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Chapter 12
“So, let me guess.”Pulling Brooklyn onto her lap, Isabel stroked the child’s hair back from her face. “You decided to go and asked Travis if the two of us were going to go and make babies, huh?”
Brooklyn looked away, jerking a thin shoulder in a shrug. “Yeah.”
“That’s a pretty personal question, Brooklyn.”
The girl’s chin dipped and her shoulders, already slumped, hunched even more.
“Why is it so important for you to know?” There had to be a reason behind this, something more than Brooklyn’s incessant curiosity.
“Because,” Brooklyn whispered.
“I need a little more than that.” Cupping Brooklyn’s chin, she guided her face upward.
Brooklyn shoved her face into Isabel’s shoulder and mumbled.
Frowning, Isabel picked apart the words until she’d made sense of them, then repeated, “Babies are special? Is that what you said?”
“It’s true,” Brooklyn said. “That’s why my mama wanted to have Mariah. She thought if she had another baby—especially if the baby was a boy—our daddy would want to stay with us more. But he didn’t. He left, and not long after that...”
Asshole, Isabel thought.
Isabel knew exactly what had happened. Just a few short weeks after she’d given birth to Mariah, the girls’ mother had overdosed. Brooklyn had been the one to find her, had been the one to call9-1-1. She rarely talked about it outside of the therapy Isabel had arranged, but Brooklyn had known her mother was dead before she even touched her. She’d picked the baby up, carried to the living room and made a pallet for her, then called emergency services, acting too much like the little grown-up she’d been forced to become.
So many ghosts this child had, so many shadows.
Cuddling Brooklyn on her lap, she stroked the girl’s soft, wispy hair. “And are you thinking ifIhave a baby of my own, maybe I won’t want you kids?”
“You wouldn’t,” Brooklyn said, sniffling. “If you and Travis make babies, why would you need us? You’d have your own babies to love.”
“Oh, honey.” She squeezed Brooklyn closer and kissed her temple. “Love is a funny thing, you know. Your heart can carry so much of it ... even when you give lots of it away, like I do with you, Mariah, Aaron, and Storm, there’s always more left over, because your heart can hold so many people.”
Brooklyn said nothing.
Cupping the girl’s chin in her hand, she pressed gently until Brooklyn finally met her eyes. “I’m not going to be having babies, Brooklyn.”
Not with Travis. Not with anybody. It was an old ache by now, but sometimes, it still stung. Now, though, there was barely a twinge, almost as if helping somebody with their hurt made that old pain fade into the background.
“You might,” Brooklyn said with a watery sniff. “You like him a whole lot. I can tell.”
Isabel wasn’t sure how to describe her feelings for Travis Barnes.Likedidn’t even touch the surface.
“No, Brook. I mean, it’s true that I like him.” That didn’t even touch on how she felt about Travis, but that wasn’t the point. With a heavy sigh, she brushed Brooklyn’s hair back from her face again and held the girl’s eyes. “Ican’thave babies. Ever.”
Brooklyn’s eyes widened while her face took on a puzzled look.
“Why can’t you?”
“I got sick,” Isabel said simply. “It’s not anything you have to worry about. It was a long time ago and I’m all better now, but there was a complication and by the time the doctors took care of it, the end result was that I’d never be able to have kids of my own.”
Brooklyn folded her mouth into a thoughtful frown, her too-canny mind turning this new information this way and that. After a minute, she squinted up at Isabel. “Is that why you take care of kids like us? Because you can’t have your own kids?”
“It started out that way, I guess.” With a one-sided shrug, Isabel said, “But it turns out, I’m pretty good at it. I know what it’s like to be in a bad place and need somebody who’ll take care of me, listen to me ... only I didn’t get it. If I can help kids like you and Aaron and Storm out, then all the bad things that happened to me when I was a kid ... well, maybe there was a reason.”
“And Mariah,” Brooklyn added. She considered a moment, then said, “And Jacob, although I don’t think I like him yet.”
“He’s a work in progress,” Isabel agreed.
