Disclaimer: I didn't create "CSI." I don't own "CSI." I have not profited in any way from "CSI." (Except that it makes me happy to write stories about these people who aren't real and I know they're not real. Really.)
: I have often wondered how Sara went from being "the girl whose father was stabbed to death" to the confident, compassionate woman Grissom fell in love with. In my imagination, it has always gone something like this.Left My Heart on Steuart Street
The house looked nice enough. But then, Sara Sidle had learned very early not to trust appearances; they often deceived. The house in which she had spent the first eleven-plus years of her life had looked nice enough, too. But what went on in that house was anything but "nice." Now that she was older, a prematurely cynical thirteen, she gazed at the house in front of her with the jaundiced eye of someone well-acquainted with the California foster care system.
The house was one of San Francisco's "Painted Ladies." Those Victorian-era monstrosities that stood cheek-by-jowl along so many of the Bay Area's hilly avenues. This one was painted a relatively subdued blue with crisp white trim. And, it could not be ignored, black, red, and gold-leaf accents on its gables, trim and all the other fancy doo-dads that decorated the third story and the roofline. Like a demure church dress topped off with a really gaudy Easter bonnet, she thought in amusement. Sara stood at the curb and regarded the house for a moment, then decided she quite liked it, silly hat and all. Not that it'll make any difference, she thought sadly. It never made any difference whether she liked the house or not.
This would be the tenth house she'd stayed at in the nearly two years since she'd been taken away from her father's impossibly bloody corpse and her mother's sobbing pleas for forgiveness. She never stayed very long in any of them. Two months was the norm, one very interesting week her personal least. She had once stayed in the same house for a dizzying three months and one week; long enough to learn the name of the bus driver on the route home from school and to have a sleepover with the girl down the block. It hadn't mattered, in the end. She'd still been yanked away. Now, she merely thought of herself as a "visitor" in the houses she was placed in. A visitor who would inevitably overstay her welcome and then be politely asked to leave.
She never could figure out exactly what it was they wanted from her. Did they want her to talk more? Less? Be prettier, more athletic, more outgoing, more like their "real" children? Whatever it was they wanted, Sara could no more give it to them than she could grow wings and fly.
She didn't think she was actually repulsive or anything; not hideous was what she usually thought as she stared at herself in the mirror. Too tall and too thin, true, and with teeth that were in serious need of braces that no one could be bothered to pay for. No, the problem was that she was quiet. Too quiet. They usually called her "withdrawn," or "sullen." Sara had not needed to look it up to know that the word meant "moody or ill-humored." She didn't feel ill-humored; she just didn't usually have anything to say to any of them. She knew she wouldn't be staying long, why waste time with bonds that would only be broken? Her long, dark hair and large, wide-set dark eyes were her best features but going through life, as she did, with her hair hiding her face and her eyes perpetually cast down allowed no one close enough to appreciate the fact. And, anyway, that was the way she liked it. She preferred to "blend in" and cause as little trouble as possible. Maybe if she hadn't been so much trouble her parents might have . . .
"You ready?" Joy, her current case-worker, interrupted Sara's musings and brought her back to the task at hand: meeting yet more strangers. Sara regarded Joy's bright smile with pity. You, she thought, have a lot to learn. Joy was twenty-four and aptly-named, with a shiny new CSW degree and the unbridled enthusiasm that went along with Doing Good. There was no problem she couldn't fix; no child she couldn't help to find a better life.
"I'm sorry," Sara told Joy, as they walked toward the neat wrought-iron gate which guarded the house's front walk.
"What for?" Joy asked, smiling fondly at the top of Sara's head, the only part of Sara she could see at the moment.
"For being your first failure." Sara squared her thin shoulders and reached for the gate's latch but Joy put a hand on her wrist, halting her.
Joy's smile didn't falter. It was a genuine smile, one that reached all the way to her eyes (which was rare enough in Sara's view) and it wasn't gong to be so easily defeated. "These people really are different, Sara." When Sara opened her mouth to speak, Joy cut her off, "I know we've been over this a few hundred times but I really wish you'd trust me on this." Sara lifted her head and, for the first time since she'd been picked up that morning, met Joy's eyes. Joy was taken aback by the resignation she saw there.
Joy had read the case file, of course. She wasn't one of those jaded old-timers who just went through the motions. She had gone into Social Work with the idea that she'd make a difference to the children of the world. And Sara's file had been difficult to get through. Sara had spent her first eleven years and three months in the care of alcoholic, abusive parents, watched over by an ineffectual older brother. Nothing new there. Joy may have been fresh out of school but she knew the system was full to bursting with such children and she had already seen her share. The world, it seemed to her sometimes, was also full to bursting with bad parents.
