Before I Let You Go(33)

He didn’t raise the issue of our shared bedroom again. That decision to let us stay together was one of many Robert made over the years that made no sense to me. I loathe him—I hate him—but even I can see that Robert is no one-dimensional villain. Allowing Lexie and me to share a room was a surprising concession on a night that was otherwise full of fear and pain and loss. There would be other times over the years that followed when he would catch me off guard with a completely unexpected kindness—like when he gave Lexie money for my rehab one time, and the fact that he has allowed Mom to speak to us via the phone even though it breaks one of the community’s most sacred rules; the separation between those “in” and those of us who are “out” is supposed to be absolute. But from the beginning of our life with Robert, he was not only our evil stepfather—he was also Mom’s husband, and regardless of all of the awful things that he’s done to me and to Lexie, on some level I do believe that Mom loves him. Her life is not one I could bear myself, but her marriage to Robert seems to have made my mother happy.

I hate him anyway. Small acts of kindness do not cancel out the many ways he damaged me.





11


LEXIE


I know that Sam has a thirty-minute break for lunch between surgeries. I find him in his office, where he’s reviewing case notes as he eats a sandwich. As soon as I step into the room, he scans my face, then he rises from his desk to pull me into his embrace. I feel anxious and fidgety, like I’m wound too tight inside. I lean into him, expecting comfort at the warmth of his body against mine, and I’m disappointed when it fails to rise.

“How did the hearing go?” Sam asks me, and he pulls me gently away from him to peer down into my face. I search for words, and when they fail me, I sigh and shake my head.

“Not good. I mean, most of it was as we expected, but the judge came down on her pretty hard. She’ll pretty much have to go to that place at Auburn as soon as she’s discharged.”

Sam’s eyes are locked on mine.

“So . . . what happens to the baby?”

I clear my throat, and shake my head as I disentangle myself from Sam altogether. I press my hands deep into the pockets of my jeans to keep them still, and then I stare away at the wall behind Sam’s ear as I admit, “Well, it will stay in the NICU, but once it’s discharged—it goes into foster care or . . .” I clear my throat. “Or it stays with me.”

“With us,” Sam corrects me with a frown. “Lexie, I keep telling you—we’re in this together. Do you want to care for the baby while Annie gets better?”

“That’s the thing, Sam . . .” I say, but I still can’t look at him. I let my gaze fall to the floor. “I don’t know if she’ll finish that rehab program.”

“Well, it sounds like she’ll have to if she wants the baby back.”

“It’s not that simple. It’s never that simple. There’s no better way to send Annie off the rails than to insist she do something.”

“And what happens if she doesn’t graduate the program?”

“They will arrest her immediately,” I whisper, and Sam takes me into his arms again and pulls me hard up against himself. He strokes the back of my hair as he says quietly, “That’s a pretty good incentive to play nice while she’s in there, honey.”

“It’s like there’s a switch that gets flipped inside her whenever anyone tells her what to do. She automatically does the opposite.”

“So . . . are you worried that if we take the baby for a few weeks, we’ll be stuck with it forever?”

“Stuck with it?”

Sam winces and shakes his head.

“That came out wrong, but you know what I mean. We are certainly capable of caring for a newborn for a few weeks—we can call it practice.” He offers me a smile, but the one I give him in return is forced. “But . . . if you really think she’s not going to give rehab a shot, even with the future of her kid in the picture . . . well, we need to sit down and talk this out, don’t we?”

I hesitate, then I whisper, “I already told her I’ll take the baby.”

“Lexie . . .” Sam is shocked, and I’m immediately defensive.

“She was so upset, and I can’t let my niece or nephew go into the foster system. God—that kid is already going to have NAS to deal with when it’s born—and—”

Sam interrupts—his words are sharp and I can see impatience in the stiffness of his shoulders and the hard set of his jaw.

“Look, we’ll make it work. I just wish you’d talked to me before you agreed to this. Have you even thought about your job? You can’t take indefinite time off. You told Oliver you’d be back on Monday. How are we going to juggle all of this? Especially if it does end up being for the longer term.”

“I will go back to work on Monday,” I say. “And he let Ira take three months off last year when he and his partner adopted that baby from China. I’ll look into unpaid parental leave. And if they won’t let me do that, we could get a nanny. I’ll find a way to make it work.”

“Lexie, I know you will. You are the most capable woman I know—but we are going to be in this together. That means you don’t have to deal with it on your own, but it also means—” Sam draws in a deep breath, then he groans impatiently “—well, frankly, it means that I do have to deal with it, too—and you need to talk to me before you make decisions like this. Got it?”