Catching Air (10 page)

She was suddenly so hungry and tired. Her belly felt hollow, and her joints ached. She folded her arms over her knees and dropped her head. She didn’t want to go home and cook spaghetti again. She wanted to walk into the light, and taste the chicken, and listen to the end of her father’s story.

“Honey?” she heard her father’s new wife say. “Do you want a beer?”

Kira got up and slipped away without having knocked on the door. She was the one who’d told her father to leave her alone all those years ago, she reminded herself. She’d refused to attend his subsequent weddings, even though he’d invited her . . . She just wished it hadn’t been so easy for him to let her go.

She’d ended up taking an added shift at the frozen yogurt shop—Sundays from noon to seven—and the extra money had pulled them through. Her mother had gotten better. They’d moved on.

Kira had grown up in a house of uncertainty, where financial worries had helped rip apart her parents’ fragile union, and she’d always imagined things would be different when she was married. But she and Peter each had a failed career now, and their bank balance was dependent upon the whims of vacationers. She tried to push away the unsettling thought, but it kept gnawing at her: If the B-and-B was a bust, they’d have to start over again.

The timing was all wrong. She only wished Peter could see that.

Chapter Seven

IT HAD BEEN A
happy day, a golden day, but nothing could prepare Alyssa for the miracle blossoming within it.

As they cleaned up the breakfast dishes from their only guests—a quiet family with two teenage sons who’d come for a weekend of hiking and bike riding—Peter announced that the long-range forecast called for the snowiest winter in Vermont in a decade.

“Awesome,” Rand said. “That’ll bring in the skiers and boarders like crazy.”

Peter kept their bookings listed on an oversize calendar posted in the kitchen, and the stretches of empty white squares had them all worried. The B-and-B needed to be busy through the winter months or they’d never make a profit, even with the wedding.

Alyssa finished loading the dishwasher and scrubbing the omelet pan, then she took a cup of tea out to the porch and sat on a rocking chair. There was a nip in the air, but the sun felt warm on her face. She leaned back her head and closed her eyes, letting her mind drift back to her conversation with Kira and the story of Peter and Rand’s tangled history, as it had so many times in the past few weeks.

Families were so complicated, she mused. Take hers—her parents had split up before she was out of diapers, but the most surprising thing was that they’d gotten married in the first place. Her mother was a hippie who’d brought cloth bags to the supermarket decades before it was fashionable; her father’s favorite way to cap a day was with a marbled steak and a martini.

Once, Alyssa had asked her mother, Bee, why she’d gotten married to a man so different from herself. “Maybe we hoped we could change each other,” Bee had said, smoothing Alyssa’s hair back from her face and kissing her forehead as Alyssa caught the scent of patchouli her mother always wore. “Or maybe you were the whole point.”

And Alyssa’s stepsisters, who came from her father’s first marriage, felt more like acquaintances than relatives. They’d been teenagers by the time Alyssa was born, and now they led lives that looked nothing like hers. One was an executive at a Fortune 500 company and the other had started a make-your-own jewelry business that had grown to franchises in five states. They lived in gorgeous homes, had well-dressed kids attending expensive colleges, and seemed stretched so thin that they could snap at any moment.

Alyssa adored both of her parents, but she was closer to her mother. Still, her father was always there for her. She thought about Kira’s pronouncement that she’d never have to worry about money. And it was true: Her father sent her an exceedingly generous check every year on her birthday. Other checks along with professionally wrapped gifts arrived at Christmastime, and he’d been the one to cover their adoption fees. Maybe those slim paper rectangles had provided an invisible safety net that allowed her to soar, to erase the kind of fear that could freeze someone in place in a safer kind of life.

The sun, the soothing motion of the chair, the omelet and toast she’d eaten for breakfast lying heavily in her belly . . . Alyssa adjusted the pillow behind her back and yawned.

When her cell phone rang, she was completely disoriented. Had two hours passed, or two minutes? She rubbed her eyes and looked down. This time she recognized the number, and she jumped out of her chair, suddenly wide awake.

She snatched it up on the second ring, knowing even before Donna with Children from China spoke a word that this was a seismic moment in her life, a dividing line that would forever separate everything into a before and an after.

“Congratulations!” Donna said, and Alyssa burst into tears.

“The Chinese government has approved your application and we have a match for you. A little girl, estimated age of eleven months,” Donna said.

“Thank you,” Alyssa whispered, suddenly loving Donna, who was a conduit to such miracles every day. “Thank you so much.”

Did Donna sound a little choked up, too? “I’m sending you an e-mail right now with a photo and brief history. Once you and your husband have a chance to read through everything, we can go through the formalization of your acceptance. There are a lot of papers involved!”

