Untethered

by Julie Lawson Timmer

“No,” Char said, “no promises. But I think we can be pretty sure that—”

  “No promises,” Morgan said again.

  “Should we go and wait by the car?” Char asked. “So we can give her a hug before she goes?” She extended her hand.

  Morgan took it, and climbed out, and they made their way to the front walk. Morgan’s tear-streaked face glistened in the light of the outdoor spotlight mounted at the peak of the garage. Each time she wiped a cheek with the back of her hand, it was wet again within seconds.

  It wasn’t Morgan’s tears that made Char’s own start to flow. It was the fact that Morgan, even though weeping uncontrollably, didn’t make a sound. Not a single intake of caught breath. Not a sigh. She didn’t even sniff. She had, for reasons Char could only guess at with impotent rage, perfected the art of noiseless crying.

  When Allie stepped out of the house and saw Morgan, the poker face Char could see the teen trying to maintain started to crumble. Allie dropped the duffel bag she was carrying and hugged her arms around her waist as though physically trying to hold herself together.

  “Wait one second, okay, sweetie?” Char said, a hand on Morgan’s shoulder. “I’ll get Allie’s bag, and you can walk her to the car.” At the front door, Char put a hand on each of Allie’s shoulders, leaned close, and whispered, “Easy, now. However this goes for you, it goes for her, too. If this is the end of the world for you, it will be for her. If you can make this ‘Good-bye for now, but see you soon,’ it can be that for her, too. Which would you rather leave her with?”

  Allie nodded, and Char let go of her shoulders. To give the girls a few extra moments, she took her time with Allie’s bag, making a production of checking to make sure it was zipped all the way before she hoisted it over one shoulder, dropped it, and lifted it to the other shoulder, all while studiously avoiding the impatience she could predict in Lindy’s expression.

  She shuffled down the walk, toward the car. Lindy pointed to the back seat, but Char walked slowly to the trunk instead, feigning surprise that it was locked. Lindy sighed and unlocked the trunk, and Char took too much time setting the bag inside.

  All the while, Char kept an eye trained on the girls. Allie was hunched over Morgan, both arms wrapped around the girl. Her upper body rose and lowered with her sobs and the entire surface of both cheeks shone wetly. But while the teenager could not control her body, Char could hear her fighting valiantly to control her speech. Gulping for air around her sobs, Allie maintained a steady stream of patter designed to make the listener feel better but also, Char knew, as a means of comforting the speaker.

  “It’s . . . it’s . . . f-f-fine, Morgan. It’s going to be fine. We’re going to text and talk on the phone and Skype. All the time. You’ll see. You’ll be sick of me, you’ll hear from me so often! And I’ll be back. As soon as I can. Maybe for a week in the summer. I’ll talk to my mom about it. Or I’ll have Char ask her.”

  As Allie spoke and sobbed and sniffed and wiped her eyes and nose, Morgan stood immobile, a child carved out of granite. Char looked from the girls to Lindy and worried that Allie might be pushing her luck. Lindy, sitting in the driver’s seat, was scrolling through her phone for the moment, but it was only a matter of time before she lost interest in that and started making a show of her impatience, at which point it was possible Allie would get fired up again. Char moved to the girls and gently pulled them apart. The teenager gave Morgan a few last desperate kisses on the cheek before allowing Char to put an arm around her and lead her to the passenger door.

  At the car, Char kept an eye on Lindy. Too much sentimentality between the girls was one thing. Too much between Lindy’s daughter and the woman who had raised her for the past five years was another. Char estimated she could take about a tenth of the good-bye time that Allie and Morgan had before Lindy made motions that it was time to go.

  She put both arms around Allie, pulled her close, and kissed the girl’s cheek, laughing as their tears made their skin stick together. “I love you, Allie,” she whispered. “So much. As long as you’re gone, I’m going to feel like a part of me is missing.”

  “Me, too,” Allie whispered back.

  “I’ll work on your mom. I’ll come up with something. Maybe I’m her solution to those business trips she’s got lined up in July.”

  Allie nodded. “You think that’ll work?”

