“Clearly I am not asking the right questions. Can you tell me about meeting your daughter, the first time?”
I leaned back against the couch and closed my eyes as I shared the best and worst day of my life.
Ten years ago...
“Mr. Reynolds, right this way.”
I followed the woman whose name I couldn’t remember down a long, sterile hallway. She stopped in front of a door and opened it, allowing me to step in first.
My eyes shot around the room, taking everything in. Someone had painted it a cheerful yellow and decorated the walls with flowers and insects. It felt a little like walking into a garden.
It was a sharp contrast to the hall that had led us here. There was a small sofa along the wall and a toy chest filled to the brim in the corner. This was the room they used for family visits. Supervised visitation while moms and dads who the court deemed unfit worked through their shit, trying to get their kids back.
Marsha hadn’t worked through her shit. Instead of letting the system work, she’d attacked Frankie’s social worker and ended up in jail. That was enough for the judge to terminate her rights.
That was why they’d come looking for me. As Frankie’s father, ideally, I would take responsibility for her. Only, I couldn’t. I didn’t trust myself to raise a child. It was whyI took care of the possibility of ever fathering another child, permanently.
My eyes caught on the crib in the corner of the room and the little girl who stood there, watching me.
“Are you sure, Mr. Reynolds?”
I nodded, unable to say the words out loud now that she was here in front of me.
“I’m afraid I will need to hear the words.”
“I’m sure.” My voice cracked with emotion. “She deserves better than me.”
“Every parent is terrified in the beginning, sir.”
I whipped my head around and glared at her. “Does every parent grow up being beaten daily? I can’t take a chance that I will end up like my father, Miss Fredricks. She deserves more than that. More than what she’s had so far. I just wanted to meet her once.”
The woman nodded. “I can respect that, Mr. Reynolds. It takes a lot of courage to admit to our faults, but the fact that you are willing to give her up rather than risk her being hurt tells me you might make a better father than you think.”
I shook my head as I stared at my little girl. She had my mother’s eyes. Eyes I never thought I’d see again, eyes lost to the world when my father killed her. Eyes that looked into my soul and saw what my mother called possibility, the way she had.
“Would you like to hold her?”
“Is that allowed?”
“Until you sign those papers, she is your daughter.”
I slowly walked toward the crib and looked down at the tiny little girl. I didn’t have experience with kids, but she looked small. Too small. I reached down, lifted her from the crib, and held her against my chest.
“Hey, Curly Sue, I brought you something.”
I reached into my back pocket and pulled out the small stuffed bunny. It was no bigger than my hand and filled with little round pellets, making it floppy instead of stiff.
I handed it to my daughter and whispered, “I love you, Curly Sue. It’s why I have to let you go.”
“Oh, Derek.”
Haizley swiped at the tears that slid down her cheeks. She always tried to keep her emotions in check during our sessions, but as she had said before, she was only human.
“What are you going to do?”
“There’s nothing for me to do. I signed away my rights.”
“Do you think you can live in the same town as your daughter and not want to be her father?”
