“Yep. Corny.” He gave her a brief smile, but
his expression told her that he understood. After a pause of
consideration, he mused, “Well, we’ve made it this long. I seem to
have some kind of, I don’t know…immunity or something. I’m not
sure. In fact…”
He stopped talking and kissed her.
Amber figured she should protest. The timing
certainly didn’t seem right for passion or romance. But the mere
contact of his lips on hers pushed all of that aside. Warmth,
contentment, happiness and vibrant excitement unfurled within her,
replacing her fears and anxiety over the unknown.
They eventually parted, and he once again
looked into her eyes. One corner of his mouth rose.
“Huh.”
He seemed pleased and a little bewildered.
Curiosity got the better of her, and she turned and marched
determinedly down the hall to the bathroom. Because she grabbed his
hand when she started walking, he followed. Flicking the light
switch, she stared into the mirror. Her eyes widened, but she
otherwise controlled her reaction to the change in her
reflection.
“They were even more gold before I kissed
you,” he said, also looking at her eyes in the mirror. “Now they’re
kind of…”
“Amber,” she finished. Her grip on his hand
had tightened with the flip of the light switch, and she
consciously loosened her hold. They both stared at her eyes in the
mirror for another few beats in silence, each lost in thought.
Finally, she shook her head. “Man, this is crazy.”
“The best I can figure,” he said, turning her
so that they were once again facing each other, “is you’re reacting
to the dramatic change in your environment. I somehow help
counteract that, maybe because I’m the closest thing to your usual
‘environment.’”
She thought about that for a moment. “Is it
scary that I find that an acceptable explanation for my eyes
dramatically changing color?”
He smiled. “When you’ve experienced what we
have over the years, eye color seems almost superfluous.”
“You know how I like it when you use words
like ‘superfluous.’”
“Of course I do.”
Grinning appreciatively, she patted his
cheek. “This doesn’t mean we can continue to put off talking about
The Incidents.”
“Sure. But why don’t we walk up to the
grocery store and get some supplies before it closes. I know you
won’t be happy in the morning if you don’t have your orange
juice.”
Because he was right, she nodded and then
took a more careful look around the bathroom. A shower-tub combo to
the rear of the room was lined with serviceable beige tiles. The
toilet sat to the left of the entrance between the tub and the
white pedestal sink under the oval mirror. The hardwood floors from
the front of the house continued through to the bathroom and
bedrooms, so the owners of the home had placed a woven blue mat on
the bathroom floor.
Stepping out of the bathroom, she glanced
left and right and saw two bedrooms, both with queen-size beds.
What appeared to be handmade quilts topped each of the beds, and
serviceable wood furniture, more woven mats and paintings similar
to those in the living room decorated each room.
“I’ll take the one with the pinkish spread,”
she said generously.
“My manly sensibilities surely thank you.” He
squeezed her shoulder. “Why don’t I haul those suitcases into the
rooms and then we’ll head out?”
“Sounds like a plan.”
About an hour later, they were back from the
local City Market and the fridge and cupboards were stocked with
the basics they would need over the next few days. They had
arranged their things in their bedrooms and taken their turns in
the shower, and were now sitting at the kitchen table eating a late
meal of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
“So, tell me about the first Incident,” he
said.
She swallowed a bite of sandwich and asked,
“The first one I remember?”
He thought about that. “I guess that’s an
important distinction, huh?”
She nodded and took a drink of orange juice.
Then, figuring she might as well just get on with it, she set her
glass down. “I think the very first Incident happened when I was
around three.” Seeing his interested expression, she continued,
“Mrs. Harris left my file on her desk once when I was waiting in
her office. I looked.”
“Of course you did.” He grinned at her.
Sensing his sincere ease with the
conversation, she relaxed a bit.
Why have I always dreaded
this?
she wondered now.
Fiddling with her napkin, she went on, “I was
found in an abandoned industrial building shortly after I was born.
