From Here To Maternity: A Second ChancePromoted to MomOn Angel's Wings

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  She nodded, her big brown eyes moist at the corners. “Remember Brian, that five-year-old boy with the cigarette burns?”

  My stomach turned over. I wasn’t usually queasy, but then, there wasn’t anything about me that was usual anymore. Except perhaps that I’d enjoyed the meeting with my sales staff that day. They were all the family I had. Or they had been until a year ago, when I’d been sitting at my home computer one evening winding down with a game of solitaire and heard the familiar ding that announced a new e-mail message. I’d thought it was from one of my newer associates who’d been trying to close his first deal.

  Instead, the message was from the daughter I’d given up for adoption thirty-one years before, asking if I would be willing to meet her.

  “I remember,” I said now.

  “The judge gave him back into his mother’s custody today.”

  “You told me when they took Brian from her he had burns all over his legs and hands! How could a judge give him back?”

  “The mother claims she had no idea her boyfriend was abusing her kid. She broke up with him.”

  “Do you believe her?”

  Even after only a year, I trusted Kylie’s instincts completely.

  “He went to school with burns on his extremities,” she said now, running a finger lightly along a fold in the white tablecloth. “What kind of mother dresses her five-year-old for school and doesn’t see major burns?”

  “Maybe she didn’t dress him. Maybe she wasn’t there.”

  “Maybe she knew and just didn’t do anything about it.”

  I gazed at this daughter of mine, in awe of what she’d become. “You think she knew?”

  “Brian said it wasn’t the first time.”

  “So why would the judge give him back?” It made no sense to me, but then, a year of looking at life from Kylie’s perspective had done drastic things to my opinion of the California justice system.

  “When I put him on the stand, Brian claimed he’d never said that.”

  “He wanted to be with his mother.”

  “Yep.” Kylie slipped out of her navy suit jacket, carefully hanging it over the back of her chair. All the other tables in the quaint, eclectically decorated room were filled, yet the atmosphere was intimate, the tables angled to maximize diners’ privacy.

  I took a sip of water, watching her. Wondering. And then I had to ask. “Do you think being with his mother is better for Brian than being a ward of the state?”

  After all, Kylie hadn’t had that chance. That choice.

  She stopped fidgeting and stared at me, her eyes warm and tender and filled with compassion—reminding me so much of Denny, I ached with memories. “I think the world has many women who are eager to share their love. They’re mothers who are capable of loving children who aren’t their own, biologically speaking, anyway.”

  How I hoped so—had spent most of my life hoping so.

  “But do you think it’s still better for a child to live with disadvantages, if it means he’s with his mother?”

  “Honestly?”

  No. But…I nodded.

  “I can’t speak for everyone, Melanie. I can only speak for me.”

  “And?”

  “Look at me. I’m thirty-one years old, married to a wonderful man. I have adoptive parents who are as much my parents as any biological parent could have been. My whole life I’ve felt special, secure, sure I could do anything I set my mind to.”

  Her words cut into me, hurting horribly. Yet they also soothed my heart, opening it, giving it freedom. Freedom to feel pain.

  I’d met her parents shortly after I’d met Kylie and had been invited to their home several times since—I had even spent Christmas Day with them. They were wonderful people and they welcomed me as part of their family. I thanked God every night that my greatest desire—to have Kylie safe and happy—had been fulfilled. Still, to know that my daughter hadn’t ached for me as I’d ached for her…

  “And…” She reached across to cover my hand with hers. “Every day of my life I wondered about you and my father. Every day of my life, a part of me felt incomplete.”

  Whew. I shriveled up again just a little. But the hurt dissipated enough so that I could pretend I was all right.

  “What can I get you two ladies to drink?” The chipper young server finally noticed that my dinner companion had arrived.

  I wanted a bottle of wine. Without the glass.

  I opted for sparkling water instead.

  CHAPTER THREE

  WE BOTH ORDERED baked potatoes and house salads with honey mustard dressing. I had no idea whether it was genetics or a crazy coincidence, but my daughter and I had discovered months ago that we had exactly the same taste in food. Out of all my traits she’d got my taste in food—which was boring at best.

  Please.… I sent up a silent aside. With this one still in the barely-a-blip stage, can I put in an order for him or her to have my blue eyes or my athletic body, instead of my penchant for potatoes and crackers?

  I wanted to hear everything that had happened in court in the week since I’d last seen Kylie. I was still in the proud-mama stage—feeling as if every kid she represented was a client of mine, as well. But, hey, while I might have given birth thirty-one years ago, I’d had a child to mother for less than a year.

  We were halfway through dinner by the time I was satisfied that I was completely up-to-date. I knew all of Kylie’s current clients’ stories, the friends she’d had lunch with and I’d heard about the cruise her parents were on. I knew that Sam, Kylie’s tall, blond husband of almost ten years, was still encouraged by the early success of his recently launched chiropractic practice.

  I told Kylie about my sales meeting.

  I couldn’t have her thinking her birth mother was a write-off. She’d feel bad about herself if she thought she came from inferior stock.

  Okay, even after a year I was still anxious to have her like me.

