* * * *
Two days later and still not knowing, Grady watched a dark-curled girl in a ruffled yellow sundress and tiny white sandals meet her baby brother for the first time.
Alicia Carpenter had suggested he think about what they’d talked about and come back to see her in a couple days, after it had had time to settle.
Forty-eight hours had passed and he’d thought of virtually nothing else. But settling? No.
When he arrived for his appointment, the receptionist asked him to take a seat on the bench in the vestibule.
He watched a woman holding a baby and a man with his arm around her shoulders come down the stairs and cross to a living-room-like area off the vestibule.
“They’re here!” an adult voice proclaimed from deeper in the room, then the couple and the baby were surrounded by a gray-haired couple, two younger women, another man and the little girl. The woman holding the baby crouched down to the little girl’s level, and the babble quieted.
“Andrea, this is your new brother, Benjamin.”
The little girl, dark eyes wide, nestled against her mother’s side and ventured a tentative hand over the side of the blankets to improve her view.
“Did I look like that?” Her tone hinted at disapproval.
“Yes,” said the woman. “When you first came to us, you looked very much like this.”
“Oh.” She digested that, then looked around at the faces above her. “This is my brother. His name is Benjamin. He’s in our family now, too.”
Not an eye remained dry, including Grady’s.
He’d just seen a miracle. As amazing and magical in its way as childbirth. A miracle of love.
And Grady had found his answers.
How simple it all seemed now. Flesh and blood hadn’t made a family of him and his parents. It wouldn’t prevent him and Leslie from making a family, whether that family was the two of them or—through adoption-—three or four. The only thing he couldn’t accept would be not having Leslie in his life. He loved her, loved her in a way he never thought he’d be capable of.
Now he had to make her believe that and make her understand what they could be, together.
“Ms. Carpenter will see you now.”
Grady came to with a start. Blankets, baby clothes, diapers and other belongings gathered, the family was preparing to leave, now one member stronger. He watched, smiling with their joy, until the front door closed behind them.
“Good. I want to see her, too.” In Alicia Carpenter’s office he didn’t waste time on a preamble. “I’ve decided. I want to adopt.”
Alicia looked both amused and annoyed. “And you think that’s it? You’ve decided and now I’ll walk out that door, find you a baby and hand it over? That’s not how it works, Grady. Not from our end, not even from yours. It’s not that simple. How about the woman you’re involved with?”
“Leslie’s great with kids. You should see her. Nobody could meet her and not know she’d be a great mother.”
Alicia leaned across the desk toward him. “Grady, you don’t even know if this woman wants a long-term relationship with you, much less marriage. Don’t you think you should resolve all that first?”
He sat perfectly still as the possibilities her words evoked washed over him. What did he really know of Leslie’s feelings? They hadn’t talked about relationships or futures. He’d been too unaccustomed to the concepts; she’d been too protective of her secret. What if the image of them together hadn’t ever occurred to her? What if . . .
Slowly he sat back. He sensed a light touch on his cheek, the soft stroke that an elegant, capable hand might make. It caressed his chin, his neck, his shoulder and settled over his heart. He saw Leslie’s eyes when they had made love, so full of emotion, so giving.
“She loves me. She really loves me.”
Wanting to whoop in exultation, he settled for a grin. The caress and the image remained, though he focused again on the woman across the desk. “She does love me.”
Alicia sighed, but he didn’t believe for an instant that she was really exasperated. “Okay, say she loves you. What if she doesn’t want to adopt? Some people don’t—women as well as men. They’re not comfortable with it.” She held up a hand, and he swallowed his automatic response. “Especially someone who’s gone through what Leslie’s gone through, the loss and the pain. From what you’ve said, she’s made a life for herself that doesn’t include children. She might not want the risk. Think about that, think about it all. More important, go back and talk to her about it. And listen to her, really listen.”
He looked away, staring unfocused out the window to see Leslie’s face as she held Paul and Bette’s baby, Leslie’s hands as she stroked April’s hair, Leslie’s tears when she told him she could never have a baby.