Due to the neighborhood where I was found, it’s thought that my
mother was a junkie and/or a prostitute. Apparently, investigators
never found any evidence leading them to my parents. At that point,
I was placed in my first foster home. Ed and Lisa Vonnegut. The
file said everything had gone well and that adoption proceedings
had begun.”
A pang passed through her at that, and she
paused to take an unwanted bite of her sandwich to collect her
thoughts. Yes, she had come very close to having a solid foundation
on which to build her life…a happy family. She looked up and caught
Gabriel’s understanding gaze.
But what she ended up with pleased her just
fine.
“The file said that the foster mother, Lisa
Vonnegut, was witnessed shaking me violently. I ended up slicing my
chin open on the edge of a table, had to have stitches. CPS
investigated and, although Mrs. Vonnegut denied that she had shaken
me, it was determined that the risk was too great. They didn’t want
to assume liability if something worse happened. End of
placement.”
He sat silently for a moment. “You think that
you had an Incident, and that’s why you were shaking in Mrs.
Vonnegut’s arms?”
She nodded.
“Okay. What about the next Incident?”
Appreciating his matter-of-fact manner, she
drank some more juice and then continued, “My next placement was
with a couple named Ron and Deena Anders. They had another child
they had adopted. Julia. She was a year or two older than me. Once
again, things seemed to be going well. Then, shortly before my
sixth birthday, Ron and Deena were cooking dinner while Julia and I
played in the backyard with a couple of kids in the neighborhood.
The report said that Julia just lost it and attacked me, repeatedly
ramming my head into the concrete patio. Julia denied it, but the
most reliable witnesses on the scene were the few six and
seven-year-olds in the yard and my foster parents, who saw it from
inside the kitchen. CPS once again intervened. They determined that
Julia was a dangerously jealous child and that it wasn’t in
anyone’s best interests to keep me there. Placement ended.”
He reached over and covered her hand where it
rested on the table. “Is it safe to assume the next Incident
occurred when you were nine?”
She hooked her fingers with his. “Yeah.
You’re pretty good. It took me until I was fifteen to see the
pattern.”
“Well, you’ve never talked about it, and I’m
sure you avoided thinking about it as much as possible. Until you
look at the linear progression of events, the pattern isn’t very
noticeable.”
“Linear progression?” she repeated. One
corner of her mouth rose when he grinned sheepishly. “Well, you’re
right. I was about nine. This time I was placed with a single
foster mother. Allison Palmer. She was younger than many foster
parents. Twenty-five, the file said. I remember thinking she looked
even younger. She was very nice, and had a lot of experience
working with kids. The file said that she had the perfect
background for fostering and had taken more than her share of
classes needed to qualify. Everyone had high hopes that the
placement would work long-term.”
“What happened to disrupt this one?”
“The Incident was more severe. It left me
physically scarred, at least long enough for it to be seen by the
CPS investigator. It unfortunately happened at a time when Allison
was at work. I had come home early from school because I wasn’t
feeling well. Being me, I hadn’t actually told anyone at the
school. So when the school realized I was unaccounted for, they
tried to reach Allison. She was in a meeting at the time and didn’t
answer her work phone, so they called the local authorities. By the
time they found me at the house, it appeared that I had scalded
myself with boiling water.”
“Let me guess. You had a convulsion while
boiling water on the stove?”
“No. I really don’t know what happened. I
know I wasn’t cooking. There wasn’t any charring in the house. But
I had serious burns over more than half my body, and I was
unconscious when they found me. There were also several broken
things in the room where I was found...a table, a lamp. They
suspected I broke the things when I fell.
“At any rate, Allison fought the disruption
of my placement far harder than my previous foster parents had. She
argued that she’d had no way of knowing that I was home unattended,
and that the school hadn’t called her cell number or she would have
answered. The burns healed quickly, and I even confessed to having
snuck away from school without going to the nurse or notifying a
teacher. It didn’t help. The Powers That Be decided that anything
resulting in me being physically injured was negligence and cause
for removal.”