Sara also had a medical file full of "accidents." A dislocated shoulder at the age of thirteen months was only the beginning. There was a fractured left wrist at two, a broken rib and a concussion at three, two broken fingers and second-degree burns at four, a fractured right eye socket, nine stitches, and another concussion at five. Mercifully, the broken bones had stopped once Sara reached school age. Teachers and school administrators were legally obligated to report even suspected abuse. The abuse hadn't stopped; Sara's parents had just gotten better at concealing the evidence.
Reading between the lines of the terse, cramped writing which filled the pages of Sara's file, Joy suspected that Sara's parents had been at war with each other and that Sara and her brother had gotten caught in the cross-fire. Shawn Sidle, six years older than Sara, had coped by withdrawing. He had run away three months before their father's death and hadn't been heard from since. Sara had borne the brunt of her parents' anger at Shawn, at each other, and their disappointment with life.
Sara's intelligence, rather than being a blessing, had been her curse. When Sara had entered kindergarten already able to read the battered "Nancy Drew" books she carried everywhere with her, her teachers had been delighted. Testing had revealed an IQ close to 190, a number undreamt of in the small Tamales Bay charter school. Meetings with Sara's parents had, however, proved frustrating. Mr. Sidle was unimpressed with his daughter's ability. "Any retard can read," Joseph had said contemptuously. The fact that Sara had taught herself to read before the age of four by watching "Sesame Street" and using the old books she found around the house to match the letters to the words spelled out by Big Bird, Bert and Ernie did not change his view that Sara was "a smartass who needed to be taught some manners." Laura Sidle was little better. Cowed by years of emotional and physical abuse, she barely noticed her daughter at all most days. Sara was someone she knew she was supposed to protect; she just couldn't be bothered to try. Neither parent was capable of keeping up with their brilliant offspring so they vented their frustrations the only way they knew how: with harsh words and their fists. So, with little encouragement - or objection - Sara skipped kindergarten and started school in the first grade. She was far more advanced than even the first-graders but the school was reluctant to push, considering she was barely five.
Sara loved school and flourished intellectually. It soon became apparent, however, that she was making few friends among the older children who were her classmates. Sara, already not social by nature, had never learned how to make the overtures by which other children formed casual friendships. "Wanta come over to my house and play?" was just not an option in her world. Birthday parties? Forget about it. How would she get there and what would she do for a present? Her family wasn't poor, just . . . indifferent.
When her elementary school principal (another Do Gooder, Sara suspected) compared her test scores with her lack of social progress, he suggested moving her up another grade. What difference did it make? was his attitude. They couldn't do anything about her lack of friends but they could feed her hungry mind and allow her to grow intellectually. Having a "genius" was good for the school's image. (And its funding.) So Sara was skipped once again, this time to the fifth grade when she was eight. True, she had few friends, but her mind was expanding to fill the void. She had memorized the Periodic Table of Elements for fun and loved to point out things and name not only their symbols but their atomic weights as well. Instead of being appropriately impressed, her parents let her know that they thought her a showoff. Sara soon learned to quit "showing off" and keep whatever information she had discovered to herself.
And then her father died and her mother was sent away and Sara went to "visit" the strangers she was supposed to think of as family. They, too, seemed intimidated by her. Sara thought they probably meant well, but she didn't fit their preconceived ideas of what a girl ought to be. Foster children were all damaged goods; everybody knew that. And foster children were supposed to be "grateful for the opportunity" to experience the joys of normal family life. Problem was, many of those "normal" families were more screwed up than the one they thought they were saving her from. Oh, there were controls in place to make sure there were no more broken bones or black eyes but that didn't mean she wasn't made to suffer all the same. She lost her shoes the first night she spent with her first foster family. She shrugged, wrote it off as her foster kid "initiation" and took to sleeping with her shoes under her pillow. She learned not to place too much importance in personal possessions because she could never keep them. She forgot how to trust. She learned to dodge the grabby hands of foster "brothers" and the well-meaning attempts at make-overs by foster "sisters." Foster moms and dads pretty much ignored her after their initial attempts to befriend her were rebuffed. She didn't want a new set of parents and let them know in no uncertain terms that their advances were unwelcome. Her standard line, uttered while staring at the floor, was "Where should I put my stuff?" And that was that. She was left alone to settle in, store her meager belongings in whatever cupboard or drawer they gave her, and look around for what would become her "spot." It needed to be out of the way, quiet, and comfortable, since she generally spent a good deal of time there. Usually this spot was her bed but some foster parents frowned on Sara spending too much time alone in her room and insisted she spend "quality" time with the family. In those situations, she merely brought whatever book she happened to be reading with her, ignoring everybody else. This routine had stood her in good stead for the past two years
Now, though, things were about to change.
