Untethered (22 page)

“Where are you going?” Sarah asked.

“Where do you think? I'm going after the girls.”

“I thought Dave was going to—”

“You think I'm going to let him be the one to go? You think I trust him after all the lies he's told me? After what he's done? You think Morgan wants this whole episode to end with her getting picked up by the very man who
dumped her with strangers
two weeks ago?” She aimed her finger to the front of the house and Sarah scurried past.

“What if they don't pull over?” Sarah asked. “What if they keep driving, all the way to Florida?”

“Then I will, too,” Char said.

“It's a huge state! What if you don't find them?”

“I don't know!” Char said. “I don't have it all worked out in my head! I just know that I can't sit here while they're getting further and further away! I need to
do something!
I need to be closer to them, and I need to be closer right now!” She gestured to the door leading from the hall to the garage. “Go out that way. I'll lock the front from the inside and follow you out.”

Sarah obeyed, and Char took a moment to lock the door and find a jacket in the foyer closet before jogging into the garage and hitting the button to lift the door. She raced to the driver's side of her car, yanked it open, and made a move to toss her purse, phone, and jacket on the passenger seat.

There sat Sarah, arms reaching, ready to take Char's things.

“What are you doing? Get out of my car!”

“Please. It's my fault they're gone. I want to help.”

“What makes you think Morgan will want to see you?” Char said.

“I'm sure she won't. But we have no idea what kind of head start
they have. If you want to get closer, you're going to need a second driver.”

Char paused. Sarah was right. As unappealing as it was to spend another minute with the woman who had just admitted to giving away her own child, Char didn't have a choice.

T
hey had been driving for an hour in silence, Sarah slumped in her seat, catatonic, staring out the passenger-side window, Char with her eyes on the road ahead, trying to make sense of everything she had just heard. A jumbled mess of thoughts flitted through her mind, but none stayed long enough for her to grasp. Half a dozen times, she turned to Sarah and opened her mouth to speak, only to close it a moment later and turn back to the road, her question having disappeared a split second after forming.

Twice, she moved into the right lane, ready to take the next exit and force Sarah out of the car. Let the woman wait at a gas station for her husband to pick her up. She was clearly in no condition to share the driving like she had promised. And even if she was fit to drive, Char didn't want to share the same space with the woman. Breathe the same air, look at the same scenery. Not after what Sarah had done to Morgan.

Both times, Char switched back into the left lane. She couldn't comprehend why the Crews had discarded their daughter the way they had. But she also couldn't come up with a solution that would
have allowed them to keep her without risking their son's safety. Char adored the freckle-covered, raspy-voiced Morgan, but there was a little boy to think about, too. What if the Crews let Morgan stay and Stevie cut himself again? What if he struck an artery? What if they took too long to find him?

The entire thing was so spectacularly complicated. Char wasn't sure if the fragments of thoughts spinning in her brain would ever stand still long enough for her to grab on to them, piece them together, sort them out.

Finally, Sarah spoke. “I wasn't asking for your understanding,” she said. “Back there, at your house. I wasn't trying to put all the blame on my husband, either. He made his choice, but I'm responsible for mine. In fact, I'm more to blame than he is, since he was at least convinced he was making the right decision.” She was silent for a moment, and then she said, “I'm not going to sit here and try to convince you that I'm not a terrible person.”

“Good,” Char said.

Sarah nodded as though it was the response she had expected, the one she knew she deserved. It made Char feel like a bully.

“I'm sorry,” Char said. “That wasn't called for. Look, you and I have spent a lot of time together. I've seen you with your kids. I know how much you love them. I've seen how hard you've tried with Morgan. So, I'm trying to understand. I am. If I weren't, you wouldn't still be in my car. I've been going over it in my mind since we left Mount Pleasant. I'm trying to make sense of it.”

“You're being nicer to me than you should,” Sarah said. “Nicer than I deserve.” She turned to face Char. “You're not as judgmental as most people. I've noticed that about you. Dave even made a comment about it, after your husband's funeral. The way you are about
Allie's mother. Other women in your position would . . . say more about it. About her. Be critical.”

