Disclaimer: Nope, still don´t own the characters. The storyline is mine, though.
"Adoption is not about finding children for families, it's about finding families for children." (Joyce Maguire Pavao)
Chapter 2: Edward
The file wasn´t as thick as I had expected. It was quite thin, actually. Just a medical report, the boy´s personal information – or the parts of it that the Washington state had been able to gather, since the scumbags that Edward had been forced to call his parents for the first six years of his life had already left the state and hadn´t picked up their phone – and the results of a psychological evaluation, performed on the day after Edward was found just outside the CPS office in Seattle. I stared at the sheet of his personal data in my hands.
The paper stated that his full name was Edward Anthony Masen. He was born on June 20, 1994. There was basically no information about his biological family, save the names of his mother and father. The Washington state CPS had probably tried hard, but they couldn´t find out whether he had siblings. Neither Edward senior nor Elizabeth had any siblings and the boy had no grandparents alive. Given this information and the problems that sending Edward back to Illinois might cause, the state had decided to find him an adoptive family or a long-term foster home. There was a picture of him, attached to the paper that contained his personal information with a paper clip. He was the cutest little boy with his unruly bronze locks and shockingly green eyes. I swear, I have never seen eyes greener than that on anyone before. And I fell in love with him the moment I saw the photo. My heart beat faster and my whole body felt warmer. A smile spread onto my face when I looked at the picture. I wondered whether this was the way a mother felt when seeing her newborn baby for the first time.
"The child seemed introvert and somewhat uninterested during his meeting with the psychologist. The psychologist did most of the talking while the boy sat on the floor, holding a toy in his clenched fist, his position rigid," Carlisle read silently from the psych evaluation, "This is ridiculous. Surely anyone, especially a child his age, would act introvert after being separated from the only family he had ever known. And he wasn´t even a lost boy at the store. He was coldly left into the street, hoping that the social services finds him before anyone else," he huffed and let the paper drop from his hands and fall onto the table.
"Maybe they didn´t even hope that. Maybe they didn´t care who found him and just happened to leave him next to the CPS office building by accident," I mused. Carlisle seemed livid for the boy. It was rare to him this aggravated since he was usually the calmest man on the planet. It was one of his many good qualities that made sure that he was going to be a great father someday. I was just as angry at the no-good parents who just abandoned their child, in a strange state and city no less, with no care in the world. From what Miss Stewart and the files told me about his biological parents, it wasn´t hard to conclude that Mr. and Mrs. Masen were most likely drunk or on drugs when leaving their son.
"We have no choice, do we?" Carlisle asked me, a grin on his face.
"No, my dear husband, I don´t think we do. This boy is our child. Edward Anthony is our son," I answered with a big smile on my face. No matter what the boy had gone through before now, things would get better for him when he joins our family.
We called Miss Stewart back that afternoon, telling her that we most definitely were interested in adopting Edward. The weeks following the phone call were crazy. The final court decision of Edward´s parents being unfit to take care of their child was made four days after we got the file. After that we went through another mangle of interviews, home checks and medical evaluations, just like when we were on the training process to becoming adoptive parents.
It was the 24th of November when Carlisle and I met Edward for the first time. The meeting was arranged in the house of his temporary foster family. The couple that had taken Edward in seemed to be very nice, decent people.
"We would absolutely love to keep Edward with us, but our lack of space is a problem," Jasmine West, the mother, explained. She told us that they had four bedrooms – plus the master bedroom – and were currently fostering three children. There was Edward, of course, and then there was Janet, a beautiful 14-year-old girl with haunting dark eyes, and Roy, a 12-yar-old boy who was so tall that his height alone made him look older than he was.
"Janet will be leaving us next week and Roy probably in a month or two. But after Janet leaves the social services has asked us to take three girls more. But the thing is, we won´t take any more than four at a time, so that each child has their own room and is as comfortable as possible when staying with us," Dave, the father, continued, "These children have been through more than enough shit for a lifetime, and we want to make our house a pleasant place for them to be instead one those freaking money-making factories. Foster parents get paid, ya know, not a lot but still and some people take advantage on that, taking as many children into their house as possible and not taking care of them properly. Some kids have to sleep with the pets or on the floor, others are raped and abused. Those people ruin the whole fostering system. Oh God, Jas, how many children have we had come here completely terrified of they think we´re gonna do to them." Dave looked pained at the thought of those kids.
"Yes, sometimes it´s hard to be a short-term foster carer. We get a lot of difficult children who are just waiting a place in an institution, or in better cases they wait for an adoptive family. And almost always just the child starts to form a bond with us, and vice versa, he or she is snatched away. Even though we shouldn´t, we do get attached to these kids," Jasmine murmured, shaking her head and I was sure that I saw tears in her eyes.
"Anyway, Dave and I have probably been ranting for way too long, when all you probably want is just to see Edward. Please wait here while I go and get him," Jasmine said, smiling apologetically and headed upstairs where the bedrooms where located.
I have to admit, the first encounter with our future son was slightly awkward. We didn´t know what to say and neither did he. Jasmine and Dave – who had been in situations like this many times before, no doubt – were a great help. They encouraged Edward to show us his room at the foster home and talk about things he liked or didn´t like. The rest of the conversation came more easily when I and Carlisle started to ask questions about what he told us. Edward seemed – I cringed inwardly as the words of the psychologist of the child protective services came to mind – very apathetic. It took a while for him to get comfortable enough to say anything, and when he did, he muttered short answers to our questions while staring at the carpeted floor. I understood that awkwardness and fear were normal reactions to a situation like this, but still something in Edward´s behavior, something I couldn´t quite put my finger on, worried me and seemed somehow abnormal.
After we left the West family´s house that day, we met Edward one more time before he moved in with us. That day we were allowed to take him outside. We took him to have ice cream and he seemed to be slightly more relaxed than last time. We all were. But there was still the underlying awkwardness in him which worried me.
It was the 17th of December, 11.00 a.m., when adoption was finalized in a court room in Seattle. That day Edward Anthony Masen became officially Edward Anthony Cullen – and we had no idea what laid ahead of us.
So that was chapter 2 of A Home For The Children. Sadly, I´m a very busy woman and don´t have much time to do any real research so if I have gotten any facts wrong about the adopting process I´m sorry and asking you to ignore my silly mistakes. Pretty please :) What do you think about my story so far? What do you think of little Edward? Please review! I won´t take much of your time, but it would make my day better :)
- La Hija de la Luna
