Like Dandelion Dust (17 page)

That’s when Jonah started talking out loud, just like there was someone standing right there to talk to. Only there wasn’t anyone in the room but themselves.

“Dear God, it’s me, Jonah. Thank You for this day and for my house and my mommy and my daddy and my cousin, Joey. But not really Cammie, because she told on me.” He thought for a minute. “Okay, thank You for Cammie, too. But please make her turn into a nice sister tomorrow. Help us be safe, God. Gee this name, amen.”

Joey waited a second. “Amen.” It seemed like the thing to say. But Joey stayed awake for a long time that night thinking about the prayer. Jonah was lucky that he had someone as big as God to talk to. And every night! Joey was going to go home the next day and ask his mommy to teach him how to talk to God.

But the next day came, and he forgot.

Only now, maybe that’s ’zactly what he should do. Jonah didn’t use any special words when he talked to God. Joey looked out the window. He felt like crying again, but he didn’t. “Dear God . . .” He breathed a few hard breaths. “Hi, this is Joey. I’m a’scared because tomorrow I’m getting on an airplane with a strange lady to see a strange mommy and daddy and I don’t even know them.” His words were little whispers, and they ran together like a long train. He blinked and waited, in case God wanted to say something back.

He didn’t hear anything.

“God, I need someone to talk to ’cause I don’t really want to go on the trip with the strange lady.” He had an idea. One that made him feel just a little bit of happy inside. “How ’bout You go with me, God? You’re invisible so no one would even care if You came, too.” He thought some more. “Maybe You could even sit beside me. ’Cause that would make me get back home a little faster I think.”

The scared in him seemed a little less. He yawned and remembered. “Oh, yeah. I forgot the last part. Gee this name, amen.”

There. That was a real prayer, ’cause it sounded just like something Jonah would say. He yawned again. Sleep was coming. He still didn’t want to go with the strange lady to the place called Ohio and maybe to a teepee. But if God would go with him, then maybe it wouldn’t seem so bad.

One more thought came into his head.

“P.S. God . . . thank You for my mommy and daddy and Gus. Because they’re the bestest family in the whole wide world.” After that he felt a little smile on his face. He put his arm around Gus, and in a little bit of time he was sleepy.

Just like it was any other normal night.

Chapter Thirteen

A
t five o’clock that morning, Molly sat straight up in bed and gripped the down blanket close to her chest. Her sides heaved as if she were running a marathon. And she was. The marathon of surviving the past week, the race for a way to keep Joey home, to stop him from getting on a plane in just a few hours and leaving for Ohio.

But it was too late. All the running and striving and planning amounted to nothing. Joey was packed, ready to leave, and in five hours he would walk out their door. She relaxed her grip on the sheets and looked at Jack. He was sleeping still, though neither of them had more than a few hours’ at a time before reality jolted them awake, forcing them to go through the possibilities one more time.

Molly crept out of bed and walked to the bathroom. She stared at herself in the mirror. Who would she be if she wasn’t Joey’s mommy? Her chest tightened and she banished the thought. It was one visit—just one night. He’d be home tomorrow. She showered and dressed, and at least six times a minute she wondered if she’d ever be able to draw a full breath again. She needed sleep, needed a good meal.

She needed Joey.

Her heart beat hard against her chest, so loud she wondered if it would wake Jack. She tiptoed down the hall. Joey’s door was open. She took a few quiet steps inside and held her breath. Gus was stretched out along the wall, and Joey was curled up, soft little snoring sounds coming from his mouth. Mr. Monkey and Mr. Growls were tucked in close to his chest. Maybe it was her imagination, but in the shadowy early morning it looked like he was smiling.
Poor baby . . .
Chills came over her and she folded her arms.
You don’t have any idea why you’re leaving today.
How could he possibly understand?

For a moment she considered crawling into bed beside him, but there wasn’t room. Besides, she didn’t want to wake him. Morning would come soon enough. Instead she stood there, barely able to think, teeth chattering, and watched him. Every memory took a turn playing on the screen of her mind. He was big now, but the face was the same one she used to watch sleep when he was an infant, when he first came home to them.