“I will. I will talk to her, and I will listen. But I know that this woman has too much love in her not to want to share it.” He looked back at Alicia. He’d learned to read people and he thought that, despite herself, the counselor was impressed. Still, her nod was neutral.
“Okay, Grady, for the sake of discussion, we’ll accept all that, too. We’ll say Leslie wants to adopt and we’ll say the two of you are approved—not a mere formality, let me assure you. There’s still the question of babies.”
He waited, but she didn’t continue. “What do you mean, the question of babies?” What else had this whole discussion been about?
“That’s what you have in mind, isn’t it, Grady? A newborn you and Leslie can watch learn to smile, crawl, walk and talk, all the milestones? Yes, I can see that’s exactly what you’re thinking.” She leaned forward across the desk. “But, Grady, that’s everyone’s dream, and there aren’t as many babies as there are dreamers.”
But those other dreamers couldn’t give a child what he and Leslie would, he knew that. And knowing that, he believed to his core that nothing could stop them.
“Well, I can see I haven’t convinced you.” She sat back with a sigh, but kept her eyes on his face. “But there are other possibilities, Grady. There are other children—not babies, but children—who need families. Some have special needs. Physical or mental disabilities. Some are minorities, some are emotionally injured and some are simply past that cute, cuddly stage of babyhood. But every one of them needs love and security. Every one of them.”
The sadness in her voice told of the children she saw who didn’t get those basic needs met.
April’s face came sharp and clear into Grady’s mind. Not a baby, but a child. A child not battered or starved, thank God. A child with a parent, yet still adrift without the love and security she needed.
“Would that be something you would consider, Grady?”
“It might,” he said very slowly, while the borders of his envisioned future broadened a little more. “I’d have to talk to Leslie about that. See how she feels about it.”
Alicia laughed. “Now that’s progress.”
* * * *
That Friday evening Leslie walked out of the office building and into the broiler of a Washington September heat wave with Tris at her side. Hovering at her side to be accurate.
Tris had done that this whole week, ever since April’s departure. At least she didn’t press Leslie to talk about Grady.
Today she’d stuck particularly close, popping into Leslie’s office what seemed like every few minutes, except for an hour-long break when she said she had an errand to run at lunch. She’d also badgered Leslie into leaving work right on time, when Leslie had thought a few extra hours would be just the thing to put her ahead for the next week . . . and fill in a lonely Friday night.
So now they exited the glass doors with Tris debating, with no help from Leslie, the merits of stopping for a TGIF drink with co-workers or heading straight to her house for the dinner she’d insisted Leslie join. All the while, Tris’s head whipped back and forth surveying the area.
Leslie wondered a little guiltily if Tris had said they’d be meeting Michael here and she’d forgotten, or never heard. She hadn’t listened that closely to Tris; once she gave in to Tris’s good-hearted bullying to spend the evening together, she figured it didn’t much matter which option they chose. She’d follow wherever Tris led.
Where Tris led was down the block to a brand-new, bright red Suburban parked at the curb. Half expecting to see Michael, Leslie took in that a man was leaning against the passenger side of the vehicle. But Michael and Tris hadn’t said anything about a new car, had they? And Michael wasn’t that tall . . . or that blond.
“ ’Bout time you got here. I’m about two minutes from a ticket.”
For an instant the evidence of her ears and her eyes didn’t compute. And then it burst in her head with a roar that blocked out all other thought. Grady . . .
Grady
!
“You brought the bag, Tris?”
Tris handed him an overnight bag that was a dead ringer for Leslie’s.
“Wait a minute.”
Ignoring her order, which had all the firmness of Jell-O, he opened the passenger door, tossed the bag into the backseat and started around to the driver’s side.
“C’mon, Leslie. Get in,” urged Tris.
“That was my bag.”
“Yes, and it has your clothes in it. That was my lunchtime errand. Now get in.”
Tris’s hands gave her a firm push in the direction of the open door, but Leslie stopped short.