Standing on the sidewalk outside the beautiful, old home, Joy thought about the facts which filled Sara's file and wondered at the complexity of the young person who stood so stoically next to her. The facts in the file didn't come anywhere close to summing up the puzzle that was Sara Patricia Sidle.
Joy had first met her six months before, when Sara's then-foster family had decided to move to Montana and had given up the three children in their care. Sara had not complained, not once, about the unfairness of her life. But Joy's heart had ached for her, nonetheless. Despite her quiet, withdrawn air, Sara had a sweetness about her that people responded to. Often in spite of themselves, for she could be a dull, unresponsive pain in the ass most of the time. Joy suspected that Sara's prickly exterior was protecting a heart that was too fragile for its own good. Sara was often teased about her love of living things. She would try to rescue bugs that had wandered into the house, taking them outside before they could be stomped on. When she did speak at the dinner table, it was to make some off-the-wall comment about what she imagined to be the feelings of whatever poor animal they happened to be eating. Just before it was brutally slaughtered!
Sara should have become as self-centered and unfeeling as most of the other teenagers who had been in the system for as long as she had. Circumstances had certainly had enough opportunities to beat any tender feelings out of her. And yet . . . Joy had sensed it the first time she met Sara, lurking beneath the bitterness and the disappointment and the cynical disdain for those grownups who imagined they were "helping poor Sara." Under her thorny exterior, Sara hid a well of something that Joy had recognized immediately because it was what got her through her sometimes very difficult days: hope.
Now, looking into those chocolate brown eyes, Joy was struck by the resignation she saw there. Sara didn't usually leave her emotions lying around for just anyone to pick up; she was much too proud to let anyone think she was in pain. Just how tired did she have to be to let it show so nakedly? Joy wondered. This is it, Joy thought. My last chance. If I screw this up, Sara really will be my very first failure.
And yet . . . Watching her, Joy thought she could still see just the tiniest flicker, way down deep under the weight of crushed expectations. Even after all the disappointment, and after all her attempts to tamp it down, the hope was there. Sara still longed for something better; something more permanent. She felt it every time she stood on the porch of a new house. She despised herself for it, but she couldn't stop it. Every time, she would think: Is this it? Am I going to be able to stay here? Are these people the ones?
She knew better now, two years in the system. Knew better than to let it happen, but darned if it didn't rise up just the same. Joy put her arm around Sara's shoulders and leaned her blonde head next to Sara's dark one. "These people asked for you, Sara. Did you know that?"
Sara glanced up, startled. "Asked for me?"
"Yep. They're only interested in the best. The smartest. They've seen your test scores."
One side of Sara's mouth twisted up in a tiny smirk. "Wait until they get a load of the real deal, huh? That'll be a treat."
"Right," Joy agreed, laughing. "They asked for this meeting, Lovey. They put a note in your file two months ago that said that the next time you were in the market for a new home, they wanted to meet you before you went anywhere else. How's that for special, huh?"
Sara shrugged her shoulders nonchalantly. She didn't really care. (Oh, but she did care! So much so that her heart beat so hard she felt sure Joy could see it sticking out of her thin - and embarrassingly flat - chest.) "I guess," she said, trying for casual indifference.
"How 'bout we go meet them and you give them a chance, just this once. Hmm?"
"Okay," Sara reluctantly agreed. Joy removed her hand from Sara's wrist and opened the gate and they walked swiftly up the walk and onto the deep front porch. With one last encouraging smile at Sara, Joy rang the bell.
The deep "bing bang bong" of the doorbell echoed dimly throughout the house's interior. Sara, standing on the front porch, tried to get her nerves under control while they waited. It wasn't any big deal. She had done this so many times she could probably perform the introductions in her sleep. "Hi. I'm Sara. This is Joy. Nice to meet you. Where should I put my stuff?"
Joy and Sara soon heard footsteps echoing just on the other side of the large, ornate door. A female voice could be heard shouting "Michael! They're here!" on the other side. The door was opened and Sara had to look up to meet the no-nonsense gaze of the woman standing there. She was tall. Even for a man, she would have been considered tall. Probably close to six feet, Sara guessed. Late forties to early fifties. Her hair was dark and shiny and cut in a short cap that framed her face. Her eyes were a brown so dark they seemed black. She smiled down at Sara and said "Come on in, both of you." She stepped aside and swept her hand toward the hallway behind her.
