A Daughter's Trust

“I’ll meet you at the door.”

HE DIDN’T LOOK NEARLY AS good as he said he felt. His face ashen, his hair disheveled and his eyes reflecting the pain he wasn’t admitting to feeling, Rick stood stiffly in his wrinkled work shirt and pants. “I had to come get my car, and couldn’t go home without making sure you and the kids

were all right.”

Sue crossed her arms. “You aren’t going home, and don’t bother wasting your energy on argument,” she said. “If you think I’m going to have you driving like this, you’re nuts.”

Rick swayed. “They put something for pain in my IV,” he admitted. “I was thinking about sleeping it off in my car.”

Because he didn’t think he could ask her for help? Sue had to clasp both hands behind her back to keep from touching him, reassuring herself that he was all right. That she was.

“Do you need anything to drink?”

“No.” He handed her some papers. Instructions for him. Instructions she was going to read and follow just as soon as she had him out of his torn clothes and lying down, so she didn’t have to worry about him falling down. “I’m…are the babies okay? Can I see them?”

“They’re fine.” She checked the front door one more time and then, with the papers in one hand, slid the other around his back and led him down the hall to her room.

She needed him in her bed tonight, close enough to touch, close enough to hear if he wanted anything.

But even with Rick sound asleep next to her, an ice pack on his wound, and the babies’ breathing clearly audible on either side of the bed, Sue lay wide-eyed, staring at the ceiling.

TWO WEEKS OF WEARING a sling was too much for Rick. He had no idea how he was going to stand two months of the torture. He’d much prefer to not wear the sling and suffer any consequential pain.

Except that he didn’t want the bone to heal crookedly.

So as he let the agency people into his home, to score through all of his private details, as he submitted to interviews, went to work, he wore the damn sling.

He wore it on his visitation nights, when he held and fed Carrie.

The only exception he made, the only time he didn’t have the cotton strapped across his chest, other than when he showered, were the few times he made love to Sue. He refused to have anything between his skin and hers.

They already had too much between them.

Friday, April 10, nine days after the break-in, the day his mother was to have had her final interview with the agency and either be rewarded or denied placement, the six-month trial period before the final adoption, passed without event. Because of Rick being in the picture, her appointment had been postponed.

He thought about calling her. But didn’t. There was no point in caring about her needs. It always ended with her no longer sober and his heart deader than the last time.

Sonia, Carrie’s caseworker, called him the following Wednesday, exactly two weeks after the break-in at Sue’s.

Rick closed his office door as he answered the call, and then, instead of returning to his desk, moved over to the fourth-floor window across from it and gazed out at the sunny day and down to the people briskly moving on the sidewalk below.

His heart pounding, he interrupted her spiel about procedures and policies. “Have you made a decision?” he asked, holding the phone with the hand he could raise to ear level. Please, God, let this one go right. Please. Save a baby. Just one baby.

“Not yet.” He started to breathe again. “But I am calling to warn you, Mr. Kraynick, that we’re leaning more toward your mother.”

Funny how tension could return in a split second. “How could you be?”

“Because she meets all the requirements. Her scores are all above average….”

Scores. So much for Sue’s assertion that they didn’t look at numbers. “What scores?”

“When we do our assessments we assign scores to each area of interest and concern. Your mother has only two drawbacks. Her age, which isn’t really even a consideration—she’s just a little older than the average parent receiving a baby. And her past drug use. But she’s shown very clearly that that use is in the past.”

Rick had an idea that the caseworker shouldn’t really have been giving him this information. So why was she?

Because she really wanted Rick to have Carrie and was looking for a way to help him?

Or because she felt sorry for him?