3. Tessa #2
“I don’t,” Tessa confirmed, dipping into thoughts she sometimes had.
“I won’t ask because I know Dusty would never break the therapist/patient confidentiality.
Whatever is going on with Morgan, it’s not for me to know.
Of course, I do know her tragedy—the loss of her husband and parents when Olive was a newborn—but I don’t know how that’s impacted Morgan or why she’s made the decision to give Olive up for adoption. ”
Lynda’s eyes shuttered at the mention of the tragedy that no young girl should ever have to endure.
Tessa felt her whole body soften as she continued. “All I knew was that she needed to go to an in-patient facility, and needed someone to watch Olive while she did. Dusty’s right—I suggested a short-term solution. And…the rest kind of just happened.”
“The rest?” Lynda asked.
Tessa smiled. “Olive stole our hearts,” she admitted. “But we more than willingly gave her back when Morgan left the treatment center. Then…”
“Then she tried, and failed, to keep Olive,” Lynda finished, confirming that she likely knew a lot more than Tessa realized about all of this.
“I’ve personally met with Morgan a number of times.
She’s been clear and consistent through two stints in residential care, and she’s held to her decision longer than most birth mothers in similar circumstances.
That matters. That matters a great deal. ”
Tessa let out a breath. “I was a birth mother,” she whispered, the words coming out before she even took the smallest second to edit herself.
Lynda looked at her, a brow rising. “You were?”
Tessa swallowed and nodded. “When I was twenty-five, the result of a, uh, brief relationship with a man whose last name I never knew.” Brief, she thought, as in one night. She couldn’t bring herself to say that out loud.
Lynda stared at her, no judgment in her eyes, just interest. Was telling her the biggest mistake Tessa had ever made? There was no law compelling her to reveal this, but she needed to let Lynda know she understood the magnitude and agony of the decision.
“I sought help from my father, who came down to Florida and helped arrange a closed adoption for my son.”
“Did you have contact with your child?” Lynda asked.
Tessa felt a smile pull. “I did not, but someone I confided in decided to take matters into her own hands.”
Lynda’s brown eyes widened. “In a closed adoption?”
“Yes, but it’s fine. Roman is…” She gave a soft laugh and glanced at Dusty. “My biological son walked me down the aisle yesterday and is now engaged to that very young lady I’d taken into my confidence. He’s family and we’re good.”
“Oh.” Lynda leaned back, taking a sip of coffee as though she had to digest this new information. “How lovely for you,” she said. “It could have ended…badly.”
Tessa nodded in agreement. “I respect that there are times in a woman’s life, and circumstances as tragic as Morgan’s would certainly qualify, that raising a child safely is impossible.”
“Thank you for sharing, Tessa,” the other woman said. “And Dusty?” She turned to him. “Can you answer a question for me?”
“Of course.”
“When did you stop being her therapist? Not on paper but in your mind. Was there a moment, even a small one, where the line got blurry between caring for her as a clinician and caring for her child as a future parent?”
Dusty held very still.
“I’m not looking for a perfect answer,” Lynda said. “I’m looking for an honest one.”
“I’m still her therapist,” he finally said. “I’m not treating her, but I know her and am deeply familiar with her case. I can tell you that she’ll always be welcome in our home and in Olive’s life. We plan to be entirely honest with Olive when she’s old enough to understand.”
Lynda finally opened the folder. “Thank you for your candor,” she said, picking up her pen to mark something on what looked like a checklist. “Now, tell me—”
The question was interrupted by Olive’s wee voice coming over the baby monitor.
“Tess-Tess?”
Tessa felt her whole being change, and didn’t bother to try and hide her smile. The sound shot a joy through her she couldn’t describe.
“Excuse me,” she said, already on her feet. “My heart is awake.”
She heard Lynda chuckle softly behind her.
Outside, in the September sun, she took the side stairs two at a time. The Gulf stretched beyond her, wide and deceptively calm, with that hard pewter line on the horizon, a storm beyond their visibility.
Her own hurricane brewed in her heart. Hurricane Lynda. She looked calm, quiet, and nothing like a cat five, but that woman had so much power.
Upstairs, Olive had stayed in her toddler bed, as Tessa had trained her to do. Her hair was a wild halo of curls, and she had her pink stuffed flamingo in a chokehold, blinking at Tessa with a mix of outrage—What took so long?—and relief.
“Olive Oyl.” Tessa scooped her up, fully aware that every word spoken could be heard by Lynda. Didn’t matter. Nothing would change. “Why are you so beautiful, my princess?”
“Tess-Tess.”
“Yes, baby.”
“Wingo.” Olive shoved the flamingo at Tessa’s face.