  My daughter’s eyes lit up as I replayed some of today’s key scenes—particularly the one during which Rick admitted that the Heath deal was mine.

  “An honest salesman,” she said, grinning at me with lips that were as generous as her father’s. “Who hired that guy?”

  “I did.” I tried to hold her gaze, but couldn’t. Really, hiring Rick had been a fluke more than a brilliant instinct or any great act of knowing. I’d had too much work on my plate, I was due to report to my new boss, and Rick had walked in the door for an interview I’d completely forgotten.

  He’d been punctual. He’d been wearing a suit. And he’d been happily married with two young daughters he doted on. Still was happily married. And he still thought the world of his daughters, too, though at thirteen and sixteen they were giving him more stress than laughter these days. Giving him gray hair and high blood pressure.

  And he was in his forties, dealing with it all. Younger than I was…

  “SAM AND I HAVE DECIDED to try one more time,” Kylie’s softly spoken words cut through my haze of panic.

  “Oh, sweetie.” I cringed, as I recognized remnants of my own mother in my reaction—even before the words escaped my mouth. “You said the last time was it.”

  How can you be pregnant, Melanie? You said you weren’t seeing him anymore.

  Kylie’s dark eyes were wide and sad and the look broke my heart. “I know, but…”

  I know, Mom, but I love him.…

  “Kylie.” I leaned forward, moved by my own unrest and by my need to make life right for my child. At least one of my children. “You’re still in debt from the last procedure.”

  What is it about mothers? Even new ones. We can’t just offer support. No, we have to jump right in there with judgment and our “greater” wisdom. As if money mattered at such a time.

  “When you miscarried, the depression afterward almost killed you.” Perhaps not literally, but…

  The last failed procedure had brought Kylie looking for me. I’ve wondered many times since then what would’ve hap
pened if she hadn’t found me.

  Did this child of mine have my inner steel? Could she get up every morning for years if that was what it took, put one foot in front of the other in spite of feeling dead inside? Or was she more like my mother, who’d spent her life on medication, then with a bottle when her dissatisfaction persisted—even with help from the strongest antidepressants.

  “I’m only thirty-one. We know that with in vitro I can conceive. If I can get through the first trimester…I could still have a whole houseful of kids. Sam’s willing to do this and I can’t not try.”

  “You have a thin uterine wall. Which is why your doctor doesn’t think you’ll ever carry a baby full-term.”

  “She’s human. She could be wrong.”

  Maybe Kylie wasn’t my mother or me. Maybe she was like her father, turning her back whenever life got too tough. Believing in illusions. Or refusing to believe?

  I didn’t miss the irony in all this. My daughter was risking her sanity because she couldn’t have a baby. And I was risking mine because I was.

  “I wish you’d think about this for a while.” Where did I get such a big, interfering mouth?

  “I have thought about it,” Kylie said, pushing her plate away. She folded her napkin into a neat square and set it on the table. “Look at you and Shane.”

  What? What did my ex-husband have to do with this?

  “You were married for ten years.”

  “Yes.” The irritating tic in my neck was at it again.

  “Sam and I have been married that long.”

  I wasn’t following, but okay.

  “You never had kids.”

  We never had sex, but that hadn’t come up in any conversation with my daughter. “Right.”

  “Do you ever think that maybe if you had, you’d still be together?”

  Whew. My breath left along with a load of tension. “Kylie,” I said, making eye contact with her to ensure she understood the confidence I felt on this point. “Marriage is a relationship between two people and two people alone. Children can add a dimension to that shared life, but not to the marriage itself. If children are the only thing holding a marriage together, it’s not really a marriage. It’s a partnership, two people in the business of raising children.”

  “Children bring couples closer, Melanie. I see it all the time.”

  Yeah. Shit. I forgot for a second there that Kylie’s business was children—those whose lives had gone astray.

  “They might not create the love between you,” Kylie continued. “But they’re an extension of it. Something that bonds you even more closely.”

  She was smart, this kid of mine.

  “Maybe if you and Shane had had children, you’d have seen that,” she said softly.

  “Kylie…Shane was gay.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  AT MY BALD PRONOUNCEMENT, my daughter’s jaw dropped—probably not something that happened often to an accomplished prosecutor. I hadn’t meant to tell her. Bad enough that she knew I’d been pregnant and unmarried at seventeen. She didn’t have to know everything about me.

  Kylie stared. And stared. As if she’d asked a question and was prepared to wait and wait and wait for the answer.

  I gave in and told her. “Shane was my boss’s son.” She was going to get it out of me anyway. And at this point, it was probably better for her to hear the rest. I just hoped she would understand and not judge me too harshly.

  “I thought your father was your boss at Vector back then.” Kylie was frowning.

  “Shane’s father was my father’s boss,” I explained. “The two of us spent a lot of time together during college, and a couple of years after graduation he asked me to marry him. Then it seemed like a good idea.” Then I was nothing but a face in the mirror, an empty young woman going through the motions of living.

  Not that I was going to admit that to my daughter. No matter how good she was at getting information out of people.

