CHAPTER ONE: Christmas Eve, 1994

I dipped a spoon into the rich, brown batter and was dropping the last of the cookie dough onto the baking sheet when the doorbell rang. Too early to be people arriving for our annual Christmas Eve open house. I stuck the cookies in the oven, wiped the flour off my hands and rushed to the door. A delivery man stood holding a package, a last minute Christmas present, I assumed.

Then I saw the return address. European Adoptions Consultants. Funny, they never said they were sending anything. No one mentioned more forms we needed to sign. All that was done months ago. We were in the waiting stage now. Waiting for the adoption agency to tell us which children would be ours.

This is how they said it would work, back in November 1993 when we signed up with the international adoption agency. First, they would call us. Next, they would send a photograph or video. Next, we would say yes or no. If yes, off we went to Russia to get the child. The simplicity of it appealed to me.

I ripped the envelope open. Inside was a blurry photograph of three blond children. I turned the photograph over. "Katya, Yulya and Vitya" was scrawled on the back.

The kids were cute. They had no major problems that I could see, unlike the ones in the first photograph we'd been sent. No crossed eyes, bowed legs or shaved heads.

I dialed the agency, hands shaking, and asked for Margaret, the Director.

"Do you like them?" she said.

"They're for us?" I said, staring at the picture.

"Aren't they cute?"

"Yes…it's just a surprise…"

"Didn't anyone call? Jana was supposed to. They're nice, too. At least that's what they tell me in Russia."

"Are they in Moscow?" I said, holding my breath, praying they didn't live in some godforsaken place like Kaleningrad.

"They live in Nishney Novgorod. Don't worry. It's not far from Moscow. A train ride away."

A train ride. As far as Waukegan maybe, worst case Kenosha.

"I have to show Mark, but I like them."

"Good." I could hear her smile in her voice. "I thought you would. But you have to be patient. The Russian Christmas is later than ours. There won't be any news on these kids until mid-January. Put the picture in a drawer and forget it. We'll talk in a few weeks. Merry Christmas."

I replaced the phone. Forget it. Right. That was like saying to a bankrupt man, you won the lottery but don't think about how you are going to spend the money. Impossible. This was the moment I had been waiting for since the day we were told we couldn't have kids.

Oh my God, the cookies!

I ran back to the kitchen and yanked the burnt lumps out of the oven. I was waving away the smoke when Mark walked in, home from work.

"What's on fire?" he said.

"Oh nothing." I turned to face him. "You'll never guess what came. Look!"

I handed him the picture of the kids, the Nishney 3.

He stared for a second.

"They're kind of cute," he said. "Better than the last ones."

He spoke with no enthusiasm, no smile, a flat expression on his face. I cringed. What was his problem? He wanted a family, here was a family. He wanted more than one child, here were three.

"Better than the last ones? Come one! They're adorable."

"Look at the little boy. He looks like a little Russian."

"They are Russians."

"Oh, right."

"That was the point, remember? We wanted to adopt from Russia. It's the land of your ancestors. The old bad guys."

He managed a smile. "Rescuing kids from the jaws of the evil empire."

"And connecting to your roots."

"Keep reminding me of that."

That was my role. That's what I did, from the moment we began to discuss adoption, after it was clear our own bodies, science and technology all had failed us, to now, when we were about to buy someone else's forgotten or abandoned children.

I tugged at his arm. "C'mon, let's go find Nishney Novgorod on the map."

There is was, due east of Moscow. It did look a train ride away, just as Margaret had said. Thank God, no Areoflot. We had heard horror stories from people we met at adoption meetings and on the internet about flights where people stood in the aisles, no food or drink, no bathrooms, and airports with no electricity.

I put the photograph in a kitchen drawer, just like Margaret told me to do. I tried not to look at it. But I couldn't resist. The photograph pulled at me; it was the moon and I was the ocean, sweeping back and forth to take peeks.

I snuck looks at it all afternoon as I got ready for our annual holiday open house. Soon I had every bit of that photograph memorized. The way the little girl in her faded green dress stood shyly behind her big sister, the way their brother stood fiercely next to them with his fists curled into balls. The big sister, I was sure that was Katya, was so grown up looking with her white shirt tucked neatly into her black skirt.

My daughter. That photo was my ultrasound.

Ever since we decided to adopt a child from Russia, I thought of myself as being pregnant. Filling out the forms and having the home study was the first trimester. Waiting for a referral and remodeling the spare room into a kid's room was the second trimester. This photograph signaled the beginning of my third trimester. Now I was in the home stretch. Soon I would deliver triplets: a five-year old girl, a six-year-old boy and an eight-year-old-girl.

I showered quickly, bent my head upside down and squirted my hair with the blow dryer, hardly looking in the mirror. I dressed for the party in a daze. I slipped on the velvet pantsuit I wore every Christmas. When I came out, I found Mark already dressed in a black turtleneck and brown corduroy slacks by the stereo.

"How about some big bands and then some Bing Crosby?" he said.

