“Oh yes, it is.” His dark eyes twinkled. “You left your mama in charge of the B and B and came all the way back to Indiana so you could maybe find out who left you in the alley behind the unwed mothers’ home, and now that you’re here and your mama is there, you’re waffling.”
“I’m not waffling.”
“Girlie, in my book, flip-flopping what you want to do is called waffling.”
She sighed and hung her head. “I haven’t changed what I want to do. I’m just not totally sure it’s what I’m supposed to do.”
He cupped her chin and lifted her head. The amusement had vacated his expression and only tenderness remained. “What’re you worrying about?”
She gathered her thoughts. “Mom’s always called me her gift. And you just said God brought us all together.”
“Uh-huh.”
“So does that mean I shouldn’t want to find out where I came from? Should I just be happy where I am, with the family God gave me? I know Mom wants me to leave things alone. What does God want me to do?”
“Oh, honey-girl…” He gave her cheek a pat and then lowered his hand to the console. “I don’t have the answer to that question, but hearing you ask it sure makes me proud. If you’re more concerned about what God wants for you than you are about pleasing yourself, then you’re on the way to making the right choice. You’re a good girl, Alexa.”
Tears stung her eyes. She sniffed. “If I’m a ‘good girl,’ then it’s because I had good teachers.” She couldn’t imagine a better, more loving mother than Suzanne Zimmerman. Was she being disloyal to try to find her birth mother? Desire to please Mom warred with the curiosity writhing through her. She groaned. “I’m so confused right now.”
“Well, you know we don’t have to do this today. If you want to go back, talk to Linda some, pray on it, we’ll turn around right now.”
His kind understanding brought a second sting of tears. “But you drove me all the way over here. It took almost an hour. And you hate driving in Indianapolis traffic.”
“You’re right about that. Good thing I love you so much, or I wouldn’t have done it at all.” Teasing glinted in his eyes. “And guess what?”
“What?”
He pointed out the front windshield. “We’re here.”
Alexa whipped her face forward, her pulse leaping. A sign—weathered, warped, its painted letters faded—stood sentry in front of the house just ahead on the opposite side of the street. She read the sign in a rasping whisper. “ ‘Indianapolis Home for Unwed Mothers, Established by the North Central Mission Board in 1963.’ ” She leaned forward as far as the seat belt would allow and stared hard at the house half-hidden by trees.
In its glory days it must have been beautiful, with its corbels and turrets and bay windows and front porch with an attached gazebo. Had the neighbors fussed when needy women began filling the rooms? In 1963 the stigma of being unwed and pregnant would have carried a foul stench. Although much of society had relaxed its stance, in some circles it still held an ugly aroma. Alexa wasn’t sure Mom had completely forgiven herself despite the good life she’d carved.
Her gaze drifted upward, absently counting the many windows and trying to estimate the number of bedrooms inside. How many babies had been born within those rooms? How many mothers had—either reluctantly or willingly—handed their children to another set of parents? How many had chosen to keep their children? How many rued the decision later? Had her birth mother regretted the choice she’d made?
“Alexa?”
Tom’s quiet voice intruded on her thoughts. She kept her focus on the house as she answered. “Hmm?”
“Do you wanna explore, or should we go back to Franklin?”
The concern etched into his features turned her heart upside down. He might not really be her grandfather, but he loved her. God had surely given her a precious gift when He brought Tom and Linda into Mom’s life. “I think I want to talk to Mom.” She pulled her cell phone from her purse. “Then I’ll decide. Okay?”
“Okay.” He folded his arms over his chest and arched his white eyebrows. “But I’m not getting out and giving you privacy. It’s cold out there.”
She laughed. “It’s all right. I don’t suppose I have any secrets from you anyway.” She pulled up her list of contacts and pressed her finger to the little photo of her mother.
Arborville
Suzanne
Suzanne balanced a blueberry pie in one hand and opened the oven door with the other. The task proved unwieldy with the oven set low to accommodate Mother’s wheelchair. But by crouching she managed to slide the pie into the hot oven. As she straightened, the cell phone in her apron pocket buzzed.