  “I hope so. But you’ve got to watch what you say, okay? Vent as much as you want to your friends, but don’t—”

  “I know,” Allie said. “I blew it tonight.”

  “No. I did. But we can’t think about that now. We need to move on.”

  “Take care of her for me,” Allie said. “Tell her every night that I love her. Give her an extra kiss every night, from me.”

  “I promise.” Char kissed the girl again and helped her into the car.

  She stood with Morgan on the front step, crying and waving as Lindy backed out of the driveway, Char sniffing and gulping, Morgan not making a sound.

  Later, Char tucked an exhausted and still soundless Morgan into bed in the guest room and sat beside her, rubbing circles on her back. When the girl’s raspy breathing became slow and deep, Char crept into the hall, eased the door shut behind her, and snuck downstairs to Bradley’s office. Without turning on the overhead light, she made her way to his desk and lowered herself into his chair.

  She reached her hands across the desk and, feeling in the dark, moved her palms over papers and journals and notepads until she came to the smooth glass dome that covered Einstein. She lifted it and passed it from hand to hand, feeling the heavy glass solidity she loved so much.

  Then she stood, wrapping her right hand around Einstein’s smooth encasement. Twisting from her torso so her right shoulder rotated back, she raised her hand, and Einstein, up in the air, high and back. Then she whipped around and forward, and as she did, she catapulted her arm and opened her hand, launching Einstein into the darkness.

  She heard a sharp crack as the dome splintered against the wall, and then a sound like rain as a thousand pieces of splintered glass sprayed against the wall, the bookshelf, the hardwood floor, and the floor-to-ceiling windows.

  Forty-six

  It was a hot Saturday afternoon in August. As they had done every week, all summer long for the past two summers, Char and Morgan bought ice cream at Doozie’s and carried it to their favorite table. The one with the best view of the campus, according to Morgan. The one where Bradley had asked Char if she loved him, and his daughter, and Mount Pleasant, enough to live there with them forever.

  Char always intended to get a child-sized portion in a cup, and always ended up ordering two scoops in a cone, the same as Morgan. “Bite for a bite?” she offered, taking a seat.

  They hadn’t changed their order in two years—vanilla with caramel swirl for Char, the garishly colored Superman for Morgan—but every single time, Morgan wanted to trade bites, as though that week, they might each be in for a new taste surprise.

  Morgan didn’t respond. She didn’t sit, either, but stood near Char, her legs moving while her feet stayed planted in place, as though she were revving herself up to take off. Her eyes traveled to every corner of campus and back before repeating their scan.

  “Morgan?” Char said.

  “Oh . . . what?”

  “I asked, bite for a bite?” Char held her cone out.

  “Oh, uh, sure.” Morgan held her ice cream in Char’s general direction, but nowhere close enough for her to bite it. Her cone was tipped at a precarious angle, and with the heat, the ice cream threatened to fall to the ground. She made no effort to taste Char’s.

  “Morgan!” Char said. She reached for Morgan’s hand, to help her right the cone, but it was out of reach.

  “Huh?” Morgan continued her inspection of the campus.

  “Your ice cream!” Char pointed.

  But it was too late. Bo
th scoops dropped to the ground, two frozen blobs barely missing the child’s foot.

  “Hmm,” Morgan said, stepping sideways, away from the mess.

  “Here, take mine,” Char said, handing her cone to Morgan and bending to use her napkins to try to clean up the mess. She trotted to the garbage can with two handfuls of soggy napkins and ice cream.

  When she returned, Morgan was still staring across the green expanse in front of her, oblivious to the fact that Char’s cone was now tilting at a forty-five-degree angle and ice cream was dripping down it onto her hand.

  “Don’t you want any?” Char asked.

  Morgan didn’t respond, and, laughing, Char gently took the cone from the girl’s hand, pressing napkins in its place. “This was the one day I could have saved the six dollars,” she said, “not to mention the mess.” She made a second trip to the garbage. When she got back to the table, the girl was gone.

  “Morgan?” Char called.

