by Irene Hannon
“Laura’s been praying for this moment for years. We both have.”
His drug-addicted, promiscuous, felony-committing birth mother prayed?
Nothing was adding up.
“I’ll leave you two to talk.” The man leaned down and kissed his wife’s cheek. “Call me when you’re finished. I won’t be far away.”
“Okay.”
He held onto her hand for another few seconds, gave Keith a nod, then walked toward the exit.
Once they were alone, Laura motioned toward the coffee shop off the lobby. “I checked that out before you arrived. It’s not very crowded at this hour. We should be able to find a quiet corner.” A quiver ran through her words, and she sounded out of breath.
“That’s fine.”
He followed her over the polished floor, to a table for two in the far back corner of the almost-deserted coffee shop. She slid onto a chair and set her purse beside her, but he remained standing.
“What would you like?”
She fumbled for her purse and started to rise again. “Let me get the drinks.”
“I’m already up. Just hold our table.”
After slanting him an uncertain look, she sank back down. “Black coffee is fine.”
He chose an Americano with an extra shot of espresso.
When he returned with the drinks and some napkins, her hands were crimped together on the small round table.
He acknowledged her subdued thank-you with a dip of his head and took his seat.
“I have to tell you . . . after all these years, receiving that letter from the adoption registry was a shock. A happy one, though.”
“How many years ago did you sign up?” He loosened his grip on the cardboard cup when dark liquid spurted through the sip hole.
“Fifteen. Not long after Dennis and I got married. Much as I’d always wondered what happened to you, I didn’t think you’d want to have anything to do with me. But he encouraged me to register, and after I prayed about it, I decided it was the right thing to do.”
Another mention of prayer.
Had she had some kind of born-again experience in prison?
She leaned closer. “I’ll be happy to tell you anything you want to know, but may I ask why you decided to contact me now, after so many years?”
To buy himself a moment to frame his response, he took a sip of his drink.
The hot liquid burned his tongue.
“I’ve been wrestling with a lot of questions for a long time, and they’ve been keeping me from moving forward with some things I want to do. To be honest, signing up for the registry was a shot in the dark. My mother suggested it, but I never expected to actually connect, based on what I’d heard about you.”
Sadness filled her eyes. “What did you hear?”
“Enough. Drugs, illegitimate pregnancy, attempted suicide, prison.”
“All true, I’m sorry to say. But the Laura who gave birth to you died long ago.” She wrapped her fingers around her cup. “Do you remember anything about your first three years?”
“I remember being scared and cold and hungry. I remember being burned. I remember the hotel room where you tried to take your life.”
She flinched, but he steeled himself. She’d asked the question. Why cut her any slack?
Yet he found himself adding one more memory to that list.
“I also recall sitting at a table, drinking milk and eating oatmeal. I have a feeling I did that often.”
“Every single morning.”
He locked gazes with her. “I need to know if you ever hurt me.”
“No!” Her reply was fervent. “I loved you as much as any sixteen-year-old mother could love her child.”
He stared at her.
Sixteen?
Mom had told him his birth mother was a teenager—but she’d been barely old enough to drive?
He frowned. “I didn’t know you were that young.”
“Yes.” She lifted the cup with both hands and took a cautious sip. Set it back on the table. “Why don’t I tell you about my life—and our life together? That might answer a lot of questions without you having to ask them.”
“All right.” He picked up his drink and leaned back in his seat, giving her—and himself—some space.
“I was raised in an abusive home. My stepfather was a drunk who beat my mother on a regular basis. Much as I wanted to run away, I felt I’d be deserting her if I did. But when he started making advances to me, I knew I had to get out.”
She spoke in a dispassionate, clinical tone that suggested she’d long ago dealt with—or buried—the emotional trauma of her childhood.
“I left when I was fifteen and became a street kid. Essentially I traded one hell for another. One out of three teens who stays away from home more than forty-eight hours is lured into prostitution, and within two weeks seventy-five percent are involved in theft, drugs, or pornography. The only part of that I avoided was the pornography.”
Keith furrowed his brow. “Why didn’t you go to the authorities?”
“I heard horror stories from the other street kids. They said I’d be sent back or put in a foster home that might be worse. I knew my way around the streets by then, and I figured, better the devil you know. Or so I thought, until I got pregnant.”
“Do you even know who the father was?”
“No. The truth is, it could have been any one of several different customers.” She confessed that without flinching, but the raw pain—and shame—in her eyes tugged at his heart.
He looked down and fiddled with his lid, trying to remain aloof. “Since you obviously didn’t want me, why didn’t you have an abortion?”
After a few beats of silence ticked by with no response, he glanced over at her.
A single tear was streaking down her face.
Great.
Crying females could erode male resolve faster than an August scorcher in St. Louis melted ice.
“I know I did a lot of bad things.” Her voice was subdued now. Shaky. “But I couldn’t kill my own baby. I thought . . . I hoped . . . that once I had you, things might get better. I even managed to lay off the drugs while I was pregnant. After you were born, though, one of the succession of losers I shacked up with got me hooked on heroin. It was all downhill from there. The last guy I was with was a dealer, and I got sucked into that too. Plus, he did very bad things when he was high—which was most of the time.”