Anna-Grace glanced over from rolling pie crusts and grinned. “Does that tickle?” She looked impish with flour dusting her cheek and white ribbons trailing along her temples.
Suzanne tried to chuckle, but the sound came out like a strangled cough. Why couldn’t she relax around Anna-Grace? In only a few days, the girl had settled in as if she’d always been a member of the household. She was kind and helpful, assisting Suzanne in filling the café’s pie orders and doing much of the cooking. Suzanne had prayed repeatedly for God to bring peace to her heart so she wouldn’t be on edge around her daughter, but it seemed her prayers got trapped in the attic.
She pulled out her phone and peeked at the screen. Alexa! She snapped it open and pressed it to her ear. “Hi, honey!”
“Hi, Mom.”
Alexa sounded subdued. Suzanne’s mother-alarm began to ring.
Anna-Grace set the rolling pin aside and inched up to Suzanne. “Is it Alexa?”
Suzanne nodded.
Anna-Grace waggled her fingers at the phone. “Hi, Alexa!”
Suzanne pushed the Speaker button and held the phone outward. Alexa’s voice carried through the little speaker. “Is that Anna-Grace? How are you?”
Anna-Grace leaned close and spoke into the cellular device like a microphone. “I’m good. I’m sorry I didn’t get to see you before you left for Indiana, but your mom says you’ll be back in time for the wedding.”
“Yes, I intend to be. Are you making preparations for the ceremony?”
“Not this morning. Your mom and I are baking fruit pies.”
Suzanne cringed. Would Alexa think she’d passed her responsibilities to Anna-Grace? She blurted, “It was her idea to help.”
Anna-Grace laughed and Suzanne gave a start. She hadn’t realized how much Anna-Grace’s laughter sounded like hers. She’d need to be careful about laughing unrestrainedly when the girl was in earshot.
Anna-Grace spoke again, her voice louder than it needed to be. “She’s right. It was my idea. And I better get back to the crusts. Good-bye, Alexa.”
“Good-bye. Thanks for helping Mom.”
Anna-Grace bustled back to the worktable, and Suzanne clicked off the speaker before pressing the phone to her ear. “It’s good to hear from you. I know you’ve only been gone a few days, but I miss you.”
“I miss you, too, Mom.” Melancholy carried in her tone. “It sounds like you and Anna-Grace are busy, but do you have a minute to talk?” She paused then added, “Privately.”
Anna-Grace could handle the pies on her own. Suzanne turned to the girl. “I’m going to the front room to talk to Alexa. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“That’s fine.” Anna-Grace’s blue eyes twinkled with mischief. “Be sure to tell her about your date with Mr. Aldrich.”
“What?” Alexa’s startled exclamation nearly pierced Suzanne’s ear.
Suzanne wished she could throttle Anna-Grace. She said firmly, speaking as much to Anna-Grace as Alexa, “It isn’t a date. He just wants me to spend some time with Danny and maybe give him some advice on how to handle the adolescent stage the boy has entered.” She hurried out of the room before Anna-Grace could say anything else.
Mother was in her rocking chair, knitting bulky pink yarn into a sweater for little Isabella. She nodded at the phone. “
Alexa?”
“Yes.”
“Let me tell her hi.”
Even though she wanted to dive directly into conversation with her daughter, Suzanne obliged Mother, hiding a smile at the ease with which her Old Order mother handled the cell phone. After their short conversation, Suzanne headed for the stairs with the phone cradled against her jaw. “Okay, honey, you’ve got just me now. What’s going on?”
“Honestly, Mom, I’m confused.”
So she’d been right—something was troubling Alexa. She entered the 2 Corinthians 9:8 room and settled in the wing chair in the corner. “About what?”
“Whether or not I really should look for my birth mother.”
Suzanne’s heart caught. She stifled a cry of exultation and forced a calm tone. “Why are you questioning it?”
A heavy sigh carried through the phone. “If God went to the trouble of making sure you found me and became my mom, does He want me trying to find my real mom?”
