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‘Mommy, my shoe broke today.’ Amy is snuggled in bed, eyes wide over the covers as she delivers this news.
‘What?’ I stare at her, my mind still on sushi, and she nods toward the shoes by her bed. New school shoes, bought from Payless less than two months ago for the start of third grade, and not all that cheap. ‘It should be called Paymore,’ Kevin joked when he saw the receipt.
‘My strap broke.’
I bend down to look at her shoes. Just as she’d said, the strap has snapped on one, because she pulls them so tight. The other one, I see, is wearing thin.
‘We’ll use duct tape to fix it.’ Amy nods sullenly, knowing better than to argue even though I know she doesn’t want to limp to school with a duct-taped shoe. But as I stare at the strap I feel something harden inside me. Amy knows we can’t afford another pair of shoes, and I hate that. I hate that she knows not to ask. Not to expect. My smart-mouthed, sassy girl, accepting this silently, knowing there’s no point to protest, because the money simply isn’t there.
I look at Emma curled up in her bed, and Lucy sprawled in hers, and my heart aches with fierce love for my three girls, girls who already have had a hard start in life thanks to Kev’s accident, who know not to expect new shoes or special treats, who don’t even ask for them any more. I want more for my girls. I want to be able to give them more, not less. And there is only one way I can do that.
After I’ve tucked Amy in I head back to the computer. Kevin has dozed off and the TV blares a replay of a football game. If I turn it off, he might wake up, so I leave it on and click on another profile. And another. All these happy families. Except of course they’re not families. Not yet. I don’t want to give my baby to any of them.
Then I see a photo of a woman by herself. She looks sharp and sleek, wearing a navy-blue skirt suit, arms folded, hair back, barely smiling. Her gaze is direct and a little challenging, and somehow I like that.
I read her profile, which is full of business stuff I don’t understand, but there’s a picture of her apartment in Manhattan, with floor-to-ceiling views of Central Park. Grace Thomas is sitting on her sofa, looking stiff, legs folded to one side, her mouth curled in a faint smile as if she’s thinking of something else.
I don’t know why I keep staring at her photograph. Maybe because she’s so different from me. Maybe because those lovey-dovey couples feel like such a slap in the face. They have everything I don’t, and I’m meant to give them more? I’m meant to hand over everything they’ve ever wanted, put the icing on their triple-layer cake?
This woman, this Grace, has a lot. She’s obviously super-rich, and she could provide for this child way, way more than we could. But she’s not part of a smarmy couple; she’s not flaunting her happiness in my face. She’s clearly driven and independent, and I imagine how she’s made her way on her own, how she’s climbed to the top with her own two hands. My hands creep to my belly.
I could give my baby to someone like this. Someone different and driven, someone smart and ambitious. Someone who will give this little one everything I can’t.
I could do it, even if it would kill something inside me, even if I had to live with the guilt and the grief every day of my life. I could do it… and it might be the best thing for my baby, never mind me or my girls.
Four
GRACE
‘Grace, we might have a match.’
In one quick movement, I rise from my desk and twitch closed the blinds on the floor-to-ceiling window that overlooks the rest of the office floor. I take a deep breath and turn to the two other floor-to-ceiling windows, the ones overlooking the Hudson River. My corner office. Finally. A perk of that social media deal back in November, although it ended up not doing quite as well as I’d hoped.
‘We do?’ I say carefully. My heart is beating hard and I feel that tingle of excitement, a flare inside, like I do when I sense a good investment no one else has spotted. And this… this is the biggest investment of all.
It’s been two months since my father’s funeral and the loneliness hasn’t let up. If anything, it’s become worse. And along with it has grown a need, a craving I feel with every fiber of my being, that I need someone to love. Maybe it’s my biological clock, maybe simply the human urge to live for something greater than myself. In any case, six weeks ago, I decided to begin the process to adopt a baby.
I didn’t have time to find a man, marry, and start trying the old-fashioned way. That would take months, years, and it was sure to be complicated and messy. I’m thirty-nine; it’s already getting late. Besides, adoption felt right: a baby without a mother, a mother without a child. We’d fit, two interlocking puzzle pieces, holding tight together. We’d be a team, the two of us, just like my father and I used to be, needing nothing but each other.
When I decide something, I do it, and that’s how it was with this. I bought the books, I found an agency, I went through all the loops and hoops, the home study and assessments, with single-minded determination. It gave me a focus, something I desperately needed after my father’s death, and more importantly, gave me hope.
Even now, two months later, I’ll suddenly remember he’s gone and it’s startling, like I’ve heard it for the first time, the wave of grief breaking over me as fresh and cold as ever. The phone will ring, and I think it’s him. The words Hey, Dad are almost out of my mouth when I hear the telemarketer’s drone.
So thinking about a baby, my baby, my family, has helped me. Grounded me. And now I might be taking the next step to making that a reality.
‘Yes, a couple have come forward to express interest,’ Tina, the woman who handles my case at the adoption agency, says, and my heart turns right over. ‘They specifically requested a closed adoption, just as you wanted. She’s due in the middle of May.’
It’s early January now; the city is covered in dirty snow and the air is frigid, sharp and metallic. Christmas might as well not have happened. Dad and I always had Christmas together, over at his place, exchanging a gift each and sharing a bottle of wine. It was low-key but I loved it, because we weren’t trying to oversell the holiday or pretend everything was normal, without my mom, without the extended family most people take for granted. We just were, and that was always enough. It always had been.
This year I simply pretended it wasn’t Christmas at all. I worked pretty much the whole time and on the actual day I holed up with a bottle of wine, takeout Chinese food, and Netflix.
‘And she – they – picked me?’ I can’t help but sound disbelieving. Me, the single, driven career woman who, I’m secretly afraid, doesn’t even look maternal?
‘Yes, they did.’ I hear a smile in Tina’s voice. ‘It does happen.’
And yet I didn’t expect it to happen quite this quickly. Everyone yammers on about how adoption takes forever, at least on the internet forums I ventured onto one drunken night. The desperation seeped out of my laptop like some toxic gas, and the worst part was, I felt it too, like something being carved out of me. I clicked and clicked on message after message, read stories of adoptions that fell through, sometimes heartbreakingly late, and then of course the ones that never even happened. Couples waiting years, decades, longing only for a child to love. Just like me.
‘So who is she?’ I ask Tina.
