Chapter 53 Daisy - Dreams and Plans
DAISY Dreams and Plans
I needed to call Allison, our social worker.
Because grandmother or not, someone needed to document what had just gone down in my driveway.
But I had a contented baby in one arm, an inconsolable teenager in the other, and so much adrenaline coursing through my body that I wasn’t sure what to do about any of it.
“Sarah,” I said, calmly but firmly. “Look at me.”
Her head remained on my shoulder.
“Look at me,” I repeated.
This time she did. Her eyes were swollen and puffy, and her face was wet with tears and snot. But I was a nurse. Bodily fluids didn’t bother me.
Maisy was still just as calm and happy as could be.
She really was a perfect baby. My heart wrenched at the thought of never seeing her again.
Because, if Cheryl’s outburst in my driveway was to be believed, it wasn’t only that I wouldn’t be adopting her; I would be prevented from ever seeing her again.
“Have you talked to Drew?” I asked.
She nodded and bit her lip. “He was really mad. But we’ve made up.”
I wanted to roll my eyes. Because whether Drew and Sarah were back together was of little consequence to me. “But have you talked about your daughter?”
I had tried to tiptoe around the situation before for purely selfish reasons. I didn’t want Sarah to be reminded that this perfect baby was her daughter. I wanted her to think of her as a problem that needed to be solved. But now that was all over for me. And I needed to know what she was thinking.
She sighed. “Daisy, I think we both know that Drew and I aren’t cut out to be parents right now. Would I love to see my baby grow up? Sure. But I can’t even begin to visualize what that would look like.”
I thought of Julie then, of my own mother down the road, who had probably had a very similar thought process.
It was so immature, so selfish. But, well, I had been seventeen once too.
And, while that whole undeveloped-prefrontal-cortex theory is being called into question in scientific communities, I knew for sure that, whatever the reason, biologically or life-experience driven, teenagers tended not to have the ability to see past what would make them happy right now.
I looked down at Maisy and mused that that was how she had gotten here in the first place.
“So you want Cheryl and Andy to raise her?”
Sarah’s eyes filled again, and she shrugged. “I just don’t know, Daisy. If I had my choice, I think I’d want younger parents for her. But Cheryl and Andy taking the baby means that I at least get to watch her grow up.”
I nodded, feeling the type of devastated resignation I had felt holding baby Brian as he took his last breath. It was over. There was nothing I could do to change that.
“Daisy?” she asked.
“Yeah?”
“Can I… can I hold her?”
I smiled and rearranged this little girl I loved so much into the arms of the young girl who had given birth to her. Sarah looked down into her baby’s face. “I’m so sorry I left you,” she whispered. “I know I haven’t done a good job of showing it, but I love you so much.”
And that’s when I knew that I had to walk away.
Because as much as I loved Maisy, the mother who’d grown her and birthed her loved her too.
I wondered if my biological mother had loved me that much.
It broke my heart that I would never know.
But here, now, I had the opportunity to make sure that Maisy didn’t grow up like I had, wondering about her biological mother.
She should be with her family. It was only right.
I put my arm around Sarah as she cooed to her baby.
And I steeled everything inside myself. It was my job to make sure Maisy had her best possible future.
Sarah too. And it occurred to me that, as much as I had fought against him, Mason just might have been right about everything.
And now he was leaving. And I was too late to tell him how I felt.