by Dana Corbit
“That sounds like the good news.”
“That part was good.”
“Are you going to tell me the bad news?”
Tears escaped from the corners of her eyes before she could open her mouth again. “He said...that I shouldn’t get my hopes up...about receiving custody of Blake.”
“But that’s not new news,” he said, seeming to forget his earlier discomfort. “He told you it was going to be a challenge from the beginning. Why would he tell you that now? Was he just trying to upset you?”
“Remember how I told you that as a birth parent who signed a voluntary release of parental rights, I am not one of the parties who can legally request a court modification of a permanent custody order?”
She waited for his affirmative sound before continuing. “Although Miss Lafferty recommended to the Department of Human Services that they support my request, her superiors have chosen...not to file...on my behalf.”
Somehow she managed to choke out those last words that felt like nails being pounded into a door that would lock Blake away from her forever. She could call to him through the wood, like she’d done that first night at Mark’s house, and could strain to hear him calling back for her, but she had no power to open the door.
“I’m sorry, Shannon. Miss Lafferty didn’t tell me.”
Using the sleeve of her long-sleeved T-shirt, she brushed aside her tears. They were impotent tears anyway, as incapable of making a difference as she was in providing a home for her own son.
“Wait. Didn’t you say you had news, too?”
“It doesn’t matter now,” he said in a soft voice.
For some reason, hearing Mark sound as defeated as she did crushed her heart even more. Hopelessness enclosed her in its grasp, attempting to swallow her whole. But there were words she still needed to say, even if they wouldn’t make any difference now.
“I’m sorry, Mark. For all of those things I said last night.”
“I know. I’m sorry, too.”
“I’ll still be over when Blake gets out of school this afternoon,” she told him.
“You’re sure?”
“Absolutely.”
There were precious few things she was sure of right now, but this was one of them. No matter how painful it was to be in Mark’s home and know that she was responsible for destroying what could have been between them, she was determined to keep her commitment to stay with Blake during Mark’s work shifts. Her son had to know that his mother wanted him—desperately—and always had.
Even if the courts prevented her from providing a home for him in the way she’d hoped, she never wanted him to doubt, even for a minute, that he was loved. She would spend as much time as she possibly could with him until he was placed again and would continue to visit, if she was allowed to, even after that. Then on his eighteenth birthday, when he was finally free of the state’s control, she would invite him to live with her.
Brushing away the last of her tears, Shannon pulled a compact out of her drawer and removed the smudges of her eye makeup with her thumb. She could do this. She would be the best mother she could be to Blake, even if it had to be from a distance. She didn’t look forward to delivering the news to him this afternoon, but she would do it as gently as possible.
A knock at the door reminded her that there were others who needed answers from her today. Her girls. She’d once kept the secret of her child from them, but they would be witnesses now as she faced this newest challenge. She hoped she would do it with grace and that they would be proud of her.
“Come in,” she called out.
She expected at least six of the girls to spill through the door, their ears red from having pressed them to the wood, but Chelsea was alone as she stepped inside.
“Miss Shannon, can I talk to you for a minute?”
“Sure. Come in and sit.” She gestured toward the chair where all of the girls had sat at one time or another to talk during some of the rougher times in their pregnancies.
Shannon sat straighter in her seat. She hadn’t had a conversation with the young lady yet regarding Blake, but she prepared her words carefully now. Somehow she needed to convince Chelsea that now wasn’t a good time for her to become involved with a boy without leaving the impression that she thought her son was too good for her. She smiled as the conversation she’d had with Blake came to mind. Hopefully, this one would go more smoothly than the other had.
“I know there’s something going on with you today,” Chelsea said, gripping her hands together in her lap, “and I’m sorry to add one more thing.”
“Whatever it is, we’ll work it out together.” She cleared her throat. “Now, if this is about Blake...”
“Blake?” She drew her brows together. “What about him?”
“I don’t know. I thought you and—”
“Oh. No. We’re just friends.”
Shannon nodded, though she wondered if her son was aware of how the girl had defined their relationship.
Chelsea patted her stomach and then gripped her hands on top of it. “Besides, I’m taking some time off from guys. I’ve got more important things on my mind right now.”
Again, Shannon nodded. “That’s a good idea. Now, you said you had one more thing that we needed to deal with. What is it?”
Chelsea stared at her hands. “I need you to help me go through all the paperwork.” She stopped and took a shaky breath. “I’ve decided to place my baby for adoption. I want to sign the papers today.”
Chapter Fifteen
Shannon’s eyes burned, and she blinked back tears for the twentieth time since arriving at Mark’s house two hours before. And for the twentieth time, Blake pretended not to notice, as he sat at the dining room table, solving again for x and y.
