Like Sweet Potato Pie (42 page)

“So what did you want to talk to me about?” Adam’s breath misted as he stood with me off to the side of Tim’s truck. Engine running, sending up puffs of exhaust into the barren overhead limbs. A lantern bleeding pallid light across a sparkling snowdrift.

I put my hands in my pockets and turned to face him, hating to burst Tim and Becky’s hopeful bubble with sour news. “I’m leaving.”

“You mean like for a vacation?” Adam’s brow quirked.

“No. For good.” I pressed my lips together in the cold, looking away. “I’ve applied for a job at
Yomiuri Shimbun
in Osaka.”

The look that spread across Adam’s face made me stare down at my feet.

“What? You mean you’re …?” He shifted there in the lantern light, the glow illuminating the hard lines of his eyes. “But you don’t even know if you’ve got the job or not! I mean, I know it’s what you’ve always wanted, but I thought …” His mouth hung open.

“I know the editor.” I brushed my hair out of my face, shivering. “He just became editor last year, and he’s always loved my work. He said”—my voice cracked, and I cleared my throat to steady it—“He said that job announcement expired ages ago, and they still haven’t hired anyone. But the job is in the bag if I want it.”

“You called him?” Adam sounded angry. Or grief-torn. I couldn’t tell which. But his arms crossed tightly across his dark coat.

“Yes, I did. Now I just have to wait for some interviews and things. And then they’ll … well, they’ll send tickets.” I swallowed hard. “I’m sorry, Adam. I didn’t plan on things being … you know. This way.” I scuffed my shoe in the snow. “I’ll have to find a home for Christie, and …” My voice trailed off. “I’m sorry.”

Adam stood silent a long time, looking down at me with an expressionless mask. Swallowing.

“So you’re going to go if they offer you the job?”

“Yes. I’ve decided. Staunton just isn’t for me, Adam. I can’t stay here.”

Tears had formed in the corners of his eyes, and he threw out his arms. “What about your house? You’re just going to leave it?”

“No. I’m going to lose it in March anyway.”

“Lose it? Why?”

“I just … am.”

Adam gave a sort of angry snort and turned away, stamping the snow off his boots. “Is Japan what you really want, Shiloh? I mean, I tried to …”

I froze, unable to move a muscle. Thinking of how thousands of times I’d played that question over in my mind, always ending with
yes.
And suddenly I couldn’t answer.

“I hope we can still be friends,” I replied instead, tears spilling cold onto my cheek.

And with that, Adam put his hands in his pockets and stormed into the house, leaving me standing there in the snow.

T
here they are! I see them!” Todd called from the darkening window, face pressed toward the outside. A ring of condensation where his breath touched the cold glass.

“They’re here?” I leaned forward, looping my purse over my shoulder. My scarf draped over my arm, limp as my legs from a long and sleepy wait.

Our little welcoming party in the University of Virginia Medical Center had grown: Adam and Vanna and Todd, plus Faye, plus Tim Sr. and Jeanette, plus Becky’s parents, Tina and Pal. We probably looked ridiculous—all jabbering over a baby that might not be the answer to our prayers, and nobody knowing quite what to say. And yet every last one of us giddy with nerves, hiding smiles, tense with roiling delight just under the surface.

The sliding glass doors opened, and in strode Tim and Becky, looking nervous and out of place in their simple winter coats, heads gawking at the enormous, high-tech lobby. Tim’s polished cowboy boots under dress pants. Becky’s smiling mouth, coral-colored with fresh lipstick.

We all rose as if watching a bride escorted into the church.

Walking beside them, nodding and laughing, came a small, curly-haired woman who we assumed represented the adoption agency. Her friendly face and gentle manner instantly put us all at ease.

“I’m Hannah,” she said, her brown eyes sparkling as she shook our hands one by one. “It’s so nice of you all to come. Are you family or friends?”

“Family,” said Becky firmly before we could respond. Cheeks white and pink with cold, bright pink scarf tied firmly around her neck. “All of ‘em.”

I felt my breath catch in my throat, shallow-breathed. The way I’d felt when Faye asked me to be her bridesmaid.

My eyes found Adam’s from across the room, and he gave me a brief smile before looking away. I smiled back then glanced away, too, catching my fingers together to hide the emptiness I felt. Remembering his voice over the phone on Sunday afternoon, as I stood at the kitchen window looking out over lifeless trees.

“I’m sorry about the way I acted, Shiloh,” he’d said. After I’d skipped church and spent the day praying, putting my final résumé together and even packing up a few boxes. “I just wasn’t expecting you to move back to Japan so suddenly. Not in a million years.”

I didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry, too,” I replied. “I guess things sometimes work out differently than we expect.” I wanted to say “hope” instead of “expect,” but I refrained.

“I wish you the best. Of course we’ll be friends. It might be a little awkward for a while, but we can do this.”

“Thanks, Adam.” I stood there holding the phone, thinking of a thousand words I wanted to say but couldn’t. And hung up the phone as a dull chill settled over the house. I felt ready to move suddenly—ready to pack up and leave this portion of my life behind me for good.

I’d accomplished what I’d come for in Virginia—to settle my past and deal with Mom’s house. To restart my life. And now it was time to go.

“What a wonderful and supportive family you have,” Hannah was saying to Becky, and I looked up, surprised to find Adam’s eyes still on me. They bounced away quickly, as did mine. “You’re a lucky couple, that’s for sure. I’ve never seen so many family members at a meeting like this!”

Tim looked around at all of us, and down at Becky, then slid his arm around her. “I know,” he said mistily. “We call it blessed.”