  She held her hand to her forehead like a sun visor. Morgan was fifty feet away, moving faster than Char had ever seen. Behind the running form lay a trail of napkins, and in front Char spotted a lanky blur, long hair flying behind as it moved toward Morgan at twice the speed the smaller form was moving. A moment later, Char could hear the shrieking.

  “Morgan!”

  “Allie!”

  Char fished an extra napkin out of the back pocket of her shorts and pressed it against the corners of her eyes as she stood beside the table and watched the reunion she had been dreaming of for the past two years.

  Allie had texted Char late the night before, saying she had arrived safely. She had hoped to reach town early enough to see Char and Morgan, but because it was so late, she would go straight to her dorm on the CMU campus and meet them at Doozie’s today.

  Since she would be sharing a few hundred square feet with another girl all year, she hadn’t needed to bring much with her, and she had managed to stuff all of her clothes and things into the convertible. Allie’s convertible—after clearing the gift with Lindy, Char had offered it to Allie the year before. Will took a few days off last November, and after spending Thanksgiving with Char and Morgan, he drove the car to California, then flew back home to South Carolina.

  I wish it had a navigation system, Char had texted, before Allie set off on her drive from California to Michigan. But I guess your iPhone will do.

  Allie: iPhone? No way. I’m using dad’s road atlas!

  Along the way, Allie texted to tell Char she had been annotating the atlas as she went, like her father would have done. Favorite scenic overlooks, comments about the state of the bathrooms in each rest area, ratings of each hotel she checked in to.

  Char: So, it would appear you are a dork, just like your father.

  Allie: I hope so.

  Allie wouldn’t declare a major until next year. She was leaning toward social work—she wanted to have a career in the foster care system. She wouldn’t necessarily need communications courses for that, but she had enrolled in Char’s beginning journalism class anyway. It was a morning class, and clear across campus from her dorm, but she never had gotten the hang of teenaged sleeping-in.

  Also, she had told Char and Morgan over Skype before she left California, she was trying to front load her schedule each day, so she could be finished by midday. That way, she could spend a few afternoons with Morgan each week. “You know, like the good old days.”

  “Tutoring more than one day a week?” Morgan asked, pretending to be appalled. She stuck her tongue out toward the computer camera and showed Char how she appeared to Allie in the box on the right-hand corner of the screen.

  “Nice,” Allie said. “But no. Tutoring one day, and other stuff the other days. Getting ice cream, hiking, the library, the swimming pool, you name it. And every Thursday when CC teaches late, we’ll make dinner, so she can come home and relax.”

  “Sounds heavenly,” Char said.

  “I know,” Allie said, raising her hand to the camera.

  Morgan raised her hand, too, smiling at the virtual touch.

  The only person not thrilled about it was Lindy. She had done everything she could to push her daughter into college on the West Coast: two years of elite boarding school, carefully selected extracurricular activities. No unsavory friends to distract her. No troubled children taking up her afternoons.

  But just as Allie and Char had known that night in the driveway two years ago that they were powerless to keep Lindy from taking Allie away from Mount Pleasant, Lindy must have known, at some point, that she would be powerless to keep her daughter from returning to it.

  As the girls made their way to Doozie’s, arms around each other’s waist, Allie lifted her chin, spotted Char, and waved.

  “Now, there’s a sight,” a deep voice said from behind Char.

  Turning, Char saw Will, Colleen, and Sydney approaching, their eyes fixed over her shoulder at the double-headed creature crossing the field toward them.

  “Shorts and a T-shirt,” Will said, pointing at the shorter, thicker half of the creature as he put an arm around his sister. “And only one gauze wrap.”

  “Only one in plain sight, that is,” Char said. “One step forward, two steps back. But it’s progress.”

  “It’s the only progress she’s making,” Colleen said, as Allie and Morgan, still clutching each other’s waists, listed to the left, shrieking. They backed up three paces to regain their balance and started forward again.

  “It’s like some kind of multilimbed sea monster,” Sydney said. “After it’s been shot a few times. Or drugged.”

  “Sorry we didn’t make it in time to see the big event,” Colleen said. She and Sydney had gone to the airport to fetch Will. “It must have been something, to see them meet.”

