Here Without You

I flip him off, but he just arches a brow and smirks.

‘Aww, c’mon, I was just funnin’.’ His drawl is all kinds of exaggerated. ‘No need to get hostile.’

I roll my eyes behind my own mirrored sunglasses and pull into traffic as soon as he’s buckled up. ‘There’s more hostility where that came from, Reid Alexander.’ Like slipping into a broken-in pair of boots, I affect the accent he professes to love. ‘You just keep that smart mouth shut or you’ll be meetin’ your son sportin’ a fat lip.’

Luckily, he grins that full-wattage smile and shakes his head without any more flippant commentary. Cocky son-of-a-bitch.

As we leave downtown and head south on I-35, he turns the alt rock station down and asks, ‘You nervous?’

I sigh. ‘Hell, yes. You?’

‘I’ve never felt so panicked about meeting anyone in my entire life.’

Nodding in agreement, I say, ‘That pretty much sums it up.’

‘How long will this visit last?’

‘Wendy said about an hour, unless River makes it clear he’s done, and then it would be best to leave. We don’t want to make him uncomfortable.’

When I tell Reid what I learned from Wendy yesterday concerning River’s muteness, his periodic nightmares, and some of the details about his adoptive parents, he mutters, ‘Shit,’ and stares out of the passenger window for several minutes.

Two years ago, River’s adoptive father died in a tragic car accident. I vaguely recall him, out of all the prospective adoptive parents Kathryn and I sifted through that summer. Blond, handsome, mid-thirties. Financially sound. What I remember best is something he wrote at the end of his prospective adoptive parent statement: I hope to be the same loving, wonderful father to my child that my dad was to me. That sentence was the tipping point for my choice of them over another couple.

His father is deceased, his mother is in her seventies and living in a retirement home.

River’s adoptive mother had been estranged from her parents for years, and they were unwilling to consider caring for River, whom they didn’t regard as a grandchild. Soon after her husband’s death, she’d sunk into an addiction she was unwilling or unable to abandon, even though it meant losing her child – a little boy who had no one else to depend on in the world.

Except for me.

‘What are we supposed to say to a kid who doesn’t talk?’ Reid asks, finally, all hints of his earlier levity gone.

‘He can understand what we say. And I brought the Life Book – it’s on the seat behind you.’

He turns to snatch the scrapbook we started when he was here earlier in the week, leafing through the pages as I spot the exit up ahead. ‘This is great, Brooke,’ he murmurs.

‘When I was six or so, Kathryn made me a scrapbook of my own. I was jealous of Kylie and Kelley having books of their baby photos and stories about their first few years of life.’

‘Your mom didn’t make you one?’ he asks, and I glance at him like Really? ‘Guess that’s not much of a surprise.’

Sharla making a scrapbook? Definitely not. ‘Kathryn told me to bring a few photos the next time I came over. Over the next few weeks, I pocketed snapshots of myself that I found in drawers or boxes at home. There weren’t many, even though I was basically an only child. Kathryn bought a handmade journal at some craft fair, stuck glittery pink adhesive letters on the front that spelled out Brooke’s Book, and composed the story of me.’

I haven’t thought of that thing in years. I’d forgotten about it until just now.

‘Do you still have it? My mom’s definitely not crafty, but she kept photo albums of my childhood. Up until I was ten, anyway.’

I bite my lip until it goes numb. ‘No. I don’t have it. I made the mistake of taking it home. Sharla found it. She was furious. Ripped the pages out and tore up all the pictures.’

‘Holy shit, Brooke.’ He stares at me. ‘That’s f**ked up.’

‘Yeah. What a great role model for a mom, huh?’

His hand clenches into a fist on the console between us. ‘Your role model is Kathryn, not Sharla. You know that, right?’

I did know that, somewhere in my head. I’d just never acknowledged it consciously.

‘Yeah. You’re right.’

I turn down a street of analogous one-storey homes, all of them small, each with a big front yard, a driveway on the right-hand side and a cyclone fence. A few pecan trees and crepe myrtles dot the landscape here and there, but this flat stretch of acreage was probably reclaimed farmland when the subdivision was built, so there were no old oaks, like those surrounding Kathryn and Glenn’s place.

‘This is it,’ I whisper, spotting the mailbox house number, which is surrounded by a hand-painted swirling heart motif. My heart thumps so hard that I feel each beat like someone is pounding on my chest from the inside, trying to escape. My hands grow cold, though it’s a beautiful late-winter day, the temperature in Austin within a degree or two of LA.

As we walk up the long, cracked sidewalk, I alternate between examining the chalked pictures and inscriptions decorating the concrete and staring at the quiet little house I recognize from the photo Bethany Shank brought to me not even two months ago. Reid, silent and following me, takes my hand as we reach the front door. He removes his sunglasses and I remove mine, and for a moment we stare at each other. I’ve never seen him look so resolute.

‘Here we go,’ he says, pushing the doorbell. At the echo of chimes inside the house, my heart rate surges. Reid squeezes my hand and says, ‘It’s all good, Brooke. We can do this.’