Giving Up the One You Love

Many bowings and mewlings of gratitude to Punky96. Talking through things with her when she was in London finally got me through my block with this. Thanks Punkmeister.

A/N I ask that you keep an open mind for this fic. It is informed and coloured by own experience as part of the Adoption Triangle. I fully understand that it may not reflect the experiences or desires of others within the Triangle or out of it for that matter. It is merely my take on the prompt subject.

Part 3/3

Andy puttered around the kitchen, grazing in the fridge and grabbing a diet soda before she returned to her spot on the couch. She nibbled on the cheese and crackers she'd snagged and idly watched the images on the TV. The volume was muted and for a while she tried to amuse herself by inventing dialogue for the figures as they appeared on the screen. The amusement soon faded, it was a game best played by at least two people and she was a single unit now sans both boyfriend and friends.

When she'd returned from Paris, Nate had already moved out and away to a new job in Boston. He'd called her and they'd managed to patch things up so that they could manage a long distance friendship. Nate had been good enough to leave behind everything except his personal possessions and kitchen equipment. He'd even stumped up for his share of the next two months' rent. Andy sighed as she mentally repeated the wish that her friends could have been as reasonable as Nate. Lily wasn't speaking to her, and although Doug took her calls he had, so far, declined to meet up either at her place, his place or any neutral territory.

Her parents were away on an extended holiday visiting her aunt in Australia. She had no job and even the first interview she'd set up wasn't until the end of the following week. For nearly four weeks she'd been living like Robinson Crusoe on an island of one and a half million people and it was really starting to get to her.

Given her isolation it was unsurprising that she almost didn't register when a faint knock came from her front door. The visitor knocked more loudly and Andy made her way to the door figuring it was likely a delivery guy who was lost. A seasoned New Yorker of over a year, she made sure to check the peep hole, just in case, and gasped at the sight of Miranda waiting in the hallway, impatiently tapping her foot. No thought was required on the brunette's part as she instantly began unlocking and opening the door. One did not keep the fashion maven waiting, even if your hands were shaking sufficiently to lose hold of the chain and deadbolt several times over.

Andy pulled the door open and looked into stormy blue eyes as she whispered, "Miranda." She cleared her throat before continuing, "Please, um, come in." Stepping back and allowing the older woman to walk into the apartment, she shut the door behind them and turned to face her guest. Miranda had walked directly into the living room and stopped in front of the couch before likewise turning back toward Andy.

The older woman looked around taking note of the small but comfortable living area, eyes skimming the bookshelves, noting familiar and not so familiar titles, her glance continued taking in the kitchen/dining area and the door leading to the bedroom before returning to the living area. She looked everywhere, but avoided making eye contact with Andy. She shifted her stance slightly and began a second scan of the room apparently unwilling to be the first to break the silence.

Falling back on the cushion of social niceties, Andy finally spoke up, "Can I get you something to drink?"

"Water, if you have bottled, or coffee if it's not too much trouble."

Miranda gave her reply and then wandered over to the living room window and looked out on a surprisingly pleasant view of a neighbourhood garden. She jumped a little when a moment later Andy handed her a cold glass of Pellegrino. Andy would never admit it, but she'd been keeping the bottle of expensive water in the fridge for the past month, living on hope as she always did.

Miranda murmured her thanks and took a few sips as she continued to look out the window. Andy stood beside her, not too closely, allowing the older woman some space, but definitely within her peripheral vision. She waited patiently, content for the moment that Miranda had sought her out. After nearly ten minutes it was Andy's turn to give a little jump of surprise as Miranda began to speak, even as she maintained her gaze on the garden below.

"You have his eyes." This first statement was followed by a heart-deep sigh before the older woman continued.

"His beautiful chocolate brown eyes. I think…I think that's why I hired you that day. It had been nearly 26 years since I'd looked into those eyes, and I… I finally wanted to remember what it had been like." Holding the glass carefully Miranda wrapped her arms over her chest and shivered before continuing in a voice filled with longing, confusion and a certain amount of incredulity.

"It's so strange that given the eyes, my thinking of him every time I saw them, your name and how I reacted to it, so strange that I never put the pieces together."

Bowing her head she added ruefully, "Such is the capacity for humans to blind themselves at will to things they do not wish to see."

Andy took a step closer and asked, "What about my name?"

Miranda unwrapped her arms, took a long drink and finally turned to face the younger woman. She sought out the eyes she'd been talking about and gave the tiniest of half smiles as she answered.

"You have his eyes, and you have his name." She watched as those pools of chocolate grew in wonder at this revelation.

"Andrew?"

"Yes, but…" she paused, and this time she did give a little smile. " I called him Andy."

The look on the brunette's face was almost comical as she tried to wrap her mind around this piece of information. She could see now why Miranda had always insisted on calling her by her full name and not the nickname by which every other person in her life addressed her. As she took this in a soft look stole over her face and she felt a warm tug in her heart. She felt somehow connected to her unknown father, and in some strange corollary she also felt a connection to Miranda because of the specialness of the use of her full name occurring only between the two of them.

"How did I end up keeping the name? I mean it would be too weird if my parents just accidentally picked the same name." Andy ran her hand through her hair as she pondered this little mystery.