"You must be Joy," she said, reaching out to shake Joy's hand firmly. She turned her gaze to Sara and reached out her hand once again. "And you," she said smiling warmly, "must be Sara."
Sara automatically allowed her small hand to be engulfed in the woman's larger one. She smiled, briefly, then cast her eyes down at the black-and-white checked floor of the entryway, allowing her hair to swing forward and shield her face.
The woman moved to her left, toward a small, cozy room that would probably have been called a sitting room. "This way. We can talk in here." She indicated a small sofa set at right angles to the ornate fireplace and sat herself down on its twin, on the other side of a glass and iron coffee table.
Joy sat back while Sara perched stiffly on the very edge of the chintz sofa, looking for all the world as if she had somewhere more important to be and would bolt at any moment. A man entered the room briskly, rubbing his hands together and smiling broadly. He strode over to stand next to the woman and regarded Sara over the top of a pair of rimless glasses. "You," he proclaimed, "must be Sara."
"We've established that, Dear," said the woman.
"We have?"
"Yes."
"Well then. What haven't we established yet?"
The woman glanced up at him, towering over the three females, "You could sit down and introduce yourself," she suggested kindly.
"Excellent idea!" he boomed. As he made himself comfortable next to the woman, Sara studied him, fascinated in spite of her determination to remain indifferent. He was slightly taller than the woman, his hair salt and pepper (though more salt than pepper, Sara had to admit), lean and energetic. Even seated, he seemed to be in motion. His eyes were a clear hazel and his cheeks, improbably, dimpled. He placed his right hand over his chest and said "I'm Michael Reese. Dr. Michael Reese."
"She doesn't need to know your credentials, Dear," the woman interrupted mildly.
"She doesn't?"
"No."
"But how am I supposed to impress her, then? Get her to stay?"
"You could try charming her," the woman suggested. "That always works on me."
They smiled at each other and the man - Michael - continued, "And this lovely creature is my wife, Gina. Dr. Gina--"
Gina cleared her throat loudly.
"Unnecessary information?" Michael asked.
"Yes," she replied.
Michael paused and took in a deep breath, trying to force himself to slow down. He leaned forward and bent his head, trying to see past Sara's curtain of dark, wavy hair. "We've asked you here today because we have an offer we'd like you to consider."
Sara's head shot up and she looked, startled, from one spouse to the other. This was not going the way these meetings usually went. Not at all.
Michael went on, now meeting Sara's startled brown gaze with his own calm green one. "We're both psychiatrists--" He turned to Gina, "That's necessary information, right?"
"I'd say so, yes." She smiled at Sara. "You need to know who we are and why we're doing this if you're to make up your mind."
"Make up my mind about what?" Sara asked. Joy glanced quickly over, surprise evident on her face. Sara never spoke during these initial meetings. In the six months she had known her, handing her off to four different sets of foster parents in that time, Sara had never said a word to any of them other than her rote recitation of "Where should I put my stuff?" She usually seemed as though she couldn't be bothered to care. Now, though, Sara was watching her potential foster parents with rapt attention, glancing from one to the other as if she were watching a particularly exciting tennis match.
"Why, whether you want to stay with us or not," Gina replied.
Sara's mouth fell open in astonishment. "S-s-stay with you?" she asked, dumbfounded. She had never realized she had a choice in the matter. She usually just went where she was told, and stayed there until someone, lately Joy, came to take her away again. Sara watched Gina, then Michael, then Gina again and finally said "No one's ever asked me before."
"Well, we're asking you," Michael said firmly.
"Michael, don't let's get ahead of ourselves," Gina reminded him. "You haven't explained our proposition yet."
"Oh. Right you are, my darling," Michael said. He sat back, propped his left ankle on his right knee and clasped his left knee in both hands. He smiled at Sara and went on. "As I said, we're both psychiatrists. Gina has a small private practice and she consults with the San Francisco police from time to time doing clinical evaluations. I teach. At UC Berkeley."
Sara was impressed. "That's a good school," she murmured.
"Yes. It is," Michael agreed. He went on, "We've never been able to have children of our own and from time to time we take in certain . . ." he paused, considering, "very special foster children."
Sara smiled. "Very special as in, they ride the short bus to school?" she asked cheekily. None of Sara's previous foster parents had been treated to Sara's dry sense of humor. Joy had only glimpsed it a few times herself.
