Life Intended (9781476754178)

by Kristin Harmel

  “You sure?”

  “Really.”

  “Okay. Good.” He clears his throat. “Look, I’m sorry to ask you this today, of all days. But if you’re at all able, could you meet me at St. Anne’s now? There’s something I need to talk to you about, and I’d rather do it in person. If you’re sure absolutely you’re okay.”

  My heart skips. Is it possible that Allie’s mother was denied custody today and that Allie will need a home? My home? Surely Andrew knows by now that I’ve been approved. “Sure,” I tell him, trying to keep my voice from shaking. “I’ll leave now. I’ll be there in about forty-five minutes.”

  Karen Davidson had sounded so optimistic on the phone, and as I think about it on the subway ride out to Queens, I become convinced that this is what Andrew wants to tell me. Maybe he’s called me in to inform me that Allie and I have been officially matched. Can it happen that quickly?

  Maybe September eighteenth can stop being the anniversary of the day the world ended and begin being the anniversary of the day I officially became a foster mom to Allie. It would be a beautiful end to my story. And I have the feeling this is what Patrick would have wanted for me.

  When I get to St. Anne’s, Andrew isn’t in his office, so I shoot him a text saying I’m here, then I head down the hall, looking into office windows to see if I spot him anywhere. I reach the conference room and when I peer in the door, I’m startled to see Allie, her back to me.

  I rap lightly and walk in. Her face lights up as she turns. “Kate!” she exclaims. “Hey, thank you so much!” She crosses the room to hug me, and as I hug back, I’m suddenly positive that Andrew has already told her the news. Allie’s coming home with me. This is all coming true.

  “Thank you?” I ask, feigning ignorance. I’m unable to stop myself from grinning at her, though. “Thank you for what?”

  “Thank you for telling me not to give up on my mom,” she says warmly.

  A bad feeling develops in the pit of my stomach as I blink at her in confusion. “What?”

  “The judge said she can come get me today. Kate, I’m going home!”

  That’s when I notice that the corner of the conference room is filled with battered suitcases, as well as a folded-up keyboard stand, and a keyboard standing on its end. I look from the pile to Allie, and for a moment, all I can do is stare.

  “Kate?” Allie asks after a moment. “What’s wrong? Are you sad about your husband still? Do you want to talk about it or something?”

  I shake my head, still mute with shock, just as Andrew comes in behind me.

  “Kate,” he says, and I can hear in his flat tone that he’s realized in an instant what’s happened. “Kate, can you come with me for a minute?” He doesn’t wait for an answer; he just puts a gentle hand on my back and leads me out of the room. I feel dazed as he moves a stack of paperwork from a chair in his office and sits me down.

  “Kate,” he begins as I lean back in the seat. “I don’t even know what to say.”

  “I thought you’d called me down here to tell me I could foster Allie,” I say numbly. “I got the call today from Karen Davidson. I’ve been approved as a foster parent.”

  He blinks a few times as the information registers, and I can tell he feels a hundred times worse. “Oh, Kate. I had no idea. I called you because the judge awarded custody to Allie’s mom, which means she’s going home today. I know it’s not what we expected, but I thought you might want to be here, to say good-bye. I didn’t tell you on the phone because I thought it was the kind of news that should be delivered in person. I assumed I’d catch you before you ran into Allie, though. God, I’m sorry.”

  “Today of all days,” I say dully.

  “Oh, Kate,” Andrew says again. He squats down beside me and pulls me into an awkward hug. “Was I wrong to call?”

  “No,” I say into his shoulder. He feels warm, solid. Suddenly, I don’t want to let go, but that’s irrational. Everything I hold on to disappears, so I pull away before he has a chance to. “I’m glad I’m here to say good-bye to her. It’s the right thing.”

  “It’s not a forever good-bye. It’s just for now. As long as it’s okay with her mom, I don’t see why you can’t continue working with her once she’s settled, if you want to.”