A muscle in Keith’s jaw spasmed. “I know. I have the scars to prove it.”
Her throat worked as she swallowed. “Do you remember what happened that day?”
“Not in any detail, thank God. But I do have lingering memories of terror—and pain.”
Another tear slipped out of her eye. She picked up one of the paper napkins and wiped it away.
“That’s the day I knew I had to take desperate action.”
“So you tried to kill yourself.” Anger erupted in his gut, so sudden and violent that the hand holding his coffee jerked, sending dark liquid spurting onto the tabletop. He grabbed a napkin and scrubbed the stain away. “You were saddled with a kid and a life you didn’t want, so you decided to take the easy way out and leave me with that scumbag.”
“No!” Her eyes flashed. She fisted her hands on the table and leaned forward, her body taut. “I loved you! But I knew I couldn’t take care of you. I thought about dropping you off at a church, and maybe that’s what I should have done. But I was afraid Les might follow me, and I couldn’t take that risk. He got some kind of perverse pleasure out of frightening you, and I wanted you away from him, from me, from the life I was living. I wanted you to have a chance for something better.”
She reached up and massaged her forehead, as if she had a headache.
That made two of them.
“To be honest, I wasn’t thinking straight the night I took off after he started hurting you. When he went to the bathroom, I grabbed you and some money and some drugs and ran. Once we were safe at the motel, I hit botto
m. I couldn’t see anything but darkness ahead, and I decided you’d be better off without a druggie mother lurking somewhere in the background who was likely to go to prison. So I tried to overdose. I knew the cleaning people would find you the next morning, that as far as you were concerned, I’d just be asleep. You’d be safe and I’d be free. Except . . . I didn’t die.”
“No. You went to prison.” A muscle clenched in his jaw. “How long were you in?”
“Two years.”
“Is that where you found God?”
“No. That came much later. But I did connect with a vocational counselor who convinced me I could make something of my life and inspired me to get my act together. I owe her a debt I can never repay. By the time I got out, I had my GED and I’d been accepted at college. She helped arrange low-cost housing for me, and I worked nights while I went to school. It took me eight years, but I finally got my degree. Then I got a job—and I’ve worked ever since.”
“Doing what?”
“I’m a caseworker with the Children’s Division of Social Services. My degree’s in social work.”
In other words, she was helping kids who were in the same situation she’d been in growing up.
Much as he didn’t want to, and grudging as it was, he had to admit that deserved some respect.
He cleared his throat and softened his tone. “Where did you meet your husband?”
For the first time, the corners of her mouth lifted. “Through my job. Dennis does a lot of work with young people in his ministry.”
Ministry?
“Is he a . . . cleric?”
“Yes. He’s the reason I found my way to God. My life was going well, and I knew I was doing worthwhile work, but something was missing. He showed me what it was—the redeeming love of God and his infinite capacity for forgiveness. We became friends as well as business associates. He’d lost his wife a few years before we met and was raising his two boys alone, and things between us clicked. I give thanks every single day for his presence in my life.”
Keith took a long, slow sip of his drink while he processed all she’d told him—and the picture that emerged was 180 degrees from what he’d expected.
His birth mother, too, had known trauma as a child. She’d run from one kind of trouble to another. She’d made serious mistakes—and paid a steep price for them. Yet she’d worked herself out of the mess she’d created and now lived a happy, productive life.
There was much to admire in her story.
Yet bottom line, she hadn’t loved him enough to get her act together and fight for the chance to be a real mother.
“Keith.” She laid her fingers on his hand, her touch tentative, and spoke as if she’d read his mind. “I want you to know that the night I tried to take my life, my biggest regret was that I wouldn’t be there to see you grow up. But I had no hope at that point things would ever get any better, and I knew it was just a matter of time until I ended up dead or in prison. I wanted you in a better place sooner rather than later, and I knew, if I had one breath left in my body, I would selfishly want to hold onto you. Ending my life was the only way I could guarantee you a better one.”
As her impassioned words hung in the air between them, his heart stuttered.
She hadn’t tried to commit suicide because she didn’t want him.
She’d done it because she wanted him too much—and knew her presence in his life would hurt him.
That night in the motel room hadn’t been about escaping from him.
It had been about escaping for him.
It had been about unselfish love, however misguided.
“That’s not what you expected to hear, is it?”
Her soft question burned through the fog swirling in his mind. “No.”
“I hope knowing the truth will bring some closure for you.”
He hoped so too—but at the moment his brain was on overload.
When the silence lengthened, she spoke again. “Do you have any other questions?”
“I can’t think of any.”
“Then may I ask a few?”
He forced himself to switch gears. Of course she’d have questions too. Might as well answer some of them. “Yes.”
“Were your adoptive parents good to you?”
“More than good.”
“Are they still living?”
“My mom is.”