"The name was on your birth certificate, they would have seen that, perhaps they just liked the name and decided to keep it. It would have made the legal fiction of re-producing the certificate that little bit easier as well. I insisted that your name go on the certificate, even though I was going… I had already… I mean…" Miranda faltered to a stop, unable to finish the sentence or the thought in the face of its subject who was standing right in front of her.

Andy found her bravery and reached out to touch Miranda on the arm and finished the sentence for her, "You'd already decided to give me up." She said it quietly, and taking a deep breath afterward realised it had been cathartic to say that out loud to the person who had given her life and then shaped it with that decision.

Keeping eye contact, Andy led Miranda to the couch and urged her to sit before joining her and taking hold of her hand. She asked the question that had burned in her mind ever since she was old enough to understand that being adopted not only meant that her Mom had been able to pick her specially to be her little girl, but that her birth mother had given her away rather than have her as her little girl. It was a double edged sword she had balanced on all her life and the question needed to be asked.

"Why?" Despite her best efforts, her genuine desire not to sound accusatory about it, Andy just couldn't keep her voice was trembling with emotion as she spoke.

The single word was Miranda's undoing, the tears began to flow as she struggled with her internal conflict, wanting both to run to escape the pain and to reach forward and grab onto her child and never let her go again. Eventually, she calmed a little and realised that despite what Andy may have said in her letter, that here and now she did owe this explanation to her daughter. Gathering the steal that had garnered her reputation as the Dragon, she faced herself and then began to speak.

"I met Andrew," she paused and then snorted. "No, I never called him that, ever. I met Andy when we were both in our senior year at college." Miranda wove the tale of her first, greatest and some would say only true love, from that first meeting through two months of chasing (him not her), three wonderful years of dating as they completed their degrees and Andy started on his post-graduate degree in English Literature right up to their getting engaged and planning their fairy tale future together.

"We'd already been engaged for three months when I discovered I was pregnant. I had never heard of or seen a man so enamoured of the idea of impending fatherhood." Miranda paused and took Andy's hand in hers as she looked at the younger woman to stress her next words.

"He loved you with everything he was from the second I told him I was expecting. He would be so damned proud of you Andrea, so damned proud." She reached out and stroked the younger woman's face. "Just as I am."

Andy leant into the touch and held Miranda's hand to her cheek as she soaked in what felt like a lifetime, no two lifetimes of love and affection. It was amazing to finally be getting all this wonderful information about her father, and her mother, but the question she had asked had not yet been answered and so she remained silent, encouraging Miranda to continue. Miranda took up her story again, but her voice was quiet and the sorrow and pain were living things as she described the day that her world was destroyed.

She was half way through her eighth month of the pregnancy and was staying with her parents at their home in Akron while Andy was in NYC putting the finishing touches on his PhD thesis. The plan had been for him to come out and join her in the first week of April when the baby was due, but he'd finished up early and had decided to come early and surprise her.

On the 10th of March Miranda received the news that the love of her life had been killed in a car accident as he'd driven through a freak March blizzard in Pennsylvania. Miranda had collapsed from the shock and gone into severe a severe state of depression, as far as she was concerned her life was over, she couldn't imagine a life without her Andy in it. Her parents watched her constantly afraid she might do something to harm herself or the baby.

Once again Miranda paused in the tale as she gathered herself for the final explanation, the admission that would most likely see Andrea kick her out of the apartment and regret her desire to find her birth mother for the rest of her days. Sitting up straight and taking her hands back into her own lap she looked Andy in the eye.

"I didn't want to live anymore, without Andy there was no point to existing. But…but I couldn't take your life, I couldn't sacrifice the baby he had wanted so much. I contacted child services, without my parent's knowledge and made the biggest mistake of my life, I gave my baby, Andy's baby… I gave you up for adoption." Miranda squeezed her eyes shut as she added the final details of the story in a mere whisper.

"I was out of my mind with grief. I… didn't intend to be around very long after your birth, I… I was going to follow your father. But I needed to know you'd be taken care of and adoption was the best option. My parents were already in their 70's, and Dad was already sick, they weren't a viable option to raise you. I…thought, I thought I was…doing…the right thing." Her words were now punctuated by soft sobs as her tears fell freely.

"When you were born…they…they never even let me…hold you, they never let me see you. I've, I've wondered sometimes, if they had, if I'd held you in my arms, would that…" She looked at Andy, saw the tears in those beloved eyes and finished with a last gasp. "Would you that have saved me, I don't think if I'd held you, I mean I know now, with the…the twins…"

Miranda reached up and dashed away the tears from her eyes and reached out to hold Andy by the upper arms as she growled, "If I'd held you Andrea…Andy, I'd never have let you go!"

Andy pulled her arms away from Miranda's grasp as she looked into her eyes to gage the truth of her statement, of her story and she found it. The years of wondering, of anger and blaming and yearning and grieving were over, she'd found her mother, and her father, she'd finally found herself. And she was never letting that go. She moved forward and reached up to pull the white haired woman into her arms.

"Then hold me now mother and I won't let you go."

And finally, at last, Miranda pulled her daughter, her first born, the child of her greatest love into her arms as she repeated over and over again.

"My baby girl. My Andy."