Deep breaths.
Still back in time.
We came together
Fell Apart
And broke each other's hearts
Remember when
It started with supervised visits.
They were bittersweet, of course. Benjamin would be so happy knowing he was seeing them, but he would run back to give us one more tight hug before his case worker brought him to meet Heidi and Marcus. Bella and I would watch him leave, watching the distance between us become large enough to leave us both uncomfortable. We were thrilled for him, but the uneasiness we felt grew and grew with each visit.
Maybe it was because we were so caught up in the arrival of Rose and Emmett's daughter in March that it didn't occur to me what was happening.
Maybe I didn't want to think that losing Benjamin was a possibility, even though I woke up every morning thankful that we had been given another day with him. It was stupid of me, really, to think that our experience with fostering a child would be different than all the others. I knew how it worked – personally and professionally.
The truth was that I thought we had more time.
We learned the hard way that having him for almost a year was both a blessing and a curse. Bella and I had filled a void in Benjamin's life that he deserved to have filled; we spent the last eleven months filling that void with experiences and routines and stability that Benjamin never had before. In turn, Benjamin had given us joy that we never knew existed.
It turned out that Benjamin had filled a void in our lives, as well.
We didn't even know our lives had been lacking in anything until he became such a fixture in our world. We had fallen in love with everything about him. He was inquisitive to the extreme, and I learned quickly that he would never be satisfied with anything surface-level. He wanted all the layers peeled. He wanted, needed, to know everything there was to know about everything. Instead of being content with a basic random fact, he had to know the how and the why of anything that crossed his path. We would spend hours roaming the property together, in the early weekend hours or as dusk settled in the time between day and night, his blonde hair disheveled and wild in his exploration.
While he was busy exploring his new life with us, we were busy learning that the small things would be the things we would carry with us when we had nothing else left of him.
A toothbrush. A random school assignment. A tee-shirt accidentally left behind.
Those small things were what we clung to when everything else was flipped upside down.
The morning of the first supervised visit, I tried all the tricks I knew to keep Bella occupied and her mind off of Benjamin. His case worker was meeting him at school at the end of the day to take him to meet Heidi and Marcus, and since Bella was new to this, I found that nothing I did to put her at ease was working.
I knew she was worried before I was even fully conscious with the constant tossing and turning I had felt from her side of the bed all night long. I already knew Bella had barely gotten any sleep at all, and the thoughts plaguing her mind were almost identical to my own. The subtle difference between the two of us, maybe not so subtle, actually, was that at one point in my life, I was Benjamin.
I was the one shuttled from one place to the next, my heart scattered and left behind in remnants in each house or group home I left behind. Now that I was the foster parent in the equation, I wondered if any of my temporary foster parents had spent long nights awake praying for my safety and well-being the way that Bella had for Benjamin.
When I rolled over in the early morning sun to pull her into me, the sigh that fell from her lips was heavy with dread.
"What if things go really well and they don't have to bring him back?"
I shook my head against her shoulder, my hands running up and down her side to calm her fears and for warmth. It was always cold in our room with that drafty window that neither of us dared to replace.
"That's not how it works." I placed a kiss against her shoulder. "A positive pattern has to be recognized by the courts before that happens."
She rolled over so she was on her back, making me move to prop my head up with an elbow and a hand to my temple wrapped up in the sheets. I knew Bella. I knew she had plenty more to say.
"What if he comes back here after being with them and he hates us?"
Eleven months of memories replayed over in my mind, holidays and changes of seasons and everything those changes brought flashed in front of me with laughing smiles and warm embraces.
"How could anyone hate you?" I mocked, even though an image of Bella and Benjamin baking holiday cookies danced around the edges of my closed eyelids, my mocking tone losing all credibility in an instant.
"I'm serious, Edward."
"So am I. Look," I said, pausing to exhale before I gave her an answer she didn't want to hear, "the bottom line is that this is something he has to go through, whether or not any of us like the thought of it."
Those few months when Benjamin had struggled to find his true place, when the guilt of loving it here with us and missing his life with Heidi and Marcus became too much for his young mind and body to cope, were tumultuous at best. He was angry and he didn't understand why, causing his anger to be misplaced and his trust waning with anyone with authority.
He had come so far since then, and the last thing we all wanted was to put him through anything that dark again.
"I don't like the thought of him hurting," Bella whispered. "I know he needs to see them. I'm happy that he's seeing them. I just don't want him to feel confused again."
"I think it may be inevitable," I responded, thinking of the years I spent angry as a foster child. "He's smart enough to know that his situation is different from his friends or other kids his age. He'll question everything, no doubt. He already has."
We closed our eyes, knowing that taking the time to have this conversation while Benjamin still slept soundly down the hall was wise on our part. He would be coming into our bed shortly, and without verbally acknowledging it, Bella and I wanted to talk about the hard parts coming up without him present.
