Crazy About the Baumgartners Page 15

  “Okay, thank you… yes, I understand… we will… please keep us informed… goodbye.”

  Carrie hung up the phone, putting it on the coffee table, and I hung my head, waiting.

  This was it. It was over. All the sweetness and love we’d shared the past few days was decimated with one phone call. I knew it was my fault, but I selfishly had hoped that this time, this one time, I could finally have something to call my own.

  “That was… that was Holly’s social worker.” Carrie’s voice was hoarse, like she’d been crying, but her eyes were dry. I realized she was looking at me, talking to me, and I glanced up. It was so hard to look at her, to know how much pain I’d just caused them, the two people I loved most in the world. I wanted to die.

  “Apparently her paternal grandmother has… has come forward.” She cleared her throat, like it was hard to get the words out. I looked over at Doc, but he had his head down, in his hands, elbows on his knees. “She lives in Utah. I guess she didn’t even know about the baby.”

  “But…” I couldn’t think. It wasn’t Maureen on the phone? It wasn’t CPS? “Wait… they said she didn’t have any other relatives. When they placed her with us, didn’t they say that?”

  “They said they were looking for other blood relatives, but they didn’t know of any at that time,” she said, lower lip trembling. I saw her hands shaking. “This grandmother has petitioned the courts for custody. She wants Holly.”

  I let the words sink in, like a knife to my belly, and I instinctively held the baby closer.

  “Well she can’t have her.” I felt tears stinging my eyes at the thought of giving this baby to anyone, ever. She belonged here, with the Baumgartners. This was her family. She’d been with them only a few months, but she was happy and loved and doing so well. Of course, the social workers would see that. The judge would understand. He wouldn’t want to take her away from a family she’d come to know and love and count on.

  “Unfortunately, she’ll probably win,” Doc said, lifting his head to look at me. His eyes were wet. Carrie choked out a sob at his words, covering her face with her hands. “Unless she’s a serial killer or something, the courts are partial to blood relatives in cases like this.”

  “But you could fight it,” I cried, holding Holly so tight she started to squirm. “Possession is nine-tenths of the law, isn’t it? You have her until a judge says you have to give her back, don’t you? And the longer you have her, the more time she has to bond, then the less chance there is a judge will say you have to give her up. Isn’t that right?”

  “And the longer we have her, the more damage we do, if we have to give her back,” Doc said sadly. “Think about it, Gretchen. Say we drag it out in the courts for a year, two years, maybe three. Now we have a beautiful three-year-old daughter who calls us Daddy and Mommy, who knows nothing else but our family.”

  Carrie was really sobbing now and Doc put an arm around her shoulder, pulling her to him. Tears rolled down my cheeks. This couldn’t be happening. It was wrong, so very wrong. This baby had been born drug addicted, she was given back to her abusers, and of course they did it again, torturing and nearly killing her—and now she was safe, with a family that loved her, and they wanted to take her back?

  “What happens when we’ve exhausted all our appeals, and a judge still decides she has to go live with someone else? Now she’s a heartbroken three-year-old who doesn’t understand why Mommy and Daddy are telling her she has to go away.”

  “Noooo,” Carrie sobbed against his chest.

  “We talked about this.” Doc rocked her, stroking her hair. “We said, if this happened, we would give her back right away, so she wouldn’t get too attached. This is for Holly, remember?”

  “I know, I know.” Carrie sniffed, drying her eyes, taking a long, shaky breath. She looked at the baby in my arms and teared up again. “Can I have her?”

  The answer was clearly “no.” At least, as far as the state was concerned. Because Holly belonged with some stranger in Utah who had never even seen her, simply because they shared some DNA? I thought of Maureen Holmes. I’d been so sure it was her. Had she prayed for us? Had she asked God to punish the wicked? I’m sure, if Maureen ever found out, she would consider this our punishment for living a life of sin. But as far as I was concerned, this was just more proof that there was no God. If there was a God, he wouldn’t let things like this happen. Ever.

