Life Intended (9781476754178)

by Kristin Harmel

  I turn, and the moment unfolds like it’s happening in slow motion. I see Hannah, my Hannah, exactly as she looks in my dreams, walking toward us from around the corner, clutching a map in her hands. I watch, breathless, as she looks up from the map and sees Candice first. Her lips tremble a bit, and I can tell she recognizes her birth mother, the woman she’s come here to confront. I can see the pain in her face.

  But then her gaze shifts to Allie, and I can see confusion sweeping across her perfect features. Finally, her eyes slide to me, and that’s when she stops in her tracks.

  For a frozen moment, Hannah and I just stare at each other. I can’t seem to move or to muster words, but there are a thousand thoughts running through my mind. I can’t believe she’s real. She’s been real all along. Does she know me too?

  I want to say the right thing, to say something, to tell Hannah I know who she is without scaring her away. But there’s nothing that could have prepared me for this, so I just stand there, staring. The world around me feels like a blur; I can only see Hannah.

  She begins walking toward us again, slowly, but she looks puzzled now. She looks at Candice again, then at me, then finally at Allie. What’s happening? she signs to Allie.

  Allie shrugs and looks at me. I don’t know, she signs back to Hannah. I think your birth mother knows my friend.

  Hannah’s gaze slides to my face again, and she regards me suspiciously. I can see something flickering in her oh-so-familiar eyes. Patrick’s eyes. It’s distrust, trepidation. But there’s something else there too, a spark of distant, foggy recognition. Or maybe I’m just imagining things, because I want so badly to believe that Hannah has seen me before too.

  Do you know me? I sign to her. It takes all my focus to keep my hands from shaking.

  “No,” Hannah says out loud, and her voice sounds exactly like I knew it would. “Who are you? You’re friends with her?” She gives Candice a dirty look.

  Candice jumps in. “Wait, you’re normal? You can talk?”

  I finally find my voice again as I turn to Candice. “You know what, Candice?” I say. “You are a complete jackass. Hannah is a normal kid. So is Allie. Just because they’re hard of hearing doesn’t mean they’re abnormal. That’s an incredibly ignorant thing to say. But then you’ve always been an incredibly ignorant person, haven’t you?”

  I turn back to Hannah, whose eyes are wide and alarmed. “I’m sorry,” I tell her, and I’m not even sure what I’m apologizing for, exactly. It’s just that it feels a bit like the universe itself owes these two girls an apology of some sort, and Candice certainly isn’t going to be the one to deliver it. “Hannah, I hope you know you’re better off without someone like this in your life. She did you a favor when she gave you up.”

  “Who are you?” Hannah asks, staring at me.

  I clear my throat as tears sting my eyes. I don’t know what to say. I doubt Hannah’s been having the dreams too, because if she was, I think her reaction would be different somehow. But there’s a spark of something in her eyes, although it’s not the instant recognition I would have hoped for.

  I think about saying that I’m just a friend of Allie’s, a friend who cares about what happens to her too, but that wouldn’t be the whole truth. I consider telling her I’m the woman who was meant to be her mother all along, but that would just scare her away. So what comes out of my mouth unbidden instead is the best way I know how to say what’s in my heart.

  “I knew before I met you—” I murmur, knowing that I’m telling Hannah in a language of my own, in a language she won’t understand, that I love her, that I’ve always loved her, even before I knew she existed.

  Hannah just stares at me for a moment, and I’m convinced she believes I’m crazy. Maybe she even thinks I’m somehow in cahoots with Candice and that I’m here to hurt her too. But then, her expression changes from one of defiance to one of confusion, and she replies tentatively, “—that I was meant to be yours.” She looks at Allie then back at me.

  My heart feels like it has burst into a constellation. “How did you know to say that?” I whisper.

  Hannah shakes her head slowly. “I have no idea.” She studies my face, like she’s trying to figure something out. “You knew my dad, didn’t you?” she finally asks.

  “How did you know that?”

