The Perfect Child(19)

She turned to look at me, the sheen of perspiration on her forehead. She brushed the hair off her face with the back of her arm. “I just want everything to look perfect.”

“Well, you’ve pretty much turned our house into a museum, so if that’s what you’re going for, then I’d say you’ve succeeded.”

She threw her rag at me. “You’re terrible. Everyone knows that women are judged by what kind of a house they keep. I don’t want her to think I’m some kind of slob.”

“Slobs are good people too.”

“Shut up!” She laughed. “You’re not making me feel any better.”

“Come on, let’s call it a night.” I walked over and grabbed her bucket. “Sink or tub?”

She pointed to the tub, and I poured the rest of the water down the drain. I held out my hands and pulled her up, then brought her against me and rubbed her back. “It’s all going to work out okay.”

“You’re not nervous at all?” She raised her head to look at me. Worry lined her forehead.

I shook my head. “I know it’s meant to be.” I pulled out her hair tie and let her hair fall down her shoulders. I loved when she wore it down, but most days it was pulled into a tight ponytail. I ran my fingers through it.

“I’m just nervous. What if—”

I put my finger up to her lips, shushing her midsentence. “Everything is going to be fine. You’ll see.”





CASE #5243

INTERVIEW:

PIPER GOLDSTEIN

“You couldn’t have asked for a better home for Janie. I’ve been in children’s services for over twenty years and met my share of foster parents. Believe me, they’re not all good. I wish people became foster parents because they have big hearts and want to help children, but sadly, that’s not usually the case. A lot of the parents I work with look at foster care like a job. They do it to get a paycheck, and their families run just like a business. I’m not saying all the business foster families are bad. Some of them are actually good, but there’s just not a lot of love and caring that goes on in them besides meeting the child’s basic needs. Don’t get me wrong—for many of the kids in the system, it’s way better than where they came from, so I don’t complain too much.”

“And the Bauers?” Luke asked.

I took another sip of my coffee. He’d forgotten my cream, so I was drinking it black, even though I knew my stomach would protest later. “Like I told you before, they were one of the good ones. Good foster homes are the ones where they really care about the kids they take in. They do it out of love versus any kind of monetary gain. They’re the homes where children thrive, and the Bauers were certainly one of them. No question.”

Therapeutic foster homes were better equipped to deal with Janie’s issues and had more experience working with high-risk children and might have been a better fit. The Bauers hadn’t had any history dealing with kids with special needs and definitely not the kind of needs that resulted from kids being severely abused. It took special skills to live with kids who were emotionally disturbed, and there was never a doubt in my mind that Janie was emotionally disturbed, given her background and my interactions with her. But that didn’t mean that someone couldn’t learn how to do it, and the Bauers had been willing to learn whatever they needed to. It wasn’t just that, though. They had already loved her, and Janie had loved them. Well, she’d loved Christopher. She’d still been warming up to Hannah.

My mind had been made up the day I’d walked into Janie’s hospital room for a scheduled meeting with her and found Christopher cuddled up with Janie on the bed, both of them fast asleep. He’d been dressed in his green scrubs, like he’d run to her room after surgery. He’d lain stretched out on her bed, his long legs reaching the end. Janie’s head had rested on his chest, and his arm had been protectively curled around her small body. Her tiny toes had peeked out from underneath her knitted blanket—the one Hannah had made for her. His other hand had clasped her fingers in his. Her face had been perfectly still and calm. She’d looked peaceful. Truly peaceful. In all the times that I’d seen her, I’d never seen her look peaceful. Janie was never still. Every one of her muscles needed to move, and she was an endless stream of chatter, her words running over each other.

I hadn’t even considered waking them up, even though we’d had a scheduled visit, because the moment had been too beautiful to ruin. Instead, I had sat down in one of the chairs, pulled out my laptop, and started typing up the report to submit to family court. I had recommended that Janie be placed in emergency foster care with the Bauers.





TWELVE

HANNAH BAUER

We were thrilled when we got the call from Piper that our application had been accepted and the judge had granted us temporary guardianship as Janie’s foster parents. She’d been in the hospital for six weeks, and the plan was to use the next two weeks to transition her into outpatient care. Christopher scoured Amazon, overnighting books to the house so we could take a crash course in working with traumatized children. Piper wanted us to start having home visits with her immediately because of the short timeline, and I was so excited the night before the first one that I barely slept.

This time Janie got into the car easily and without a struggle. I couldn’t help but smile at the small victory. It wasn’t long before we reached our house, since we didn’t live far from the hospital. It was the main reason we had chosen the house. When we’d considered buying it, we had talked about how we could bike or walk to work if we wanted to, but we’d been in the house for six years, and so far neither of us had done it.