"No, Miss Smartypants," Michael retorted, grinning back at her. "Special as in, they're the cream of the crop. Intellectually. Artistically. Special."
Sara sobered, once again bending her head to stare at the floor. "I'm not that smart."
Gina spoke up suddenly, "You are that smart. Let's not disrespect each other by pretending otherwise, shall we?" Sara glanced up once again, meeting Gina's forthright gaze.
"Okay."
"We are fortunate in that we don't have to work very hard to maintain a comfortable lifestyle," Gina said. "And we have both experienced the horrors of the foster care system first-hand." She reached over and gave Michael's hand a quick squeeze, then returned her hand to her lap. "As Michael said, we have not had children of our own. Still, we are your stereotypical California liberals and we have an overly-developed sense of responsibility to make the world a better place. We decided about twenty years ago we'd do it one child at a time."
Michael continued the narrative, "We have some clout with the Department of Children's Services."
"Some clout," Gina snorted. "Michael did them a huge favor. I mean HUGE--"
"Don't exaggerate, Gina," Michael protested modestly, blushing a deep pink. "I helped them out of a tight spot and now, we get a few perks, like getting to pick potential foster children."
"And you picked me?" Sara asked, wonderingly.
"We have access to the state educational test scores, as well as Children and Family's own IQ evaluations. We also," Michael added more seriously, "have access to personal files."
Sara flushed. Here it comes, she thought. This is where they ask me what really happened that night.
"Sara?" Gina said gently. Sara looked up, unconsciously flinching slightly. "We don't care what's in the files. We just needed to know what your life was like before; what sort of stuff you're made of, so we'd know the best way to help you reach your potential."
"You don't care? That everyone says I'm . . . damaged?"
"Not in the least," Gina said quietly. "All of us are damaged in some way, Sara. Some of us just need a little help putting the pieces back together, that's all."
Sara blinked rapidly, trying to will away the mist of tears. It had been a long time since she had been treated with such understanding. To distract herself, she glanced around the small room. Noticing the pictures arranged along the high mantel and on various surfaces, she asked "Do any other foster children live here?"
"Not right now," Michael said. He glanced at a picture of a smiling young man in a bright green cap and gown which held pride of place in the center of the mantel. "Zachariah just left for college." He grimaced, as if in pain, "USC, the traitor." He sighed dramatically. "I tried to get him to see the benefits of the California state system, Berkeley, Santa Cruz, UCLA even. But, noooo. He went for the snobby, private ins--" He stopped abruptly and glanced over at Gina with a grin. This was obviously a familiar speech. "You'll meet him, if you decide to stay. They all come back for Thanksgiving dinner. If we don't see them any other time during the year, they all try to make it back for Gina's famous deep-fried turkey and pumpkin mousse pie."
"All?" Sara asked.
"Six, so far. Four girls, two boys." He turned to Gina, suddenly thoughtful, "Funny how we've ended up with so many more girls, over the years."
"Yes," she replied, not quite hiding the slight smirk. "Funny."
"The oldest is our girl, Anita. She's a doctor in Atlanta. An oncologist. She just had her second baby. That's him," he said, pointing to a picture of a rather splotchy newborn on the small side table next to Sara's elbow. "He doesn't look like much there but he's turning into a handsome baby," Michael said proudly. "Then there's Marcus. He's an engineer at Cal Tech. All set to solve this country's energy problems, just you wait and see if he doesn't. He has twin girls and the sweetest wife on the planet." He glanced over to see Gina's raised eyebrow. "Next to you, of course," he added.
"Of course," she murmured.
"Then, umm, Marlea, our artiste. She plays the cello with the Chicago Symphony. She just has the one baby. Says it's all she can handle at the moment. Then Chelsea, she's some sort of computer whiz over at Apple. She says she isn't even looking so will we please just forget about her producing any grandbabies for the moment! And Yolanda's at Yale, finishing up her Master's in Psychology." He couldn't quite keep the pride out of his voice at this bit of news. "And Zachariah's not sure what he wants to do. Either cure malaria or invent a cheaper electric car."
Sara's head was spinning and she wasn't sure she could take it all in. "And you want me? Next?"
Michael smiled at her. "Yep. We want you."
"Why?"
"Because," Gina answered, "you're one of those special people we were discussing earlier." At Sara's snort of disbelief, Gina moved over to sit next to her. She didn't sit too close, not wanting to spook her, but lightly touched her arm. "We've seen your file. You've had some rotten luck in your life, but none of those things have been your fault."
