AN: Wow! I'm amazed, flattered, everything by your response so far! I'm glad to see there's at least some interest in this fic and I hope I don't let you down as I go. Your feedback, as always, is greatly appreciated and loved.
I'm giving you a second chapter. It's still not much, but you at least get a little more to the story. I hope to have more for you out soon, but it's late here and tomorrow starts early.
I hope you enjoy. Let me know what you think.
*Warning for possible triggers ahead for domestic abuse and some of its possible side effects.*
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It's in the past. It's behind you. Leave it there. Don't worry about it. Leave the past where it belongs.
That's the well-meant mantra about life isn't it? Once you've gone down a road then leave it behind you. You've made it over the obstacles, you've travelled the miles. Look ahead and look toward the future. What's done is done.
All these things get said and repeated over and over. They're applied to every aspect of every day. We can't change the past, but we can change the future. The past should just be forgotten.
But that's not the reality of life at all. Not for anyone. Life is like looking straight ahead of you most of the time. You see what you haven't seen before. You see what could be, what might be just ahead if you keep on moving. The problem, though, is that life has a way of throwing mirrors up in front of your face at nearly every turn. You look ahead then, fooled and not expecting the glass in front of you, but then it's there and you can't see what lies ahead any longer. You see only what lies behind you. It's a reflection, of course…a distorted image of what's no longer in your direct line of vision, but it's still there. It hasn't really gone anywhere at all. It's not so much behind you as it's always at your back.
That's the real truth about life. The truth that you don't read in any of the fancy inspirational quotes scrawled on greeting cards and in books.
As humans we may never see ourselves except in photographs and mirrors…and both are reminders of our pasts since neither captures present nor future.
Good or bad, the past is always with us, it's always behind us, and it's always in how we see ourselves. It can't be escaped.
Carol sat in her kitchen, the receiver of the telephone pressed against her ear, and life held a mirror up for her.
A year after Ed went to prison, Carol was trying to piece together her life. At the time she'd had some grand notion that she would pick up, somehow, where she left off when the nuptials she thought were marking the beginning of something grand for her had stripped her of really all the hopes and dreams she had left over from the illusions of childhood.
She had gone, in the beginning, to a support group for battered wives. It was supposed to help her heal. She was supposed to surround herself with women of a similar experience and together they would rise up like metaphorical phoenixes and they would become new and whole. Each of them would continue on with their lives, leaving the past buried behind them where it belonged, and they would embrace in the future.
Except that really wasn't what happened. The group sessions, in Carol's opinions, had been nothing more than giant pity parties for everyone involved. She didn't want to tell her story because she didn't want them all looking at her with the same sympathetic eyes. She didn't want the coos and the hugs and the promises that it would all get better. She didn't want sympathy at all, and she didn't believe that it would get better. It was behind her, after all, and Ed was in prison. What more could she want out of life? The chapter of the book was closed, and she'd put it on the shelf where it belonged.
In her private therapy sessions, things had been different. She'd had a therapist, Rosie, who was focused on the future. Everything she talked about sounded like it had come off one of those inspirational calendars, the kind intended to make each new day better and brighter than the one before. And the first thing that each of them was supposed to do was to come up with some way in which they could connect with the future they'd each seen for themselves while also contributing, in some way, to their own healing process.
Carol remembered the activity well. She'd been stumped with how she might, in any way at all, reconnect with the future that she'd once envisioned for her life. The future that she'd envisioned, all those years ago…before the nightmare that life with Ed had been…had been a future that might have come directly from a Norman Rockwell painting or from the pages of some romance novel.
Carol was going to be the beautiful, adored, and doting wife. She was going to be the caring and nurturing mother. But that had been before she'd realized the truth about herself. She wasn't beautiful and she'd never be adored. She had no desire to be any man's wife after Ed had blown through her life like a tornado, and therefore she had little hope of motherhood.
Still, her therapist had urged her, after a dozen or so sessions, not to give up entirely on the concept. She could foster, the woman had said. She could act as a temporary mother for a child…until a better home was found.
Even then, Carol had thought that it wouldn't take much for services to find a better home for any child than her own. She had nothing to offer any child, no matter how much she might have once believed she had maternal inclinations.
At the therapist's urgings, however, Carol had finally decided to fill out the papers to foster. She'd done her required hours of training. For a while, as she thought more and more that it might happen, she'd begun pleased with the idea. She didn't know how well she'd do at caring for a child, but she wanted to believe that the people at the training sessions were right and she really was worth something, at least to a child who had nothing.
Time passed, though, and Carol never heard a thing about the papers that she'd turned in. Her paperwork had likely been discarded. The people who had worked placing children could probably tell from just reading the pages that Carol really wasn't fit for the lofty ideas placed in her head by a well-meaning therapist.