  “I don’t know.” She looks a little scared now, and I know I can’t reach out and comfort her, even though I want to. It’s too soon. “My grandma told me he was a nice man,” she continues. “She said he would have loved me if he’d ever gotten the chance to know me. But then he died.”

  “Yes,” I say through the lump in my throat. “He did. But, Hannah, he would have loved you with all his heart. I can promise you that.”

  “You really knew him?”

  “I was his wife.” I hate that those words will always be in the past tense. But they have to be. I know that now.

  “So you were supposed to be my mom or something?”

  “Yes. I was. I . . . I think maybe I am.”

  “Yeah, well . . .” Hannah glances at Candice, then she looks away, an expression of resolve on her face. “I don’t have anyone anymore.” I know that whatever Hannah came here to say to Candice today has already been said. There are plenty of languages that don’t make a sound, and I’m confident that Hannah has just closed the book on the woman who gave birth to her.

  “Yes, you do,” I tell her. “You have me. And you have a grandma named Joan, who will be so very happy to meet you. And an aunt Susan, and cousins, and a grandma in Florida too.”

  “You’re saying I have a family?” Her lower lip quivers.

  “You always have.” I stare into the eyes of the girl who reminds me so much of Patrick and of the life we were supposed to have together. I don’t see Candice in her at all, and I’m glad. Instead, I see everything I lost and everything I’ve found. This is the life I was intended to have all along. It just took me a little longer to find my way here.

  Epilogue

  Eight Weeks Later

  “Did you have a good time, sweetheart?” Joan asks as I slip into the apartment on a chilly November night, trying my best not to make any noise. My lips are still tingling from the kiss Andrew and I shared in the hallway.

  “It was pretty much perfect,” I tell her.

  Joan has already made up the foldout bed in the living room, and she’s smiling at me as she dog-ears a page in the novel she’s reading. Her hair is gone from the chemo, just like in the dreams I used to have, but she’s fighting the cancer. She has a new reason to live.

  Hannah.

  Hannah, who’s fast asleep in the room that used to be my guest room but that now belongs to her. Hannah, whose blood tests prove she’s Patrick’s child, Joan’s grandchild. Hannah, whose adoption paperwork Andrew has pulled strings to expedite. Hannah, who will officially become my adopted daughter within the next couple of months.

  Joan yawns. “I like him, you know. Andrew’s a good man. And he’s so good with Hannah.”

  “He is,” I agree. I can feel my cheeks getting a little warm as I add, “I like him too, Joan. A lot.”

  In Joan’s smile, I see genuine acceptance and happiness, and I’m glad; she has welcomed him into our lives with open arms. I think she’s happy to finally see me moving on—not the way I did with Dan, but the way I’m doing now, with an open heart. Finally realizing that I shouldn’t feel guilty for being happy—that Patrick wouldn’t want me to—has changed me.

  I know how lucky I am to have found someone who understands everything. Andrew treats Joan like she’s an old friend he adores, and for this, I’m eternally grateful. After all, Joan’s a nonnegotiable for me. A lesser man might not have understood why I need to have my deceased husband’s mother living with me. But Andrew hasn’t missed a beat. Regardless of how they’re in your life, family’s family, he’d told me the night I fir
st hesitantly explained the situation. And family is the most important thing in the world, no matter what. That had been it. And he’s been nothing but supportive of my decision to adopt Hannah.

  “What time is Allie getting here in the morning?” Joan asks.

  I nod. “Her mom’s dropping her off at ten.” We’ve decided to have Thanksgiving a day early this year so that Allie can join us. She’ll be spending Thursday with her mother, who has indeed stayed sober and clean since getting custody back. Although Allie doesn’t trust her entirely yet, she’s getting there. She has one session a week with me in my office, and she spends a lot of her extra time over at our apartment with Hannah, talking about boys. The purple-haired Jay Cash, apparently, has finally kissed her.

  “It’ll be amusing to see the girls figuring out how to get the turkey into the oven,” Joan says with a chuckle. Allie and Hannah have volunteered to cook for us, although it will be their first time doing so. That way you can have time to flirt with Andrew, Allie had signed to me mischievously last week, which of course made my cheeks heat up.