The phrase “real mom” was a knife in Suzanne’s breast. She closed her eyes.
“Tom and I are sitting right across the street from the home where you had Anna-Grace. All I have to do is get out and walk a few yards, and I’ll be where you found me twenty years ago. It’ll be the first step toward finding her. But right now I’m not sure I should get out of the car.” She paused, her breath puffing as if she’d just run a race. “What should I do, Mom?”
“What should I do, Mom?” Over her years of parenting Alexa, she’d heard the question dozens of times. Alexa asked her opinion on which friends to invite for a sleepover, which dress to wear to a church member’s wedding, whether to take art appreciation or home economics for her elective credit, whether to attend the school dances or not. Suzanne had never struggled to offer advice on the little things or the big things in her daughter’s life. But at that moment, she didn’t know what to say.
If she said yes, go, she’d be pushing her beloved child toward another mother—possibly one who had no more desire to know Alexa now than she had when she wrapped her in a stained towel and left her in a box behind a garage. If she said no, don’t go, she’d be giving in to her own selfish fears. Either way, Alexa risked being hurt.
God, what should I tell her? No answer whispered through her heart.
“Mom?”
Suzanne opened her eyes, and her gaze fell on the embroidered Bible verse Alexa had stitched, framed, and hung on the wall of the guest room. She found herself reading aloud. “ ‘God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work.’ ”
“Huh?”
“It’s the verse you chose for this room.”
“I know. But why did you quote it to me?”
Suzanne laughed softly. “I’m not sure. I didn’t know how to answer you, and the verse was there on the wall, so I read it.”
“Oh.”
A long pause followed, during which Suzanne listened closely for some guidance from heaven. None came. Eventually Alexa’s quiet voice came through the phone.
“ ‘All sufficiency in all things…’ Doesn’t that kind of mean God can make sure we’re ready to do what needs to be done, even when it’s hard?”
Suzanne stared at the words. The black stitching began to swim as tears filled her eyes, but she nodded in agreement. “And the beginning—‘God is able’—assures us when we don’t have strength, His will be enough.”
“So maybe”—Alexa’s voice dropped to a halting whisper—“I’m supposed to stop being scared and just do what I came here to do.”
Although it pained her, Suzanne nodded again. “If God wants you to meet your birth mother, He will open the doors. But He won’t throw you through them. You have to move forward on your own two feet.”
A sob hiccupped in Suzanne’s ear. “Thanks, Mom. I think I just needed to be sure you were okay with this. That you weren’t mad at me.”
A hysterical laugh built in Suzanne’s throat. Mad? No, that was too calm. She was furious, but not at Alexa. At the circumstances that kept her from claiming one daughter while facing the possibility of losing the other to the woman whose womb had given her life. She swallowed hard and forced a calm tone. “No, sweetheart, I’m not mad at you. Please don’t worry.”
“I love you, Mom.”
Suzanne crushed the phone against her cheek. “I love you, too.” She drew in a shuddering breath and stood. “Now I better get downstairs and help Anna-Grace with those pies. Tell Tom and Linda hello for me, and I’ll be praying—” Her voice broke. Could she honestly pray for Alexa to find her birth mother? She finished weakly, “I’ll be praying for you.”
“Thanks, Mom. I’ll call you later in the week, okay?”
“Okay. Bye, honey.” They disconnected the call, and Suzanne slipped the phone into her pocket. She moved to the staircase and descended slowly, one plodding step after another, as she imagined Alexa crossing the street, examining the spot where she’d been left as an infant, then moving toward the nameless, faceless woman who’d begun to haunt her dreams.
She froze midstep and turned her face to the ceiling. Raising her fist, she uttered a low moan. “Don’t let that woman hurt her, God. Do You hear me? Don’t You dare let my daughter get hurt.”
Indianapolis
Alexa
Tom drove around to the alley and parked behind the garage, leaving the car idling. “Well, this is it.”
