sense. The items on the shelves are for sale. Customers walking in are encouraged to buy them. The entire place is Sasquatch-free. Eleanor grabs a stack of baby books and arranges them on a shelf, fuming. “What kind of person refuses a tart? Even if you don’t want it, you accept it! You don’t stare down from your stupid ladder—which was not even positioned very well, I might add—and pretend the person who just walked in with a tart she may have spent an entire evening baking for all you know … you don’t just pretend she walked in empty-handed. I mean tarts—they’re not like cookies. You have to roll the crust, cut it, bake it, and then, once you add the filling, cook it again. I swear to God, I’m not talking to that guy again. From now on you’ll do the communicating.” When Ginny doesn’t respond, Eleanor looks around. “Gin?”
The door to the restroom is still open. The test! Eleanor rushes to the back of the store to find Ginny hunched on the toilet, pants around her ankles, staring at the pregnancy stick. She lifts her tear-stained face and shakes her head.
“Don’t tell me.”
“I swear, all it takes is the sound of his belt buckle andthere I am. Pregnant again.” Ginny looks up, unbrushed hair curtaining a face already puffy with maternity bloat.
A fourth baby for a woman who’d been determined to have none.
The pain is spreading to Eleanor’s neck. She reaches up to rub her shoulder.
Chapter 8
J onathan is late. Eleanor watches the other people in the agency waiting room and tries to stop her hands from shaking. Couples, all except the one who just walked in. There, in the corner, behind a crisp copy of
House Beautiful
, this single woman seats herself, a graceful, olive-skinned creature with bare ankles. With light brown hair pulled off her face and a long neck, she could be a ballet dancer on her day off. There’s something self-conscious in the way she keeps checking her watch, swiping nonexistent lint from her lap.
Eleanor picks up
Parenting
magazine and tries to focus on an article about teething, but her attention keeps drifting back to the dancer. Surely there have been other people here in the agency alone, but not until now has Eleanor paid any attention. Why is the ballerina by herself? Could this one have been dumped recently as well? Or is she going it alone? She’s delicate, this girl. Unsure of herself. No earth-mother aura to her whatsoever. It gives Eleanor a thrill. If this one can raise a child on her own, so can she.
The cherub-faced man at reception—Miles, Eleanor has heard him called—wearing a modern shrunken suit thatexposes leopard-spotted socks, stands up and calls out “the Needhams?” A petite couple, pink-cheeked with excitement, follow him down the back hall to one of the caseworkers’ offices. Moments later, Miles is back to set a fresh pot of coffee by the plants on the windowsill. A stack of Styrofoam cups needs straightening and he takes care of it. He nods at Eleanor. “Nancy will be right with you?” She remembers him from her other visits. Phrases every statement as a question in a way that suggests a good-natured lack of confidence. It made her like him right away.
She pulls out her phone and stares at it, willing a text to appear from Jonathan telling her he’s looking for a parking spot.
It was over a year ago that Eleanor and Jonathan came in to try to convince Nancy Stachniuk they were worthy. Eleanor nearly buckled under the scrutiny, terrified the agency would come across some minor infraction from the annals of her life, something as benign as an unpaid parking ticket, and use it to prove that nature was, in fact, all-knowing, and that Eleanor was not qualified to become someone’s mother.
A twenty-something couple sits across from her with clasped hands. Eleanor recognizes the nervous giggles, the toes pointed inward in submission. The woman, a reddish-blonde with only a hint of a chin, appears more nervous than the man,
The door to the restroom is still open. The test! Eleanor rushes to the back of the store to find Ginny hunched on the toilet, pants around her ankles, staring at the pregnancy stick. She lifts her tear-stained face and shakes her head.
“Don’t tell me.”
“I swear, all it takes is the sound of his belt buckle andthere I am. Pregnant again.” Ginny looks up, unbrushed hair curtaining a face already puffy with maternity bloat.
A fourth baby for a woman who’d been determined to have none.
The pain is spreading to Eleanor’s neck. She reaches up to rub her shoulder.
Chapter 8
J onathan is late. Eleanor watches the other people in the agency waiting room and tries to stop her hands from shaking. Couples, all except the one who just walked in. There, in the corner, behind a crisp copy of
House Beautiful
, this single woman seats herself, a graceful, olive-skinned creature with bare ankles. With light brown hair pulled off her face and a long neck, she could be a ballet dancer on her day off. There’s something self-conscious in the way she keeps checking her watch, swiping nonexistent lint from her lap.
Eleanor picks up
Parenting
magazine and tries to focus on an article about teething, but her attention keeps drifting back to the dancer. Surely there have been other people here in the agency alone, but not until now has Eleanor paid any attention. Why is the ballerina by herself? Could this one have been dumped recently as well? Or is she going it alone? She’s delicate, this girl. Unsure of herself. No earth-mother aura to her whatsoever. It gives Eleanor a thrill. If this one can raise a child on her own, so can she.
The cherub-faced man at reception—Miles, Eleanor has heard him called—wearing a modern shrunken suit thatexposes leopard-spotted socks, stands up and calls out “the Needhams?” A petite couple, pink-cheeked with excitement, follow him down the back hall to one of the caseworkers’ offices. Moments later, Miles is back to set a fresh pot of coffee by the plants on the windowsill. A stack of Styrofoam cups needs straightening and he takes care of it. He nods at Eleanor. “Nancy will be right with you?” She remembers him from her other visits. Phrases every statement as a question in a way that suggests a good-natured lack of confidence. It made her like him right away.
She pulls out her phone and stares at it, willing a text to appear from Jonathan telling her he’s looking for a parking spot.
It was over a year ago that Eleanor and Jonathan came in to try to convince Nancy Stachniuk they were worthy. Eleanor nearly buckled under the scrutiny, terrified the agency would come across some minor infraction from the annals of her life, something as benign as an unpaid parking ticket, and use it to prove that nature was, in fact, all-knowing, and that Eleanor was not qualified to become someone’s mother.
A twenty-something couple sits across from her with clasped hands. Eleanor recognizes the nervous giggles, the toes pointed inward in submission. The woman, a reddish-blonde with only a hint of a chin, appears more nervous than the man,
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