  “Can you believe Christmas is only a month away?” Joan adds as I shrug out of my jacket and unwind the scarf from my neck. “Our first Christmas with Hannah. Who would have believed any of this was possible?” She looks off into the distance for a moment before adding, “I wish Patrick could be here to see this.”

  “I think he is, in a way,” I tell her.

  “I do too.” She yawns. “Well, I should be getting to sleep, or I won’t have any energy at all tomorrow. Stupid cancer.”

  “Stupid cancer,” I agree. I hug her good night, and after bringing her a glass of water, I kiss her on the cheek and turn out the light. I make my way down the hall and crack the door to Hannah’s room to make sure she’s sleeping soundly.

  Indeed, her chest is rising and falling peacefully. The moonlight spilling through the window illuminates her delicate features, which are as familiar to me now as my own. I tiptoe across her room and pull the covers up around her shoulders, just in case she gets cold during the night. She stirs and smiles in her sleep, and I wonder what she’s dreaming of.

  She’s never been able to explain how she knew the words Patrick and I always exchanged, the words I told her myself in my dreams. But as I watch her eyelids flutter and her smile grow broader, I wonder if, like me, she saw a preview of this life before she got here.

  On her dresser are the two things that have convinced me beyond a shadow of a doubt that something beyond our comprehension brought us into each other’s lives. The first is a framed sketch of hers, a picture of a little girl and her parents at Disney World. When I first saw it as she was unpacking her things a few weeks ago, I gasped.

  “What is that?” I’d asked, staring at it as if I’d seen a ghost. In a way, I had.

  She frowned as she turned to look at the sketch too. “I drew it when I was ten, after I had a dream about going to Disney World with people who were my mom and dad in the dream. It was probably the realest dream I ever had.” She leaned in to look more closely at the picture, then she turned to stare at me, a perplexed expression on her face. “Wait, the mom kind of looks like you, doesn’t she?”

  “She sure does,” I said through my tears.

  The second item that sits on her dresser is a small jar of silver dollars. “I find them all the time,” she said with a shrug when I asked her about them. “It’s weird, actually. Like, I’ll just be walking down the street, and I’ll look down, and there’s a silver dollar. Like they’re falling from the sky or something.”

  I look skyward now, to where I imagine Patrick must be. Maybe Hannah’s explanation of the silver dollars isn’t that far off. Maybe they have been coming from the sky, wishes from a long-lost father who wanted to help her find her way home. Someday, I’ll tell her the story of the silver dollars and how her family has a long-standing tradition of throwing them back. But for now, knowing that they’re there is enough. She’ll have plenty of time to return her wishes to the world.

  I kiss Hannah gently on the cheek, then I shut her bedroom door quietly behind me and make my way back out toward the living room. The lights are out, and I can hear Joan snoring softly already, so I’m careful not to make noise as I put my coat back on, open the apartment door, and slip out into the hallway.

  I walk up Third Avenue to Forty-Second Street and grab the 5 train heading uptown from Grand Central Station. I get out at the Fifty-Ninth Street stop and head three blocks west to Fifth Avenue, where I turn left and walk until I’m standing in the square in front of the Plaza Hotel with the Sherry-Netherland behind me to the right.

  In the middle of the plaza sits the Pulitzer Fountain, the fountain Patrick and I were supposed to throw a silver dollar into on the night of September eighteenth, 2002. I know now that he’d given me the coin that morning because he’d just learned about Hannah. It was meant to be a celebration of the daughter he’d hoped we’d soon bring home.

  The bronze sculpture on top of the fountain is of Pomona, the Roman goddess of abundance, and I wonder if that’s why Patrick wanted to throw the coin here, because suddenly and unexpectedly our lives were about to become so abundantly full. Pomona has been sculpted holding a basket of fruit, which reminds me a bit of a Thanksgiving cornucopia, making it quite apropos that I’m here the night before our family Thanksgiving. Never could I have imagined that I’d one day have so much to be thankful for.

