapped the number into the phone and held his breath as it began to ring.
He could still hang up.
He could end the call.
"Our Lady of Sorrows, how may I help you?"
"Ah. . ."
"Sorry?" The voice was distinctly female. "I didn't catch that."
"Um, is Dr. Dana Scully in?"
"Dr. Scully? Hold on, I just saw her; she just got in."
End the call! End the call! His brain was screaming at him.
"Dr. Scully?" The call was muffled. "Someone on the phone?"
There was an inaudible conversation, and then "Here she is."
There was a scuffle, and then a woman's voice.
"Hello?"
Her voice was lower than he'd imagined, and she sounded tired, despite the early hour. There was a faint accent. He couldn't place it, but he supposed it was what the East Coast sounded like.
"Hello? Can I help you?" And vaguely impatient.
"Um, yeah, um. . ."
There was a terse silence. What if this was the wrong Dana?
"It's me. It's William." He didn't know what to say.
There was a sharp inhalation on the other end.
A gasp.
"Um. . ."
"William?" Her voice was softer now, quavering slightly. "William?"
"Yeah, um, I'm looking for my mother, and um, I guess you're her." There was no other explanation for her reaction.
"William. Oh, my God."
"You're my mom?" he whispered into the phone.
"Oh, William, how did you find me?" She almost sounded afraid now, but he supposed she was just surprised.
"I Googled you."
There was a weak chuckle. "God."
"Dr. Scully? Are you rounding today?" It was someone from Dana's end of the line, someone from the hospital.
"Yes, um, just- Sorry, just a minute."
"Of course."
"William-"
"Dana-" He didn't know what to call her. Mom didn't seem right, but neither did Dr. Scully. "You've gotta go. It's okay. I should probably go to bed anyway."
"You-? William, don't you have class?"
"It's okay. Everything we're doing is pretty easy."
There was a long silence, and he worried she had hung up.
"William, tell you what. I'll give you my cell number, okay? And you can call or text, whatever is comfortable." She waited until he had a pen in hand, then recited her number.
He grinned wildly, even though she couldn't see it. This was more than he'd ever dared to hope for.
"I get off work about seven tonight. You can call anytime, though."
"Okay."
"Okay."
"Dr. Scully?" came the other voice again.
"Coming!"
"Bye, Dana."
There was a pause. "Goodbye, William."
He hung up before they could say anything else. It wasn't that he didn't want to talk to her, he did, but. . . He didn't know how to talk to her yet. She was a shock to his system.
The phone didn't ring again, so he quietly erased his browser history, shut down the computer and cleaned up. He was in bed by six, knowing that his mom- his Mrs. Van De Kamp mom- would wake him up for school in an hour. Maybe he'd try to play that he was sick. . .
"Dr. Scully?"
"Hm?" She was still holding the phone in one hand.
"Are you alright?" The nurse seemed skeptical. It was Padma, one of Scully's few friends at the hospital.
Scully shook herself. It was just another day at the hospital. She couldn't afford to be distracted. Just another average day. "Yes, thank you."
"You look like you've seen a ghost."
Oh, I have, Scully thought. I've seen far too many, and this is just the latest addition.
"Just an unexpected call. That's all. Someone I haven't heard from in a while." She fell in step with the other woman, walking through the innards of the hospital.
"Mr. Mulder again? It seems like whenever you need him y'all always end up playing phone tag." Padma smiled. The occasional calls from Dr. Scully's old friend were always nice. He was polite and often told a joke or two while he waited for someone to find Scully. He always sounded tired, though.
"Not him this time." Scully still seemed lost in thought. "Although I'll need to call him later today. He needs to know. . ."
"Are you sure everything is okay?" It wasn't like Scully to trail off.
Scully sighed. "No, but I want to believe that it is." She pushed through the double doors of the surgical anteroom, ready to scrub her hands and heart clean of the mess she'd made.