“You never told me that, Julie.”
“I didn’t tell anyone. I was mortified. But I’m telling you now, because we’ve all been there. Emma will get over this, Ally. Of course she will. It’s just a phase.”
I nod, smiling my thanks. I know Julie is trying to make me feel better, but I only end up feeling worse. I wish I was dealing with a contraband bottle of whiskey. That sounds like child’s play right now.
Another neighbor, Anita, comes into the kitchen for more wine, and Julie beckons her over. “Come cheer up poor Ally. Emma’s just told her she’s not coming home for her first Thanksgiving.”
I school my expression into something more rueful and even nonchalant as I try to suppress a surge of annoyance that Julie decided to announce my news to another friend. I know she means well, everyone always does, but now they are going to gossip about me.
“Oh, Ally!” Anita gives me a quick hug, and with Julie’s arm still around me, it feels like I am being suffocated. “It’s so hard, isn’t it?” she says, pulling a face as she releases me. “You absolutely adore them and you give your very soul for them… and then they break your heart.” Her sympathetic smile threatens to slip off her face, and for a second she looks like the one who needs a hug. I wonder what is going on with her sixteen-year-old twins, Freya and Lindsey. Josh took Freya to the eighth-grade dance what feels like a lifetime ago.
“I’ll drink to that,” Julie announces, and she pours us all more wine. We toast each other rather grimly, and then we stand and sip our wine, thinking about our wayward teens.
But are any as wayward as mine?
Last night, at about two o’clock in the morning, when Nick had finally dropped off but I still couldn’t sleep, I crept downstairs to my laptop and looked on the foster care message boards about problems with your own children while fostering. All I found were empathetic arguments and warnings to make sure you look after your own children while caring for a foster child, and how sometimes they can feel a little bit left out. But that wasn’t Josh’s problem, because, according to him, he’d started dealing drugs back in spring.
Full of despair, I typed when your child is a drug dealer into the search engine and then let out a groan when I saw the results—some terrifying, some depressing, all of them awful. I didn’t click on any of them; I couldn’t.
Now, gritty-eyed from lack of sleep and feeling twice as fragile from Emma’s defection as from Josh’s sins, I can’t summon the emotional energy, or even the interest, to ask Anita about Freya and Lindsey. I know I should, clearly something must be going on, but instead I simply sip my wine and stew in my misery.
“Let me know if there’s anything I can do,” Julie says a little while later, when I make my excuses an hour earlier than is expected or even polite. “Really.”
“Thanks, Julie.” But there’s nothing she can do, of course, and I think we both know it.
Back at home, the house is quiet—Dylan asleep, Josh shut up in his room. He handed his laptop and phone over to Nick last night and Nick spent a frustrating few hours trying to find incriminating evidence on them as if he were some CSI expert before he gave both back, exasperated and humbled. Josh smirked and said nothing. I can’t help but feel we’ve somehow made everything worse, yet what else could we have done? Where’s the parenting manual for this situation? How to Discipline Your Drug-Dealing Kids. Wouldn’t exactly be a bestseller, would it?
“Did you have fun?” Nick asks without much enthusiasm when I find him in the family room, listlessly flicking through channels.
I sit on the edge of the sofa with a sigh. “Not really.”
We’re both silent, staring at the TV screen and the montage of commercials as Nick continues to scroll through Saturday night’s unappealing offerings.
“It’s not going to feel like Thanksgiving without Emma,” I say after a moment, because it’s easier to talk about her than Josh.
“No. We could invite someone else, I guess.”
“Who?”
He shrugs. “Beth?”
I actually brighten at this thought, even though Beth makes me uncomfortable and I have a strong feeling she seriously dislikes me. Still, it would be a nice thing to do, and I feel like helping someone, since I don’t seem to be able to help myself or my family. “That’s a good idea. But I don’t have her phone numbe
r or any contact information.”
“Call Monica?”
“I suppose I could.”
But when I call Monica on Monday, it flips over to voicemail; she’s taken the week off. Even DCF employees get vacations. I don’t have Susan’s number, and the DCF number is only for emergencies. I leave it, because the truth is I’m too weary to make more of an effort for Beth’s sake.
“We could go to your parents’,” Nick suggests on Monday night, as we’re undressing for bed. Tomorrow is Josh and Dylan’s last day of school before the break; usually I’d be flying around, making pies, decorating, feeling festive and homely and happy.
Instead, I spent the morning trying to work, and the afternoon taking Dylan to get the last two of his fillings. The dentist kindly decided to use a general anesthetic to reduce his anxiety, and the result was that Dylan was sleepy all afternoon, and went to bed promptly at seven, with a mouth full of healthy teeth.
“We can’t,” I tell Nick dully. “We need permission to take Dylan across state lines.”
“Oh, for…” Nick shakes his head. “Would they even have to know?”