Tim Sr. swallowed hard and blinked, and Jeanette reached into her purse for tissues.

As if on cue, Hannah opened her arms in a happy gesture. “Ready?”

Tim grinned. “Let’s git this show on the road.”

We followed Hannah up to the counter and showed our IDs then crowded in the elevator in two trips and stopped when the lighted number dinged overhead. We walked up corridor after corridor until we came to the sterile neonatal unit, softened by pictures of the little patients pasted on snowflakes. Then we washed our hands in a long sink and put on clean medical scrubs, all of us.

“We can’t go in all at once, so maybe Tim and Becky can call you in separately,” directed Hannah in her scrubs, looking nonplussed as if she did this all the time. “We’ll let them go first and start from there.”

We plastered ourselves to the neonatal window, peering in over the rows of tiny babies, doll-like, sleeping in miniature cribs and incubators. Tubes and poles and monitors lighting up with numbers lined the room. Walls decorated with little lambs and angels in soft pastels, a sharp contrast to the room’s startling, hard lines of white and silver.

I put my arm on Todd’s shoulder and watched a tiny girl with pale brown hair squirm in an incubator, red-faced, almost too small to be real. Courtney, perhaps? My heart fluttered. She flailed fists, hooked up to so many tubes my hands clenched in sympathy.

But of course not. The hospital wouldn’t release a child in such precarious condition.

We fell silent, watching as Tim and Becky entered in their scrubs, looking around with nervous eyes. They followed Hannah through the maze of cribs, and she paused to speak to several nurses on duty. Nodding and gesturing.

Then Hannah smiled and stepped forward, motioning with her arm.

We rushed to the next window, still trying to see, and one of the nurses gathered up a little bundle from the far corner of the room. Something wrapped in a pink blanket.

She lay the bundle in Tim’s arms, and a hush fell over all of us.

There lay Courtney. Skin the color of chocolate, soft black curls covering her tiny head. Her eyes, so full of black lashes, closed in drowsy half sleep. They flickered open, and she blinked, showing the darkest baby eyes I’d ever seen. Tiny pink rosebud lips. She turned slowly from one face to the other and then up into Tim’s upturned face as if trying to understand.

I tried to read Tim’s face, his parted lips and down-turned brow, but I couldn’t tear my eyes from Courtney. Looking up, up—a long inquisitive gaze. She blinked her eyes and squirmed. The she reached out and, as if in slow motion, wrapped one tiny brown hand around his bony white finger.

Tim looked at the baby, then at Becky, and then turned to all of us with a kind of weepy astonishment on his face. He passed a trembling hand over her forehead and through those soft little curls, as if afraid she might break.

I waited for someone to say, “She’s black,” but no one did.

Only Jeanette whispered, “Lands, that’s a pretty child if I ever seen one.” And Pal murmured back his agreement. “So little.”

I couldn’t see through my tears anymore. All my makeup had run into a puddle on the floor probably, or onto my crisp white dress shirt. Adam moved a step closer, and we stood there together, side by side with Faye, unable to tear our eyes away from the glass.

“Would you like to feed her?” One of the nurses held up a bottle, her voice wafting through the open door.

Tim and Becky exchanged glances, and Tim reluctantly (and awkwardly, new father-like) passed the blanket to Becky. Courtney still clutched Tim’s finger, until finally, one by one, the little fingers released.

Becky stared into her face for a moment in awe, tears dripping, and sat down in the rocking chair the nurse indicated. She expertly turned the bottle the correct way, flat part of the nipple down, and gently offered it as Courtney reached out.

We watched as Becky rocked, smoothing the baby’s cheeks with her free hand. Passing her fingertips across the fuzzy curls in a kind of awe, nuzzling the baby toes that poked out from the end of the blanket.

Becky nestled her carefully so as not to jostle her still-floppy neck, face bent close. Voice low and soft. Singing. Becky was singing.

Becky’s going to be a mom.
I knew it. I could feel it. It burst in my heart so strongly I wanted to shout it down the corridor, waking everyone just to tell them the news.

Macy Alyssa
, I wanted to whisper.
Your daughter. The name you chose, flipping through Barnes & Noble baby-name books. It was for her.

We huddled in the hall as Tim and Becky bid the nurses good-bye. The door closed, shutting the sound of monitors and baby cries behind glass. The squeak of the rocker and whir of machines. Leaving us all in the sterile fluorescent glow of the hallway, spotless white, smelling of soap and antiseptic.

We peeled off our scrubs, nobody really knowing what to say.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Becky cast a last glance over her shoulder to see Courtney, wiping her eyes, but the closed door and basinets obscured the crib.

Tim still leaned with both hands at the window, deep in thought.

“You okay?” I put a tentative hand on his arm.

“Huh?” He looked up briefly, trying hard to get back the goofy, carefree smile that usually lined his face. “Oh, yeah. I’m good. I jest …” He looked back through the glass and sighed, fingers tensing. “I ain’t sure if I can do it.” His voice sounded strained.

I caught my breath, feeling the hallway freeze into a hard cube of white. Motionless. “Why not?” Memories of skinheads and Southern sin poured back against my will.

Tim turned to me, and for the first time I saw his watery eyes, all rimmed with red. He played with his jacket lapel, Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed a couple of times before speaking.

“I dunno if I can give her away as a bride.”

Y
ou can thank me now.”

“Thank you? For what, Kyoko?” I’d just plopped down at the computer, Skype ringing for me to answer it. Scarf still wrapped around my neck, and eyes sticky with tears.