  Then again, there were always things in life to be grateful for, even after I lost Patrick. I just let my grief obscure the moments of hope. Maybe there were silver dollars falling from the sky everywhere, like there were for Hannah, if I’d just opened my eyes and looked for them.

  I reach now for the silver dollar around my neck, which has served as a comfort to me for a long time now. But the metal circle has also been an anchor. As I pull it over my head and examine it, I’m almost surprised to realize it’s just a coin, no different from the ones in Hannah’s jar. I’ve spent a dozen years thinking that it was Patrick’s final gift to me, but now I know I’m wrong. He’s given me Hannah, and that’s a gift that will never end.

  But more than that, he gave me a foundation for a good life, which is something I should have recognized long ago. He encouraged me to follow my dreams, and that’s why today, I’m able to make a difference in other people’s lives. He loved me deeply, which taught me—even if I forgot the lesson for a while—that everyone deserves to love and be loved that way. He taught me to look for the good in the world, and to be profoundly grateful when wonderful things happen. And by dying, he gave me one more gift: he reminded me just how valuable life itself is.

  “I won’t waste another second,” I promise him aloud as I look down at the silver dollar in my hand. Slowly, I unclasp the chain and slide the coin off. It’s cool and shiny, but it’s not magic. It’s not a piece of Patrick. Patrick is in my heart and in my daughter and in every moment of my life, and now that I know that, I know it’s time to let go.

  You have to pass the good luck on, Patrick always used to say. That way, someone else gets to make a wish. I can almost hear his deep, reassuring voice in my ear as I squeeze the coin in my palm. I look up at Pomona and at the five basins of water spilling into the large pool at the bottom. I read once that the sculptor, Karl Bitter, had been killed in a car accident before he could complete the fountain and that someone else had to finish it for him. It makes me think of Patrick, because in a way, I know that for the rest of my life, I’ll be finishing the beautiful things that he started, the things he never had the chance to see through. It’s a privilege, I realize, to sculpt a life in his honor. But now I have to put my touch on it too.

  I look at the coin one last time, kiss it for good luck, and close my eyes. I take a deep breath and throw it toward the fountain, smiling as I hear the tiny pinging sound it makes as it splashes into the water. I turn away without looking, because I don’t want to know where the
coin has landed. It belongs to someone else now, another person who needs its luck.

  As I walk home, I’m eight grams lighter without the silver dollar. But there’s been a weight lifted from my shoulders too, and for the first time in a dozen years, I’m not looking back to the past. I’m looking forward to the future. And I know it’s going to be beautiful.

  Back at home, as I slip under the covers, I find myself thinking about Hannah. Although she’s just like she was in my dreams, and although so much of my early knowledge of her came from that, I’m savoring every new detail too. The musical sound of her laughter. The fact that she likes to paint her thumbnails different colors than the rest of her fingers. The crush she’s recently developed on a boy named Eddie Colton at her school. The fact that she hates mushrooms but loves peas. The way she has a dimple in her right cheek when she smiles wide, just like I do. She even loves blueberry–peanut butter pancakes with honey. “My favorite!” she exclaimed the first time I made them. “How on earth did you know?”

  The things I love about her are infinite, just like Patrick always used to tell me. And I’ve only just begun to know her. I drift off to sleep with a smile on my face.

  When I awaken, I know right away that I’m back in the lemony morning light of the dream. Patrick is beside me, sleeping soundly, and for a moment, I just watch him.

  The dream is hazier this time, and I have the feeling it’s because my ability to see this world, whatever it is, is almost gone. Maybe it was only visible to me when I needed it. Maybe Patrick had something to do with showing me the way to Hannah, or maybe it was God himself. Either way, I know I don’t need this life anymore. What I had with Patrick can never be duplicated, and there will always be a hole in my life where he used to be, but I have Hannah now, and Andrew too. And I know I have to keep moving forward and becoming a better version of me. I owe that to my husband, who never made it out of his twenties.