‘Not necessarily,’ Eleanor answered calmly. ‘The baby is in ICU at the moment, correct? So the birth mother can’t see him easily. That could work in your favor, especially if you don’t cover any medical expenses once she changes her mind.’ She sounded so cold but in that moment it was what I needed. ‘If you feel you have the relationship,’ Eleanor suggested, ‘and she wants to see you, you could talk to Heather. See what she’s thinking. But be careful.’
‘And after the seventy-two hours? If she doesn’t… surrender?’ I pictured Heather waving a white flag from her hospital bed, a war being waged. Why did it have to be like that? The soft-focus stories I read online made everything seem so amicable, and she and I had reached a certain kind of friendliness, hadn’t we? Now it seemed like so much fakery, even though I felt it at the time. I’m sure I did.
‘There’s not much you can do then,’ Eleanor admitted.
‘But I gave her money,’ I said, even though it wasn’t remotely about the money.
‘You mean you paid for her expenses, I hope,’ Eleanor returned sharply. ‘Any compensation should have gone through the proper channels, Grace. The laws are very strict about how you give money to a birth mother. Trust me, you do not want to look as if you were trying to buy a baby.’
‘I know.’ Guilt and fear prickled through me as I thought about that five grand I’d given Heather. I hadn’t thought it mattered, but what if it jeopardized my case? What if she used my generosity against me, made me seem unfit or even criminal? Everything felt like a minefield, explosions all around me.
‘And what if she does sign the papers after seventy-two hours?’ I asked, trying to focus on the what-ifs, the ones I wanted. ‘Can she still change her mind, even then?’
‘She has forty-five days to reconsider her decision after executing the form. But she’d have to take you to court, and it wouldn’t be a certain outcome for her.’
Or for me. Still, I felt the tiniest bit better. I didn’t think Heather wanted the expense and drama of going to court. But the next three days were critical.
I click my keys to unlock the door to the SUV I bought after Isaac was born. He clambers in the back and I slip into the driver’s seat, steeling myself for what lies ahead. Four excruciating hours of Heather’s overt neediness, her family’s tense silence, my son’s heart-wrenching discomfort. Every month. But that’s going to change. Finally, that’s going to change. Isaac buckles up, and then asks if he can play his iPad, as usual.
‘Why don’t we play the alphabet game?’ I suggest. It’s something we’ve started doing in the last two years, since Isaac learned to read. ‘You go first.’
‘A on Avenue!’
I meet his eyes, the same hazel as Kevin’s, in the rearview mirror. ‘Good one, bud.’
‘Your turn, Mom.’
I never tire of that word. Mom. Me. ‘Hmm, let’s see,’ I say as I turn onto Eighty-Sixth Street. ‘Where am I going to find a B?’
‘Columbus!’ he crows as we drive through the park, toward Columbus Avenue. ‘And C too!’
We’ve finished the game – Z in Zappos on a billboard by the GW Bridge – by the time I turn onto I95, and I relent and let Isaac play on his iPad. I’m used to this hour-long drive to Elizabeth. I’ve made it eighty-two times in the last seven years, eighty-two visits, excruciating for everyone. But maybe this one will be the last, or at least close to it. I can hope.
Seven years ago it was twenty-four endless hours before Heather agreed to see me. I’d gone home, then gone to work because I didn’t know what else to do and I needed to face the partners and Jill, who wouldn’t even meet my eye. I went back to the hospital in the evening, feeling as if I were on an awful loop I was desperate to get off, and yet I still dreaded seeing Heather. Reading the truth in her face, hearing it from her own mouth. Facing the end of everything.
When Heather finally said she would see me, and I cracked open the door to her hospital room and saw her struggling to sit up in bed, I had no idea what to expect. My mouth felt dry and my heart thudded. I ached to see my son, but I didn’t even know if he would be mine. But he felt mine.
‘Don’t sit up, not with your stitches,’ I said, waving her back down with one hand and putting the huge bouquet of flowers that now seemed showy and completely inappropriate on a side table with the other. I’d debated getting the flowers, but it had felt wrong to come empty-handed. ‘How are you feeling?’
Heather’s lips trembled and she pressed them together. ‘I’ve felt better.’
‘I’m sure you have.’ I sat on the edge of the chair near her bed. ‘Have you seen Kevin?’
She nodded jerkily. ‘He was here earlier. My sister watched the girls.’
‘How is… how is the baby?’ The words felt incendiary, but I had to ask. I needed to know.
‘He’s going to be fine.’ Heather turned toward the window, away from me. ‘They’re going to have to keep him in the hospital for a couple of weeks, because of his lungs. And they’d like him to be over five pounds before he… before he goes home.’ Her voice wobbled and she sucked in a hard breath. Tears pricked my eyes and I realized, with a ripple of shock, that they were for Heather.
Underneath my fear and selfish desperation, I ached for her. I knew I couldn’t even begin to imagine what she was feeling, and I was humbled by that knowledge. No matter what I was facing, Heather faced more. And yet maybe it was still all going to be okay for her. Maybe I was the one going home with empty arms and an aching heart.
‘He’s beautiful, you know,’ she said, her voice thick. ‘Tiny but beautiful.’
‘I’m sure he is.’ Now I was the one who sounded like I was going to cry. The two of us broken over this little baby boy we didn’t even know yet but we both loved.
‘I’m not going to change my mind,’ she said, her voice hardening, the threat of tears gone now, her face still turned toward the window. ‘When I first saw him…’ She draws in a quick breath. ‘Well… All you need to know is I’m not going to change my mind. So don’t worry.’ I couldn’t mistake her bitterness, and yet everything in me pulsed with painful relief.
I released my breath in a slow, quiet rush. ‘Thank you.’ I had no other words.