“I didn’t mean to startle you, honey.” Miriam patted his arm. “What’s going on?”
“Grace was dreaming,” John said, trying to steady his breathing. “She’s going back to sleep now.”
“GOOD news!” Eyes shining, Miriam flung her arms around John the minute he walked in from work. He danced around with her, enjoying her happiness without knowing its source.
“I just got the call from Social Services,” she said. “Grace has been cleared for adoption!”
John froze.
“Honey? Isn’t that great?”
He slipped out of Miriam’s embrace. “Uh, yeah. I didn’t think it would be so soon. I thought they needed to get her biological parents to sign something.”
“The police weren’t able to track them down. Why even try? They were drug addicts-the social worker says their parental rights have been terminated.”
“What about the aunt who Grace lived with for a while?” John asked.
“She’s not claiming Grace, either. She’s so stressed out by her financial problems since her husband abandoned her and her kids, she can’t cope with another child.”
“Doesn’t he pay child support?” John asked.
Miriam shrugged. “If the government doesn’t know where you are, they can’t make you pay.”
John was silent, staring at a spot somewhere to the left of the refrigerator. All he could see was the brown and green garter snake.
There, and not there.
THE sinking sun cast long shadows over the backyard. John sat in the family room nursing a beer. A cool breeze blew through the sliding doors, carrying voices into the room.
“I shouldn’t have done it. I made a bad mistake.”
John cocked his head to listen. That was Grace.
“It’s not your fault. You didn’t know.”
Christopher was reassuring her about something. What wasn’t her fault? What didn’t she know?
“Well, I know now,” Grace said impatiently. “It’s not the same as when I sent my parents away. I have to try to fix it. Otherwise it’s just not fair.”
“Don’t worry,” Christopher said as he slid the screen door open. “I’ll help you.”
“Don’t worry about what?” John’s newspaper trembled in his hands.
Christopher and Grace stood side by side. “Nothing,” they chorused, and ran off.
Watching their sneakered feet pumping in unison, John felt a strangling vine of dread twist around his heart.
He went into the kitchen. All Things Considered played on the radio. Five yellow plaid placemats waited on the table. Miriam stood at the counter chopping vegetables.
Where to begin?
“Honey? I’m… I’m a little worried about Grace.”
Miriam stopped chopping.
“She seems to think… I mean, I just overheard her tell Chris that she… she sent away-”
“Oh, that.” Miriam waved a carrot. “Lately she’s been telling me all about how she sent away her parents.”
“You know about this?”
“She was abandoned by the two people who were supposed to love her more than anyone else in the world. This fantasy is her way of coping, gaining control,” Miriam’s voice took on a tone John associated with his fifth-grade social studies teacher. “It’s called magical thinking, and it’s actually very normal for a child in her circumstances.”
John squinted at his wife. “Normal? I call that weird, Miriam.”
“If she can believe that she sent her parents away because they hurt her cat-that’s what she says, that she sent them away to protect Mittens-then she doesn’t have to accept the reality that they abandoned her.”
“Does she think she can send other people away, too?” John’s mouth tasted sour. Had Grace told Miriam what she’d done to Shane Malone? Would Miriam have some kind of child psychology mumbo jumbo to explain that away?
“Yes, she says she had to send her uncle away to protect her aunt and cousins. He was abusive, you know.” Miriam’s hand pumped the knife up and down, reducing the carrot to an orange mound. “That’s how she rationalized the fact that her aunt couldn’t afford to keep her when the uncle abandoned the family.”
“Anyone else?”
Miriam eyed him. “Of course not.”
“So, when she tells you these things, what do you say?” John asked. “Do you try to reason with her?”
Miriam smiled and shook her head. “What good would it do? The books all say that once she feels safe and secure, she’ll gradually let go of her magical thinking.”
John rubbed his temples. “What if she doesn’t let it go? Maybe there’s…” He took a deep breath and chose his words carefully. “Maybe her problems are too big for us to handle, Miriam. Maybe we’re not the right family for Grace. It wouldn’t be fair to the boys-”
Miriam’s eyes widened, and she stopped chopping. “You get one thing through your head, John.” She wagged the knife to emphasize each word. “We are not abandoning that child. Grace has found her forever home, and it’s right here with us.”
JOHN slipped out to the back deck with the laptop and Googled magical thinking. What he read seemed to confirm Miriam’s theory. Small consolation-if the kid wasn’t dangerous, she was crazy. Something in the computer’s browser history caught his eye: garter snakes. He clicked on it and a picture of a green and brown snake filled the screen.
Recoiling, he rushed to close the window. Before he could, a skinny arm reached around him, and a short finger tapped the screen. “They’re not dangerous at all,” Grace said. She pursed her lips disapprovingly. “You were silly to be scared. Because of you, I did something unfair.”
John’s hands clenched the arms of his chair.
“Unfair?”
“I sent the little snake away because he scared you. But he wouldn’t have hurt you. I’ve been trying to bring him back, but I can’t.” Grace’s head drooped, and she scuffed her sneaker across the deck. “That makes me sad.”
John forced himself to relax his grip on the deck chair. Miriam said to humor her. He spoke softly. “Can you send anyone away, Grace?”
She looked at him through her wispy bangs as if he’d asked if she could fly. “Of course not. It only works if I need to protect someone.”
Like Christopher.
John looked into her fierce, righteous face, and he knew fear. Would he wake up one day and find Gordon gone because he called his little bother a twerp or trounced him in a video game?
“Grace, Shane Malone was just a rude teenager. He didn’t hurt Christopher.”
She regarded him with that special look children use when they’re astounded by the stupidity of the adults who control their lives. “I wasn’t protecting Christopher. I was helping the girl with Shane. When the bright light flashed, I saw Shane hurting her, trying to do what my uncle used to do to my cousin, Lori, when he sneaked into her room at night. The girl screamed, but no one came to help, because everyone screams in that place. So I sent Shane away.”
“There you are,” Miriam appeared at the sliding glass door with the phone in her hand. “It’s the detective working on the Shane Malone disappearance.”
John accepted the receiver. The mild summer air felt as treacherous as a riptide.
“Sorry to bother you again, Mr. Harrigan,” the detective said. “I happened to notice a discrepancy. The credit card records indicate you paid for five admissions, but your family photo shows only four people. Who’s missing?”
John’s hand tightened on the phone. “Uh… Grace. She’s nine. She was hiding behind me because she was scared. When the flash went off, she must’ve jumped back and got cut out of the picture.”
How quickly the lie had formed in his mind. How glibly it flowed from his lips. John realized he was holding his breath, waiting to hear if the detective accepted this explanation.
“That’s what I figured, but I had to check.”
John could hear the disappointment in the detective’s voice.
“Just for the record, Grace is your daughter?”
John looked across the deck. Grace stood by the railing, her fair hair illuminated by the rising moon. She’d caught a firefly in her hand and was studying its rhythmic flashing. Then she shook her hand and smiled as it flew into the night.