We’d confirmed our suspicions that Olivia was back to being the inhibited girl she was when she first moved in with us. She hadn’t said more than a few sentences at lunch. And she nearly cried when Briony tried to cheer her up with some encouraging words about how much fun she was having with her aunt. As if we couldn’t tell she wasn’t happy. The flash of disappointment on her face when she thought we didn’t know how she felt anymore was heartbreaking.
We weren’t giving up all hope. Nell agreed to meet with us on our way back from the airport. That was hopeful. At the very least, we wanted to float the idea of spending more time in Olivia’s life. But the ultimate goal was to follow Austy’s advice and broach the subject of adoption. Nell hadn’t acted like a selfish twenty-something who only thought of herself, but she wasn’t the mother that Briony was. Not even the mother that I was.
“What are you thinking about?”
I shrugged and smiled, caught. Briony knew what I was thinking about, surrounded by kids having fun, included in a loving family. “Do you ever miss living here?” I hadn’t been thinking of that, but the thought just entered my head. She must. Her folks showed concern and care and love with every action, her former sisters-in-law treated her like a real sister that they desperately missed and loved, and her former in-laws could easily be mistaken for her parents.
She gripped my chin and turned my head to look at her. “I do, but I wouldn’t give away my time in Virginia for anything. I relish teaching there, I adore our friends, and I found you when I never thought I’d love again. I found someone who fits me perfectly and loves my son and makes my life happy and whole.”
I turned to face her, smiling at the truth of her statement.
“I didn’t have all that before, you know.” Her eyes darted over to gage the hearing distance to her nieces and nephews. “That happens when you marry young. I don’t know how I’d be now if I was still here, but I know I’ve never been happier than I am with you.”
My eyes misted. “I feel the same way about you. I know how I’d be without you, and I wouldn’t like it at all.”
She leaned in and brushed her lips over mine. “Let’s go deal with naptime for Mom then we’ll get the rest of the troupes set for an afternoon at the park. Give Mom and Dad their last break of the summer before we dart out of here tomorrow.”
Boston tomorrow, reliving some of Briony’s past. Getting to know her even better. It probably wouldn’t be possible to love her more, but I never say never with Briony in my life.
M / 26
We were meeting in the hotel restaurant. We’d suggested the room we were staying in for more privacy, but Nell wouldn’t go for it. I wondered if our being lesbians had something to do with her comfort level. If so, we’d be in for an unproductive meeting today. As it was, I’d barely slept all night, too hyped about what we were trying to accomplish today.
“Hi, Nell, thanks for taking the time to come by,” Briony greeted her when she came into our booth. We were in the far corner, meeting at a time when the restaurant was slow. “It’s nice to see you again.”
“You, too,” Nell said and shook Briony’s hand before turning to me.
Her palm slid against mine. The discomfort started out as a shock from static electricity. It always did. If it were just that, I wouldn’t need to avoid handshakes. But soon it would flare to something more painful like multiple cat scratches. I could almost always end the contact before it progressed to the agony of swarming bee stings. Thankfully, Nell didn’t seem to want to prolong the handshake any more than I did.
“How are you doing?” Briony jumped in to pull Nell’s focus away in case I flinched at her touch. “Work going okay?”
Nell looked at her for a minute then said, “What exactly are you looking for here?”
I tried to remember that she must love Olivia as much as we did even though she barely knew her and that she was probably feeling a little defensive. But it didn’t help much when she talked to my partner like that.
“Okay, we’ll get right to it.” Briony turned to me for an encouraging look. “We miss Olivia. She became part of our family when she was with us. We’d hoped to make that permanent.”
Nell looked like she was going to say something but thought better of it.
“We were very sad but also very glad when you came for her. We obviously didn’t want to lose her, but it would be good for her to know her mom’s sister again. She misses her mom so much. You must miss her, too.”
Nell’s eyes shimmered, but she didn’t say anything.
“When Olivia told us your engagement was off, we knew things would get harder for you.”
She sat up straighter. “I can do fine for myself.”