  “My parents were thrilled. His parents were thrilled. I’d had the love of my life.…” I’d already told Kylie that part. About Dennis. About letting him go because I’d known that he could never begin to realize the possibilities life had to offer, or even know such possibilities existed, if he didn’t have the freedom to leave his early life behind and discover a world that would recognize and welcome him. “Shane was my best friend. It could’ve worked.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Actually, it worked for about ten years. We tried to have a sex life that first year…” It was strange talking to my daughter about that—thirty-one or not.

  “It didn’t do much for either of us,” I explained. “But I was okay with that.”

  “You were content to live the rest of your life without sex?”

  Yes, well, I’d thought so. Until about six weeks ago…

  Stop it! My head snapped at me. I couldn’t think about that night with Denny right now. I couldn’t risk having Kylie work out that I was withholding a major secret. More than one, actually. Not until I could figure out how I was going to tell her.

  I shrugged off her sex question. “It was nice to have someone to do things with. To share bills and holidays with, to share work and home concerns. It was an okay life for both of us until Shane met Derek. I knew that he’d met his soul mate when Derek got Shane to agree to tell his folks about him.”

  “Are they still together?”

  There was no shock in Kylie’s expression. No disapproval. I loved her for that.

  “They are,” I told her, feeling relieved, even closer to her. “They’ve been living together longer now than Shane and I did, and they’re still wonderfully happy.”

  “You see them?”

  “At least once a month—more when we can swing it.”

  “I’d like to meet Shane sometime.”

  Did I mention that I love this kid?

  “He’d like to meet you, too.” I smiled, as I admitted that part. “He’s been after me for six months to bring you over for dinner.”

  “He knows about me?”

  “He’s one of my best friends, sweetie,” I told her. “He knows pretty much everything about me.”

  Pretty much.

  He didn’t know I’d seen Denny again.

  Or that I’d repeated history.

  I just couldn’t figure out a way to tell him that wouldn’t make me sound like a forty-eight-year-old idiot.

  I paid the bill and walked Kylie to her car. It was a little past eight, but in the desert March nights grew dark early. Lights shone on the boulevard. The smart shops were closing now, but the restaurants would be busy for another few hours at least.

  “You got a great spot!” I told my daughter as we reached her dark blue Infiniti just a few steps down the walk. I wasn’t ready for her to go—wasn’t ready to be alone. Here I was, a woman who’d spent a large part of her life completely solo, feeling needy.

  What did I do with that? When no immediate bits of wisdom popped forth in answer to the unspoken question, my stomach tightened with another bout of panic.

  “Melanie?” Kylie was standing on the curb, keys in hand, poised to step off and climb into her car.

  “Yeah?”

  “Did you find him?”

  There was no doubt whom she meant. She was bound to ask eventually. But I still hadn’t heard from him. Didn’t know if he’d ever agree to see her.

  And now things were so much more complicated. Just like me to screw things up for those I loved most.

  Which made it a good thing I’d spent so much of my life solo, right?

  “Yes, I found him.”

  I had to tell her. Because she’d asked and I couldn’t lie to her.

  “And?”

  “He’s on the road a lot.”

  “He doesn’t want to meet me.”

  Kylie’s expression didn’t change a bit. Cool, composed, completely the attorney facing a tough jury. I ached to know what was happening to the little girl behind the facade.

&nb
sp; “He didn’t say that, sweetie.”

  Her eyes glinted as she looked at me across the evening shadows.

  “What did he say?”

  Passersby strolled around us. I could sense their presence, and yet I was oblivious to them at the same time. All I felt was the briefest wish to be any one of them, free of the need to find the words I had to find.

  “That I looked good.”

  Oh Melanie, you’ll never make it as a mother. You were right to give this child away and you’ve got no business thinking about keeping the one coming up.

  “You saw him?”

  I hadn’t said that, had I? Screwup number two, if anyone was counting.

  Deciding it was safest to keep my mouth shut until I could get control of it, I nodded.

  “How’d he look?”

  “Good.” A question I knew the answer to. “Older—but good.”

  She nodded, watching me. Waiting. Making me squirm inside. I wondered if she knew the effect that look of hers had on others and somehow I doubted it. There didn’t seem to be a calculating bone in the girl’s body.

  But I might very well begin to hate that innate talent of hers.

  “He…uh…has a place somewhere up north, in wine country.”

  “You went up north?”

  “No. No.” I shook my head. “As it happened, he was on his way to Palm Springs when he returned my call. He had some business here.”

  “He was in town.” Still no change in my daughter’s expression, but her voice fell. Or perhaps I was just imagining it had.

  “Only for one night,” I hastily assured her. And what a night it had been.…

  There I went again, lost in my thoughts. I had to stop. These were critical moments.

  “So what did he say?” Kylie swung her key ring around her index finger. “About me?”

  “That he wanted some time to think about things.”

  After I’d told him how badly Kylie needed us. That something in her wouldn’t be complete without closing the circle. After I’d told him how meeting her had changed my entire life, giving me a peace and a joy I’d never expected to have.

  “Thinking’s not a bad thing,” Kylie allowed with a tentative smile. “I like to work through situations, too.”