More heartbreak.
And suddenly it became too late to go home. Too late to change course.
“I’m sorry to keep you waiting,” she said. Sam was her name. Samantha Riggins. Sam glanced at Spence and he stiffened as if caught by high beams. Jennifer saw his face go pale. But Sam only smiled, missing every sign of Spence’s distress. “Maybe you want to go into the kitchen with Deb?” Sam asked, turning slightly, revealing the black woman sporting the long thin braids with blond tips who had talked to them when they arrived.
Spence grabbed Jennifer’s hand and shook his head, clearly not wanting to go anywhere with anyone. Jennifer stroked his back, trying to calm his sudden fear.
“You sure?” Sam asked. “Breakfast is being served.”
“We talked about this, babe,” Jennifer whispered in his ear, though she wished she could capitalize on these sudden misgivings of his and pick him up and go, take him to a Waffle House and forget this closet ever existed.
But she’d promised him. And worse. She’d promised Doug. “I just need a few minutes with her,” Jennifer said.
His gray-blue eyes swam with indecision and fear. I don’t want to leave you, Mommy, his eyes said and she swallowed the lump of indecision and fear that lodged in her own throat.
“It’s okay,” she promised. “I swear. If it starts getting good—” she smiled, knowing his theory that all the good stuff was adult stuff “—I’ll call you in.”
Spence gave Sam one more hard look as if cataloging all the things they had in common. Then he pursed his lips as if gathering all his courage and glanced down at his notebook.
“I’m allergic to strawberries,” he said to Sam.
“I…ah…don’t think we’re serving strawberries,” Sam said. “So you’re safe.”
“Are you allergic to anything?” he asked.
“Shrimp,” Sam answered. “They give me hives.”
They did the same thing to Spence and he checked something off on his notebook before tucking it back in his backpack, looking satisfied.
My baby, Jennifer’s heart cried. My sweet little guy.
“Do you have doughnuts?” he asked Deb. Sam laughed but Jennifer couldn’t. If she laughed she’d bawl.
“Maybe,” Deb answered, holding out her hand. “Let’s go find out.” Spence didn’t take the stranger’s hand but he followed her out the door, his ginger curls gilded by the sun in front of him, his khaki pants inches too long.
“Now,” Sam sighed, sitting in her chair with the duct tape and, come to find out, a terrible squeal. “What can I help you with?”
“I’m afraid it’s complicated,” Jennifer said, totally unsure of where to start.
“Isn’t it always?” Sam said with a smile. “But Deb told me you’d mentioned a letter?”
Jennifer took a deep breath, cursed her husband and deathbed promises, then jumped into a situation she’d fought for the past nine years.
“The letter, I, ah…referred to…is the letter you left in your file with the adoption agency.”
Sam didn’t speak. Her brows furrowed and she shook her head as if she just didn’t follow.
Stupid woman, Jennifer thought unkindly. Did Spence mean nothing to her?
“The permission to contact letter you wrote when you gave your son up for adoption.”
Understanding struck the woman’s face and she went pale. White pale. Even her lips lost all their color. Her hand shook as she brought it to her forehead. “Oh, my God,” she whispered and turned slightly toward the door Spence just walked out of. “Your son—”
“Well, biologically—” Jennifer nearly choked on the words “—Spence is your son.”
4
There was a giant empty vacuum where thought should be. Sam knew she should say something. Anything. But she opened her mouth and there were no words. A rattling dry gasp from the back of her throat, that’s all.
My son. Here.
Feeling cornered, she pushed away from her desk, the chair rolling into the boxes of soap behind her, and she felt the other woman’s eyes on her, watching her.
What was the right way to respond? Or feel, for that matter. Because all Sam had was shock, blind and all-consuming. Her feet were numb, her hands blocks of ice.
“Perhaps this is a bad time?” the tense woman said and Sam finally focused, the roar in her ears abating for the moment.
