“You’re my baby, my daughter. You’re the only one I’ve got.”
“I know.”
She pulled away from me to look at my face. “You know?”
“Well, I’d noticed there wasn’t anyone else around the house.”
She laughed and then took a deep breath. “I don’t expect you to understand this—to understand what it’s like to be a mother.” She touched my hair lightly, pushing a strand away from my face. Her eyes lingered on mine. “The first time I held you in my arms . . . I’d just been through labor. I was exhausted; but it was all I could do to keep myself from leaping off the hospital bed so I could hold you while they tested you to make sure everything was all right. I would have walked through fire for you.” Her smile wavered. “In fact, I think I did walk through fire for you tonight.”
“Yeah, sorry the police officers said all that stuff to you.”
“I haven’t acted like, but I know you’re a good kid.” She kissed the top of my head. “This is what infertility does to a person. One thing went wrong, and suddenly I saw my entire parenting career as ineffectual. I saw . . .” She stared past me into the darkness. For a few moments I sat and felt the silence around us. Then she said, “I used to want other children so badly. Every time we tried and failed, I held onto you tighter. I guess I’ve never been able to let go.” She put her hand over her face, then lay back down on the bed and cried again.
I didn’t know what to do. I had never seen her like this before. “It’s okay,” I said. “You won’t lose me.” She seemed so fragile, so out of control.
Dad came and sat down on the bed beside us. I hadn’t noticed him coming in and didn’t know how much of our conversation he’d heard. He took Mom in his arms, and she cried onto his shoulder. “It’s all right,” he told me. “She’s not crying about you. She’s crying for the children we couldn’t have.”
I didn’t understand. “What children?”
“Go to bed,” Dad said. “We’ll talk in the morning.”
But Mom lifted her head. “No, it’s all right. She needs to stay and talk with us, or she’ll think I’m having a nervous breakdown.” She wiped the tears from her face with the back of her hand. “About once a year something sets me off, and I cry hysterically whether I need to or not. It’s another side effect of infertility.”
“I didn’t know it upset you so much.”
Mom took a tissue from her nightstand. “There was no point in telling you. You can’t do anything to change it.”
“You’re a wonderful daughter,” Dad said, “and you make us happy.”
Mom tried to smile, but didn’t quite manage. “You have to understand this about me—after all these years, my arms still ache every time I see a baby. I don’t look at pregnant women. I go out of my way to avoid the baby section in the department stores. The pain doesn’t end. It just resurfaces at each different stage of life.”
I didn’t know what to say. I got choked up myself. I thought of all the times I’d complained to my parents about being an only child and how it must have hurt them. Why hadn’t I ever seen it before?
Mom gave me a hug. “I didn’t mean to make you sad, honey. You don’t have to feel bad. We’re the luckiest parents alive because we have you.”
I took several shaky breaths in an attempt to regain composure. “Why didn’t you adopt?”
“We thought about it,” Dad said.
“We still think about it sometimes,” Mom added. “But, it’s just . . .” Her voice trailed off, and she crinkled the tissue in her hand, looking down at it instead of me. “We tried for so many years to get pregnant after we had you. For five years, we went to doctors. When the pregnancy test finally came back positive, we were so happy. We picked out names. We painted and wallpapered the den into a nursery. You went up to complete strangers and told them you were going to be a big sister.”
Mom stumbled over her words now. “When I found out I had to have the hysterectomy, I couldn’t go on anymore. It was as if heaven itself had pronounced we shouldn’t have any more children. I couldn’t face the prospect of trying for another child, of getting my hopes up again. I couldn’t even walk past the den without mourning the one I’d lost. I just locked the door, and we didn’t use the room for six months.” She paused. “I don’t suppose you remember that, do you?”
“I remember you being in the hospital, but that’s all.”
“You were little.” She smiled sadly. “Do you know what you wanted to call the new baby? Thumper if it was a boy and Flower if it was a girl.”
“You watched a lot of Bambi,” Dad said.
I don’t know what made me say it, but the words, “I think you should adopt,” came out of my mouth.
Mom said, “Do you?”
“Yes.”
“We’re too old.”
“No you’re not. Elise’s mom is having a baby and she’s older than you.”
“Elise’s mom is a normal person.”
“So are you.”
“Elise’s mom doesn’t have the social-services judge decide whether she’s fit to parent or not.”
“You’re great parents. I’ll vouch for you.”
Mom gave me another hug. “We’ll think about it. But now it’s nearly—” she glanced over at the clock, “morning, and we all need to get some sleep. It’s been a long night.”
“All right.” I gave them both a kiss. Before I left their room, I turned back to them. “If you decide to adopt, I’ll tell strangers I’m going to be a big sister.”
I could tell Mom smiled even in the dark. “I do trust you, Cassidy. I’ll try not to hold onto you so tightly.”
* * *
By the time I pulled myself out of bed the next day, it was afternoon. After I’d showered and eaten, I texted Elise to see how she was. She didn’t answer. I figured her parents had confiscated her phone, so I texted Josh and asked the same question.
He texted back: I’m about to walk the dog. Meet me outside.
Yesterday I wouldn’t have told my parents what I was doing. I would have made up some other excuse to leave the house. Today I put on my coat and grabbed a pair of gloves. “I’m going to go talk to Josh.”
Mom glanced up from her laptop. I knew she wanted to question me about how long I’d be gone and what I’d be doing. She probably also wanted to throw in some instructions about dressing warmly, but she just said, “Okay.”
I smiled and left.
Josh hadn’t said where to meet him, so I started down the sidewalk toward his house. A thin layer of snow covered the ground, sparkling in the sunshine and making everything seem clean and picturesque, renewed.
I was almost to Josh’s house, when I ran into Samantha. I didn’t usually see her outside, but she was walking my direction wearing a parka that framed her face so perfectly she looked like a model for a ski magazine.
I wondered if Josh always walked his dog at this time and if Samantha had coincided her stroll to run into him.
When she got close, she smiled in that evil cheerleader sort of way. I could tell she already knew about Elise and me getting hauled down to the police station last night. I met her gaze without flinching anyway. “Hi, Samantha.”
She stopped instead of walking past me. “Hi, Cassidy. How’s your weekend going?”
“Oh, average.” I made a mental note to call all my friends when I got home. I wanted them to hear the story from me before they heard it on the sour grape vine. “How about you?”
“Well, I’m keeping out of trouble.”
“Great.” That about summed up everything I had to say to Samantha.
I caught sight of Josh then. Goliath was straining on his leash, pulling him toward us. “Heal,” Josh said, but it didn’t do any good.
Apparently Samantha and I looked interesting, or perhaps smelled tasty.
“Hi,” Josh said when he reached us.
“Hi,” Samantha and I said at the same time. We glanced at one another then back at Josh. He nodded at Samantha, but motioned for me to follow him. “Come on, Cassidy, let’s go talk.”