Page 42 of Love What's Left
The shudders that jerk through her almost look like adrenaline shakes. By the time I met her, the uncertainty and fear of that time was in her past, but it probably doesn’t feel like history to her now. For her, it was last month. Every little piece seems to hit her at a different time, as though her brain is protecting her from absorbing too much information too quickly.
She had to have gone to college to become an engineer, but it must not have felt real. Or maybe she hadn’t remembered what I told her.
I thought of the Nest & Wing Foundation as something she wanted because, even though she was lucky and found a way to build a future for herself, she saw so many foster kids around her end up homeless or trafficked or in prison. I never really saw her in the kids we help. She was different.
Sydney was resilient and made it on her own. She was talented, ambitious, and fierce, with a take-no-shit attitude. She was tough as nails and was always going to come out on top because she was strong. She wasn’t vulnerable the way these kids are.
Except, she was. She was desperate, terrified, and one torn meniscus or major illness away from losing everything. Even whatever temporary home she’d found.
It puts her refusal to give up her apartment when we married in a new light. She lived with me but insisted on having a backup plan. At the time, it bothered the hell out of me.
“You attended Blackwater State University on a soccer scholarship. You eventually moved off campus with your friend, Clarissa Harcourt, and my sister, Bronwyn. You’re still close to them. After undergrad, you completed your master’s at Columbia while working for my father in one of his research and development departments. You’re only a semester away from finishing your PhD. You and I met about five months after you graduated from BSU.”
“You’re my e-emergency c-contact?” she asks.
I thought that feature of the program was something practical, like having a lawyer on retainer. Never in my life have I not had the ability to pick up the phone, say, “I need you,” and not know my family was coming, sometimes to their own detriment.
“Yes, but you have close friends who are like sisters to you too. They call your phone every day, waiting for you to answer. My parents and siblings would be here if you needed them. Any one of us would answer the phone at two in the morning and show up for you, no questions asked. But yes, I’m your emergency contact.”
She nods. “As long as we’re married.”
I huff. “As long as welive. You’re my family. I’m yours. That may not be how it works for some people, but if we weren’t together, I’d still be here for you. Clarissa, Bronwyn, Franki, and Janessa were yours before we married. You’ll always have them too. You’re not alone and never will be again. If you didn’t want to be here with me, you could stay with one of them.”
It’d kill me if she left, but the thought of her feeling trapped makes me sick.
“Can you send me the report?” Her speech is halting and rough, but clear.
“Sure.”
I pass her the electronic tablet. She curls into the monstrosity we call a chair then accepts the files I send her. Frowning, she scrolls through them. Then, slowly, her shoulders relax.
My phone alerts me with a message.
Wifey: Is the program already in two states?
My lips curve.I’m right here.I look over to find her watching me as she waits for a response.
“Currently, we have programs in Pennsylvania and New York, but we have plans to expand nationally in the next two years,” I say.
She turns back to her iPad, and I return to my email inbox. Three minutes later, another iMessage pops up.
Wifey: Did you see the request to add childcare, so the kids who are parents can work or go to school? It seems like an oversight to have missed it in the first place.
I look back her way. “I did. I’m sure we’ll discover more than one place we can improve. I imagine it’ll evolve over time. We’re working on figuring out a way to keep siblings together too. Especially when they have younger ones who are still in the system. It’s a big project. We’re just getting started.”
The speech therapist called her problems speaking apraxia. She seems to struggle sometimes to coordinate making her mouth form words. The thoughts, themselves, are still there. In writing, she’s every bit as eloquent as she ever was.
Wifey: What is this?
She sends a screenshot of a folder.
“Those are the kids we’ve lost,” I say quietly.
She frowns. “Lost?”
“One to depression last year. A couple to addiction. Prison. Some have broken the rules too many times or too severely to be considered a safe housemate for others. Some just”—I shake my head—“disappear and never come back. They keep me up at night, sometimes, wondering what we could do differently or—” I shouldn’t be talking about something like this with her. She needs peace and for me to stay positive.
She nods. When I say nothing more, she goes back to reading the files. Eventually, the messages she sends slow, then stop.