Alexa tipped her forehead against the cold window and let her gaze drift from the cedar-shake roof of the run-down building to its drooping carriage-style door and then to the cracked cement patch that met the edge of the alley. She’d expected some kind of connection to the place where she’d been abandoned, but nothing stirred through her chest. She didn’t break out in goose flesh or even experience a sting of tears. Nothing.
She turned to Tom. “I’m getting out.”
“Want me to come with you?”
She considered the question for a moment and then shook her head. “It’s okay. As you said, it’s cold. Just stay put. I shouldn’t be long.” She slammed the door behind her and then crossed the short expanse of gravel to the cement pad.
Wind sent a few dry leaves swirling in front of her feet. They danced a do-si-do and joined a cluster of other leaves caught in the narrow inset of the wide door. She moved to the pile and toed it with her shoe. Her breath hung like a little cloud in front of her face, and cold air teased the thin band of exposed flesh on the back of her neck between her coat collar and ponytail. She shivered, recalling Mom saying how cold it had been the day she heard a kitten’s mew that wasn’t a kitten at all.
She ducked against the door to better block the wind, then looked up and down the alley. Tall bushes, rows of trees, and fences created barriers between the narrow alleyway and the backyards. Other than the wind’s whistle and the soft vibration of Tom’s car engine, it was quiet, too. No intrusion of traffic or voices or other evidence of people nearby. She shivered again but not from the cold this time. An unexpected rush of anger filled her.
It was so cold out here. And lonely. Not a soul around. What kind of person left a tiny baby in a place like this? Even though it was behind an occupied home, a good fifty feet separated the back of the garage from the back door of the house. In December people wouldn’t have been in the yard. If Mom hadn’t been leaving that day, if she hadn’t gone to the side of the house closest to the garage, Alexa’s weak cries might have gone unnoticed. She might have died right out here in this alley.
She gave the leaves a vicious kick that sent them swirling across the hard ground. She’d told Tom she didn’t want to get her birth mother in trouble, but at that moment she wished she could call the police, report her own abandonment, and see the unfeeling, irresponsible woman brought to justice. How could she have just thrown Alexa away the way she did?
Tom rolled down the passenger window, leaned across the console, and angled his worried face toward her. “You okay, honey-gir
l?”
She wasn’t okay. She was fighting mad, the last thing she’d expected to be when she talked Tom into bringing her here. She gritted her teeth and shook her head.
“Why don’tcha get back in? No sense freezing yourself clear through.” Her fury created a spark of heat that combated the cold wind. “Not yet.” She needed a few more minutes to memorize the dismal, lonely spot where she’d met Mom. She wanted to remember it so when her path crossed with the woman who’d given birth to her, she could tell her—
“May I help you?”
Alexa leaped away from the garage door as quickly as if she’d been kicked by a mule. A woman—young, sad-looking, with her gaping coat exposing a very swollen belly—stood only a few feet away. She held a filled garbage bag in her hand. Lines of worry—or weariness?—marched across her forehead, giving her an aged appearance despite her round, smooth, youthful cheeks.
Alexa took a hesitant step toward Tom’s car. “No. No, I’m—”
“Are you needing to check in? You have to go around to the front.”
Heat flamed Alexa’s cheeks. “Oh, I’m not here to—”
The woman ducked down a bit and peered at Tom. “Is he your baby-daddy? He can’t stay here with you, but they’ll let him visit. Especially if you’re planning to keep your baby. But you’ll have to take classes together. They’re real strict about that.”
Embarrassment and uncertainty held Alexa’s tongue.
The young woman didn’t seem to mind carrying on a one-sided conversation, because she continued with hardly a pause. “Me? I’m not keeping mine.” She cupped the underside of her stomach and gazed down at the mound. “I already met the couple who are adopting my baby.” She glanced at Alexa, a sad smile curving her chapped lips. “I’m having a girl.” She looked down again. “They’re real nice, and I know they’ll take good care of her. The people here make sure the adoptive parents are good and decent, so if you’re gonna give yours up, you don’t have to worry.”
“I’m not staying here. I’m not having a baby.” Alexa finally spit the words out.
When Love Returns Page 10