“It makes me a doormat, sometimes,” Char said. “Maybe most of the time.”

“It makes you a better Christian than I am,” Sarah said. “‘Judge not, lest ye be judged.'”

“I'll accept ‘not very judgmental,'” Char said. “Beyond that, let's not push it. But like I said, I'm willing to try to understand. And we have miles of empty road ahead of us. So, try me.”

Sarah nodded, but she turned back toward the windshield, stared out, and said nothing.

Char waited, and when Sarah still didn't speak, Char said, “Okay, I'll start. I can appreciate how terrified you were to find Stevie that way, with a razor blade. I truly can.” She felt the corners of her eyes burn as she pictured the little boy giggling on the floor of the community center as he made his grime angels, then imagined him lying motionless, bleeding.

“The thought of that sweet child . . .” Char's throat closed. She swallowed and tried again. “I understand why you felt you had to make sure that never happened again. But Sarah, was there no option besides
advertising her on the Internet
? As though she were some puppy you didn't want anymore and were looking to rehome?

Sarah swallowed hard and slid lower in her seat.

“It doesn't seem like you,” Char said. “It's too . . . heartless. I'm sorry, but it is. It's like you to protect your son the way you did, and I'm not criticizing you for that. But it's not like you to abandon your daughter. And I just cannot wrap my head around that part. I cannot comprehend that you did that to her.”

Char felt herself shaking at the thought of Morgan watching out
the window of a strange house in Ohio as Dave Crew, the man she regarded as her father, drove away. She gripped the wheel tightly with one hand as she used the other to wipe the tears from her eyes. “I cannot make sense of it. Why you couldn't have found a different way to deal with the problem rather than dumping her with two new parents and two new sisters she had never laid eyes on before. Couldn't you have—”

Sarah shot upright and whipped her head around to face Char. “What new sisters?”

“The ones in Ohio,” Char said. “The two girls Morgan's new parents had already adopted—or acquired, or whatever you call it. One from Russia and one from Africa. I think that's what Allie said.”

“I have no idea what you're talking about,” Sarah said. “The couple we sent her to didn't have any children.”

“Well, it's hard to believe Morgan would lie about such a small piece of a giant puzzle,” Char said. “She told Allie she had two sisters, and that they were mean to her. They got her in trouble for crying at night, making too much noise—”

“I can't believe this! We specifically said Morgan shouldn't be placed in a family with younger children.”

“Well, they were older, sounds like, so—”

“But they didn't mention any children at all! In all the e-mails and phone calls, they made it sound like they had no other kids. That they'd have plenty of time to focus on Morgan. They even agreed when I said I was excited for her to have the chance to be an only child! They said they were excited for her to have that, too!”

“Why would they lie?” Char asked.

Sarah covered her eyes with her hands. “Oh my God. They knew we were considering other people. They must have wanted to be sure we chose them.”

“But why—?”

“There's a subsidy. We get money from the state every month for Morgan. We said we'd send it to them—”

“Jesus! So they were doing this for the money?”

“I didn't think so,” Sarah said. “Everyone asks for the subsidy. And it's fair. If they're taking her in, they should be the ones to get it. But they said they didn't care about it. They didn't even want it, they told us. They said they had good jobs, they could support her on their own. We could keep the subsidy.”

She let her hands drop to her lap. “I can't believe it. We got taken. It was all an act. They could tell from talking to Dave that he was the kind of person who'd send them the checks no matter what. They said it to make themselves look good. So we'd choose them. And we fell for it.”

“Allie said Dave met the sisters,” Char said.

Sarah's eyes widened in disbelief and she opened her mouth to speak. But she closed it again and lowered her chin to her chest. She was quiet for a long time, before she finally whispered, “He must have known that if he told me, I'd change my mind. I'd drive down there myself to get her. And he didn't want her back.”

They drove for a long time in silence, until Sarah said, “I wonder if they lied about anything else.”

Char thought about the “dump” Allie had described on the phone. It didn't jibe with the “good jobs” and not being in it for the money. But as angry as she was with the Crews, she wasn't up for pouring more salt into Sarah's wounds.