“Hello, Wingo.” Tessa kissed Olive’s head, then the stuffed animal, whose name had migrated from Flamingo to Mingo to Wingo, where it currently stayed.
“Tess-Tess.” She flopped her head on Tessa’s shoulder.
“Baby girl.” Tessa pressed her face into the sweet scent of Olive’s neck, the smell of sleep and warm cotton, and felt something in her chest unclench a quarter of an inch.
“Guess what? A nice lady is here to meet you. That’s the good news. The bad? We’re out of blueberries.”
A little lower lip stuck out, then her whole sweet face broke into a smile. “Cheewios?”
Oh, dear. She probably shouldn’t eat those. She glanced at the monitor. “How about a nice sugar-free banana?”
“Gol’ fish?”
Yikes. “Come on, you little mercenary. There’s a banana waiting for you.”
“Nana!” She giggled, somehow so smart she could play games already.
“Let’s go.” Tessa smoothed her hair and checked her Pull-Up. “Let’s stop in the potty like a big girl and then meet Miss Lynda and show her what our best behavior looks like.”
Best behavior was flexible, but Olive woke up happy after a nap, so Tessa felt confident as she carried her down the outside stairs, letting the salt air clear her head. When she walked in, Lynda and Dusty were laughing about something.
That was good.
“Honey, this is Miss Lynda.”
Olive stared at her and walked into the living room, slowly but with interest.
“Hello, Olive,” Lynda said. “How was your nap?”
She walked right up to Lynda and held her hand to the woman’s face. “Pwetty.”
“Like chocolate, huh?” Lynda responded with a laugh. “You’re pretty, too.”
“I swear I didn’t tell her to say that,” Tessa joked. “But points to you, Double O.”
She’d magically broken the tension and a few minutes later, they all sat at the kitchen table, talking while Olive ate a chopped ’nana and Wingo’s foot.
Following a checklist she didn’t really need, Lynda asked about routines, about phone calls with Morgan, about the construction timeline. She occasionally got up and looked around, not asking for permission, but it seemed fine.
Tessa told her about her flexible hours at her small event-planning company, and Dusty showed her his office, and finally, the conversation turned to the storm.
“I assume you have an evacuation plan in place for the beast they’re calling Norman,” she said. “Because this house is horribly vulnerable.”
“We do,” Dusty assured her. “I’ve already made reservations at three hotels and will choose depending on the path of the storm.”
She nodded. “Good. Because you will not, under any circumstances, stay in this house with Olive even if this beach is a hundred miles from the eye. Not negotiable.”
“Understood,” Dusty said.
She closed her folder and smiled at Olive. “What is your favorite part about living here, Olive?” she asked with a sweet, toddler-friendly voice.
“Bu-berries,” she said without hesitation. “And Tess-Tess.”
Tessa’s heart folded in half. “I paid her to say that,” she teased, tapping Olive’s nose. “There’s extra bubbles in your bath tonight, love bug.”
Lynda smiled at the exchange and stood, ending the meeting. Dusty took the job of getting Olive safely down from her booster chair while Tessa walked Lynda to the door.
“We’ll watch the storm closely,” Tessa assured her, the “not negotiable” comment still echoing. “And when can we expect to hear from you?”
“When you least expect it,” Lynda replied, tempering the comment with a smile.
“Gotcha.”
On the front step, Lynda paused. She looked at Tessa for a long beat with an expression Tessa couldn’t quite read.
“I want this to work,” Lynda said.
“Oh.” Tessa felt her eyes sting. “So do we.”
“I don’t see any red flags, Tessa. The two of you are good with her. She’s attached. The dual-relationship piece is real but it’s addressable.”
“But?”
“But anything can go wrong,” she said flatly.
“Morgan can change her mind tomorrow. Florida adoption courts are not bound to anyone’s timeline.
The judge could decide that a fifty-year-old couple in a half-finished beach house in hurricane season needs a longer evaluation, including a structural inspection and a review of your insurance.
The next home visit could turn up something I didn’t see today. ”
Each warning hit like a bullet to her heart. “Okay,” Tessa said, feeling weak.
“You just take care of that little girl,” Lynda concluded, her voice much softer. “She obviously loves you.”
Clinging to the statement, Tessa stood in the open doorway and watched her go.
Behind her, in the kitchen, she heard Dusty say, “Sure, you can have Cheerios. And then we’ll have a family trip to Publix to buy blueberries and the last bottle of water on the shelf.”
Good heavens, she couldn’t love him more. Or Olive. Or this life she was trying so hard to build.
She stared at the horizon, thinking of all the storms that threatened.
“Please, Norman,” she said softly. “Please stay away.”