  “Yeah, okay,” I say flatly. I know he’s trying to cheer me up, but I feel dead inside. “So the meth thing? Allie was wrong about what she saw?”

  He nods. “The judge ordered another random drug test, but it came back totally clean too. It was just tobacco.”

  “Or maybe her mom’s just good at beating the system.” I take a deep breath and hope that I’m wrong. “Do you think she’ll be a good mom to Allie this time around?”

  Andrew looks sad as he shrugs. “I don’t know. I wish I could say yes. But I’ve seen so many of these kids come and go, and there’s often no way of telling whether things will work out. Let’s hope that Allie’s case is one of the good outcomes.”

  I’m silent for a moment, then I say, “I thought I was going to get to be her mom. Her foster mom, at least. I really thought that’s what was supposed to happen.” How could I have gotten everything so wrong?

  Andrew doesn’t reply. He just pulls me into another awkward hug. When he finally stands up, his expression is somber. “Her mom should be here soon. Are you ready to go say good-bye?”

  “I guess,” I say, although I’m fairly sure I’ve already had my fair share of good-byes in this lifetime.

  “It’s going to be okay, Kate,” Andrew says. He reaches out and squeezes my hand. “I know it sounds like a foolish thing to say now, but I really believe things happen the way they’re meant to. There must be a reason for this.”

  “That’s a dumb thing to say,” I snap. “There’s not a reason for any of it. There’s no reason my husband had to die. There’s no reason I can’t have a child. There’s no reason that everything that means anything to me gets taken away.”

  I glare at him for a minute before realizing that it’s not his fault. He’s just trying to help. “Sorry,” I mumble.

  “No, I’m sorry,” Andrew whispers, and when I finally look up at him, I see tears in his eyes. His emotion touches me more than I expect.

  “I didn’t mean to throw a pity party for myself,” I say, wiping my own eyes and forcing a smile. “Let’s go see Allie, okay?” I stand up and hurry out of his office before he can say anything else.

  Andrew walks me back down the hall and stands by my side as I hug Allie tightly and tell her she’s going to be all right, and that I’m so happy for her.

  “Are you going to come visit me, Kate?” she asks, looking worried.

  “You couldn’t keep me away, kiddo.”

  “What about my piano recital next month? Are you coming to that? Bella’s playing a Beethoven piece too, and Jay’s going to be there. He said he’d come. Isn’t that awesome?”

  I nod, and at once, my whole body feels numb, exhausted. I’m too tired to even share in her obvious excitement about her crush. “I forgot that Bella plays too,” I manage to say.

  Allie nods enthusiastically. “You won’t believe how good she is. On a scale of one to ten, she’s like a fifty!”

  I force a smile. “That’s great.”

  “So you’ll come?” Allie persists. “To my recital?”

  “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  That’s when Allie’s mother arrives, accompanied by a harried caseworker balancing a big pile of papers in his arms. I’m startled to see how young she looks—maybe late twenties or very early thirties—and it occurs to me that she must have had Allie when she was only a child herself. This makes me irrationally sad. By the time she’s my age, forty, Allie will be grown and out on her own. Her mother will have had all those years of having a child, and she has already squandered so much of it. How is it fair, in any universe, that she would get to be
a parent and I wouldn’t?

  I can feel my hands balling into fists of frustration, and as if sensing how I’m feeling, Andrew puts a hand on the small of my back and begins rubbing small circles there. It’s an intimate gesture for someone I only know professionally, but he doesn’t seem to notice, and I realize I don’t mind. Already, his touch is soothing me.

  I watch as Allie’s face lights up and she throws herself into her mother’s arms. The woman, who looks like a slightly older version of Allie, appears startled, but she also looks happier to be holding her daughter than I’d expected her to be. I had pictured her as a villain who had carelessly thrown her child away. But I’m forced to admit the reality might be different. She looks pleasant, and I can see tears sparkling in her eyes as Allie holds on.

  Maybe Andrew’s right. Maybe Allie’s mother really is trying.

