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“Way easier than HALO missions, babe,” Adam whispered, kissing the top of my head just before Sister Theresa swung open the door. “You’ve got this, badass.” It made me smirk and lean into him just a little, my heart filling with something that scared me: hopefulness. I didn’t stop to think about why or what that meant and whether it meant hopefulness for something with him, or Daniela, or both of them, but it put a genuine smile on my face right before we stepped through the door to meet the sour-faced old lady I remember all too well. She’d always looked like she was two hundred years old, but additional time had further pickled her features and the same bitter expression she’d always had.
Sister Emanuelle had been the bane of my existence as an eight-year-old. She had been headmistress of the small Catholic school I’d attended from the ages of six to nine, when I was officially “uninvited” back to Sacred Heart Elementary, because I was deemed “entirely too much trouble.” In fact, according to the sisters, I’d invited the devil into my heart, leaving no room for the Holy Spirit’s gentle corrections.
To be fair, I’d earned that reputation pretty hard. I’d been the kid to lead others into temptation. I was the one smuggling in fireworks to light in the girl’s bathroom and slipping fat, slimy frogs out of my pockets and into the teacher’s desk drawer. I was trouble and I knew it, but in my mind I wasn’t doing it tobetrouble. It was just fun.
Itwasfun, until my parents were called to collect me from Sister Emanuelle’s office for the eighth or ninth time, which was when I made the unsanctimonious transfer to the local public school.
Public school hammered most of the spirit out of me over the years, though that was probably less the fault of public school and more the fault of Leia Batabor, the Filipino girl who arrived three weeks after I did, and made my life a living hell. Her neurosurgeon father had done something to lose his prestigious position in the Columbia University hospital network and found himself relegated to our little backwater hospital, something Leia punished me for from the fifth grade through our senior year of high school.
“Ms. VanBuren.” Sister Emanuelle’s voice was just as sharp and unpleasant as I’d remembered, even three decades later. Some things just stuck with you, like the fact she still had a tremendous wart on the left side of her nose that made her whole face look lopsided and like it was about to slide down her neck.
If you’d asked me at nine, I’d have told you that wart was what made her so pissed at life and now, thirty years later, I decided I maintained that opinion.
“Yes, sister.” It wasn’t a challenge to sound meek, because the woman still scared the shit out of me.
Daniela began to stir ever so slightly in Adam’s arms and Sister Emanuelle looked put out, so I held my arms out. When he carefully nestled the little bundle in my arms, I put her right up to my shoulder to bounce her gently.
“I understand you have something of an attachment to our youngest ward.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
There was that look again.
“I have reviewed your application, my dear.” Her tone suggested I was anything to her but dear. “I’m afraid I feel you are not positioned as the best applicant for a number of reasons.”
There were more applicants? The thought filled me with more than alarm, it made a cold panic start to twist my guts.
I couldn’t have explained my connection to Daniela if you’d held a gun to my head, but I knew she belonged to me. The thought that I might not have a chance, because Sister Emanuelle considered me the broken half of a whole unit, made my eyes suddenly fill.
“Sister,” I gulped, looking up pleadingly, furious that a tear tracked down my cheek. “I was the one to send her here and I need to be the one to save her. I fell in love with this little girl in a migrant camp.”
There wasn’t an ounce of pity on the woman’s face as she stared me down, and I knew she was seeing an eight-year-old hellion with tangled hair and a scraped knee.
“Sweetheart.” Adam’s voice startled me when I realized the endearment was meant forme. “Why don’t you take her back for her bottle and sit with her for a while? I believe the sister and I need to catch up.” He caught my eye, seeing all the words of protest that piled up behind the lump in my throat, and he leaned over to kiss my temple in a gesture that would have seemed tender to anyone looking on. I was pretty sure it was just a show, though I didn’t know why.
“I’ll explain everything to her.”
I rose carefully, Daniela squirming just a little against my shoulder, and he squeezed my elbow before Sister Theresa opened the door and led me out into the hallway.
“I’ll have a bottle prepared,” she called, bustling down the hallway, which I took to mean I should take the baby back to her room.
Daniela and I settled into the rocking chair in her little room, where I fed her the bottle, burped her, and we rocked until I lost all sense of time, lulling her into a nap filled with sweet little kitten snuffles and tiny baby gurgles.
She was tiny for her age, estimated at only three months old, but still in newborn clothing. I suspected her teenage mother had given birth to her during the long walk from Venezuela and wondered not for the first time if the girl hadn’t died of dehydration, but of complications from childbirth. She’d been small, slight and lovely, with narrow hips, and I had a feeling her daughter would take after her.
It was a long time before I heard the faintest noise in the hallway and I looked up to see Adam leaning against the door, a sweet expression on his face as he watched the two of us.
“I don’t want to put her down,” I confessed in a whisper, my eyes dangerously close to filling again and he crossed the room quietly, squatting down in front of me.
“The home study will be conducted in three days,” he said softly. “I’ll keep Bailey at my place so he doesn't spook the social worker. There will be some questions, some might be a little uncomfortable, but I have a good feeling about this.”
My forehead pinched a little and my eyes narrowed suspiciously. “What did you do?”
“Only what had to be done,” he said easily, taking the baby from my arms and kissing the top of her head before he held her up for me to kiss, then tucked her into her crib.
“What had to be done,” I repeated suspiciously, double-checking the blanket he’d tucked loosely around Daniela, and I smoothed a hand down her little body before kissing my fingertips to press gently against her chest.
We were outside the building before I could draw a deep breath and instead of walking toward his truck my feet led me across the parking lot, toward the formidable church. He didn’t try to stop me, simply followed me like he knew what I was doing and when I turned slightly to tell him, “I wanted to light a candle for her parents,” he nodded and took my hand.
