Chapter 9 - Bea #2
Linda and Stanley Fields. I remember first meeting them.
He had the beginnings of a portly belly and a kind, round face.
I recall thinking that he’d make an excellent department store Santa - just give him the suit and a fake beard.
Linda was taller and slimmer, though she still looked like she was no stranger to the kitchen.
Both of them were perhaps around their early forties.
They spoke to me like I’d known them all my life.
Stanley showed me photos of the baby changing table and crib set he’d made by hand. Linda made me a cake.
They had apparently just finished a stint of fostering kids of all ages - from newborns to teenagers.
I was still young enough to potentially be one of their foster kids at the time.
And I remember for a brief moment, feeling hopeful that they might take both me and the baby.
But no. My Aunt knew they were thinking of adopting after too many short-term fosters.
Saying goodbye to the little ones over and over must’ve been especially hard.
They wanted a baby to call their own, and mine was a possibility.
I don’t even think I was showing by then.
Over the next few months, I got to know Linda and Stanley fairly well.
They visited often, and I was invited to see their pretty little farmhouse too.
I distinctly remember thinking it was like something out of a picture book - one where all the animals can talk, and children go off on adventures to save the day.
I also remember thinking that the Fields seem like the type of people who don’t make rash choices or wrong decisions like I had.
Linda was clever enough to have been a teacher, and Stanley could make furniture with his own hands, for God’s sake.
“They were really nice - loving,” I continue after taking a sip of water. “The couple - they couldn’t have children of their own, but they really wanted one. When my daughter was born, she became their daughter.”
Zyntarr’s wings flare a little and his head jerks. “They stole her from your arms?”
“No,” I snort softly. “Mom didn’t really give me a choice. I had to give her away. I was only young myself. I couldn’t look after a baby alone.”
“Where was the male who sired your youngling?” Zyn asks, his good eye narrowing.
Shaking my head, I tell him, “he didn’t want to get involved.
” Zyntarr’s brow furrows so deeply, it shifts his eye-patch a little.
He frowns, his mouth opening to talk, but I beat him to it; “I don’t expect you to understand.
I don’t expect anyone to understand. Things are different back home, and when you’re young.
It… It was the hardest thing I ever had to do. ”
I wet my lips, trying to ignore the echoes of my mother’s voice telling me what a stupid, lustful thing I am to have made such a choice with that kind of boy.
“Daisy, they called her. Daisy Fields,” I say, forcing a weak smile on my lips.
Stanley had suggested the name, and Linda had pointed out how it went with their last name.
They both got the giggles after that and dismissed the option.
But they kept coming back to it - even asked me to suggest some names while I sat at the dining table Stanley made, eating Linda’s delicious pot roast. I couldn’t think of any - didn’t want to.
And they just couldn’t let go of ‘Daisy Fields’.
She even sounds like a character from a children’s book.
Like she wasn’t even real at all - just a figment of our imagination or the star of a movie.
It had been the right thing to do for her. I know that. Linda, Stanley and their little Daisy. As much as it felt wrong to hand her over, it felt right to hand her to them.
“If only I had listened to that screaming voice in my head,” I say out loud without realizing, my vision glazing over, remembering how I’d felt so numb when mom came to pick me up and take me home again. Just me. No baby.
Zyn is quiet like he often is. On the odd occasion I’d considered telling someone about my past, I’d always imagined that I would want them to rush to comfort me with their words.
Console me that I was only young and I did the right thing for Daisy in the end.
But I can tell by the way his skin-stars are swaying at his temples and how his scarred brow pinches that he’s taking his time to really digest what I’ve told him.
I wonder if he sees it now - the way babies and pregnancies bring it all back for me.
How I want to be happy for everyone - how I am happy for them, but how it’s difficult for me, too.
Eventually, he breaks his silence with a grunt to clear his throat. “If you had listened to that voice, little Bea, then a ‘nice, loving’ mated pair of humans would not have their daughter to love,” Zyn tells me, accompanied by an upward swish of his tufted tail.
“I… I guess you could look at it like that.” They were so very… capable. And happy. They wanted her so much.
I still feel guilt over not really feeling the same. I’m sure that would have come in time if I had been given the support to keep her, but in reality, in those few moments I had with her in my arms after the birth, all I felt was fear.
Sometimes, when I look back to that time in my life, I think maybe I dreamt it all - just imagined the whole thing because it doesn’t feel real.
But then I’ll look at the fading silvery stretchmarks on my stomach, and I remember that it definitely was.
She was there. And those marks are like her own little graffiti tags - little scarred signatures to remind me of her.
Linda and Stanley would send me letters periodically as she grew.
Sometimes there were photos. But then Mom found out about them, and she contacted the Fields to ask them to stop.
The last one they sent was when she was two and a half.
They told me she was developing an obsession with ponies and they were going to get her one for the farm.
Each letter had read like they were trying to prove to me how they’re being beyond perfect parents for their little Daisy - like they were trying to show me that I’d made the right choice for her. I don’t think they knew that I didn’t need much convincing.
“You weigh every decision as if the outcome could result in something such as this?” Zyntarr asks, his voice soft and low, like it’s rumbling straight from his chest. His tail flicks again as he waits for my reply.
“I…” my words cut off in a sigh. “It’s just better if it’s clear what the right choice is.
The right thing to do. Or better still, someone else makes the choice for me.
” I glance down at where I’d been idly doodling lines in the sandy ground.
I’d been drawing daisies without realising.
“If it’s not clear what the right thing to do is, I just end up freezing.
Doing nothing is better than doing the wrong thing,” I say, wiping the sand-daisies away. “I don’t want to mess up again.”
A gentle warm hand slides beneath my chin so that Zyntarr can direct me to lift my gaze up to his.
He doesn’t say anything straight away, though.
First, his beautiful blue eye studies me, the muscle in his jaw ticking as he looks me over.
His hand is so massive at my chin, his thumb and fingers can reach right up under from one ear to the other.
There’s a strong temptation on my end to just lean into his touch - rest the weight of my head on his palm.
“There is not always a wrong and right thing to do in life, little Bea,” he tells me, glancing down briefly to re-draw my crude daisy shapes in the sand again.
“The choices of our past are what make us. We sit with them now. The good, and the bad.”
I swallow thickly, sure that he can feel the movement in my throat as he continues to hold my face.
I wet my lips, a tingle running through me when Zyn’s good eye drops to follow the movement.
There’s a delicious warmth low in my belly when we’re close like this, but my voice is shaky and hoarse when I say, “I just don’t want to make any more bad choices. ”
Zyntarr is still staring at my mouth when he asks, “am I a bad choice, little Bea?”
And suddenly, that warm, delicious feeling, is no longer a pleasant kind of warmth.
It’s hot like burning shame. Just the thought that he thinks that I’m hesitant to move forward because of him is filling me with guilt.
“Zyntarr, no-” I shake my head and take the hand that had been holding my jaw into both of mine. “I don’t mean-”
“I know I am not a whole male for you, my Bea,” he says, voice quiet, gaze dropped to where I clutch at his hand.
“But I would protect you, and honor you. You would not want for anything as my mate. If you choose to accept my seed for a youngling, you would not be left alone, like with the other male.” He pauses to grind his teeth together, his hand curling into a fist. “You would not be forced or shamed for anything, like with your mother. They should not have done that to you.”
Shaking my head, I slide my hands away from his. “It’s fine.”
“No, it is not,” Zyntarr quietly growls. “You may be afraid to make choices, little Bea. But you are not making them alone. Not anymore.”
My breath catches in my throat at that.
Does he really mean it?