And so she'd forgotten about it. She'd dismissed, entirely, the whole idea. She'd quit the therapy sessions and left the group to cry on each other's shoulders about things that couldn't be changed. She'd left them all to think about how wonderful their futures would be. She'd let it sink into them that the future really wasn't some magical place that they were going to find where all their dreams come true. It was just another moment in time…one that would quickly become the past and fade into the background with all the other details, both wonderful and horrifying, that made them who they were.
Except now that moment from the past was reflected back to her. The memory of turning in those papers, completing those hours, and wondering if her life would change for the better like the nauseatingly sunny therapist suggested it would, came rushing back.
After all these years, they wanted to know if she was interested in fostering a child that needed to be placed immediately.
Carol only half heard the details of what the woman was saying to her. The child was a girl, Sophia, and she needed to be placed as quickly as possible. Would Carol be willing to take her? She was desperate for placement.
She must be desperate…her case must be pretty much hopeless. That would be the only reason that Carol could think that after all these years they had blown the dust off the pile of papers that she'd filled out and thought of placing the girl with her.
Only someone who had absolutely nothing…no chance at all…would seem like a "perfect fit" for Carol.
And now that someone, apparently, was a little girl named Sophia that needed to be picked up as soon as possible if Carol was willing to foster the girl until she could be placed in a more permanent home.
Carol considered turning the offer down. Financially the child wouldn't be a burden, but Carol wasn't sure that she believed the lies of the therapist any longer. She wasn't fit to be a foster parent. She wasn't fit, really, for anything of the sort. The worst thing that could happen to this child, probably, was that she end up in the care of someone like Carol. It was hard to mentor someone to become something, when you'd never been anything yourself.
Somehow, though, things got lost in translation somewhere and Carol found herself giving into the woman's pleas and the guarantees that the placement was temporary. It was even more temporary than the word could imply. They'd actively search for a new location for the girl, if only Carol would house her until something became available.
When Carol hung up the phone, still processing what she'd just accepted, she realized what a grave mistake she'd made. She had no idea how old the child was, but if she remembered correctly, the somewhat optimistic side of herself that existed back then had requested a young child. A baby or a toddler. She'd checked, she thought she remembered, three or under as her preference.
Carol climbed the stairs to the second story of the house where the two abandoned rooms stood empty and waiting…though she wasn't quite sure what they were waiting for. She hadn't been up to the second level in years, and she grimaced a little at the cobwebs that clung to the corners of the stairwell.
She opened the door to the first room and stepped inside, her eyes casting over the furniture. Everything exactly as she'd left it the last time she'd left the room, though she'd been a lot different then. She walked around it, running her fingers over the railing of the crib, touching the bow of the bear that sat in the rocking chair that had never been used.
The nursery was untouched. Still haunted, a little, by the tiny soul that never resided there. She'd put too much hope into the room when she'd put it together, against Ed's wishes, sneaking pieces of furniture here and there. He'd only been in the room once…and the first time that he was there was the last time that she'd stepped over the threshold.
The thing about babies, was, that they were much more fragile than their mothers. At barely five months pregnant she remembered that beating well. Each detail of the recovery played over and over in her mind a million times for years after…it had been a long time, though, since she'd thought about it. A broken wrist…a broken collarbone…three broken ribs…a busted cheek. Really not all that bad for as angry as he'd been. Child's play for some of his rampages. Except it hadn't been quite the uneventful experience for the baby.
She'd never known it, not really…she never once held it in her arms. Even at the hospital they'd insisted that she not see the child, even though she'd requested it. Ed had taken her that night. He'd driven her to the emergency room, gallant knight that he was, and he'd played the game well. The heartbroken father, worried over his wife and his child when she'd suffered such a tragic accident.
Carol shivered. She'd meant to dissemble the room a thousand times, but she'd never brought herself to do it. She'd simply left it as it was the night he'd drug her out of it.
When she'd let herself be falsly optimistic, for the brief spell when she believed that she'd become a foster parent, she figured the room might get some use after all. Children might stay in that room, although their stays might be brief, and they might wipe away the haunting memory that hung over the place. She'd forgotten that hope too, though, when time passed without a call and she realized that she wasn't going to be chosen…not when there were so many better options.
She supposed, though, now the room might be of some use. The girl, Sophia, might sleep in the crib. She might hug the bears that had never been held by a child. She might, during her brief time there, help to make the room feel less like the tomb it had become and more like the beacon of hope that it had been intended to be.
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Carol woke up earlier than normal. She'd agreed to pick the child up and she didn't want to be late and leave a bad first impression on the authorities that had taken five years to make contact with her.
She drank her coffee in a hurry, pulling on a long sleeved shirt and a hoodie that supported some sports team she'd never heard of to go with the jeans she'd worn the day before. She stepped out the house, tousling her hair a little to make it look less like she'd let the pillow do all the styling for her.
