to calm, when someone knocked. With Carrie on her hip, Sue did a visual check of her sleeping young men and pulled open the door.
Rick Kraynick, looking too good in jeans and a button-up denim shirt, stood there.
“Uh-uh.” She shook her head, swinging the door closed again. She was already having enough trouble getting the man out of her thoughts.
“Wait. Please.” The hand administering resistance against the solid wood panel wasn’t violent. Or particularly pushy. But it was firm. “I need to speak with you.”
There was something about him. A sense of vulnerability mixed with toughness that she couldn’t ignore.
And she couldn’t give in to it, either.
“You know my number.”
“In person,” he said. “I need to speak with you in person.” He swallowed, his eyes beseeching her far more than anything he could say. “Please.”
“We’ve been through this, Mr. Kraynick. Talk to social services. Or better yet, get yourself into some kind of counseling. You don’t seem to be able to take no for an answer.”
“I called my mother.”
Christy’s mother. Carrie’s Grandma. Sue didn’t want to care. She repositioned the baby, holding her up against her, with Carrie facing back into the house.
“You have to leave now.” She wished she felt the conviction behind her words.
With a glance behind her, Sue verified that both boys were still sleeping. Chances were that wouldn’t last long. William was eating every two hours.
All night long.
As well as during the day.
And Michael wasn’t sleeping through the night yet, either. Or at least, if he was, he’d stopped since his move to a new home. Which meant, since she also used her evenings to do Joe’s bookwork, Sue was coming off a night with very little sleep.
“My mother just told me she’s adopting Carrie,” the man said, a hint of desperation in his voice.
“I can’t discuss that with you.”
Dressed casually today, he looked no less serious about himself. Or his business. He had no less effect on her. Sue rubbed Carrie’s back, bobbing to keep the baby entertained.
To keep her close.
To ignore how drawn she was to this intense man.
“She says Carrie’s birth changed her. I guess she was there for the last couple of months of the pregnancy and was with Christy for the birth.”
“And she wants Carrie.”
“Yes.”
“If she’s the junkie you say she is, she’ll never get her.”
“She got me back enough times. And Christy, too.”
“Yes, but…”
“She’s older now. She’s already got a job, working in a preschool. And she’s renting an apartment from a preacher and his wife. And I just found out from my lawyer yesterday that there was a suicide note. In it, Christy said she wanted the baby to go to her mother.”
“Which could carry some weight, of course, but a judge could just as easily decide that Christy’s suicide meant she was unstable—not fit to be making decisions for her baby.” For the baby in Sue’s arms. Why was she still talking to him? Anyone else and she’d have shooed him away immediately.
“I’m not willing to take that risk. Carrie might be one in a hundred to you, Ms. Bookman, but she’s the only child of my dead sister. She’s all the family I have left. And I, apparently, am all the family she has as well—discounting a junkie who’s already had two chances at motherhood and failed. I can’t just stand back and let the system take its course.”
“Did Christy know she had a brother?”
“No. My mother never told her. Just like she didn’t tell me about Christy.”
Carrie’s feet jabbed Sue’s stomach. The infant was going to be wanting her lunch soon. And before that, to get down and move around. The little girl was busy developing. She had places to explore, things to learn. Muscles to strengthen.
“Before finding out about Christy, how long had it been since you’d been in contact with your mother?”
“Years.”
“Your choice or hers?”
“Mine.”
“And yet you want me to believe family means so much to you?”
“My mother…I’d like a chance to discuss this with you. Please.”
Carrie grabbed for her ponytail. Missed. Tried again. Rick Kraynick followed the action with his eyes. And grinned. Sue’s insides quivered. Pulling the ponytail over her opposite shoulder, Sue reminded herself that she was a foster mother not only because she loved what she did, but because she was truly good at it.
For most people, loving from afar was difficult, especially loving babies. Many foster mothers of infants burned out quickly or petitioned to adopt their charges. Giving them up was too hard.
But Sue could do it. Loving from afar was what she did. The only way she could love.
The system needed her.
And she needed it.
“I don’t see any point in further discussion,” she finally told the man waiting in front of her. And plenty of reason not to further their acquaintance if every expression that crossed his face seemed to be permanently implanted in her memory banks. “There’s nothing I can do with any knowledge you give me, except to keep sending you to social services.”
“And there’s no legal reason why you can’t just listen,” he persisted. “You’re allowed to have guests in your home. I’d like to come in as your guest. I won’t touch the baby. I’ll be here only to speak with you.”
“On her behalf.”
“As one person involved in the foster system to another who grew up in the system. Period. Just talk. Can you give me that much?”
Leaning back, the baby in her arms put her hands on each side of Sue’s chin, her big round eyes focusing somewhere around Sue’s mouth. As though she could understand that the answer was important. Sue didn’t want to help Rick, but he was asking her for something she wanted as well. Information about Carrie. And for Carrie’s sake, she really wanted to know what he had to say.
“I don’t feel good about this.”
The man was entirely too…everything.
“But you’ll listen?”
“You have twenty minutes.”
Stepping