She also wasn't ready to put the issue to rest, though. “What about a hospital?” she asked. “Couldn't you have checked her into someplace with a children's psychiatric unit? Just until the cutting was under control, and there was nothing more for Stevie to copy?”

“You can't just ‘get cutting under control,'” Sarah said. “It's not a quick-cure thing. And she wouldn't be eligible to stay on a psych ward anyway, not under her insurance. To qualify for inpatient care like that, she would need a whole cluster of symptoms that are a lot more severe, and she doesn't have those. I thank God she doesn't. The children in those units are very, very troubled.”

“What about something private?” Char asked. “Like those rehab places, where you pay your own way, outside of insurance, and—”

“Residential care facilities,” Sarah said. “That's what they're called. We looked into a few of those. They want you to commit to several months, and we didn't think it would be good for Morgan to be sent away, given her history. Even being sent for a week would've been devastating for her, let alone a few months—”

Char sputtered and Sarah said, “I know what you're thinking. But we meant for the family in Ohio to be
permanent
. Obviously, it didn't end up that way. But that was our thinking at the time. Find her a new home where she could be happy forever. That would be better for her than being sent away for treatment and brought back again.

“Plus, those places are all out of state, and they want the family to attend weekly therapy. Sometimes more than once a week. We could never have afforded to fly us all out for that. Even if we could've covered the cost of the stay itself. Which we couldn't. Not even close. Those places cost a fortune.”

“But wouldn't your church have helped?” Char asked. “Isn't that one of the things churches do? Raise money for families in need? Why didn't you go to your pastor? Explain the situation? Ask for help? I know you said a temporary visit would've been hard for her,
but this Ohio family ended up being temporary anyway, and maybe at a care facility—”

“It's not just the money,” Sarah said. “It all comes back to the fact that a stay in a place like that simply isn't a guaranteed solution. Because there is no guaranteed solution. You have to believe me. If this was something we could have fixed, we would have. Gladly.

“We'd have kept her even if we knew it would
never
get fixed, if we didn't have Stevie to worry about. We'd have stuck it out, despite the cost and the time and the work and all of it. It's the
combination
we couldn't deal with anymore: the fact that it might not get better soon, or at all,
and
that we have Stevie to think about.”

“What about the Department of Human Services?” Char asked. “Isn't that the one? DHS? The one in charge of foster care? Wouldn't they have helped? Allie told me Morgan's afraid of getting sent back to foster care. Is that even possible? Could you have sent her back and asked them to find a new family for her? They're experts at matching kids with families and at doing thorough background checks. They would've figured out that the people in Ohio weren't legitimate.”

“Morgan always thought we were going to send her back,” Sarah said. “But there's no return policy on adoption. You don't get to send them back.”

“That's what I thought,” Char said. “But Allie keeps mentioning it. I guess it's because it's a fear of Morgan's. Even if DHS wouldn't take her back, though, why didn't they do something else? Provide her with a different therapist, or more sessions, or, I don't know . . . something? Wouldn't they be obligated to help? Wouldn't they have wanted to, for Morgan's sake?”

Sarah shook her head.

“Oh, come on. Are you telling me they wouldn't help at all? That there was nothing they could do? Don't they feel any responsibility to her? To you and Dave?”

Sarah shrugged.

“I can't believe they'd be like that,” Char said, “after Morgan was in the system for so many years. I can't believe they'd sit there and listen to you tell them what's been going on with her and then say, ‘Sorry, she's your problem now.' But you're telling me that's basically what they told you?”

“No,” Sarah said, “that's not what they told us.”

“Well, what did they—”

“They didn't tell us anything,” Sarah said. “We didn't call them.”

Char swiveled so forcefully to face Sarah that the car almost veered onto the shoulder. “You didn't even call them? Sarah! Why wouldn't you give them a chance to—”

“Because!” Sarah said. “Once you tell DHS that you can't keep your biological son safe from your adopted daughter, they might decide you're unfit parents! And then they might come in and take
both of your children away
from you!”

“What? That doesn't make any sense. You mean, you do the state a favor by taking a child out of foster care, and if something goes wrong and you ask for their help, you lose your other kids? I can't believe that's how it really works.”