When You Were Mine

“I think that’s a big one, Nick. Anyway, my mom would just worry about Emma not being there.” My parents are lovely and well-meaning, and they’ve been supportive, if a bit skeptical, about the whole foster care thing, but I feel too fragile to endure any concerned barbs about anything related to my parenting choices right now, even if they’re deserved. “Let’s just stay here,” I tell him dispiritedly. “Anything else is too much trouble. I’ve bought the turkey already.”

“If you’re sure.” Nick gets into bed and reaches for his phone to scroll through the news.

I pull on my pajamas and climb into my side before I say, “I think we might have to tell Monica about Josh.”

Nick lowers his phone before turning to me with a direct, almost challenging look. “Why?”

“Why? Because he’s been dealing—”

“I looked online, Ally. DCF only has to be informed if someone in the foster family has been convicted of a felony, and from what I’ve read, they usually don’t care unless it’s child-related.”

I stare at him for a moment, trying to gauge his tone, what he’s actually saying. “But if we know, Nick—”

“What? You want to ruin Josh’s life? If DCF knows, Ally, everybody knows.”

“That didn’t seem to bother you too much last night, when you were telling Josh how he had broken the law.” I try to speak levelly, lowering my voice because of Josh and Dylan nearby, and also because I don’t actually want to accuse him of anything. Still, I can’t help but point out his about-face.

“I’ve been thinking,” Nick says after a moment, his gaze back on his phone although I don’t think he’s actually looking at it, “it’s not like Josh has been dealing meth or crack or something like that.”

I recoil slightly, more of a twitch than anything else. “That’s what he said.” And what I thought. And yet it all feels so wrong.

“I know, I know, but really, Ally, the drugs he’s been selling… you or I could get them online with a couple of clicks. They’re not actually illegal substances.”

“They’re not M&M’s, Nick. If anyone found out—”

“But they’re not drug drugs,” Nick insists. “We’re not talking hardcore here.”

I simply stare at him until he looks away. I don’t know what to think. Part of me is desperate to agree with him; another part is repulsed by his pathetic justifications. Surely we have a moral obligation to Monica, to Dylan, and also to Beth, to report what we know.

“All I’m saying,” he resumes after a few seconds, “is that we don’t need to ruin Josh’s life just because of this one… episode.”

“It’s an episode that’s lasted for six months.”

“But it’s over.”

Is it? I can’t make myself voice that doubt. It isn’t even the drugs, such as they are, that bother me the most. It’s Josh’s attitude, that slight curling of his lip, the sneering tone, the defiant stance. He isn’t sorry at all about anything except being caught. But I don’t want to voice that, either.

“So what?” I ask eventually, weary now as I lean back against the pillows. “We just leave it all? Move on and hope for the best?”

“We give Josh some space to get his act together. He’s got prospects, Ally. A future. This is nothing more than a blip.”

“It’s a pretty big blip.”

“Still.”

We’re both silent again, and I feel too tired to press for one outcome over another. I don’t really want to tell Monica, or anyone, about Josh. And it isn’t as if Josh has the drugs in the house. When he was at school, I did a complete sweep of the room and found nothing. It’s not as if Dylan is at risk from him, either. But now I am the one justifying, and it feels as pathetic as Nick’s attempts did.

“Fine,” I say as I reach for the book-club novel I really don’t want to read. “Why don’t we give it until next semester? There are only three weeks left in this one, anyway, before Christmas. Then we’ll see.”

“Okay.” Nick nods, a man given a reprieve. “That sounds like a plan.”

I am expecting Thanksgiving to be nothing more than a gritting of teeth with the way things are—Emma gone, Josh sullen and distant, although I suppose he is no more than before, but now it has a different, darker flavor—touched with arrogance, steeped in deceit.

Surprisingly, the holiday isn’t a complete washout—and that’s because of Dylan. He is filled with wonder at the smallest things we do—picking pumpkins, swirling whipped cream on top of a golden-crusted pie. I do the things with him that I’ve done with Emma and Josh years ago—those precious, childhood traditions that seem so sorrowfully sweet now my own children have no interest in them.

We make handprint turkeys, painstakingly writing out what we are thankful for on each finger. Dylan’s writing is a barely legible, phonetic disaster, but I make out food, Lego, puzzles, and Ally. The pinkie finger is left blank, and Beth is conspicuously absent from his list of blessings, which I note but don’t mention. I am so touched he’s written my name, and when I hug him after I read it, he wraps his arms around my middle and I close my eyes, savoring the moment. I don’t get many like it these days.

Although the holiday isn’t what I had planned or hoped, I find it incredibly soothing, to stand in the kitchen with Dylan the morning of Thanksgiving, sunlight slanting through the windows, and help him sprinkle cinnamon sugar over an apple pie. Josh is still asleep, Nick in his study, the house quiet and seeming very un-Thanksgiving-like, and yet right now, with Dylan, I find peace.