“Wait a minute.” This time the words had authority to them. “First I find out what’s going on here, then I decide if I’m going anywhere.”
“I’m doing for you what you would have done for me in the same circumstances,” said Tris. “In fact, you did something very similar by sending Michael and me off alone together during a snowstorm so we could clear up misunderstandings and figure out how we felt.”
“This isn’t the same thing at all. There’s no misunderstanding here. There’s nothing unclear about this. No amount of talking is going to change—”
Grady stopped in the act of opening the driver’s door and looked across the top of the vehicle to where Leslie stood on the curb.
“I’m taking you to Charlottesville for the weekend. April’s trying to work out a way she can stay there when Melly takes off, and she’s getting caught in the middle between Melly and Grandma Beatrice. She needs you. They all need you.”
It didn’t occur to her until they were on the road to wonder how he knew her family’s inner workings. He’d said they needed her, she’d believed him and she’d gotten in, closed the door and put her seat belt on without another word.
But when the question did occur to her, it also brought a niggling suspicion that he’d used those phrases—“She needs you. They all need you.”—deliberately and with every expectation that she’d react exactly the way she had.
That was also when it occurred to her that the whole thing might be a blind, though she couldn’t imagine why he’d go to such lengths. It wasn’t as if she’d been refusing his phone calls; she hadn’t heard from him since she’d left him at O’Hare Airport. Eleven days and seven hours ago.
But he continued on the most direct route to Charlottesville, and before long she felt the familiar discomfort of returning to the place that reminded her of what she’d once hoped for, had lost and would never have. Only this time it was worse because she was returning there with the man she would love for the rest of her life and with the knowledge that she couldn’t have him, either.
“What’s this all about?” she demanded when the silence became too clogged with unbearable thoughts.
“I told you,” he said equably, but without enlightening her any.
That seemed to loosen his vocal cords, or perhaps it was because the traffic lightened away from Washington. Either way, he launched into an update on his business, including soliciting her opinion of the three finalists for his Washington office location.
After they’d discussed those, he added, “I’m pretty sure I’ve found the house I want, too. It’s in Old Town Alexandra. It’s one of the few places that hasn’t had much modernizing so it’ll take a lot of work, but then it would be just the way I want it. Of course I’d want you to give it your okay before I did anything.”
Abruptly wary, she studied him. He kept his eyes virtuously on the road, which gave her only his profile to examine, and it showed little. He might mean he valued her opinion on a historic building. Or he might not.
“And as you can see, I got permanent transportation instead of renting all the time. I figured this would be great for hauling things, too, when I get a chance to try those auctions and sales in the country like you suggested.”
“I suggested?”
“Remember, when you helped me shop for Paul and Bette’s housewarming gift? You said the way to get bargains was to haunt the estate sales in the outlying counties. I thought it would be fun to furnish the house that way. I seemed to have developed a taste for antiques during all those trips we took.”
As they methodically gobbled the miles to her hometown, he talked on, adroitly threading a fine line between excluding and including her in upcoming projects and trips and dreams.
What was he up to?
She couldn’t figure Grady out. He didn’t try to change her mind that they didn't have a future together. How could that bother her when she knew it was the truth? But neither did he say he’d accepted that they
didn’t
have a future together.
In fact, he acted as if nothing had happened.
As they reached the outskirts of Charlottesville, he pulled a paper from behind the visor and consulted it.
“This isn’t the way to Grandma Beatrice’s,” she said after a few minutes.
“That’s right. I thought we’d have a nice dinner at the club before we went back to the house.”
The club . . . the summer she’d fallen in love with Frank . . . their wedding reception . . . then, after the accident, her onetime friends turned to pitying strangers.
“No.” She barely got it out, but his expression told her he wouldn’t be satisfied with that. “I don’t want to go there. There are other places—”
“Grandma Beatrice and April are expecting us at the club.” His quiet voice was implacable.
* * * *
The first half hour was a blur to her, at the time and forever after. Then, gradually, she started to notice things.