“When can we—” Alyssa began, but her throat tightened and she couldn’t finish.

“Go to China?” Donna said. “You’ll have to get travel permission from the Chinese government, and a consulate appointment. Things are really backlogged now, so it’ll take months.”

“Thank you so much,” Alyssa said again, and then she hung up and ran across the yard, her feet barely skimming the prickly grass, to where Rand was cutting dead limbs off trees. She grabbed him by the hand and pulled him through the house, into their bedroom. She collapsed onto the bed next to the laptop she’d left there.

Rand misread the look on her face. “Lyss? What is it?”

“Our daughter,” she managed to say, turning the computer screen toward him so they could both see the photograph filling it. A little girl in a simple white shirt, sitting in a straight-backed chair, her feet dangling above the floor. Her hair was so glossy it almost looked wet, her eyes were narrow and exquisitely shaped, and her smile looked shy yet brave. This inexpensive, staged picture was the most precious thing Alyssa owned, the one item she would run into a burning building to save.

She heard Rand’s quick, fierce inhalation of breath, and she felt her tears coming hard now, streaming down her cheeks. She wanted to laugh and cry and dance and shout. They’d been waiting so long, and their daughter was arriving at the best possible moment, almost as if she’d known they were finally ready to be parents. As if she were the teacher and they were the students.

She can sit up,
the accompanying note reported.
She eats all her meals. She sleeps eleven hours a night, and naps three hours every afternoon. She is a happy and healthy child
.

Alyssa wiped her cheeks with the backs of her hands, but the tears kept coming. She was so glad Grace was happy; she couldn’t bear to think of her daughter in a crib in a crowded orphanage, holding out her arms and sobbing, yearning for someone to pick her up. For someone to tell her she was beautiful, and loved, and good. Alyssa would tell her those things every single day, and whisper them into her ear at night as she drifted off to sleep, to make up for all the times Grace hadn’t heard them.

Alyssa thought of the little bathrobe tucked away like a talisman in her bottom drawer. She could finally take it out and hang it alongside her own robe. She’d buy a rubber ducky, too, and some of those soft sleepers. Diapers! She’d need diapers, of course, and maybe a rattle . . .

Rand looked stunned, and younger, somehow. His hair was wild, and he had a smudge of dirt on his cheek. “Is it, like . . . official?”

“Don’t move,” Alyssa said and grabbed her camera off the dresser. She’d frame this picture of Rand at the moment he learned he was a father and pair it with their first one of Grace. Rand was a father now; they had a child, she just happened to be thousands of miles away. And that meant Alyssa was finally a mother.

“It’s official,” Alyssa said when she lowered her camera with trembling fingers. “They wouldn’t have sent her photo if it wasn’t.”

“We’re going to have a kid,” Rand said and blinked a few times. He gave a little laugh. “Holy shit.”

Alyssa leaned close to him and gave him a long, hard kiss. “She’s coming, Rand.” A great, joyous sob welled up in her throat, and when she closed her eyes, it was her daughter’s face she saw. “Grace is coming home to us.”

“I . . . What should we do?” Rand asked. He stood up and started to pace.

“We can tell a few people,” Alyssa said. “My mom. And we should call our dads, too. And then we need to tell Peter and Kira. They’re going to have to run this place while we go to China for a couple weeks.”

Rand was still pacing, still looking stunned. “Okay,” he said. “Do we need anything? A crib?”

“I was thinking she could sleep with us,” Alyssa said. “Babies do, in most cultures.”

“With us?” Rand repeated. “What if I roll over and mush her?”

“We’ll figure it out.” Alyssa closed her eyes. “I want to send out a little light to Grace right now, okay?”

Rand didn’t believe, as she did, that energy could travel between human beings, but he stayed next to her as Alyssa closed her eyes and willed a message across the miles. She sent it over the tips of treetops and past the Atlantic Ocean, through the misty, thin clouds, and beyond the border of another continent, where she visualized it traveling like a ray of golden light straight down into Grace’s soul.

We’re waiting for you. We love you already. We’ve always loved you.

• • •

Kira put down her long-handled wooden spoon and retrieved a wheel of Brie out of the refrigerator. She was pulling off the plastic wrap when Alyssa swung open the kitchen door.

“In the mood for a walk?” Alyssa asked. “Rand and I are going and thought you and Peter might want to come.”

“A walk?” Kira repeated.

“It’s this thing where you put one foot in front of the other,” Alyssa teased. “Come on, it’s gorgeous out!”

Kira hesitated. “Did you ask Peter?” Things between them had felt strained since their argument a few nights earlier.

