Two Weeks (The Baxter Family #5)(29)

Lucy set the rocker in motion ever so slightly.

She and Aaron hadn’t talked about having kids when they got married just out of college. They graduated from the University of Alabama and began living out their happily ever after working their way up at the local hospital. Not till they moved to Atlanta did they talk about timing.

“I’m ready if you are.” Aaron had been sitting across from her at their small round kitchen table. His eyes had looked misty, like he was overwhelmed with feelings. “What do you think?”

Lucy hadn’t answered right away. She was a nurse, working in the emergency room at the time. She needed to keep putting in hours if she was going to get moved to the maternity ward. Where she’d always wanted to work.

But as for babies of their own, all she had known was that it was still too soon. Lucy had reached across the table and taken hold of Aaron’s hand. “Now? Really?”

“Yes.” He was young, but with his master’s degree he was already being groomed to work in administration. “We can handle it. Financially.”

She felt butterflies in her heart and suddenly she looked ahead nine months and tried to imagine what life would be like with a baby. She would have her promotion to maternity nurse by then. And once a baby came she’d work fewer hours at the hospital, for sure. Lucy never pictured working full-time when she became a mommy. And for the first time the idea sounded not only possible.

It sounded wonderful.

That night they ditched their birth control and with everything in them they believed Lucy would be pregnant a few weeks later. When she got her period, she wasn’t worried. They made a game of it. No more birth control, no more caution. They teased about how fun it would be.

Trying to get pregnant.

Lucy stared at her flat stomach. Back then they’d had no idea what they were in for. How long the journey ahead would be. It took six months of trying before Lucy began to worry. She remembered the first time she broached the topic with Aaron.

They had been on a walk in the hills near their favorite lake, and Lucy stopped. Aaron took a few more strides before he realized she wasn’t with him. He turned and came back to her. “You okay?”

The words wouldn’t form, not easily, anyway. She looked at the path beneath their feet for a long minute. When she lifted her eyes to his, she blinked back tears. The first of way too many. “I’m not pregnant, Aaron. What’s wrong with me?”

“Honey, nothing’s wrong.” Disappointment fell like a shadow over his face. He tried to hide it, so almost at the same time a smile lifted his lips. “It can take a year. That’s what I read.” He kissed her and ran his thumb along her brow. “Practice makes perfect, right? Don’t worry, Lucy. God has a baby for us. I know it.”

She had been doubtful even then. Especially about Aaron’s unwavering faith. “How do you know what God’s going to do?”

“Because I know Him, and He’s good.” Her husband’s smile reached his eyes. “He has a baby for us.”

How Aaron had kept that same belief intact for more than a decade, Lucy would never know. Back then six months hadn’t seemed that long to Aaron. He did what he could to calm her fears and help her believe.

But six months turned into one year and in the second year Aaron brought up the topic of foster care. The state had a foster-adopt program, where a baby would be placed with them and if the parents’ rights were terminated, they could legally adopt the child.

Lucy had been skeptical. She still wanted a baby of their own, the traditional way. But the more she and Aaron read foster-adopt stories on the Internet the more it seemed like a viable option. At least they’d be helping.

“We’ll get a baby handpicked by God,” Aaron had told her the day they made their decision to go ahead with the program. “And who knows, maybe He’ll surprise us and you’ll get pregnant.”

Over the years Lucy had researched enough to know that Aaron was right. Sometimes after a couple committed to adopt, or once a foster child was placed in their home, infertility could give way to a pregnancy.

Until then they hadn’t tried shots or pills or procedures. To Aaron, two years was still not terribly long. Other couples tried that long to have a baby. And once they made their decision to adopt, even Lucy expected things to fall into place.

Their house would be full of children in no time.

After they were approved for foster care, their phone began to ring. “We have a fifteen-year-old with a drug addiction. She needs a home for the weekend until her aunt gets back from vacation.”

Lucy would have a hundred questions. Why wasn’t anyone helping the girl with her drug addiction? And why hadn’t the aunt taken her niece on vacation and how would it help the girl to drop her off with strangers for the weekend? And the biggest question: Couldn’t the social workers see what Lucy and Aaron’s profile said?

They wanted a baby.

At first they took in every child the state called about. A sixteen-year-old boy who could barely speak or read or hold a conversation. His grandfather had raised him, and didn’t start the boy in school until he was twelve. The placement lasted eight weeks before the boy tried to steal their car and the police had to be called. It was one case after another like that.

Finally Aaron contacted their social worker. No more, he told them. Babies or nothing. They simply weren’t prepared or equipped to handle severely disturbed teenagers. But since those kids made up the bulk of the foster system, the calls practically stopped.