Prologue
Avery was officially off the list of baby names.
Helena had known it was a boy since the first sonogram. The big day was just three weeks away, and her list of names, covering
virtually the entire alphabet, had been narrowed down to two. The final cut was made with the first named storm of the season
that was bearing down on Florida’s east coast. Miamians were still clinging to the hope that Hurricane Avery would turn north
in the next twenty-four hours—nothing against their friends in Fort Lauderdale and Palm Beach—but Helena took it as a sign.
“Austen,” she now said. “His name will be Austen Mikhail Pollard.”
Helena was outside the Miami Conservatory in ninety-degree heat with a handful of volunteers. They were making the seventy-year-old
dance studio “hurricane-ready”—shuttering windows, bringing potted plants inside, and clearing the alley of discarded bottles
and other loose items that could become missiles in hundred-mile-per-hour winds.
“Mikhail?” her friend Sylvia asked. “Where did that name come from?”
Helena smiled. The conservatory relied on volunteers to stay afloat, and Sylvia was most generous to donate her services as part-time bookkeeper to a half-dozen not-for-profits, from the conservatory to the zoo, which meant that she knew as much about dance as she did about orangutans.
Helena had danced into her early thirties with the Miami City Ballet before joining the conservatory as an instructor.
Her late grandmother was a Russian-trained soloist who had defected to the United States after the most famous male dancer of all time had come to America.
Helena was often compared to her grandmother, from her beautiful face and slender neck to her long legs and perfect feet.
“Mikhail Baryshnikov,” said Helena. “Austen is going to be a dancer.”
Sylvia’s husband was at the top of a ten-foot ladder, bolting an aluminum shutter onto a second-floor window. “I didn’t know
you were pregnant, Helena. Congratulations.”
Helena laid a hand on her flat stomach, hardened by years of dancing. “I’m not. Owen and I are adopting.”
Sylvia helped her husband climb down and wiped the sweat from his brow. “Owen seems more like the soccer-dad type,” she said.
“Does he know his son is going to be a ballet dancer?”
“He’ll know soon enough,” Helena said ruefully.
Just then, as if on cue, Owen’s car pulled into the alley. It screeched to a halt so quickly that the front bumper nearly
kissed the pavement, adding a sense of urgency to his unexpected arrival. Owen jumped out from behind the wheel and went to
his wife.
“We have to go now, Helena! The baby’s coming!”
Helena froze. “It’s too soon!”
“It’s the storm,” said Owen. “Something to do with the drop in barometric pressure. The hospitals are overflowing with women
in their ninth month.”
Helena was suddenly unable to speak or move, overcome with joy and panic.
“Go, girl!” Sylvia told her.
It was all the encouragement she needed. Helena ran to the car. Owen opened the passenger-side door for her, something he
never did, but maybe it was his “father to be” instinct kicking in. He hurried around to the driver’s side, and they were
off as quickly as Owen had arrived.
“You’re going the wrong way!” said Helena.
They were speeding north on the busy divided highway toward downtown Miami, away from South Miami Hospital. One of the many
things Helena and her parents had paid in advance for was a birthing suite at a private hospital.
“Every maternity ward south of Palm Beach is packed,” Owen told her. “South Miami didn’t have a bed, so they sent them to Jackson.”
Jackson Memorial Hospital was the nation’s third-largest public hospital. Patients came from all over for world-class treatment
at the University of Miami cancer center, the transplant institute, the National Parkinson’s Foundation, and other renowned
programs. As a public hospital, Jackson turned away no one, so it also drew floods of patients from Miami’s poorest neighborhoods,
especially in times of public emergency—everything from the deadly Overtown riots in the 1990s to Hurricane Avery today.
“This should be interesting,” Helena said with trepidation. Then she glanced over her shoulder. “Where’s the car seat?”
“It’s at home.”
“Home? What kind of parents show up at the hospital for the birth of their baby without a car seat?”
“Helena, relax. We’re not bringing the baby home today. Probably not even tomorrow, if this storm hits. We can come back with
the car seat when he’s ready to come home.”
“I’m not leaving that hospital without our baby,” she said.
She knew she sounded unreasonable, maybe even paranoid. But no one could blame her. She and Owen had been down this road twice
before, and twice the adoption had fallen through in the third trimester, one so late that Helena had already embroidered
the name on a pillow and decorated the nursery. Pile on three miscarriages and thousands of dollars spent on unsuccessful
fertility treatments, and Helena couldn’t handle another disappointment.