“What’s your name?” Sam asked, courtesy a luxury that had been blown off the map.
“Jennifer,” the woman said. Her blond hair was practically a mirror, it was so straight and pale and perfect. “Jennifer Stern. I am Spence’s mother.”
“Right.” It was all she could say. Words had utterly escaped her. Through the great nothing she felt, panic crept in, crawling over her and through her like stinging fog.
She couldn’t breathe.
My son. Here.
What should I do? Say? Oh, Christ, what do I say to him?
The ceiling above her head creaked while J.D. moved around upstairs and horror broke over her like a thunderstorm.
Oh, my God.
Her heart stopped dead cold in her chest.
The reality of the situation hammered her right in the stomach.
J.D.
What were the chances that her son and J.D. would be here at the same time? What were the seriously cosmically screwed-up odds on that event?
After all these years, and worse, after that conversation this morning, he was going to learn her secret.
Spence was his son, too.
“Perhaps we should come back,” Jennifer said, so disapproving, so cool she might have been made of ice.
Yes. Leave. I can’t do this today. The words leaped to Sam’s lips, but she swallowed the words and took deep breaths.
Did she want to push away this chance? Because of timing?
That had been her rationale for giving up the baby in the first place. She’d been twenty-seven, had no idea when she’d see J.D. again after that first time, and she’d just taken over the shelter.
It wasn’t, she’d told herself, time to have a child. Particularly alone. She worked in the shelter, she knew how hard single parenting could be. And she wasn’t tough enough, or brave enough, to take it on. No way.
But she’d left that letter in her file for a reason. And that reason was right here. Right now.
The last of the fog evaporated and Sam was filled with curiosity and, now that the surprise was abating, there was a bright shining chunk of happy at the center of her body. Happy that Spence and Jennifer were here. That this opportunity had walked in her door.
When she’d left the letter in her file with the adoption agency, she’d hoped this would happen. Had longed for a connection to her child, even if it wasn’t as his mother.
A chance to know her son.
“No.” Sam stood on trembling legs. “Please stay.”
“Why?” Jennifer asked point-blank. “You don’t appear interested or excited in any fashion. You seem ill. And I won’t subject my son to you unless you are a hundred-percent interested in this meeting.”
“I am,” Sam said, trying to sound genuine. Trying to sound anything but totally freaked out. But it was hard. She was totally freaked out.
“You’ll pardon me if I say, bullshit.”
Sam laughed, incredulous. The woman even swore with manners. How funny that her son would end up with a woman so unlike her. So her opposite.
“Let me assure you,” Jennifer said, her eyes shooting sparks, “from where I stand there is nothing funny about this situation.”
Sam rocked back on her heels. She’d been knocked around a bit today and she found she’d hit her limit. “I’m sorry, Jennifer, if my reaction to you arriving on my doorstep without the courtesy of a phone call to prepare me isn’t what you expected.”
Jennifer’s gaze fell to the floor.
“I’ve been in social services my whole working life and I know there is a protocol that is supposed to be followed—”
/>
“I know,” Jennifer said, not quite so righteous anymore. “I’m sorry. Spence has always known he was adopted and that his birth—” she glanced at Sam “—you were interested in meeting him. We’d promised that, when he was ready, if he was ever ready, we’d take the steps to find you. We had your address from the agency. I just—” She sighed and rubbed a hand down the buttons of her shirt. “I just never thought you’d still be here. I mean, who stays in the same place for nine years?”
“I do,” Sam answered. “This is my home.”
Jennifer’s eyes widened in surprise. Her thoughts were so clearly broadcasted across her tight, pinched face that she might as well have just yelled “oh, dear God, you live in a woman’s shelter,” into a bullhorn.
“I run Serenity House,” Sam said, trying not to get angry with the woman. “And I have for ten years. It was part of the reason I decided on adoption.”
