Sisters in the Wind(69)
Jennifer appeared in the doorway, startling me.
“Sorry, Lucy, I was hoping you’d help me find books for the baby.”
“Sure,” I said, pocketing the note. “I can write for donations.”
“That would be great, but maybe come to the bookstore with me tomorrow?”
The next day, as we got into her car, I handed Jennifer a book wrapped with recycled newspaper.
“How sweet.” Jennifer unwrapped the present to reveal a well-worn copy of A Tree Is Nice. She opened the book and ran her fingers across the inscription.
To Lucy on her first birthday.
With love from Daddy
July 3, 1991
“Oh, Lucy. This is too much.”
“I want Baby Allen to have it,” I explained. “It’s something my friend Abe Charlevoix taught me about giving thanks. You told me about the library when I first got here. That I could build something special. I never thanked you.”
Her eyes welled. “You didn’t have to, but I accept your generous gift.”
I enjoyed accompanying Jennifer to a bookstore and helping her pick out books to read to Baby Allen. Bookstores were my favorite places, along with libraries and swimming pools. I didn’t purchase anything, but I danced my fingertips along book spines and checked the paper quality of every journal in the gift-and-stationery section.
“Thank you, Lucy,” she said on the drive back to the farm. “Baby Allen will love the chunky board books. I even like touching the one with the fur and the bumpy fish scales.” She lets out a little squeal of happiness. “I am blessed, Lucy. I waited so long for a child. Allen and I hoped each time one of the pregnant teens decided on adoption that they might consider us.”
She looked quickly my way. With her radiant smile and rosy cheeks, Jennifer looked like an advertisement for makeup. There was something timeless about her beauty.
“I’m thankful now that Tonya was the one to say yes. All the others, I cried. I grieved. I got angry. But Baby Allen was meant to be my child and Allen’s.”
I thought of the note in my pocket.
“Were there many girls who said no?” As soon as I asked it, I regretted my phrasing. “I mean, how many pregnant girls come through the farm every year?”
“Oh, off the top of my head, I’d say three or four. Some years more.”
I wondered if Jennifer was the one who had pestered the note writer.
“Well, Baby Allen is grateful you’re his mom,” I said.
She squealed again. Her happiness was too much to hold back.
When we returned from the book-buying trip, there was a new teen at Hoppy Farm. A fourteen-year-old pregnant girl named Paige. Tonya remained in the single bedroom. Lexi and I decided to give Joy and Jasmine their privacy, so Bruce and Mister moved a third bed into our room.
By now I was familiar with the dinnertime introductions whenever a new foster kid was placed at the farm. It wasn’t until I introduced myself that I realized the dinner table was full once again. The new girl had taken Diego’s place.
Mister and Missus didn’t expect Diego to return. He’d been gone for four weeks.
* * *
Over the next two weeks, Boyd went from annoying to tolerable. I was never going to have romantic feelings toward him, but at least I no longer wanted to threaten him with bodily harm. He’d kept my secret about Diego, which counted for a lot with me.
One evening as I read in the library, I looked up and saw Boyd standing in the doorway.
“Hey there, Boyd.”
“Hey, Lucy. Whatcha reading?” He glanced at the book in my lap.
“Watership Down.”
“What’s it about?”
I shrugged. “Rabbits searching for utopia.”
“Cool,” he said. “Is it on your list?”
I nodded. My caseworker had recently given me a list of the top 150 classic novels that every high school graduate should read before college.
“Did you hear that Missus is letting me move to the loft in the garage where Bruce used to stay?”
“No. Wow, that’s good. Wait … does it have heat?”
It was the middle of August. The weather would turn sometime next month.
“Yes. It’s a great space.” He paused. “Will you come see it sometime? Like tonight?”
I accepted his eager offer out of politeness.
Boyd’s loft was surprisingly clean. The queen-sized bed was made. There was a small fake-fur rug and slippers next to the side of the bed so his feet wouldn’t touch the cold wood-plank floor each morning. The drawer of an upright dresser was slightly askew—off its track or whatever. The mirror above the dresser had a woman’s photo slid into the frame. She was blond and had a dainty prettiness contrasted by a Def Leppard T-shirt.
“Is this your mom?” I asked.
“Yeah.” The normally chatty Boyd left it at that. I didn’t pry. In my experience, foster kids tended to be either purse dumpers or bank vaults. Devery dumped her life out for me and likewise wanted me to show and tell details I hadn’t even confessed to a priest. Others were closed, offering bits of information sparingly, like rewards for passing a trust test.
There was something especially earnest about Boyd. The way he had set out a bowl of potato chips and two glasses of root beer on the small bistro table in the corner of the room. The lit candle on the single windowsill that made the loft smell like a Creamsicle. An assortment of unscented white candles in canning jars had been lit and placed on nearly every surface. Boyd showed off his space. He wanted my approval. Although I hadn’t had a romantic thought about him since last year, there was something powerful in knowing that I made him nervous.