“I know that.” Lucy’s voice was hard to her own ears, hard and bitter. “But I wanted Christopher to have…I don’t know. Hope?”
“Did you give him hope?” Mrs. Costa asked. “Or did you just get his hopes up?”
Outside the office door was a waiting room full of people in need, people much worse off than Lucy, and kids who were even worse off than Christopher.
“I can tell him if you want,” Mrs. Costa offered. “I’ll go to the Baileys’ house and have a little heart-to-heart with him. I’ll tell him I made the decision, and it’s not your fault.”
It was a kind offer to do a terrible thing. Lucy almost wanted to take her up on it, but she knew that was the coward’s way out.
“I’ll…” Lucy wiped her face. “I’ll think of something to tell him. It should come from me.” She swallowed the lump in her throat.
“He’ll understand it, eventually. But it’s safe to say it’ll be harder for both of you the longer you wait. The time will come when a family wants to adopt him. It’ll be easier for him to accept a new family if he’s not waiting on you.”
Lucy couldn’t even wrap her mind around Christopher being adopted by someone other than her. Mrs. Costa gave her another tissue.
“Believe it or not, you’ll probably feel a little relieved in a few days. It’ll be a weight off your shoulders.”
Lucy met her eyes. She replied slowly and deliberately, “IfChristopher were my son, it would not be a weight on my shoulders. If he were my son, my feet wouldn’t even touch the ground.”
Mrs. Costa’s face was a blank page. “Is there anything else I can do to help you?”
Lucy was being dismissed. And why not? There was nothing left to discuss.
“No, thank you,” Lucy said. “You’ve helped enough.”
Chapter Four
Lucy returned the carto Beckett. She would walk back to school. She needed to move, to breathe, to compose herself before going back to work.
A relief? A weight off her shoulders? Did Mrs. Costa think Christopher was some sort of project for Lucy? Some charity work that kept her from having a life? She’d had a life. She’d done everything she was supposed to do in college. She’d gone to parties, hooked up with sexy jerks, gone to Panama City on spring break, six girls to one crappy hotel room. She’d even gone above and beyond the call of duty in college and dated one of her former professors, who also happened to be one of the most famous writers in the country. A renowned award-winning writer who took her to cocktail parties on New York rooftops and dinners at mansions in the Hamptons and on tours through Europe. She’d lived her life. She’d been wild. She’d been young. She’d had fun.
And she would have traded every wild party, every fancy dinner, every famous face she’d met, and every night in a five-star hotel for one week as Christopher’s mother. Or one day. One single day.
But according to Mrs. Costa, none of that mattered.
Lucy kept her head down, hoping no one would see her red eyes and think she was wandering the streets drunk or stoned. It was a Friday afternoon. After school she could tell Christopher that she’d seen Mrs.Costa again, and the state had decided Lucy couldn’t be his foster mother. Maybe she would take him to the movies this weekend to cheer him up. She had more than two thousand dollars saved. Why not start spending it now on little things to make Christopher happy? Maybe if she spent the whole weekend spoiling him, by Monday he’d be okay with it all. Nothing would have changed, really. Lucy would always be his friend. She just wouldn’t ever get to be his mother.
Not so bad, right?
Then why did it feel so very, very bad?
While cutting through a parking lot, Lucy passed a boutique toy store, doubled back, and went inside. A parent was volunteering in the classroom today, so Theresa didn’t need Lucy in class just yet.
The moment she set foot inside The Purple Turtle, Lucy realized immediately she’d made a mistake. Nearly everything was insanely expensive. What would it be like to be one of those mothers who had enough money to buy imported wooden blocks from Germany and hand-painted dolls from England?
“Can I help you?” a young woman asked from behind the counter. Lucy turned and saw her staring at her phone, her brow furrowed.
“Do you have anything for a boy who likes sharks or boats? He’s seven.” She wanted to get Christopher something to soften the blow. Something that would remind him she would always love him and want to be in his life. “Something small?”
Something not expensive.
“There’s a LEGO pirate boat over there, but it’s pretty huge.” The girl pointed at the set, and Lucy saw that the price was almost two hundred dollars. That would wipe out nearly 10 percent of her savings.
“Anything else? Something smaller?”
“We also have the Schleich animals,” the girl said, “if you want something tiny. A couple of sharks, I think.”
Lucy followed the direction of the girl’s pointing finger. She went to a large wooden case full of animals of every genus and species—lions, birds, and wolves, of course, but also dinosaurs and unicorns and, yes, even sharks.