“Of course you can. I meant that I know how hard it is to be a single parent. I was for four years, and it was the hardest time of my life. I had a lot of help from my family, but still, it wasn’t what I’d planned when my late partner and I had our son.” Briony gave her a reassuring smile. “I thought that maybe your plans might have gotten a little turned around when you broke up with your fiancé.”
Nell nodded, letting out a breath. “I’m not going to lie. The only reason I thought I could raise Olivia was because I was getting married and we wanted to start a family. I can do it alone, but no, you’re right, it wasn’t what I’d envisioned when I petitioned for her.”
“We understand.” Briony gave me a brief hopeful look then turned back to Nell. “Let me just tell you what we hoped for and then we’ll leave you to think things over. Before you petitioned for her, we wanted to adopt Olivia. We still want to.”
“That’s not…I don’t…” Nell couldn’t form her thoughts.
“We don’t want to take her away from you,” I inserted and Nell shot her surprised gaze to me.
“How is adopting her not taking her away from me?”
“You’re her aunt. You’ll always be her aunt. We’d want you to be part of her life, as much as you’d want to be.” I clarified and looked at Briony to make sure I sounded nonthreatening.
Nell’s eyes shifted back and forth between us. The wariness hadn’t left her expression yet. “How do you see that working?”
Briony glanced at me before answering, “Any way you want it to, Nell.”
Nell’s brow furrowed. “I never…maybe it could…I don’t know.”
“Did you see Olivia a lot with her mom?” I stepped in, hoping I could steer her toward what she should already know. She was Olivia’s aunt, not her parent. She might have tried when she was getting married, but alone, barely out of college, needing a roommate to afford a two bedroom apartment, it would be much more difficult than she imagined.
She considered how to answer my question. Olivia gave the impression that it wasn’t a regular occurrence seeing her aunt. “Not often. When I went to college, we lived in the same town. So a little more then.”
“Did you ever babysit for Olivia?” I asked.
“No.” She shook her head, brow furrowing. “Nina always had child care covered.”
“Then it would be safe to say that your sister wouldn’t have expected you to be anything other than her aunt if she hadn’t passed away?”
“There’d be no need,” Nell agreed.
“And if Olivia had a safe, permanent home where she was loved and well cared for, would your sister want you to be anything more than Olivia’s aunt?”
She swallowed, blinking back tears. As we’d suspected, guilt that she’d survived her sister and loyalty had made her step up to take care of Olivia. The harsh reality of parenting took a back seat when she’d had help and support from her fiancé. She glanced at me then at Briony, who probably looked more sympathetic even though I was trying my best. “I can’t be sure.”
“No,” Briony took the hint and continued my line of reasoning. “But you can be assured that Olivia will be well taken care of and cherished in our home. You’ll be able to call her and have access to her just as if you were calling your sister’s home.”
Silence hit us from the other side of the booth. I should have sat us at a four top so Briony and I wouldn’t look like we were on one side and she was on the other.
Nell took a full minute before she spoke. “I don’t think it’s right for me to just drop her on you. I know she likes you. That’s clear, but it doesn’t mean I should just drop all responsibility.”
“You won’t be,” Briony denied. “Aunts have responsibility. Now that you’ve come back into her life, she’ll need you, always.”
“You make it sound so easy.” Her eyes drifted off toward the windows lining the front of the restaurant. “It shouldn’t be easy to walk away from this.”
“It won’t be easy, and you won’t be walking away. There may be times when we can’t drive up to meet you or match up school vacations. We’re going to have to work together to make it so we’re all a part of her life. I don’t get to see my nieces and nephews very often, but I do feel like I’m a big part of their life. We’d want the same with you. As much as you’d want.”
“How can I…” she started but couldn’t seem to finish.
“Tell her?” I guessed. Hope surged for the first time all day.
“If we were to do this, yes. She’s been moved all over from what I can tell. Yours was the only place she stayed at for more than four months. She’s only been with me for two.”
“We’d like to be there to talk to her with you,” Briony said. “To be honest, we haven’t talked to her about adoption. We’d planned to do that this summer, but you came back into her life, so we never got around to broaching the subject.”
