32. April 4, Monday #3
Kayla glanced down at the smudges on Zoey’s T-shirt and made a face. “Okay. I love you, but this floor is deeply suspect. Let’s migrate to the couch. We can cry there too. It’s much comfier. And cleaner.”
Zoey let out a half-sob, half-laugh. “You know how to romance a girl.”
“Come on, swamp creature.” Kayla pushed herself up with a grunt and held out both hands.
Zoey let herself be hauled to her feet. Her body protested every movement, but she followed Kayla to the couch and collapsed sideways into the cushions, curling around one of the throw pillows like she might fall apart without something to anchor her.
Somewhere between the second chocolate bar and the fourth round of, “But what if…,” Kayla made coffee—decaf, probably, because she was cruel—and they had opened a new box of tissues.
“I wanted him,” she whispered. “Making him smile just…lit me up. It made me feel like I was actually doing something good in this world. Like if I was able to help him, it would mean I was finally…moving. Not just talking about changing my life, but actually doing it.”
“You are doing it,” Kayla said. “With or without one specific kid.”
Zoey rubbed at her chest. “I wanted to be a safe place,” she reminded herself and Kayla. “When I filled out the paperwork, I made sure I wrote that I didn’t need to be a permanent place. Just a safe place.”
“A real one,” Kayla said.
“Yes.” Zoey’s voice steadied a fraction.
“A place where kids have clean sheets and real towels. Where food isn’t a reward.
Nightlights if they want them, quiet if they don’t.
A couch they’re allowed to fall asleep on.
A place where being sad or angry or shut down doesn’t make them less deserving of patience.
Where they don’t leave with their things in a trash bag. ”
Her vision blurred again.
“Jayden was the first kid who made that feel possible,” she said. “Concrete. I could see his shoes by my door. His artwork on my fridge. Him in the backseat, talking a mile a minute about school.”
Kayla nodded. “Of course, you could. You’re human. It doesn’t make the vision wrong. It just makes it…incomplete.”
“Incomplete how?” Zoey demanded.
“Because your dream was never one kid,” Kayla said.
“You’ve said it a thousand times. You want a house full of hellions rotating through.
Holidays with extra chairs. A pack of twenty-somethings raiding your freezer on random Tuesdays.
You told me your dream is to be the soft place kids return to.
Plural. The system is reminding you it can’t tailor that dream around one boy whose life doesn’t belong to you. ”
Zoey sagged back against the cushions. Ugh. She hated that that was true.
“What if this is proof that I’m not ready?” she whispered. “What if Hanna sees something I can’t? What if I should just…pivot to adoption only and stop pretending I can handle the revolving door part?”
Kayla studied her. “Do you feel ready to foster?”
Zoey hesitated. Then, whispered, “Yes.”
“Do you feel like she told you you’re not a good candidate?” Kayla pressed.
Zoey thought about it. “No. I actually thought she…liked me? As a foster parent. She just really didn’t like me for Jayden.”
“And how does the idea of dropping fostering and switching to straight adoption feel in your body?” Kayla asked. “Forget logic. Gut check.”
A powerful no pushed up from somewhere deep in Zoey’s chest. She almost recoiled from it.
“No,” she said out loud. Steadier this time. “No. I still want to foster. I want both. But I want to foster.”
Kayla took a slow, satisfied sip of her tea. “That sounded different. You sounded sure.”
“I am.” Zoey nodded once, more to herself than to Kayla. “I’m going to foster. I’ll adopt too, someday, but I’m not abandoning the fostering part because one caseworker is cautious about one kid.”
“Good,” Kayla said quietly. “Because from where I’m sitting, that was the only answer that made your shoulders drop instead of climb to your ears.”
Zoey snorted weakly.
“It sounded like you interpreted Hanna’s reluctance as, ‘If I don’t get this child, I’ve failed at the whole project,’” Kayla said. “Did I get that right?”
Zoey shrugged, picking at a stray fuzz on the minky blanket in her lap.
“You wanted to be a safe place,” Kayla continued.
“You wanted to make Jayden smile. To help kids who drew the short straw. You’re already doing that.
Clinic. Group home volunteering. Classes.
Home study. Leaving a marriage that was bleaching you out.
Moving across the country. Taking a job that uses your brain instead of keeping you small. ”
“Can we not add all my life choices to a bullet-point list?” Zoey muttered.
“My point,” Kayla said, unruffled, “is that you are already becoming the person you want to be. Hanna is pressing pause on one outcome. That’s not the same as the universe stamping REJECTED on your forehead.”
Zoey slumped, suddenly exhausted. Her head ached. Her chest ached. Her neck still hated her for the kitchen table nap.
“You make it sound so reasonable,” she mumbled.
“It is reasonable,” Kayla said. “Which is what makes it awful. If she were clearly wrong, we could build an effigy and burn it. Instead, we have to sit with the fact that she might be right on the micro level—Jayden right now—and possibly wrong on the macro level—you as a foster parent in general.”
“I hated economics,” Zoey grumbled.