Jennifer licked her lips, staring at the floor as if for answers, or maybe cracks to fall into. But finally she heaved a big sigh and looked up, level and square, right into Sam’s eyes. “Okay. I’m sorry, you’re right. Arriving out of the blue was not fair. I’m not—” Jennifer stopped and for some reason Sam found herself holding her breath, wondering if the Ice Queen was about to crack. “I’m not thinking clearly lately. I’m sorry.”
Well, Sam thought, that’s much more civilized.
“I’m sorry, too, Jennifer, if my reaction indicated that I’m not totally thrilled you are here. I am. Please, sit,” Sam said, urging the woman back into her chair. “I’m just a bit stunned.”
Jennifer’s careful smile didn’t quite hide the palpable dislike she clearly felt, but after a moment, she sat, holding her sleek black bag on her lap like a shield.
“Now, perhaps we could begin again,” Sam said, folding her hands in her lap, fighting the urge to go after her nails like they were dinner. “Perhaps you could tell me a little about Spence. About what he is expecting from this meeting.” Please, give me some kind of road map for this new place I’m in.
My son, she thought, again, this time with a warmth running through her. Wow.
“Sure,” Jennifer said and was silent, as if she didn’t know where to start. “He has a lot of questions for you, in a notebook he keeps with him.”
Okay, Sam thought. Questions are good. I can answer questions.
“He’s rather intense about it,” Jennifer said in a way that made Sam think that the description might not actually cover it.
“Intense?” she asked, slightly incredulous. He was nine after all.
Jennifer’s entire body went rigid, her green eyes on fire. “Protocol or no, let me warn you, Sam. If, at any point, my son’s feeling are in danger of being hurt, or you begin to disappoint him, we will leave. We’ve had enough heartache.”
“Absolutely.” Sam was quick to agree. Perhaps the incredulity needed to be put on hold. She understood the woman’s baseline anxiety. It had to be fairly common among adoptive mothers when meeting birth mothers. “I have no intention of hurting him. If he’s come to meet me, I would like to meet him.”
Jennifer’s gaze was like an X-ray sliding right through Sam, photographing everything, but paying special attention to those faults, the flaws she couldn’t hide. The black circles under her eyes, the messy hair, the nails bitten to the quick—a habit she couldn’t seem to break. Nothing escaped Jennifer’s cataloging gaze.
But Sam was seeing flaws in Jennifer, too. The woman was wound so tight she was about to crack. All that careful physical perfection was hiding something bad. Since most of the women who came through Serenity’s doors had hit rock bottom, Sam recognized the signs.
This woman was pretending rock bottom wasn’t rushing up to meet her.
Jennifer finally nodded. “I’ll go get him,” she said and ducked out the office door to the kitchen, where Spence sat at the table, a chocolate doughnut on a piece of paper towel in front of him.
Sam avoided Deb’s curious eye and watched, with held breath, the interaction between Spence and Jennifer. The way he lit up at the sight of her, the way she leaned in, cupping the back of his head with her hand while she whispered in his ear.
His smile was a revelation and when he lifted his gaze to meet Sam’s across the kitchen, she sucked in an astonished breath.
The crooked grin, the blue-gray eyes—he was J.D. in miniature.
Our son. A heaviness that felt something like grief settled into her bones. The product of us. The cause of that scar on her abdomen.
She’d thought one day she’d tell J.D. They’d talk about it like adults. Like the lovers they were. She never imagined him finding out this way. Not after the things he’d said to her this morning.
Considering the fight they’d just had, Sam was sure J.D. was packing right now and would be out the door in no time. He didn’t have to know. He could go right on living his life without this knowledge.
And yes, that was convenient for her. And cowardly. But not telling him had become another habit she didn’t know how to break.
So, she would respect the boy standing in the kitchen, the woman who had brought him—and she’d keep cold, cold J. D. Kronos away from both of them.
“Come on in,” she said, waving Spencer and Jennifer into the privacy of her office all while listening for the creak of J.D.’s footsteps upstairs.