She would wake up in the middle of the night and think she heard his cry. Then she’d creep into his room and look at him. Just watch him, watch his little chest moving up and down, up and down, up and down. Just in case, sometimes she’d hold her fingers a few inches from his nose. Only when she felt his warm damp breath would she take a step back and smile, relieved. He was a wonder boy, a sunbeam, and as long as he was sleeping down the hall, as long as he was okay, she, too, could sleep.

It was the same way all through his baby time and his toddler days. Some nights she wouldn’t feel peace, couldn’t find sleep, until she spent a few minutes watching him, listening to him breathe. Tears stung her eyes. It wasn’t even possible that tonight he’d be sleeping in another state.

She moved closer, stooped down, and studied him some more. He was beautiful, a piece of stardust with a heart laced firmly to her own. Maybe if morning never came, if she could stop time and keep ten o’clock from ever crashing in on them . . . She leaned down and gave him the softest kiss on his cheek. “Don’t wake up, baby. Not yet.”

She straightened. What else could she do? Her fingers trembled, her heart pounding harder than before. Then it hit her. The baseboards needed cleaning. She left Joey’s room, padded downstairs, flipped on the lights, and looked around. Twice a week a housekeeper put in three hours doing the tougher jobs, so there wasn’t much mess to take care of.

But the baseboards . . . They hadn’t been cleaned in six months at least.

She poured a bowl of warm soapy water, found a rag, and quietly moved to the far end of the house. She stooped down, dipped the rag into the water, and wrung it out. The house was still, silent. As if all of her existence were holding its breath in anticipation of the terror that lay ahead.

How could it have come to this? Jack had called every attorney in the state—everyone who might handle an adoption case—and all of them had said the same thing. Fraud in the original documents meant that those documents were nullified. As if they’d never been signed at all.

“Think of it this way,” one attorney told Jack. “You were lucky to have the boy for four years.”

Molly put her shoulders into the task and rubbed at the first section of baseboard. Lucky to have him for four years? Was the world really that insane? Were people really that insensitive? Adoption didn’t mean a lesser bond with a child. It was a bond she and Jack had chosen, and it was no different than if she’d birthed Joey herself. He was their son. Nothing could be more clear and obvious.

She scrubbed farther down the baseboard, all her fear and frustration and fury directed at whatever dirt had dared to accumulate there. She and Jack and Gus were all the family Joey had ever known. He was too young to understand about adoption, so when this came up—when it was clear that they had no choice about the impending first visit—they told him the only thing they could. A judge wanted him to take a trip, and so he had to take it.

He was scared to death.

They could both see that. Last night when they tucked him in, he hugged Molly’s neck longer than usual. “How ’bout you go with me, Mommy? Would that be okay?” He looked at Jack. “Or you, Daddy. They wouldn’t care if I brought you, would they?”

She and Jack were out of answers. How were they supposed to tell him that his birth parents wanted him back, that he had a biological father somewhere who was just released from prison, a guy who liked to hit people—especially his wife?

And now a judge was making him visit those same people.

It made no sense no matter how they looked at it. They could hardly expect Joey to make sense of it, or to find peace in their answers. Instead he tried to be brave. Jack sat on the edge of his bed and stroked his hair. “It’ll be a short trip, sport.”

Joey nodded. He sucked on his lower lip, probably trying not to cry. “Okay.”

But what must he think about the whole thing? She put the rag back in the water, swished it around, and wrung it out again. What sort of parents let a stranger take their little boy to another state? Even if she was a social worker? Joey wouldn’t understand that.

Molly scrubbed the next section of baseboard. She replayed the conversation she’d had with Jack in the park that day, the first time they were forced to realize the truth about the situation: that it was more than a slight wrinkle in their plans—it was a machete positioned directly over their family.
We can leave the country, Molly . . . disappear . . .
With every day that passed, she’d given his idea more thought. At first she’d figured he was delusional, crazy with fear and grief, the way she was. But he’d made it clear since then. He was absolutely serious.