"But I--"
"No," said Gina, leaving no room for argument. "None of it. Not your fault. Not the parents you were born to, not the brother who left you, not your father's death, not your mother's breakdown, not the things those other families did to you. None of it was ever your fault."
Noticing Sara's effort to remain indifferent, Michael moved to sit on the coffee table, his knees just grazing hers. "We've also seen your IQ test results. You're the brightest little thing we've ever seen. Certainly smarter than any other foster child we've taken on. Chelsea was asked to join Mensa when she was fourteen, but you leave her in the dust."
"We can not, in all good conscience, let all that potential go to waste. We've made it our business to see that it doesn't," said Gina.
The couple were, for the moment, finished with their pitch and the room was suddenly quiet but for the rhythmic ticking of the small mantel clock. Michael stood up and took Gina's hand, lifting her to stand next to him. "Why don't you think about it for a while and we'll go fix us something to eat," he said quietly. They headed for a door which led into a small dining room and from there, presumably, to the kitchen. "Ham and cheese okay with you?"
"I'd rather have peanut butter and jelly," Sara said shyly. "If that's okay."
Michael smiled. "That's perfectly okay." He turned to look at Joy, who had yet to say a word. "Ham and cheese okay with you?"
"Sure," she said. "With mustard, please."
"You got it, dude," he said in his best Michelle Tanner imitation and disappeared.
Sara and Joy were left staring at each other in disbelief. "Did you know that's what we were here for?" Sara asked her.
"I thought it was gonna be the usual: Hi. Howareya. Here's Sara. Seeya. Be back in two months to take her off your hands." Joy laughed at Sara's embarrassed grimace. "Face it, kid. That's usually how it goes and we both know it. No sense sugarcoating it." She shook her head, as if trying to clear water from her ear. "Can you believe those two?" she asked.
Sara was quiet, trying to work it all out in her head. "I don't know what to do ," she said in a small voice. It wasn't really much of a choice they had given her - thrive in their care or slowly wither and die, lost somewhere in the system. But she liked the feeling that came with knowing that she could choose to reject them. She wasn't stupid enough to, but she COULD if she wanted.
They sat in silence for awhile and Joy was certain she could hear the cogs and gears in Sara's brain spinning unimaginably fast. Soon, Gina and Michael were back, carrying a platter of sandwiches and another with glasses and a pitcher of what looked like lemonade.
As they passed the food around, filling glasses with freshly-squeezed lemonade, Sara watched them, considering. They ate quickly, the quiet broken by the occasional comment on the freshness of the bread or the tartness of the lemonade. When they were finished, they piled napkins and scraps and empty glasses back on the tray in the middle of the coffee table.
Then the four merely sat and looked at each other.
Finally, Sara burst out "What if I don't want to stay?"
Gina said, "Then Joy will take you to the home of Dan and Krystol Thompson. DCFS has your next foster family all lined up."
"And if I stay?" Sara said.
"We will show you to your room, spend some time getting to know each other, and you will start the tenth grade at Bay Bridge High School on Monday morning."
"We will need to find out what YOU want to do before we make any plans beyond that point," Michael added.
Sara didn't need more than two seconds to make up her mind. "Okay," she said.
"Okay, what?" said Michael.
"Okay, I'll stay," Sara replied.
Joy and Sara made quick work of the goodbyes, standing at the little gate at the end of the front garden. Joy handed over the battered duffle containing all of Sara's worldly possessions with a slightly watery smile. "You be good, now," she whispered. Joy pushed Sara's hair back behind her ears and framed her face with her hands. "You, my love, have been given a wonderful opportunity here." She tried to look stern but couldn't quite pull it off. "Please don't blow it."
"I won't," said Sara solemnly.
"I know you won't," said Joy. "Your IQ breaks the bank, there's no way you're that dumb. It's just something us Social Workers have to say, you know, to assert our authority."
They smiled at each other and then Joy moved to the driver's side of her small Audi sedan. "I'll see you in two months." At Sara's look of dismay, Joy laughed. "Not to come get you, silly. To check up on you." Sara relaxed. "You are still a ward of the state you know and you are, for now, still my responsibility." Joy got into her car and leaned forward to look out the open passenger window. "Go on, now. I'll wait until you get inside."
Sara gave a small wave and made her way back up the walk, onto the porch and into the house, closing the door behind her. Joy put her car in gear and pulled away, smiling at the thought that there was a really good chance that Sara would not, after all, be counted as her first failure. That honor, she was sure, would one day go to some other child.
