An Act of Persuasion(39)

“It reminds me of a class trip,” she mused, moving slowly from canvas to canvas. At a time when she’d been normal for a while. Just a girl in school who was tuning out all the things her art teacher had to say about the classics on the wall and instead thinking about whether Johnny Blanton was going to try to kiss her when he walked her home from school that day.

Now here she was again, only this time she was wondering if Ben was going to kiss her when he dropped her off. She’d already told herself she shouldn’t let it happen. Kissing Ben was...powerful. Kissing Ben could make her forget all the reasons, very sound reasons, she had for not having sex with him.

“Uh-oh. You’ve compared our date to a school trip. The museum was a bad idea, then.”

She smiled. “No, it was actually a good memory.”

“You told me you hated school.”

He’d been doing that all day. Showing her how much he recalled of everything she had ever told him. He mentioned her favorite color, pointed out her favorite thing to eat on the menu. It was nothing exciting—just a grilled cheese sandwich. But that particular bistro prepared it with three types of cheeses, which made it simply to die for.

Of course, she’d never doubted he was observant. The man had been trained to see and hear everything within his surroundings. However, being observant and being attentive were two different things. Like hearing what she said and understanding why she said it were two different things. In his defense, though, she’d never talked much about her past. Any details she’d shared with him had been superficial facts.

“I didn’t hate school,” she said slowly. It felt as if she was offering up some big secret even though this was only her personal history. It simply wasn’t something she’d ever talked about with anyone before. But if they were going to make this work, if they were going to have an actual relationship, then it was probably time she gave him something of herself and the life she’d experienced growing up.

Funny, she could see now, as he quoted back all the things he thought he knew about her, how much she had kept from him. All she’d told him were the meaningless things, nothing really important or substantive about her life. She’d told herself she was in love with him, but could a person be in love with another person when there was so much of herself she hadn’t revealed?

A year ago the idea that he would remember she liked grilled cheese sandwiches and the color purple would have thrilled her. A true sign they were connected.

Now, it wasn’t enough.

“I didn’t hate school,” she repeated. “I hated being in school. I hated the age I was that made it mandatory.”

“Explain.”

“When you are in foster care you’re not in control of anything. Where you live, what food you’re given, what clothes you wear a lot of times. I hated not being eighteen. I hated middle school and high school as institutions because, as long as I was attending them, I wasn’t eighteen. Those years, the only thing I could think of was getting out of the system. The foster system, the school system. All of it. I wanted it behind me.”

She stopped and looked at him, wondering if she made any sense. His expression appeared stern. “Anna, you never talked about your time in the different homes you were in. I never pressed. But were you hurt? Were you—”

“No.” She held her hand up. “Nothing like that. I didn’t have any really bad experiences in any of the homes I stayed in. Nothing truly awful. I know there are horror stories about kids in foster homes. But there are other stories, too. A lot of the people who take in kids like me are good, kind, loving people. They’re trying to help, not hurt. I’m sure there are some bad apples, but it’s like that everywhere with everything. So, no, I don’t mean to vilify the foster-care system. I’m only saying I was anxious to be out of it.”

He nodded. They continued walking side by side down the length of the exhibition hall taking in the work without really studying it.

She had this crazy idea that he might reach out and hold her hand. He didn’t.

“When you talk about it, you use the word homes, plural.”

“I had three. The first was a really nice woman. Her husband didn’t pay us much attention but she was always laughing and hugging us. She had two girls and a boy. They were older than me, closer to being teenagers. We were all fosters. At first I thought I had won some mom lottery. I didn’t remember much about my own, but I knew this mom was way better. She made cookies and tucked the blankets in around my shoulders at night. I was with her for three years, but then she got sick. Cancer, although I didn’t know it at the time. Eventually she was so sick she couldn’t take care of us anymore. We were reassigned.”