The decision was Molly’s. If she gave her okay, Jack would set the plan in motion, and sometime before Joey’s fourth visit, the three of them would disappear. Like Joey’s dandelion dust. She slid across the floor a few feet and rubbed out a dirt smudge on the shiny white wall. No smudges—not here and not in their life. Everything had been perfect, hadn’t it? What happened to the pixie dust?

God . . . what about Beth’s prayer?
Molly barely spoke the words, and once she’d said them she blew at a stray piece of hair on her cheek. What had Beth said? People who prayed could at least be sure of God’s will. Sometimes God gave people the answer they wanted and sometimes He didn’t. But either way, if you talked to God about it, the outcome would be in line with His will.

At least that was the way Beth saw it.

Jack’s take was entirely different. They’d had the conversation three nights ago. “God’s will?” He laughed and raked his fingers through his hair. “Are you kidding? You want me to wait around for God’s will when my son’s future is at stake?”

Molly didn’t know what to say. “It’s not my idea, it’s Beth’s.”

“Well.” Jack rolled his eyes. “I think we both know about Beth and Bill. They’re a couple of religious fanatics, Molly. We can’t let them sway us now. We have to do something before we run out of time.”

“But if God wants us to have Joey, Beth says everything’ll work out somehow.”

“Look, Beth is not the one about to lose her son.” Jack lowered his voice. He took her hands and begged her with his eyes. “Please, Molly. Don’t consider such a thing. Besides . . . what if God’s will is for the Porters to have him?”

That was something Molly hadn’t thought about. She figured that if God could see the big picture—the way Beth believed He could—then He would know implicitly that Joey belonged with them. Certainly the child didn’t belong with a convicted felon, a man given to violence. Right?

The conversation about God died there. She and Jack had been on edge, but they’d agreed not to fight. There was no point. They needed each other now more than ever. Molly didn’t push the issue, and last night after they tucked Joey in for bed, Jack gently pulled her into his arms. “Help me, Molly.” His voice cracked as he spoke into her hair. He held her tighter than usual. “I’m out of options. I don’t know what to do.”

Neither did she. The tears had been nearly constant, and they came again now as she scrubbed the baseboards. She wiped her eyes with her sleeve since her hands were both wet with soapy water. Allyson Bower would be there in less than four hours, and their precious Joey would walk out the door with her. They could do nothing now to stop the visit from happening.

Molly kept cleaning, working the rag painstakingly over every inch of baseboard until it was cleaner than it had ever been. The project killed two hours. Just as she was finishing, she heard Joey’s voice upstairs.

“Mommy! Mommy, where are you?”

Every morning he fell out of bed, and before he rubbed his eyes or took a first look at the world, he stumbled down the hall and crawled in bed between them. Gus was usually not far behind. It was their special way of waking up, with Joey snuggled in the middle, whispering good morning first to his daddy, then to her. She dropped the rag in the soapy water and turned toward the sound of his voice. He must’ve gone into their room and seen she wasn’t there. Now he was wandering the hall looking for her.

She stood and felt a sudden pain in her knees. All that time kneeling without once taking a break—of course they hurt. “Joey . . . I’m down here.”

“Mommy!” She heard his feet padding down the stairs. He came into sight, his eyes still only half open. He was wearing his basketball pajamas, one of the few pairs he owned that still had feet sewn into them. He held his arms out and took little running steps to her. “Mommy, there you are!”

She stooped back down and held him close, ignoring her knees. With his little body tight against hers, she rocked him and whispered near his ear, “I’m here, baby. I didn’t go anywhere.”

“I thought the strange lady came and took you instead.” He pulled back and looked at her. Confusion filled his expression, and he blinked a few times, trying to wake up. “But you’re still here.”

“Ah, Joey . . .” She hated having to hesitate, because the words she was about to say might not be true. But she spoke them anyway. “I’ll always be here, buddy. No matter what.”

Jack came down then, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. Their eyes met, and she could see his were swollen. “Good morning.” His tone was subdued, the desperation barely hidden.

“Morning.” She stood up and found a smile for Joey. “Let’s cook your favorite breakfast.”

“Blueberry French toast?” He jumped up a few times. But the excitement in his face faded almost as soon as it appeared. “You mean a’cause I’m leaving on a trip?”