“Hi,” Spencer said, coming to stand in front of her, the doughnut and paper towel in his hand. He tilted his head in the way J.D. did when he was thinking. His wary gaze met hers and she didn’t read much excitement to see her. This was not the average nine-year-old, she realized. What had happened to this boy and his mother to make them so fragile? “You’re Sam Riggins?”
“I am,” she said, around a thick lump of emotion. “You’re Spence Stern?”
“Spencer,” he said. “My real name is Spencer but my mom calls me Spence.”
“Well,” Sam said with a smile. “My real name is Samantha but everyone calls me Sam.”
Spence smiled and its effect was nothing less than the sun coming out from behind clouds. Sam felt some of the weight lift from her shoulders. No matter what might stem from this strange alignment of mother, father and child passing through each others’ orbits, she was happy this boy was here.
“It’s good to meet you,” she said and stuck out her hand. “I’ve wondered about you for a long time.”
Spence transferred his doughnut to the other hand and slipped his tiny palm into hers. “Likewise, Sam,” he said, a smile on his lips, a fledgling twinkle in his eyes that was pure J. D. Kronos. But as soon as the twinkle was there, it was gone. And the intense boy-man was back. “Now, I’ve got some questions.”
Jennifer smiled, stroking her son’s hair, then turned to give Sam an assessing glare before walking past her into the office.
Sam leaned out into the kitchen toward Deb.
“You’re good here?” She asked.
“Of course,” Deb said.
“I’ll just be in my office,” she said.
“What about J.D.?” Deb said, her face revealing nothing and Sam had a wild jolt of fear that Deb had seen the resemblance between the man upstairs and the kid in her office.
“What about him?”
“Well, he’s bound to come downstairs at some point and ask about you.”
“Knock on the office door if he does,” she said. “But you do it, not him.”
“What’s going on here, Sam?”
“Nothing. I mean…” She sighed. Working in this business had taught her the difference between a good lie and a stinker—and a little bit of truth was always the difference. “We got in a fight this morning,” she said. “And I’m not ready to see him.”
Deb clucked her tongue and shook her head. “You’re not being honest about something, Sam,” she said. “I’m no fool and neither is that man upstairs.”
“I’ll explain everything. Just…not now.”
“Fine. I’ll knock if he comes down.”
5
Sam Riggins was really tall. Way taller than Mom, Spence thought, watching the two women try to figure out where to sit and which way to cross their legs so they didn’t hit each other.
My moms.
Thinking that made him happy. Looking at them, even though they were so totally different, seemed right, like when he got a perfect on his spelling test.
He pulled his Minecraft notebook out of his backpack and hoped he’d thought of everything. He’d tried to be thorough. Dad had helped as much as he could until they put the tubes in that made it impossible for him to talk.
After that the nurses at the hospital had been really nice and gave Spence some forms from the emergency room to copy.
Toward the end, everyone at the hospital did pretty much whatever Spence had asked.
Which was nice in a totally sucky way.
“So?” Sam finally said, smiling at him. It wasn’t a fake smile, which was cool. He was really sick of the fake smiles people gave him, like he didn’t know they were pretending. They’d all been pretending, nonstop for, like, a year.
But Sam wasn’t pretending, not with that smile.
“Spence, your mom tells me you have some questions.”
He nodded, gripping his notebook, suddenly nervous.
This is it, he thought. No playing around.
His dad always told him that when you asked a question, you had to be ready for the answer—you had to be ready for the good and the bad. That was the nature of asking questions, he’d said.
Dad had been a lawyer and he asked a lot of questions. So he knew.
Dad always knew.
Dad, he wanted to cry, why aren’t you here? Why aren’t you helping me? He’d told Spence to do this, helped him think of the questions. But without his dad, Spence didn’t know how to get to the bottom of things. Or why he should bother. Dad was gone. There wasn’t much point to anything.
The Story Of Us: A Secret Baby Romance (Serenity House Book 1) Page 5