Alyssa nodded. “He’s waiting outside.”

Kira left the Brie to soften on the counter and set the burner for the cider to low. She found her coat and wound a blue-and-white scarf around her neck, then walked out onto the porch, where Alyssa was snapping photos.

Kira inhaled a breath that chilled her lungs as she took in the explosion of colors at the tops of trees—russets and golds and crimsons that mirrored the sunset just above. It was probably close to eighty degrees in Florida now. If she were still there, she’d be stuck in her windowless office, reading a dry report, her eyes burning.

“Deer,” Alyssa whispered, pointing. There were five of them—two bucks and three does—munching on bushes that edged the lawn.

Rand clapped his hands, trying to scare the animals away. “Hey, it’ll save us from clipping the hedges,” Peter said, putting out a hand to stop his brother. “Besides, they’re pretty thin.”

“One of those dudes must be getting lucky,” Rand said. “I’m thinking he’s got a sister-wife thing going on.”

Their reactions to the deer pretty much summed up the differences between the two brothers, Kira thought. She walked over to Peter, slipped her hand in his, and felt a knot in her chest loosen when his fingers squeezed hers back.

“Let’s go this way,” Alyssa said, steering them away from the deer. They walked in silence for a moment, leaves crunching beneath their feet.

“So,” Alyssa finally said. She stopped walking. “We, ah, wanted to tell you something.” She took a deep breath, and her eyes filled up.

“Everything okay?” Peter asked as Kira squeezed his hand more tightly, suddenly worried.

Alyssa nodded. “It’s good news. Rand, you say it. I don’t think I can get through it without crying!”

“We’re adopting a little girl from China,” Rand said.

“Whoa!” Peter said. “That’s fantastic!”

“We’ve been waiting for years . . . I still can’t believe it,” Alyssa said.

Kira hugged Alyssa as Peter offered Rand his hand and the men shook.

“We’re so happy for you, too!” Kira said. “And for us! We’re going to be an aunt and uncle!” She was surprised to discover her eyes were also wet. “Do you have a name picked out?”

It was the first time Kira had ever seen Rand look ill at ease. He toyed with the zipper on his coat before answering. “It’s Grace,” he said. He glanced at Alyssa. “I was thinking her middle name could be Elizabeth.”

For their mother, Kira thought.

Peter stared at Rand as Kira caught her breath. Rand was looking back at Peter steadily, waiting for him to react.

But Peter didn’t, at least not immediately. He seemed frozen in place. Later, Kira would wonder if Rand had started to reach his arms out toward his brother, or if the faint ripple of movement had existed only in her imagination.

A red Jeep came up the road, and the driver tooted the horn as the vehicle passed by, breaking apart the moment.

“Must be our guests,” Kira said. “They’re early.”

“Let’s celebrate when they leave, okay?” Peter said. “We’ll take you guys out to dinner in town.”

“Cool,” Rand said.

“So we’re going to have to go to China at one point for a few weeks to get Grace,” Alyssa said as they began to walk back to the B-and-B. “We can hire someone to help out while we’re gone . . . I just hope we don’t have to be there during the wedding.”

“This is a little more important than the wedding,” Kira said.

“You should say that to Jessica,” Rand said. “I’m sure she’d agree.”

Kira punched him lightly on the arm. “Tell us more about Grace,” she said.

“She’s about eleven months old,” Alyssa said. “She can sit up! I keep picturing her . . . I wonder what she’s doing all the time. If she’s sleeping, if her diaper is wet, what foods she’ll like . . .”

“Like mac and cheese, or spaghetti and meatballs?” Kira asked, and Alyssa laughed.

“My arms actually feel empty now, without her,” Alyssa said.

“I can’t wait to see her picture,” Peter said. “I can’t wait to see
her
!”

Kira glanced at him. She couldn’t help wondering if Peter would feel even more strongly that they should get pregnant now, and fear tightened her chest. She was truly happy about Grace’s impending arrival; she couldn’t wait to meet her niece, and rock her, and give her a bath. Oh—and steam some sweet peas so she could watch Grace pick them up in that adorably focused way babies had when they were learning to control their hands.

How could she be feeling more excitement about the prospect of someone else’s child than her own? Peter deserved better; maybe there
was
something wrong with her.

Rand was grabbing Alyssa from behind, picking her up and swinging her around, and she was laughing. They were both wearing jeans and brightly colored fleece jackets, and they looked as perfect and happy as a couple in a television advertisement. Meanwhile Kira and Peter were walking side by side, not touching, and Kira knew what Alyssa meant about her arms feeling empty—because her hand felt the same way without Peter’s in it.