  I stood, still shaky, and went over to them. Holly smiled when Carrie took her in her arms—she knew her mama already. Doc and Carrie put their arms around each other, around the baby, a cocoon, but I knew it was an illusion. Nothing could keep them safe. Holly was going to be taken away. I heard Janie and Henry in the kitchen, oblivious. The Baumgartners were going to have to tell them. The thought made me sick to my stomach. They were singing Jesus Loves Me at the top of their lungs, changing the words to Cthulhu Loves Me. It was a horrible sacrilege and Mrs. Holmes would have been appalled, but I was pretty sure, if there was a God, he didn’t really care.

  I didn’t know if there was or wasn’t a God. I didn’t know if this was a punishment or some horrible, random act. I just knew things would never be the same again.

  Chapter Ten

  The Baumgartners had generously given me my own laptop for Christmas, but the photo software I had installed wasn’t anywhere near as good as the computer in Doc’s office. He had Photoshop on that machine and his own laptop, but I didn’t want to ask them to spend another gazillion dollars to put it on mine too, so I just used the computer in the office.

  It was hard walking into that room. Holly’s bedroom. I thought of it that way still, even though it had been months since she slept here. The walls were now taupe, the mural painted over, the ceiling an off-white that was almost gray, and Doc’s office furniture had been moved back in. It was an office again, and all traces of the baby had been erased. Carrie and I had packed up all her sweet, little pink baby things and boxed them. The social worker promised she would give them to Holly’s grandmother. The baby furniture, purchased new, had gone to Goodwill.

  I sat at Doc’s desk, turning on the computer. Poor Holly. The judge had ruled, just like Doc said he would, to award permanent custody of the baby to her paternal grandmother in Manti, Utah. I liked to think that maybe she was going to have a great life out there, that her grandmother would love her and care for her because they shared the same blood. But if being blood related made people kinder to each other, Holly never would have come to us in the first place.

  “Gretchen?” Carrie called from downstairs. “Are you coming?”

  “In a minute!” I plugged my camera in, waiting for the pictures to load, smiling as Janie and Henry’s smiling mugs popped up, one after another.

  Their mother’s birthday had been a grand occasion so far, between dinner out and a beautiful cake Doc had picked up from the local bakery. Sometimes I thought we should stop celebrating birthdays once we started to feel old, because no one liked them much anymore, except those who still were young. Carrie’s birthday had been far more fun for Janie and Henry so far than it had been for her. Not that she minded, I don’t think. She’d agreed to celebrate for them, because they wanted it, not because she did.

  I loaded the photos onto the computer and then cleared the camera, making room for more photos. We still had to eat cake and Carrie had to open her gifts. I had to get pictures of that.

  Downstairs, Janie and Henry were fighting over which of them would get the biggest frosted red rose on Carrie’s birthday cake. There was no age on it, just “Happy Birthday, Mom.” We’d talked about this upcoming birthday and Carrie said she was dreading it.

  “Why?” I’d asked.

  “Because it’s just one more year on the planet. And now every year, I’ll be thinking, I wonder what she looks like now? I wonder what she did this year?”

  I just hugged her. There was nothing more to say.

  The Baumgartners had requested they be notified about Holly once a year—just a
picture, an update, something—but the grandmother had refused. They never even met the grandmother so couldn’t appeal to her compassion or consideration. A lawyer handled all the court appearances and paperwork, and when the judge decided and we had to give Holly back, a social worker came to the house to get her, later taking her on her first plane ride to Utah.

  “Oh Doc, do we have to do candles?” Carrie complained.

  “But if you don’t blow out the candles, you don’t get a birthday wish,” Henry said, aghast, as if giving up your birthday wish was akin to death.

  “Oh all right.” She smiled indulgently, ruffling Henry’s dark hair.

  “Let me do it!” Henry grabbed the candles—a number three and a number two—from his father, putting them on the cake.

  “Oh, hey, look at that, I’m twenty-three.” Carrie grinned, turning the cake to show me. “I’m younger than you, Gretchen.”

