A Daughter's Trust

Mark frowned.

“Oh, Rick, are you sure?” Darla asked.

“Yeah, I’m sure. I had my first visit with her yesterday.”

His mother was having hers at that exact moment. Was Sue dressed in her “greeting” clothes? Filling his mother in on all of Carrie’s likes and dislikes? Her progress since his mother had last seen the baby, hours after her birth? Was she going to let his mom give Carrie her bath? And kiss her good-night?

Was she telling Nancy that she didn’t think Rick was the best choice for Carrie? Telling her that she’d help her, where she’d told Rick she couldn’t?

“How’d it go?” Darla asked, exchanging a glance with her husband as though Rick wasn’t sitting right there, able to note their obvious concern.

“Good. Great. The second I picked her up, she looked at me and smiled.” He remembered how wonderful that had felt. “I fed her and that was about it. My time was up. But I go back tomorrow.”

And he wasn’t going to let Sue Bookman get to him when he did. This was about Carrie now.

“So what happens next?” Mark asked.

“The agency conducts a thorough investigation. Medical records, criminal records, employment records. They inspect my home, my finances, my lifestyle.” And his mother’s. But he didn’t tell his friends that part. Carrie was not going to his mother. “Once that’s done, they’ll issue an order to place her in my home. They continue to monitor us for up to six months and then the court grants the adoption.” It was a simplified version of the process, but accurate.

“I can’t believe you’re really doing this,” Mark said.

“What happens if you change your mind?” Darla asked.

“Would you two please quit looking at me like I’m an alien? I’m not going to change my mind. I’m not crazy. I know, clearly and calmly, that this is the right thing for me to do.”

“You haven’t even cleaned out Hannah’s room.”

“Yes, I have.”

“You did?” his friends asked simultaneously.

“Last night. I had to make room for the new nursery equipment I had delivered this afternoon. I wanted her in the room across from me, so I can hear her if she wakes in the night.”

The room across from him. Hannah’s room. He’d had a long talk with his daughter about that during the early hours of that morning.

“What did you do with her stuff?”

“Put it in the spare bedroom.” Exactly as it had been in Hannah’s room. Or as much the same as it had been physically possible to make it. “Carrie might want some or all of it.”

The point was valid.

“Look, I’ve still got a long way to go in dealing with Hannah’s death. But this is the right thing to do. I’m ready to move on. To start over. I don’t think it’s any mistake that Carrie came into my life when she did. She needs a parent. And I was a great dad. More than that, I loved being a parent.”

Mark and Darla studied him. He withstood the scrutiny with ease.

Mark was the first to relent. “We’re here for you if you need anything, you know that, right?”

“Of course. That works both ways.”

Mark picked up his menu. “So, what sounds good for dinner?”

When their plates were empty and they’d covered every topic any of them could think of beside babies, Hannah and Rick’s state of mind, Mark reached for the bill.

“I’ve got this one,” Rick said.

And as they were walking out the door, Darla leaned over and asked, “Do you need a sitter? I’d be thrilled to have a baby in the house again.”

Though they’d been trying for years, Mark and Darla had yet to conceive a child of their own.