Inside the quiet house, Sara stood for a moment in the small entryway, taking it all in. A sound off to the right signaled the return of Gina Reese. She stopped and watched Sara for a moment, allowing her to set the pace. Sara met her gaze and asked, "Where should I put my stuff?"
"Come on," Gina said. "I'll show you."
"Will I be staying in . . . " she tried to remember the name, ". . . Zachariah's old room?" she wondered.
"No." Gina laughed softly. "We're a little too good at this foster care stuff. Once we get them shipped off to college we figure we're done but they don't want to let us go so fast. Like regular parents, it takes marriage or a job across the country to get them out of the nest. Good thing, too," she said so quietly that Sara wasn't sure she had heard her, "I get more attached than I ever thought possible."
"Oh," Sara said.
"Marcus's old room only became Zach's once he moved into his house in Pasadena. And Chelsea took Anita's old room after Anita had her first baby and we figured the marriage was probably going to last. Fortunately, this old house has lots of room." Sara and Gina moved up the staircase to the second floor. "The master bedroom's on the first floor and there are four more on this floor." Gina turned once again and headed up another set of stairs. She turned to smile at Sara, "I thought you might like something a little bit different. All your own."
At the top of the stairs, Gina opened a door and ushered Sara into what was obviously the old house's attic. It was spacious and airy with a high, sloping ceiling and windows at each gabled end. It was painted a clean, creamy white and was furnished simply with a double bed, unmade, two tall dressers and a roomy desk under the north window. The southern window was flanked by two bookcases which already contained quite a few volumes.
"I know it's a bit, I don't know, white," Gina said. "We thought you'd like to choose the colors you wanted for the walls and for the bedding."
Sara gazed around in wonder. "This is all for me?" Gina nodded. "I don't have to share with anybody?"
"Nope. It's all yours," said Gina. She moved to place Sara's small duffel on the bed. "Now, there are no locks on the doors but, don't worry, we will respect your privacy."
She opened the first door off the entry to reveal a small white bathroom. "This is pretty white, too, I'm afraid, but don't worry about it, we can brighten it up. We got all the kids their own monogrammed towels." At Sara's look she continued, "Oh, it's not as luxurious as it sounds, believe me. Once you've settled in a bit you'll be expected to do your own laundry and monograms make it easier to keep track of whose stuff is sitting in the dryer." Looking around at the bare walls and then at Sara's bag, she said "And I wouldn't be too concerned about filling up the space, either. You'd be surprised how quickly one accumulates stuff." She went over and began thumbing through the books on the shelf. "These are some of my old classics I thought you might like to have. Joy tells us you're quite the voracious reader." Sara nodded. "We have a library downstairs and anything you'd like to bring up here, be my guest."
Gina moved to the door and held out her hand to Sara. "Now. What do you say we go shopping?"
Sara settled in to her new life with Michael and Gina Reese. Living with her biological parents, and two years in foster care, had left her unwilling to trust easily so some days were better, some worse. She started the tenth grade the following Monday, escorted to her first class by Gina. "Michael has class until two so he'll be here to pick you up after school," Gina told her. "I'll see you tonight and you can tell me all about your day."
That was the biggest shocker, Sara found. That these people actually wanted to hear about her school day, help her with her homework, talk to her. In fact, they treated her with a degree of kindness and respect that Sara found difficult to get used to. Most people wanted something from her, or just wanted her not to bother them. She spent her first few months with them trying to figure out what Gina and Michael wanted.
As it turned out, they didn't want anything from her except good grades, honesty, and to be treated with respect in return. Sara began to thrive in their care. She never learned to be as physically demonstrative as they would have liked but that only made them appreciate her rare hugs all the more. Her smile became her best feature and it wouldn't have occurred to anyone to describe her as "sullen." Trust was a bit harder to develop but she soon learned that if she gave it, it wasn't abused. She would most likely always be more wary than most but the Reese's were happy with the progress she did make.
She painted her room a deep purple (with Gina's reluctant agreement) and kept the curtains and bedding simple and white. The bookshelves were soon crammed full of so many books that the thought of leaving them behind actually caused a pain near her heart. Until she realized, after her first year with them had come and gone, that she probably wouldn't ever be asked to leave them behind.
Joy, as promised, turned up at the two month mark to see how she was getting on and was stunned speechless at the change. Sara had grown another inch and filled out considerably. She was still thin but Joy suspected that she always would be. (Lucky little thing, she thought enviously.) She wore her dark hair pulled back from her face in a simple ponytail and she was more apt to look you in the eye rather than down at the ground. And she talked a mile a minute about her school and her plans and her trips with Gina to the San Francisco Police Department morgue. Joy left with the certainty that Sara would be moving from the "Potential First Failure" column to the "Biggest Success Story" column.