Owen reached across the console and held her hand. “Everything is going to be okay.”
“You promise?”
“Yes. Promise.”
It took twenty minutes to reach Jackson and almost that long to find a parking space.
They hurried through the double doors at the main entrance, cut across the busy lobby, and got in line behind two pregnant women who were ahead of them at the registration desk.
Neither appeared to be in labor, but the Florida Department of Health was advising all women near their due date to go to a hospital no later than four hours before Hurricane Avery made landfall.
The eye of the storm was at least eighteen hours away—and Avery could still make a merciful turn north—but nervous mothers-to-be were already pouring in.
Helena was nearly about to burst by the time they reached the head of the line.
“We’re here to see Elle Carpenter,” Helena told the woman at the desk.
“She arrived here in labor about two hours ago,” added Owen.
“I’m sorry, but we are not allowing any visitors other than a designated birthing partner in the maternity ward. The hurricane
warning has put us way beyond capacity.”
“We’re not visitors,” said Helena. “We’re the parents. Elle is a teenager. We’re adopting.”
“I see,” said the receptionist. “That sounds like it would be an exception. But administration told me ‘no visitors, no exceptions.’”
“Please, we’ve waited so long for this,” said Helena.
“Which adoption agency are you using?”
They’d worked with an agency before, and both times the biological mother had changed her mind. Elle and her mother had come
to them through Owen’s business partner. “There’s no agency. It’s a private adoption.”
“Can I see the contract?”
Helena looked at her husband. “Owen, did you bring the contract?”
“It’s on file at South Miami Hospital,” he said, and then to the receptionist: “That’s where the baby was supposed to be born,
before the storm came.”
The receptionist sighed. “I’m sorry, but—”
“Wait!” said Helena. “I have it on my phone.”
She pulled up the email attachment from their lawyer, handed her phone with her driver’s license to the receptionist, and
then added one last plea in desperation.
“I’m begging you,” said Helena. “This has been five years of misery.”
It took only a minute for the response to come, but it felt much longer to Helena.
“Elle Carpenter is in room four thirteen. I can’t promise they won’t ask you to leave when you get upstairs, but congratulations.”
Helena thanked her during the eternity it took for a machine to print out access badges for them, and they rushed to the first
available elevator.
Overcrowded did not begin to describe what they saw as the elevator doors parted on the maternity ward. The hallways were lined with
pregnant women. Some were in wheelchairs or on gurneys. A few were seated in chairs borrowed from the waiting room. Others
walked with no apparent destination in mind, breathing in deeply, breathing out slowly. Overworked nurses hurried from patient
to patient. A cacophonous mix of English, Spanish, and Creole, punctuated by the sudden cry of a newborn from a birthing suite,
made it difficult for Helena and Owen to hear each other speak.
“It’s worse than I-95 at five p.m. on a Friday,” said Helena.
The hub of activity was a four-sided, centralized nursing station, which was surrounded by rooms and suites. Hallways to more
rooms fed into the station like the spokes of a wheel. Helena and Owen started toward the nurse behind the desk, but a woman
cut through the crowd and stopped them. Helena hadn’t seen Elle’s mother since the signing of the adoption contract. Serena
Carpenter pulled them aside and into the crowded waiting room.
“So glad I found you,” said Serena.
“Is everything okay?” asked Helena.
“The delivery could not have gone better.”
Helena’s heart nearly skipped a beat. “He’s here?”
“Born about an hour ago. Nine pounds, six ounces.”
Helena hugged her husband, and she wiped away a tear as she broke their embrace.
“Can I see him?” asked Helena.
Serena hesitated. “I’m afraid we need to talk about that.”
Helena heard the words, but it was as if they didn’t quite register. They’d received every possible assurance that the adoption
would go through. Elle had even asked Helena what name she intended to give the baby, so that Elle could talk to him by name
in the womb. If only Helena had been able to make up her mind.
You and your indecision, she told herself. This is your own fault. Again.
“What’s there to talk about?” asked Helena.
“I’m so sorry. Elle says she wants to keep her baby.”
The words hit Helena like a sledgehammer. It was the biological mother’s legal right to change her mind at any time in the
process. In fact, according to the Pollards’ lawyer, a mother couldn’t consent to the adoption until forty-eight hours after