The afternoon had been harder than she’d expected, from pulling into the driveway to passing Mark in the kitchen to watching him back out his truck and drive away. She wanted to believe she could do this, for Blake’s sake. But seeing Mark face-to-face was different than speaking to him on the phone, where she’d been able to apologize without having to see in his distant expression how much she’d hurt him. How could she bear being so close to him every day while knowing that they couldn’t be together now?
“I still don’t know why I need to do my homework on Friday night,” Blake groused. “Algebra would still be here Sunday night.”
“And you’d still be complaining about having to do it then, though you would have had two extra days since your teacher presented the lesson in class.”
“Sounds fishy to me.” He frowned and then popped a cracker with cheese into his mouth. Already, he’d cleared off the plate of grapes and apple slices, and he was mowing down the second plate with cheese and crackers between math problems.
“Oh, I have an agenda, all right. I want you to pass algebra.”
He finished the last problem on his homework and shoved the lined paper her way. “Done.”
She checked over the answers and grinned at him. “Good job. Now history.”
“Ever heard that you’re a slave driver?”
“Once or twice.”
But he pulled the second textbook out of his backpack and opened it to the pages noted in his planner. “You know,” he began too casually, “I called and texted Chelsea a couple of times today, and I didn’t hear anything back from her. Did you take her phone away?”
“Of course not. Like always, she couldn’t use it during schooltime, meals or chores, but she would have had it during her free time.”
“I don’t get it, then. She usually texts back.” He shrugged as if it didn’t matter.
“Blake, there’s something you need to know. Today was a tough day for Chelsea. She went before a judge and signed her voluntary release of parental rights.”
“And
you let her?”
She’d expected Blake to strike out; Chelsea’s decision hit too close to home for him. But she hadn’t prepared herself for the sudden tears in his eyes, the ones he was covering by pretending he had something in his eye.
“It wasn’t about letting her. It was her choice. I only ensured she had the chance to make it.”
He had lifted his arms now to shield his face and was crying into his sleeve. “She’d said she was thinking about doing it, but I told her she didn’t have to. I would be there for her, even if her parents weren’t. Even if the creep wasn’t. But she did it, anyway.”
“She made her choice, Blake. And it’s a beautiful choice. An amazing gift. She’ll help a childless couple to become parents, and she’ll know that her child is placed in a loving home. She’s working with a private adoption agency on an open adoption, so she can receive updates on her baby as he or she grows up.”
Shannon braced herself, expecting Blake to throw the details of his own adoption back at her again, but he only nodded, finally lowering his arm. The sleeve of his blue flannel shirt was wet from his tears.
“You make it sound like such a good thing.”
“It can be.” She cleared her throat. “You know, the thing that happened in your adoption? Happened to us? It was awful, but it was also incredibly rare.”
He surprised her by chuckling. “I get that. We were special.”
Shannon made a scoffing sound. “In that case, I would have preferred to be ordinary.”
Blake stared out the dining room window. “I told Chelsea I would be there for her if she kept the baby. I had this fantasy that I would swoop in and be Chelsea’s rescuer. Maybe even some kind of dad to her baby. Pretty stupid, wasn’t it?”
“It wasn’t stupid.”
Without thinking, Shannon leaned over and did the thing she’d been dying to do for two weeks. She gathered Blake into her arms and kissed his temple. She wasn’t sure she would be able to bear the rejection if he pulled away from her, but she did it, anyway. For her son. To her surprise, Blake tucked his head under her chin and held on tight.
Shannon brushed her fingers through his soft hair, comforting the boy in a way she’d never had the chance to console the baby. And he allowed her to do it.
“You’re going to be a wonderful dad someday. You’re already a good friend. I’m sure that Chelsea appreciated your offer of help. She’ll still need support from friends like you as she makes good on her promise to place her child. It won’t be easy, even if she knows it’s the right thing.”
Now Blake did pull back from her and searched her face with questioning eyes. “How can she know it’s the right thing?”
“I know it’s hard, especially for you, but try to understand where she’s coming from. She doesn’t feel as if she’s ready to be a parent when she’s still a kid herself.”
“So were you,” he said in a soft voice.
Shannon’s breath caught. Was Blake finally ready to forgive her for the things that had happened to him? Was he ready to allow her to be a mother to him?
“I want you to know how sorry I am about using you and Mark to shock my parents.”
“You’ve already apologized for it...four times now.”
“Still, I really am sorry. I was wrong.”
“You’ve got to give yourself a break once in a while, Miss Shannon,” he said with a chuckle. “Anyway, I can understand the behavior of an angry teenager.”
“That would make a lot more sense if I was still fifteen instead of thirty.”
“Maybe you finally have it out of your system now.”
Shannon blew out a breath. “Let’s sure hope so. I would say it’s about time.”
“Don’t you think it’s also about time for you to forgive your parents?”
“Does this mean you’ve decided to forgive me?”
He brushed his hand across the open page of his history textbook as if to wipe away the past. “Nothing to forgive. Never was. You thought you were doing the best thing for me.”