The first Thanksgiving Sara spent in the old Victorian was overwhelming. Every one of the six kids made a point of showing up to greet Sara. That meant six new siblings, three in-laws, and five small children - and all their noise and confusion - to deal with. Gina informed Sara that she would not forbid her from hiding in her room if she chose, but it would probably be easier if she met them one at a time, as they arrived, rather than all at once at the dinner table. Sara found it easier to comply than she had thought possible. Every one of her six foster siblings had been right where she was, feeling just as she did. They gave her time, and they gave her space. And she loved them instantly.
She had never before been surrounded by so many smart people. It was exhilarating to be able to discuss science with people who didn't need a dictionary to keep up. Thanksgiving day at her parents' house had always been a tense affair. Her father liked to invite over hordes of people to watch football and drink and the day was never complete without a fight. Sara always ended up in her closet with a flashlight and a book. If she was lucky, she went to bed with nothing more than an empty belly.
By the end of her sophomore year in high school, Sara had pretty much exhausted the school's curriculum. School officials had suggested she skip her junior year and move right on to senior but the Reese's wouldn't hear of it. They felt that the social stimulation of her peers was too important for Sara's development to skip it. They did allow her to take nothing but AP and undergraduate college courses her junior and senior years. By the time she graduated from high school a few months shy of her sixteenth birthday she had earned nearly thirty units of college credit.
The Reese's not only had an "in" with DCFS, they were also pretty experienced with the college application process, having helped six - now seven - children get into some of the finest schools in the country. It helped that their kids were brighter than average but either Gina or Michael had "a friend" on the admissions boards of just about every Ivy League college, not to mention nearly the entire University of California state system. And they knew more about scholarships than anyone. Who knew you could get a scholarship for being both Swedish and a piccolo player, Sara marveled! Zachariah had gotten a full scholarship to USC based partly on his brains and partly on the fact that he was Hispanic and his father (wherever he was) had been a veteran. Sara, Gina and Michael found it almost painfully ironic that there was so much financial help for disadvantaged young people to pay for college. The help, they thought, would probably have been more useful a whole lot sooner since most of them never made it as far as college.
Sara chose Harvard and the Reese's went to work making sure she got in. Her grades, her test scores, her gender and her background all worked in her favor. Her youth, ironically, did not. Harvard had been burned a few times by Whiz Kids and its admissions board was wary of Sara's age. She would be sixteen (barely!) when she started and they wanted assurances that there would be no problems with a minor, even a very bright minor, having free reign on their ivy-covered campus. Assurances from two eminent psychiatrists (one of whom specialized in adolescent trauma) went a long way toward reassuring them. "Sometimes," commented Michael slyly, "that letterhead we paid a small fortune for comes in mighty handy." To no one's surprise, she was accepted, her tuition and expenses paid for with three different scholarships and Federal tuition assistance.
When the day came to leave, Sara stood in her attic room and thought back on the three years she had spent there. Sometimes, she thought of those years as the span of her entire life, preferring not to think about what had gone before. The room bore her unmistakable imprint and she would be leaving it that way. For now. ("Can I leave my room just the way it is?" she asked Gina one night at dinner. "So I can come back to it if I want, like the others do?" Gina laughed. "Of course you can, you silly. What are you going to do during summer vacations if you don't come home to us? I know you'd like to prove me wrong but you aren't going to get a physics degree in one year.") The bookcases were crammed full of books and the walls were still the vibrant purple she had chosen and some of her clothes still hung in the closet and the walls held posters and prints she had hung herself. It was HERS and she wasn't being asked to give it up until she was ready.
Gina and Michael didn't bother with tears when they watched her board the plane for Massachusetts. They knew she wasn't gone from their lives in any permanent sense. None of them ever were, God willing. And Sara did come back to them each summer, staying in her room which was, she was always pleased to discover, just as she had left it. And when she graduated with honors, she decided to come home and pursue her Master's degree at Berkeley so she could be near them.
When Gina and Michael were killed by a drunk driver one night when Sara was twenty-seven, the memorial service had to be held in Golden Gate Park; no church in the area was big enough to accommodate the crowd.
And when Sara's son was born when she was thirty-seven, she named him Reese. Reese Patrick Grissom, in honor of the two people who had put the pieces of her damaged soul back together, opened up her world, and made his very existence possible.
The End