She drove with the radio off, in silence, thinking about what she was daring to do. She didn't know how this would result, but she was feeling something in her chest that she hadn't felt in so long she might have considered it to be something like indigestion instead of what it was. She was beginning to feel somewhat optimistic…perhaps even happy.
Through the night she'd thought about the child. She would be young and she wouldn't know to judge Carol for all the things that everyone else knew to hold her accountable for. She wouldn't look at her with the same knowing eyes that Carol saw staring back from the people she encountered in the library…the people that knew about her and about Ed.
The child would be just that, a child. An infant even. She'd be too young to care that Carol wasn't anything to look at and too young to know what a worthless existence she'd lived.
As she neared the place where she was supposed to pick up the child, Carol began to worry. She didn't have a car seat and she hadn't stopped to purchase one. She didn't know how old the child would be, so she wouldn't have any idea what to buy. The woman on the phone had failed to give her any instructions such as that, and she could only hope that it meant the place was prepared and certain necessities were provided. If that weren't the case, she supposed, she could find out what she needed to know and make an impromptu trip to pick up something.
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"I know you sounded hesitant on the phone, and I can understand your feelings," the social worker said, leading Carol down a hall in a building that she couldn't imagine housed children. "We're looking for another place for Sophia. The truth is, though, that she's been through a number of foster homes already. It's becoming difficult to place her."
So you're sending her to the last possible place that anyone would want to go…but she's out of options. Carol thought. She wasn't exactly surprised by the confession of the woman. She had figured that the only way she'd end up with a child, especially after the long silence, was if there just wasn't any other option.
"We're very glad that you're willing to give her a chance, though. That's really all she needs, you know? Someone who's willing to give her a chance. You may even find that you get along quite well," the woman continued.
Carol couldn't imagine what it was that was so disagreeable about a small child that no one had wanted to keep the little thing, but she supposed that she'd soon find out. She hoped that she could at least tolerate the girl, though she was becoming worried now, until they could find somewhere else to put her.
"I don't have a car seat or anything," Carol said. "I was hoping that you had something here that I could use."
The social worker stopped in the hall outside a room. She looked at Carol for a moment as though she'd just asked her where they kept their unicorns.
"I'm sorry?" The woman asked.
"A car seat," she said. "You didn't specify on the phone last night what I would need, so I'm afraid that I'm empty handed. I was hoping that you had them available."
"You won't need a car seat," the woman said, obviously a little amused.
Now it was Carol's turn to mirror the confusion of the woman. The woman didn't respond to her verbally though, at least not in the moment. She opened the door revealing a room that looked more like a place you'd stay at a nightmarish summer camp than something you'd want to call home. On one of the beds, that were really cots, sat a girl of at least fourteen years of age if she was a day old. She had red hair, and her pale skin was dusted in freckles. Carol couldn't see much of her face due to the fact that she was sitting so that only her profile was visible, staring at the floor or at her shoes.
"This is Sophia," the social worker said, motioning toward the girl.
Sophia looked up at Carol, something between a frown and a grimace on her face. Carol's eyes met Sophia's and Carol suddenly wondered what she'd gotten herself into and if it would be too late to back out of it now.
"Oh," Carol responded. "I…I wasn't expecting…" Carol stopped. The girl's frown deepened, but she hadn't spoken yet. Carol decided it was better to abandon her current train of thought.
"You were expecting a kid," Sophia finished.
"Well…" Carol stuttered.
"They're always expecting a kid," Sophia said. She stood up and Carol realized that she was almost as tall as she was.
"Sophia, this is Carol," the social worker said, smiling. She was the only one of them smiling.
"You wanna bring me back in a month or do we just skip the bull and you just go now…we'll both pretend this whole thing didn't happen," Sophia said.
Carol was struck for a moment. Part of her did consider running, but for some strange reason, perhaps the same reason she'd agreed to this mess in the first place the night before, she felt like she couldn't turn and walk away.
"It's nice to meet you," she stuttered out, not entirely believing herself. Carol wrestled a smile on her face. "Are you ready to go?"
Sophia looked at her blankly for a moment and then glanced at the social worker. She turned and opened the door to a wardrobe, heaving out a suitcase.
"I'm always ready to go," Sophia said. "Saves time that way."
She pushed through the door and past Carol and the social worker without another word, heading down the halls that Carol had recently travelled with the woman.
Carol turned to the social worker and the woman smiled at her, looking a little apologetic.
"Sophia has kind of a…troubled background," the woman said. "I promise, we'll look for something else as quickly as possible."
Carol nodded.
Sophia comes from a troubled background. She was running from her past. A past that followed her, apparently, from foster home to foster home. A past that was behind her…and always with her.
Carol nodded again at the social worker, not sure what to say. The paperwork was done and Sophia was headed toward the exit with her suitcase, the one that she never unpacked, in her hands. Carol sighed and started after her, wondering what the hell kind of Pandora's Box she'd just lifted the lid on.