  “You got them backwards, big guy.” Doc laughed.

  “Oops.” Henry flushed, pulling them out and reversing them.

  “Get the lights, Janie,” her father said.

  We all sang the “Happy Birthday” song, warbly and off-key, but Carrie’s eyes were shining with love as she looked around at all of us. She was happier than I’d seen her in a long time, and I was glad Doc had insisted we make a big deal of this day.

  “Make a wish!” Henry insisted.

  She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and blew out the candles.

  “Okay, who wants cake?” She picked up the knife.

  “I want that rose!” Henry pointed at the biggest, fattest one and the argument began anew. In the end, she split it right down the middle, which satisfied neither child because compromise was just two people agreeing to something neither of them wanted.

  We ate cake and ice cream—Neapolitan, because Doc loved strawberry, the kids’ chocolate and Carrie vanilla. And me, I loved all three flavors mixed together in the bowl, all creamy and melty in my mouth.

  “Presents! Presents!” Henry insisted, dragging his mother into the family room where they were piled up on the table. All of them were from Doc, even the ones he took the kids to the mall to choose, because of course he’d paid for them. There was just one from me and it wasn’t on the table. She opened them all—new slippers, Bath and Bodyworks lotion, a brand new juicer and more toys for the kitchen like a rice cooker and a food chopper. She’d taken to cooking big, gourmet meals, since she’d reduced her hours to part-time at the real estate office.

  All the presents were opened when Doc pulled another out of his pocket, handing it to her.

  “Oh Doc, you shouldn’t have!” Carrie exclaimed, lifting the necklace he’d bought her out of its box. “This is beautiful!”

  “There are three birthstones.” He showed her. “One for Janie, one for Henry, one for Holly.”

  “Thank you.” She looked up at him with shining eyes.

  He took the necklace from her hands, going around the back of the sofa to put it around her neck. Janie and Henry flanked her, watching their father with big eyes.

  “Because she’ll always be part of our family,” Doc murmured, kissing her cheek as he let the necklace dangle between her breasts. “Never forgotten.”

  Carrie put her hand over his, on her shoulder, for just a moment, squeezing.

  “I have something for you.” I stood, reaching for her hand, and she took it, looking at me curiously as I led her toward the stairs.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, following me.

  The kids and Doc were just behind her. Upstairs, the hallway was lined with framed photographs Doc had taken of the kids over the years. Carrie had gone a little overboard with the amount of pictures she had framed and put on the wall, and I teased her about “the gallery” but she claimed she always had such a hard time deciding which picture she liked best, so she just framed them all.

  “Can you find it?” I smiled, squeezing her hand. “It’s like Where’s Waldo… only it’s Where’s Holly?”

  “Oh Gretchen.” She saw it almost right away. Doc had hung it for me before we left for dinner, making room halfway down the hall, between the bathroom and the office. I’d had to keep Carrie downstairs so she wouldn’t see him, which wasn’t easy because she kept asking what “all that damned pounding was going on up there.”

  It was a photograph of Holly and Carrie on the beach. Mrs. B was holding her looking back at the camera, and Holly was over her shoulder, smiling in her little suit and sun hat. It was the perfect lighting, the perfect moment. I’d had it printed and had purchased a beautiful, ornate wire frame that spelled out the word “Mother” at the top and “Daughter” at the bottom.

  “Thank you.” Carrie put her arms around me, tears in her eyes, which made me tear up too.

  I whispered Doc’s words into her ear, “Because she’ll always be part of our family.”

  She nodded, wiping her eyes with the back of her hands.

  “Okay, can we make popcorn and watch the movie now?” Henry asked, grabbing his mother’s hand and pulling her back toward the stairs.

  Carrie snuggled on the couch with the kids while Doc and I went into the kitchen to make popcorn. Doc was the popcorn maker—he did it in a pan on the stove, the old fashioned way with oil—while I melted butter and got out bowls and popcorn seasoning. Everyone liked something different—white cheddar for Henry, cinnamon sugar for Janie, sour cream and onion for me and Carrie, and Doc was a purist. He loved it with just butter and salt. Doc and I had it down to a science. We moved through the kitchen like we were doing ballet, everything orchestrated.