  “I’m going to do better this time,” she tells Andrew as she helps Allie gather her things together. She turns to me, and although I know she hasn’t the faintest idea who I am, she adds, “I’ll be the mom she deserves. I promise.”

  All I can do is nod, and I turn away and leave the room without another word before Andrew has a chance to introduce us. I know I’ll meet her eventually. I’ll see Allie again, and I may even continue working with her. But I can’t do this today.

  I can hear Allie calling to me, but I don’t turn around. There are tears streaming down my face now, and I don’t want her to see them. I don’t want our good-bye to be like this.

  I retreat to Andrew’s office, which is where he finds me standing a few minutes later, staring blankly out his window.

  “You okay?” he asks carefully.

  “Just peachy.” I know I sound sarcastic, but I can’t help it. My heart’s been shattered into a million pieces.

  “How about I take you home in a cab? I can keep you company for a while.”

  I turn around and look at him for a moment. His expression is earnest, his eyes sad. “Andrew . . .” I begin.

  “I just think maybe you shouldn’t be by yourself tonight,” he blurts out. Then he shakes his head and says, “I didn’t mean that like a come-on. I’m just worried about you. I could stay with you for a few hours, make sure you’re okay . . .”

  “I’m fine.”

  “I just don’t think you should be alone,” he repeats, looking at me helplessly.

  I smile faintly at him. “Andrew, I’m alone all the time. Why should tonight be any different?”

  I walk out of his office without another word, hail a taxi, and ride the whole way home staring straight ahead in silence.

  For the second time on this very same day, I feel like I’ve lost a piece of myself. Twelve years ago, the man who was my family was taken from me in an instant. Today, I watched as the family I’d hoped to have disappeared too.

  I crawl into bed, and for the first time in months, I’m not hoping I wind up back in the world where Patrick and Hannah exist, because I don’t trust it anymore. What could it have been telling me if it wasn’t about Allie? I just want the dark comfort of a dreamless night.

  Susan and Gina spend the next few days trying in vain to pull me out of the funk I’ve slipped into since realizing that I won’t be Allie’s foster mother. It dawns on me slowly, over the course of several days, that even if Allie’s mom had continued to disappoint her, Allie never would have looked at me as a parent. She might have loved me and come to rely on me, but I saw the way she looked at her mother with such hope, despite everything. It’s too late in her life, I think, for her to ever have that kind of love for another parent.

  Allie and I text back and forth a handful of times, and I’m happy, despite my own intense feelings of loss, to hear that she seems to be doing well. Her mother really seems to be trying, which makes me feel both relieved and jealous. There’s a part of me, a very selfish part, that wishes it hadn’t worked out, and that I could have been the one to swoop in and save Allie. But this outcome, the one in which she’s returned to a seemingly loving home, is obviously for the best.

  I go through the motions of work and dodge two calls from Karen Davidson, who leaves me messages about a hard-of-­hearing teenager who has just come into the system recently.

  “She’s a really sweet kid,” Karen says in the first message. “Her custodial grandmother died recently, and there are no other relatives willing to take her, so this is her first experience with foster care. She’s been in temporary care for about three months now, but she obviously needs something more permanent. I think the two of you would be a really good match.”

  I finally call her back late Tuesday night, relieved when I get her answering machine. “I know this is going to make me sound like a flake,” I say, “but I was really hoping to foster Allie, the girl I told you about. I definitely want to take a child in, and I want to be able to help the girl you’re mentioning. But I need some time. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I hope this doesn’t screw things up, and I promise I’ll call you as soon as I’m ready.” As soon as I hang up, I wonder if I’ve made a huge mistake, but everything feels jumbled right now. In truth, I probably shouldn’t have been thinking about taking Allie in either; I need to get myself straightened out first.

  I skip sign language class on Wednesday and leave Andrew a voice mail telling him I won’t be able to make it in to meet with Riajah and Tarek the next night. He calls back, but I don’t pick up, and when I listen to his message, in which he tells me he entirely understands and that I should take all the time I need, it makes me feel even worse. On Friday, I meet Susan for happy hour at Hammersmith’s, and she starts on me right away.