“And you . . . have you had a happy life? Are you married? Any children?”
“My life’s been very happy. No wife or children.” He almost added yet, but bit that back. He needed time to think through all he’d learned before he decided how much more of his life—if any—to share with this woman.
Perhaps sensing his reticence, she didn’t press.
“I want you to know you’re welcome to call or visit anytime if questions arise or if you’d like to get better acquainted. Our boys are grown now, and we have plenty of room for guests.”
“I appreciate that.” But he wasn’t making any commitments. Swigging down the last of his coffee, he glanced at his watch. “I have a long drive back. I better get on the road.”
She picked up her cup and stood. “I understand. If you’re lucky, you may still miss the going-home traffic.”
He rose too. “Do you want to call your husband? I can wait around until he comes back if you like.”
“Your mother raised you well.” She gave him a melancholy smile. “But no, thank you. I’ll be fine in the lobby. Besides, I could use a few minutes alone.”
They walked to the door of the coffee shop. Pitched their cups. Faced each other.
Now what? Would she expect him to give her a hug? Offer an assurance that he’d stay in touch? Would she kiss his cheek?
She took the awkwardness out of their parting by simply laying a hand on his arm. “Have a safe trip back.”
Then she walked away.
He watched as she crossed to the center of the lobby, dug her phone out of her purse, and settled into a chair.
Once she placed the phone to her ear, he headed for his room to retrieve his bag, start the long drive back—and do some serious soul-searching.
Claire peeked through the drapes and checked her watch. Again. Factoring in both the snarl of rush-hour traffic as he left KC and the brief stop at his mother’s house before swinging by here, Keith should have arrived by now. He’d said to expect him around eight-thirty when he’d called two hours ago, and it was approaching nine. She’d even made Haley go to bed early to give them some privacy, much to her daughter’s disgust—though the promise of a trip to Ted Drewes for frozen custard tomorrow had helped mollify her.
Her phone trilled in the kitchen, and she let the drapes at the front window fall back into place as she dashed to answer it.
The name in the digital display wasn’t Keith’s, however.
Propping a hip against the counter, she snagged the portable out of the charger. “Hi, Dad.”
“Hi, sweetie. You sound a little out of breath. Everything okay?”
“Fine. I was in the other room.”
“I was kind of hoping you were out having another fancy meal with Keith.”
She rolled her eyes. Why, oh why, had she told him about that dinner date? Now he brought it up every time they talked.
“No. Home for the evening. What’s up with you?”
“Well, I happened to notice in the paper today that Delta’s running a rock-bottom special on flights to select cities—and St. Louis happens to be one of them. Since I have a daughter who’s going to be celebrating a birthday next month, I figured two tickets would be a great present. What do you say?”
She’d love to say yes. What a birthday treat that would be! A chance for her and Haley to spend some quality time with Dad. Trips on the Molly Sue, the familiar roll of the waves underfoot and a salt breeze whipping past. A low country boil. Mmm. She could almost taste the shrimp and spicy sausage and corn on the cob.
But practicality intruded—as it always did.
&nbs
p; “Depends on how much this will set you back.”
“You’re not supposed to ask the price of a gift.”
“Come on, Dad. I know money is tight on your end, just like it is on mine.”
A sigh came over the line. “First off, I’m fully booked next week, and I’m at capacity with most of the groups. So I’m not going to be eating macaroni and cheese for weeks if I do this. Second, this is as much a gift to me as it is to you. That visit with you and Haley last month was wonderful but way too short. I need to see my two favorite ladies more often. Third, the tickets are a steal.”
When he told her the price, her eyebrows rose. “Wow. That is a great deal.”
“Told you so. You accepting?”
“Yes.”
“Hot dog! You tell Haley we’re going to take us some fine trips on the Molly Sue. By the time your visit is over, she’ll be my honorary—” He stopped as a chime pealed in the background. “Is that your doorbell?”
Keith would show up now.
“Yes.” She started toward the door.
“Kind of late for callers, isn’t it?”
“It might be Keith. He’s, uh, been in Kansas City on business all week and he might be, uh, stopping by on his way back into town.” She peeked through the peephole.
The man under discussion stood on the other side.
“I’ll wait until you make sure. You can’t be too careful these days.”
She flipped the lock. “It’s him, Dad. I just checked.” Opening the door, she motioned Keith in and angled away.
“Then I expect you’ll have a far more enjoyable evening than I will. I only have a book to cuddle up with.”
Warmth flooded her cheeks. “I’m hanging up now.”
His chuckle came over the line. “You do that. It wouldn’t be nice to keep that young man waiting after such a long drive. We’ll work out the arrangements for your trip tomorrow. Give Keith my regards.”
Ending the call, Claire turned back to her visitor. “Dad says hi.”
One side of his mouth hitched up. “Based on your blush, I suspect he said more than that.”
The warmth in her cheeks heated up a few degrees. “Maybe. He approves of you.”
“Nice to know, since I expect he and I will be seeing a lot of each other down the road.”