  “That was a beautiful gift, Gretchen.” Doc moved in behind me with the hot pan, shaking fluffy white popcorn into each bowl.

  “I was nervous. But I’m glad she liked it.” I started pouring butter in as each bowl was filled. “So you’re really sure you’re not going to try again?”

  “No.” He shook his head, taking the now empty pan over to the sink. “Too much heartache, like Carrie said. I don’t think we’ll be fostering any more babies.”

  “How can someone come into your life, spend such a short time, but you end up loving and missing them so much when they’re gone.?”

  “Love is like that.” He moved in behind me again, this time putting his hands on my hips, his lips on my neck. “We get attached.”

  “Mmm.” I leaned back against him, smiling. “Are you still planning to give her the other gift tonight?”

  “I think so.” His lips on my throat sent goose flesh down my arms. “She’s in a great mood. It’s good timing.”

  “I can’t wait.”

  The previews had ended and the movie had just started when Doc carried popcorn bowls into the family room on a tray. I had a pitcher of Mrs. B’s homemade lemonade and four glasses. We snuggled on the big sectional couch, Mrs. B in the corner, the kids on either side of her, Doc on one end, next to Henry, me on the other, next to Janie. When the movie was over, it was bed time, although the kids protested. No one wanted the night to end—it had been one of the best we’d had in a long, long time.

  “Will you tuck us in, Mom?” Janie pleaded, coming into the kitchen as we cleaned up our popcorn mess.

  “Sure.” Carrie kissed the top of her daughter’s head before sending her down the hall to brush her teeth. I went upstairs to my room and I heard the kids pounding up to say goodnight to their father, something they did every night. They rushed by in their PJs, but the Baumgartners’ bedroom door was locked.

  “Dad?” They pounded on the door.

  “Just a minute!” he called.

  He opened his bedroom door and came out to hug and kiss them goodnight. I watched from my perch on the bed as they passed, waving goodnight to me, before he sent them down to their room. Then he crooked his finger at me. I went to him and he opened the bedroom door, leading me inside.

  “Wow.” I stared up at the eyebolts in the ceiling. He’d installed those days ago, hoping Carrie wouldn’t notice and, so far, she hadn�
��t. Now there were two sex swings hanging from them. “Fun!”

  “I can’t wait to find out.” He grinned. “Wanna climb in?”

  “Now, before she sees them?”

  “Yes.” He nodded. “I want you to be part of the gift.”

  I smiled, pulling my t-shirt off over my head. I loved the way his eyes lit up when I did that. Doc had me strip down to nothing and then he lifted me into the harness. It was all a collection of straps that went together somehow. Thankfully, he knew what he was doing, because before I knew it, I was strapped in, right at the perfect height for him to fuck me. He could swing me around and I could hold the straps and lean back.

  “This is pretty amazing,” I said, wrapping my legs around him—he was still fully clothed—digging my heels into his back as he leaned in to kiss me. His cock sure liked them because he was hard as a rock. I wiggled into the saddle of his hips, rubbing my pussy against the crotch of his pants.

  “I hear her coming up the stairs.” He broke our kiss, eyes bright. “Don’t move.”

  “Like I could?” I laughed. My thighs were strapped into the swing and I was hanging so far off the ground, my feet didn’t touch.

  Doc opened the bedroom door, going out in the hall and closing it behind him. I heard them talking but didn’t hear what they were saying. I looked up at the ceiling, worried the straps and hooks might not hold, even with the T-bar and the springs, but I trusted Doc’s building skills. He’d built the treehouse in the backyard, after all. It seemed secure. I was tempted to actually swing on it, like a little kid, but I didn’t.

  “Doc, what surprise?” Carrie laughed as he opened the door and he led her in, his hand covering her eyes. He closed and locked the door behind her, pushing her forward a few steps, judging the distance, looking at me hanging from the ceiling.