  “Equipment issues on the connection from Detroit to Lansing,” Will said. “We thought about calling to have you delay the reunion, but we couldn’t do that to the girls.” He cleared his throat and added, “I might have encouraged Colleen to speed more than I should have.”

  Colleen shot him a look. “Not sure ‘encouraged’ is the word I’d use.”

  “It’s not like you needed any encouragement anyway,” Sydney told her mother. “I’d be grounded forever if you caught me driving like that.”

  “So,” Will said, pointing to Allie and Morgan, who were now waving and calling but still making their way slowly, “how great is this?”

  Char opened her mouth, but couldn’t find her voice. Colleen squeezed Char’s hand. From Colleen’s other side, Char heard Sydney sniff. Char tried again to answer but all that came out was a sigh.

  “I completely agree,” Will said. Char let her head fall against him as they watched her technically former stepdaughter and her technically temporary legal ward stumble toward them, still shrieking with laughter. “That’s a damn fine family you’ve got there, CC,” he said.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A few years ago, my dear friend the brilliant writer Anna Cox sent me an article about rehoming titled “The Child Exchange: Inside America’s Underground Market for Adopted Children,” written by Megan Twohey (Reuters, September 9, 2013). Thanks, Anna, for the idea, for the highway-side Tim Hortons plotting sessions, the emergency Skype calls and black licorice deliveries, and everything else you did to help me create the story of Char, Allie, and Morgan.

  My thanks to my editor, Christine Pepe, who “got” Char, Allie, and Morgan right away, even buried as they were in the debris of a wanting first draft, and offered the insights that helped me uncover them. Thanks also to Lauren LoPinto.

  Thank you to my literary agent, Victoria Sanders, and to Bernadette Baker-Baughman and everyone else at Victoria Sanders & Associates. Thanks also to Benee Knauer: one part professional wordsmith, one part armchair therapist, ten parts friend.

  My deep gratitude to the experts who generously took the time to spea
k with me about foster care, adoption, rehoming self-harm, and children’s emotional health issues, especially Vivek Sankaran, director of the University of Michigan Law School Child Advocacy Law Clinic and Child Welfare Appellate Clinic; Jennifer DeVivo, LMSW; and Lisa Inoue, LMSW.

  Thanks to Adam Pertman, president of the National Center on Adoption and Permanency and author of Adoption Nation, and to Linda Vanacker, Argie Lomas, Erin O’Brien, Courtney Barry Eiseman, Paul Kowalski, Scott Virgo, Steve Denlinger, Frank Hittel, Jonah Aaron, Terri Torkko, the Reverend Nikki Seger, and also to Charley Hegarty, Karen Piper, Glenn Katon, Jim Etzkorn, Karen Slagell, Carrie Gorga, and JoLeen Wagner-Felkey.

  Many thanks to Mary Beth Bishop, Lori Nelson Spielman, Anna Cox, Jeanne Oates Estridge, and Kate Baker for reading early drafts of the manuscript. Thanks to Michael Coffman, Rhiannon Gray, and Pamela Jacobs Landan for ten different kinds of help.

  My children, Jack and Libby, are the best cheerleaders a person could ask for. I’m not sure there’s a better thing to hear than “I’m so proud of you, Mom.” Thanks for the unwavering support, you two.

  Thanks also to Maddie, Samantha, and Evan, three young people I’m connected to for life by love rather than biology, the same way Char is connected to Allie and Morgan.

  I am overwhelmed by the support I’ve received from the extended Lawson and Timmer families since I came clean a few years ago about my formerly secret life as a writer. Thank you all of you.

  Finally, I am more thankful to my husband, Dan, than I can express here. He is the world’s best grammar and usage guru, plot and character problem solver, pep-talk deliverer, and so much more, and I only hope my keeping the Min Pin quiet in the wee morning hours comes somewhat close to repaying him.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Julie Lawson Timmer, author of the critically acclaimed novel Five Days Left, grew up in Stratford, Ontario. She earned a bachelor’s degree from McMaster University and a law degree from Southern Methodist University, and now serves as in-house legal counsel to an automotive supplier in Michigan. She lives in Ann Arbor with her husband and their children.