  “You need to let this go,” she tells me before Oliver has even had a chance to deliver our drinks. “All of this. The dreams. The obsessing over a child who will never be yours. This whole depression thing. Mom and I are concerned about you.”

  “I’m fine,” I mumble. I’m irritated that she thinks it’s just that easy, that I should be able to simply flick a switch and turn off all my problems.

  “No, you’re not fine,” Susan says firmly. “Obviously. Look, I get that you want to be a parent. But there are plenty of ways to go about that. You’ve been approved as a foster mother, Kate. Let them know you’re ready for a child. Or begin the process of applying to adopt through an agency, if that’s what you want. But you’ve got to stop harping on these dreams and what you think they’re telling you. They’re just dreams.”

  “You still don’t understand how real they were,” I say. “I was so sure that they were telling me Allie needed me. And now, she’s gone, the dreams are gone, and Patrick’s gone. It all feels like lies.”

  Susan sighs. “Kate, Patrick has been gone. For twelve years. It’s a tragedy, and we all miss him. But he hasn’t been visiting you in your dreams. You have to admit how ridiculous that sounds. You were just nervous about your wedding, because you knew deep down it was the wrong thing, and that triggered stress dreams. Any psychologist could tell you that. But the dreams are gone now, and that’s obviously your brain telling you it’s time to let all this go and get back to real life.”

  “Easier said than done,” I mutter.

  When I get back to my apartment building that evening, I’m feeling hurt and unsettled by Susan’s words. Does everyone think I’m pathetic? Maybe I am. I’m so deep in thought that I don’t notice Andrew sitting on the front stoop outside until he says my name.

  “What are you doing here?” I blurt out, then I feel instantly bad, because the words sound rude, and I hadn’t meant them that way. “Wait, did something happen to Allie?” I ask.

  “No,” he says. “She’s fine, as far as I know.” He’s dressed a little more formally than he normally is, with a button-down sky blue shirt and gray slacks. He even appears to have combed his hair.

  “You’re all dressed up,” I say.

  He looks down at himself, as if he’s surprised to see
what he’s wearing. “Oh. Yeah. I’m supposed to be at a dinner thing.”

  I imagine the tan, willowy blond girl waiting for him somewhere, probably pissed off that he’s not there yet. “Why aren’t you at dinner then?”

  “I called and said I’d be late.” We look at each other for a minute, and then he says, “Kate, you skipped class, and you left me a message on my office phone in the middle of the night on Wednesday saying you couldn’t work with Riajah and Tarek this week. Today, I got a call from Karen Davidson saying that she got a voice mail from you and that you sounded really upset and aren’t ready to foster yet. I got your address out of your file, because I wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

  I stare at him for a minute before hanging my head. “That’s really nice of you.” I don’t wait for a response before I move past him toward the front door of my apartment building. “Do you want to come in?”

  He follows me without a word. Inside my apartment, he gazes around curiously as I lead him into the living room, and we take seats opposite each other, me on the love seat, him on the couch. “Nice place,” he says.

  “Thanks.” I feel nervous, awkward.

  “Kate,” he begins slowly, “you’re upset. And I want to talk to you about it. Is this about Allie?”

  I study his face for a moment, sure that I’ll see judgment there, or maybe pity. But he only looks worried. Finally, I look away. “Yes and no. I mean, I thought I would get to help her.”

  “You have helped her.”

  “I mean, I thought that I was going to be the one to take her in for a while. To be the parent she needed, you know? But it turns out she didn’t need that at all. It makes me feel . . .”

  I trail off, and Andrew nods in understanding, waiting for me to go on.

  “I just feel lost,” I conclude in a small voice, feeling foolish as I say it.

  “You’re not lost,” he says after a pause. “In fact, from everything I’ve seen in the last couple of months, Kate, it seems like you’ve been found. Or at least you’ve found where you’re supposed to be.”