LITMIR.BIZ

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      “But that’s the very home Yesenia felt was all wrong for her child!” Lori pointed out. “I heard her say it myself. In English.”

      “No, no. It was only that she could not find another solution at the time,” Ramon insisted.

      He went on to explain that Yesenia had always felt as if she were a burden to her aunt and uncle, who had a large family of their own. She couldn’t help being aware that they had spent a good deal of money to bring her here to this country. When she’d found herself pregnant and abandoned by the father of her child, she’d been ashamed and had hid her pregnancy until the very end. As a result the Reynaldas had been in shock when the baby had arrived. Yesenia had misinterpreted their shock. She’d felt that she was a disappointment to them and had made the rash decision not to ask them to financially support her and her baby, too.

      “In her mind, there was nothing else to do except give up her child,” Ramon explained, spreading his hands.

      “But why take her back now?” Lori countered. “Lucia is happy with me. I can give her the love and security that Yesenia cannot.”

      “But she can,” Ramon argued. “The Reynaldas never wanted Yesenia to place her child for adoption. It goes against everything they believe. Unfortunately, by the time they found out, she had already done it.”

      “Surely it’s for the best.”

      “The Reynaldas don’t think so, and neither does Yesenia now that she knows her family will gladly stand beside her and help her raise her child.”

      “Then why wait so long to file her claim?” Lori demanded, desperately grasping at straws. “If it took the Reynaldas three months to convince her that she’d made a mistake, maybe she doesn’t want Lucia as much as you say!”

      Ramon fixed her with an implacable look. “She stalled from concern for you, Miss Sumner. That’s what has taken her so long, her concern for you.”

      “Me?” Lori replied weakly, more moved than she wanted to be.

      Ramon Estes nodded, his expression softening. “My client is not insensitive to your plight.” His eyes seemed to say that he felt concern for her, as well.

      Lori didn’t buy it for a moment. It was just a lawyer’s trick designed to win a point. Wasn’t it? If so, it was terribly effective. She collapsed against her chair with a gusty sigh.

      “I am not insensitive to her plight, either, Mr. Estes, but I believe I can best provide Lucia with everything she needs.”

      “And I believe that Lucia is better off with her real mother,” he replied simply.

      What he did not say, what he did not need to say, was that as the biological mother, Yesenia surely had more claim to the child than Lori herself. Bereft, Lori rose to her feet, clutching her enormous bag beneath her arm.

      “I suppose we’ll have to leave it to a higher power then.”

      He spread his hands, also rising. “I fully expect the courts to side with my client, ma’am.”

      “I wasn’t speaking of the courts, sir,” Lori said softly.

      “Ah.” He nodded. “Well, I shall make my arguments at the court bench. You may make yours at an altar if you wish, but I still believe my client will win.”

      “We’ll see,” Lori whispered, turning toward the door. She kept her head high as she walked away from him, but she made her way downstairs to the first floor with eyes clouded by tears.

      She’d never expected to identify so strongly with Yesenia’s situation. Yet, Lori believed wholeheartedly that God had brought Lucia to her for a reason. What could that reason be if not, at long last, to provide her with the family she had always wanted?

      Upon reaching the foyer, she hurried out onto the sidewalk and then up the street to her car. With summer waning and September only three days away, the air felt soft with just a hint of the chill to come. Tossing her soft leather bag inside, she dropped down behind the wheel, aware that she had forgotten to lock the door earlier in her agitation.

      Then again, who would want a basic, faded, eleven-year-old coupe except someone tied to the decrepit old thing with emotional bonds? Her foster parents, Mary and Fred Evans, had given her this car, already used and without a single luxury, when she’d graduated from high school. Lori had intended to trade it once she could afford better, but Mary died unexpectedly of a heart attack that summer, and Fred, who had been fighting cancer for months, had quickly followed. After their deaths, Lori had traded transportation for room and board with the family of a close friend, Joanna Tipps, now Allred, who’d attended the same junior college.

      Joanna had not gone on to university. She’d married her high-school sweetheart instead, and now lived in Maryland with her husband and three children. Lori had stayed on with Joanna’s parents until she’d graduated. Joanna and the elder Tipps were the closest thing Lori had to family beside Lucia, but they’d drifted apart over the years, Joanna busy with her lot, Lori concentrating on her career.

      It had comforted Lori, in some way, to go on driving the vehicle that Mary and Fred had sacrificed to provide for her, just as it comforted her to go to God with her problems as they had taught her. She knew that He had a plan, and she trusted Him, she truly did. It had to work out so that she could keep Lucia, because she simply couldn’t see her life without Lucia anymore.

      On the other hand, it was so easy to picture the home that she could build around Lucia, an island of serenity in a turbulent world, a haven of acceptance and love. Lucia would never be the angry, sullen teenager that Lori had been.

      Lori still marveled at the patience of Mary and Fred Evans. Working quietly, gently, steadily, they had won her over step-by-step, until one night Lori had finally whispered the words that they had so longed to hear. She whispered them again now, as she had so often over the years, in a kind of remembrance, a ritual act of praise.

      “Thank You, Lord, for Mary and Fred, and making them care about me. Come into my heart and forgive me of my sins.”

      The first time that she’d said it, a long laundry list of confessions had followed. Afterward, they’d all cried because they’d all been so happy.

      Lori closed her eyes, wanting that for Lucia, wanting to be the one to patiently, tenderly guide her home to God. Never, never, did she want for Lucia or any child what she had experienced before the Evanses.

      It was one thing to lose one’s only parent, another entirely to be the one to find the body. Not that she’d realized it at the time. At four, you just think that Mama is asleep on the sofa and won’t wake up. You don’t think—you can’t think—that Mama will never wake up again because such a thought is so far beyond anything you’ve yet learned.

      It was only after the man and woman had stumbled into the living room and tried to wake her mama that Lori had realized this was not the same as all those times before. Funny, she couldn’t remember their names now, even though they’d been particular friends of Mama’s, friends who’d often spent the night after an evening of laughter and shrieking and other things Lori had tried very hard not to see.

      She vividly recalled being asked their names after the police had come, but she didn’t know now if she’d been able to reveal them. Whoever they were, they had called the cops, gathered up all the drugs and beat it, leaving her there alone.

      She’d remained alone until she’d been placed with Mary and Fred, alone in all the shelters and homes to which she was trundled over the years. It was as if she’d simply disappeared in some ways, and that was fine with her at first; so fine that for over two years she hadn’t said a word, until finally she’d realized that she would never again have a mama or anyone unless she somehow called attention to herself.

      Some of the things that she’d done to make herself seen and known made her cringe now. They were all the wrong things, of course; the very things her mother had done. She’d been well on her way, in fact, to being the drug addict

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