Amber got to her feet and carried their empty
plates to the sink. Gabriel followed her with their glasses. She
turned the water on and waited until it ran warm. She used some of
the dish soap they had found under the sink and squeezed a bit onto
a washcloth as he grabbed the dishtowel. They settled into a
comfortable rhythm of washing and drying.
“It was really dumb of me to leave school
without telling anyone,” she said, handing him a washed plate.
He didn’t say anything until she glanced at
him. Then he held her gaze as he dried and said, “You were so
young. And much of your experience with people in positions of
authority had resulted in very bad times for you. Why would you
have felt comfortable turning to them?”
Handing him the next plate, she gave him a
rueful smile. “You’re a pretty handy guy to have around when I’m in
the mood to beat myself up.”
“Of course I am.”
She shook her head at him and finished
rinsing the glass in her hand. “My next placement was in the home
of another married couple. Ken and Holly Jamison. I remember they
were Southern Baptists, true Bible Belt folks. By then, I was old
enough to realize that my living arrangements were unusual compared
to other kids. I had to start at yet another school, where I was
the butt of a lot of jokes and the source of plenty of gossip. They
had two of their own kids living in the home. It’s safe to say I
didn’t make life easy for any of them.”
“No. Not you!”
Rolling her eyes, she handed him the last
glass and shut the water off. “Sarcasm is completely unwarranted
here.”
“But it’s such an underappreciated form of
humor.”
Because she was in complete agreement and she
knew he was trying to keep her from dwelling on these terrible
memories, she didn’t comment. “A few days before my twelfth
birthday, I had my fourth Incident. This one was at the church that
the Jamisons attended. Well, in the parking lot.”
Gabriel re-hung the dish towel and took her
hand. They walked over to the living room and sat next to each
other on the blue sofa. The room was still bathed in soft sunlight
even though the clock read 9:56 p.m.
Leaning comfortably into his side, she
continued her story. “I don’t remember that Incident, either. All I
know is that I was seen leaving the church during the service and
they found me convulsing on the ground by the Jamisons’ car. All of
the windows of the surrounding cars were broken.”
“Well, if there wasn’t anyone around, your
foster family couldn’t have been blamed for causing you harm,
right? So, what happened?”
Her thoughts went back to the memories she
did have about that particular Incident. The absolute horror on the
faces of the parishioners gathering on the church steps as she
regained consciousness. Later, the preacher speaking at length with
the entire Jamison family while she sat on the front steps of the
church, alone. That night, sleeping by herself in the bedroom she
usually shared with the Jamisons’ youngest daughter because her
parents didn’t want them in the same room. The next day, sitting in
the back of Mrs. Harris’ car on her way to the shelter.
Another placement disrupted.
Before answering, she took a deep breath to
suppress the anxiety that the flood of memories provoked. Then she
took the plunge.
“They were convinced I was possessed by
Satan.”
Gabriel almost asked her to repeat her
answer. She had spoken very quickly as she released her pent-up
breath. But he watched as she nervously pulled at the ties to her
red plaid pajama pants while she awaited his response, and he knew
he had heard her correctly. There was all manner of jokes he could
have cracked, but it was easy to see that this confession was a
painful one for her.
“Well…I didn’t see that one coming,” he
admitted, keeping his tone calm.
She relaxed against him and he knew he had
said the right thing. Leaning down, he kissed the top of her head.
Her unbound hair smelled faintly of the generic, lightly-fragranced
shampoo and conditioner in the bathroom and an underlying scent
that was distinctly her own, a scent that made him think of
sunlight and spiced honey. His fingers moved to her hair as he
sorted his thoughts. He watched the light coming through the
windows glimmer on the strands as they filtered through his
fingers. The action gave them both time to process this last
Incident.
He supposed it would have shocked Amber to
know that he wanted nothing more at that moment than to go and hunt
down Ken and Holly Jamison. And he wanted to do much more than
explain just how hypocritical and ridiculous their behavior had
been. The fact was, the more he considered just what must have
taken place when Amber needed them most, the more he really wanted
to throttle them both.