Nell’s mouth popped open. “Are you saying you don’t even know if she’d be okay with it?”
“Not exactly. We’re sure that she liked living with us. She asked if she could stay when your petition came through.”
Nell glared at Briony.
Briony waved her hands to assure her she hadn’t meant any insult. “Only because she didn’t really know what it would be like with you. Kids don’t like change any more than we do. She made some good friends in Charlottesville, and she gets along really well with Caleb. We think she’d like to come back.”
“I don’t know. We’re doing okay. Once we find the right apartment, we’ll be great.”
That wasn’t what we wanted to hear. I thought we’d begun to swing her around to the idea of being the aunt she was supposed to be and letting us be parents, but it sounded like she was building a wall again. In fact, I didn’t think we could even ask to see Olivia tomorrow like we’d planned based on the tone she was using now. We’d have to hope she held true to her word that we could see Olivia when Caleb came back from Vermont at the end of the summer.
“It’s a lot to think about, we know,” Briony told her. She was good at making people feel okay with being unsure. “We don’t expect you to decide anything now. We just wanted you to know how much we love your niece and want her in our lives.”
She could have said so much more. How much Olivia loved living with us. How she begged us not to make her leave. How her grades flourished and worry vanished in our home. Every bit of proof we had that Olivia was better off with us than an aunt who was having a hard time taking care of herself right now. But that was the difference between Briony and me. I might have said some of those things and probably gotten Nell’s defenses up and shut down all future possibilities to even talk to Olivia much less see her.
“Okay,” Nell said and nodded at us. “I’m glad…that is, she thinks a lot of you. Thank you for stepping in when her family wasn’t able to.”
Wasn’t able to? They refused. Sure, Nell was just a junior in college. It would have been tough, but many, many others had done it before.
“She’s been a blessing to us,” Briony said as her eyes dimmed at the finality in Nell’s tone. We’d made our plea for Olivia’s sake, for our sake, for a future that included Olivia, and Nell thanked us for what we’d done in the past.
It wasn’t a certainty, but the way Nell was acting, our adoption hope was going to stay a hope indefinitely.
27 / OLIVIA
TRYING NOT TO CRY
feels almost as bad as crying. I’d been fighting the urge since I woke up extra early. I wanted to be awake when my aunt was getting ready for work. It was too much to hope that she’d take the day off, but I really thought she’d at least say something while we were having breakfast. When she didn’t, when all she did was rush through a bowl of cereal and a cup of coffee, when she didn’t even ask why I was up before she left for work, I swallowed everything I planned to tell her.
I was supposed to get my ears pierced today. I was supposed to have cake and ice cream and go to the movies or the zoo or a museum or whatever I wanted to do because that’s what my mom had planned for my twelfth birthday.
She would wake me up like she did every year with a cheery, “Wakey, wakey, birthday girl. It’s your special day.” It didn’t matter if it was a work day. She’d always take the day off to spend with me. Most birthdays it was just us having fun. She’d try to make each one special, but it was my twelfth birthday that she’d planned for me to get my ears pierced.
As if my birthday could be worse without my mom here, Aunt Nell hadn’t said anything. She was always quiet in the morning, so I thought she just needed a little time to get her coffee working. But she placed her mug in the sink and gathered her bag and slipped on her heels and told me to have a nice day like usual. Then she walked out the door without saying anything. She forgot that today was my birthday.
For the first time since my mom died I’d been looking forward to a birthday because finally I was with someone who cared. Briony had been planning my day since Caleb’s birthday in March. When I told her about Mom’s plan, she was as excited as I was about getting my ears pierced. I thought I’d get as close to a Mom birthday as I could get without her here. Then Aunt Nell came along and it’s been tough, but I thought she’d remember. She used to send cards and she’d spent two birthdays with me before Mom died. But this morning, nothing. It was just another day for her, and I couldn’t just tell her because it wouldn’t mean anything. It would be just like at those other foster homes when they found out my birthday had passed while I lived with them. A promise to do something next year when we all knew that I’d never be with them next year.