A knot formed in Shannon’s throat. This was the moment she’d waited for, prayed for. But Blake had given her more than the forgiveness she’d craved. He’d offered some mature advice, as well. Mark had said it, too, and both of them were right. If she was ever going to be able to move forward with her life, she needed to finally forgive her parents.
“Are you in love with Mark?”
She jerked her head to look at him. Blake only watched her steadily, appearing to wait for her to confirm the answer he already knew.
“Yes...I am.” The words sounded like they were ripped from her throat. It felt as if they were. What good did it do to admit it now, when it was too late?
“What are you going to do about it?”
“What do you mean? You know what I did. You were there. I hurt him. I destroyed any possibility for Mark and me to be together.”
“You probably thought the same thing about you and me.”
Shannon swallowed. “There’s something I have to tell you.” She took a deep breath and continued. “Although the test came back confirming that you’re my son, it’s looking less likely that I’m going to be given custody of you.”
He listened while she gave him all the details, his expression carefully blank.
“Did anyone ever question whether I was your son?”
“I didn’t.”
He shook his head. “Me, neither.”
“But it had to be documented so that I could—” She stopped herself, squeezing her eyes shut and pressing her lips together before she tried again. “Anyway, you understand what I’m saying, right? As of now, I won’t even be allowed to petition the court to have you come live with me. Soon you’ll be placed in a permanent foster home, and I’m not even sure whether I’ll be given the chance to visit you.”
“That won’t make you any less my mother.”
Shannon swallowed, heat building behind her eyes. “No, it won’t. You’ll always be my son, no matter where you’re staying, and when you’re eighteen, you will be welcome to come and live with me.”
“You won’t expect me to move into your room at Hope Haven, will you?”
She smiled at his attempt to brighten the situation. “No. I can probably get a place that’s bigger than ten-by-ten by that time.”
For a few minutes, neither said more. Shannon stood and leaned over the table to pick up Blake’s plate and milk glass, but as she straightened again, Blake reached for her arm. “Promise me that you’ll make it right with Mark, even after I’m gone.”
Her throat filled with emotion, but somehow she managed to choke out the words, “I’ll try.” She promised it because he seemed to need to hear it, even though the answer to that challenge might be outside of her control.
“Good,” he said. “You’re my mom, and I don’t want you to be alone.”
* * *
Blake’s words continued to eat at Shannon, even after he went to bed and Mark returned home, stepping with her in a dance of awkwardness until she escaped to the safety of her car. How were they supposed to come back from their nasty argument when they couldn’t even look each other in the eye?
She couldn’t remember the drive from Mark’s house to Hope Haven, and once she reached home, relieved Katie and locked up the house, she hurried upstairs to her room and closed herself inside. Her chest felt so tight that she couldn’t draw a deep breath. She ached in a way that seemed to touch her spirit more than her body. She needed to be alone, the exact thing that her son feared for her future, but she needed time to think.
She slipped out of her clothes and into a pair of pink flannel pajamas. But even after she’d flipped off the bedside lamp and had snuggled under the covers, she couldn’t shake the chill between her shoulder blades. She was surrounded by the girls she
adored, by constant movement and chaos, but tonight it became clear to her just how alone she really was. She didn’t want to be alone anymore. She wanted to be with Mark.
In her heart, Shannon knew that no matter how painful the things he’d said to her were, he was the only man who’d ever really known her. The only one who could make her happy. More than that, she realized now that so many of the things he’d said were true. Instead of taking responsibility for her mistakes, she’d blamed everyone else for them. How could her pregnancy have been her fault when it was Scott who’d taken advantage of her? Why should she have taken responsibility for her decisions when her parents had forced her to choose adoption?
Mark was right, too, that she expected him and Blake to forgive her, but she’d never forgiven her own parents or Blake’s father for the ways they’d hurt her. She’d set out on a mission to earn Blake’s forgiveness, when her faith told her that forgiveness wasn’t something someone earned or even deserved. It was a gift.
Suddenly, she remembered something else that Mark had said. He’d reminded her of a scripture that talked about forgiveness. As a new Christian, he hadn’t committed a lot of verses to memory yet, but she was a veteran of years of Sunday school and vacation Bible school. She sat up in bed, turned on the lamp and reached for her Bible. She had to flip through several passages first, but finally she located Jesus’ words in Luke, chapter 6.
“‘Do not judge, and you will not be judged,’” she read at a whisper. “‘Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.’”
It all sounded so easy, so straightforward, and yet she’d failed in all of those areas. She’d judged, she’d condemned and she’d held a grudge for fifteen years.
“Lord, I have failed You,” she prayed aloud, her words the only sounds besides the wind outside her window. “And I’ve failed the others in my life. I haven’t forgiven them, and still I thought I deserved forgiveness. Please help me to forgive. And if Mark is the man You have chosen for me, please show us the way to get past the hurtful things we said. In Your name, amen.”