"Don't forget the Beatles. Hey, do you think Katya listens to rock and roll? Mark, can you believe it? Our kids are finally coming!"

"They don't feel like our kids yet."

"They will. I'm sure of it. They will."

That was my role too. The reassurer. The steadfast believer in what we were doing.

People began to arrive. My best friend Phylly came in a new black dress.

"You look great!" I said.

"Thanks! I've finally lost the weight I gained with Adam. Took long enough."

Phylly had delivered her third baby last August. A year ago I would have felt a sharp stab of pain at her remark. Phylly and I had been friends since she was a freshman in high school and I was a sophomore. We backpacked through Europe together before my senior year of college. When I decided to move to California after graduate school, I lived in her den in Palo Alto until I found my own place.

Our friendship was strong. It had endured through boyfriends, friends I had who didn't like her or she didn't like, going to different colleges and living in different states. For many years, I lived the single girl life while she married, bought a house and had kids. She had everything I wanted and sometimes thought I never would have. Her first two kids, a boy and a girl, were wonderful and smart, her third pregnancy, last year, had been hard. Her health wasn't perfect and she hadn't even been sure she would conceive, but she did.

Phylly had her hands full with three kids, and while she had always been amazingly able to focus on her friends and her demanding family life, lately, it depressed me to see her. She'd found new friends in the past years, mom friends, and while she went out of her way to introduce her mom friends to her childless friends, I felt like an alien around them.

But today, today, I was on the verge of being a mother. My babies weren't in my belly. But they were safe in my kitchen drawer.

"I have something to show you!"

I pulled her over to the drawer and showed her the photo.

"You got a referral! These are your kids? Oh my God, how adorable. How old? They are so cute, oh Marth, I am so excited for you. Does Mark like them?"

"Yep, he thinks they are cute. This might be it."

The doorbell rang. More friends arrived, bearing wine and Christmas cookies and presents. I took them all in my arms, laughing and happy. All of a sudden there was so much to celebrate.

Floating on a happy cloud, I showed my mom the photo. Her face got a worried look.

"You're going to adopt these? All three? Do you know anything about them?"

"No. Mom, you know that. The nature of this is we might never know more."

"You know nothing? Are they healthy? Why are they in the orphanage?"

"I don't know."

Her worried look reminded me of how really odd this was if one were not immersed in the process. It felt entirely normal to me to travel ten thousand miles round trip to bring three children I'd never met home to live in my house. Wasn't that how one had a family? It was the other way, the so-called usual way that now seemed so strange. Get pregnant and deliver a baby without having a social worker come to your house to do a home study? How weird!

"Remember, Mom? I told you when we first started pursuing this, that sometimes all you get is a photograph. If you are very lucky, you get a video. Believe it or not, some people don't even get a photograph. They go get a child they never have even seen a picture of."

"I know, but-"

"We wanted two children. Mark didn't want to adopt just one. But two siblings for adoption is pretty rare. The Russians take them. They can't afford to adopt three."

I carefully put the photograph back in the drawer.

Our living room filled with people eating, drinking and talking. I was happy. The Christmas carols on the stereo brought tears to my eyes. I snuffled to "Joy To The World." I'm overemotional, I thought. Like a pregnant person. I had a big advantage over a normal pregnant woman though. I could drink! The best of both worlds. I sipped my vodka and cranberry juice and surveyed the room. I had my picture of Katya, Yulya and Vitya in the drawer. Phylly's kids were crowded around Mark who was showing them the ornaments on the Christmas tree.

"Show us your computer," clamored David, the oldest.

"In a minute, buster," said Mark. "I want Jessie to see this neat ornament."

He'd be great with Katya, Yulya and Vitya. Life was good. 1995 would be a great year for us all.

Over the next several weeks the holiday season faded into piles of brittle evergreens stacked on the curb waiting for the recycling truck. I went back to work at Household International, where I designed training programs. I forced myself to concentrate on my projects. It all felt temporary. Soon my life would be transformed. I would be called to Russia to get Katya, Yulya and Vitya. My new life, my real life, my life as a mother, would begin.

I thought of the kids all the time. I looked at my town with new eyes. Doing my errands in the car, I looked out the window at the stores and wondered if the kids have ever seen a shopping mall. I looked at the glimmer of the lake at the end of the street and wondered if they have ever felt the cold wet sand at the beach. I watched the cardinal sit on a tree branch and wondered if they have ever heard the bird sing for his mate. I vowed to introduce them to all these marvels.

On our morning jogs, I passed a little girl wearing a bright red jacket and yellow mittens and decided Yulya will have an outfit just like that. I passed a taller girl carrying a pair of ice skates and decided Katya and I will go ice skating at the lagoon. I passed a group of boys making snowmen and promised myself to make sure Vitya had plenty of friends.

Finally, after two weeks of no news from EEA, I called Margaret.

"Didn't anyone tell you?" Margaret's assistant Jana said. "That sibling group is not available. There are legal issues. The adoption is not going to go through."