Our time was ticking.
For more than just Benjamin barging in on a crucial conversation.
"How long do we have?" Bella asked, and I could hear it in her voice that she was terrified to ask, let alone hear my response.
I weighed my words carefully.
"Depends. I can't say for sure since I'm not his case worker anymore. One thing I do know is that these visits mean that Heidi and Marcus are meeting certain requirements set by the courts."
"And when they meet all the requirements?"
She never had time to answer me. A door opening down the hall and a boy running full speed into our bed brought our conversation to a grinding halt, and for the next hour or two we tabled our anxieties and focused on the small moments like these.
Because we both knew the answer to her question.
-tr-
"So, Miss Maggie is going to meet you in the office after school, okay?" Benji and I were in the car on the way to school. "They'll call you to come down when she gets there to take you home."
"To The Rec?"
I hoped he didn't hear my intake of breath at how easy it was for him to think of our home as his home. I cleared my throat to cover how much he had caught me off guard. "To your Mom and Dad," I corrected him. "Remember?"
He nodded in the back seat, giddiness surging through his body. "I hope Mommy takes me to the park! Remember the park you used to come visit me at before you took me home?"
"Before I took you to The Rec, yes." Another slip up from Benjamin brought on another correction from me. "Of course, I remember. It was a pretty cool park."
"We should get one of those at home," Benjamin suggested as we pulled up at his school. "At The Rec."
Nodding, I parked the car and helped him out of his seat, grabbing his book bag and placing it on his back. "Bella and I will be waiting for you when you're done."
"At The Rec?"
I pulled him in for a hug, not caring that he was seven and in second grade now and way too cool to be hugged in front of his friends. The knot in my throat threatened to take my breath away.
"Always."
-tr-
Certain things about our last moments with Benjamin would always stick out in my mind.
The way he left our house with a book bag and not the black garbage bag he came to us with.
The way he looked back over his shoulder as Miss Maggie held the car door open for him to climb into the back seat to leave us, The Rec, his school. His life here.
She came on a Saturday a little before noon in the first week of April. We knew the day was coming, had known the exact date as it stared at us from its place on the calendar. Today was the day that he would be leaving, and knowing the date was coming didn't make it any easier. Having time to prepare for his departure was a looming prison sentence with no end in sight. The weeks leading up to today were painful yet beautiful; Bella and I soaked in each moment with him knowing that it was going to be our last.
We tried to expand on his happiness, on his excitement to be going back to Heidi and Marcus. There was a natural bond there, and always would be, and we would never try to minimize that for him, no matter how much our hearts were breaking as we watched him inch his way further and further away from us and our lives here.
We each held one of Benjamin's hands as we walked him to Miss Maggie's waiting car, counting to three before we whooshed him up and into the air between us. He had grown exponentially taller in the last two months, another growth spurt shooting him up another couple of inches so that it wasn't as easy to toss him in the air as it had used to be when he first came to us.
"Mommy can take me to The Rec to play, right? I can come after school?" Benjamin asked us when all of his belongings were loaded into the car. Bella had gone overboard making sure Benjamin would have everything he needed back home, and more.
I heard the questions he asked me, but most importantly, I heard the questions he didn't ask out loud. I heard the doubt in his voice, a defense mechanism for being too afraid to ask the real question of Would you still want me to be here at The Rec?
"Whenever you want, bud." My voice shook as I bent down to his level so he could hear the sincerity in my words and see it on my face. "We'll be here waiting for you."
"Always right here," Bella said softly, pulling him into a hug so soft that Benjamin visibly melted in her arms.
We would always be right here waiting for him.
I had known Benjamin since he was a baby, watched him through a professional lens until the boy had made his way into my heart and soul. I had attached myself to Benjamin in more ways than I could count, so much so that the similarities between us had sometimes been overwhelming.
Those tears that Benjamin had cried? I had cried those same ones when I was a boy his age. The fear of being misunderstood or pitied in school because he didn't know which place to call home? I, too, felt that because I had lived that myself.
Bella, The Rec, Felix, Carlisle, Charlie…they were all people and places who always let me know that they would be the light to guide me home.
Now it was my turn to light the candle, so to speak. I would be that person for Benjamin, and The Rec would be that place where he would always belong, no matter the time or place or circumstance.
"Maybe Mommy can bring me tomorrow?" I saw his lips begin to turn down in sadness, his voice cracking as he looked around the property. The reality of it all was beginning to sink in for him, and I prayed I would be strong enough to let him go.
I couldn't protect him from everything. Basic human emotion was a process, facts of life, that he needed to go through in order to gain understanding and acceptance of his situation.
"I'm sure Mommy and Daddy have a ton of fun things ready for you all to do," Bella said with a smile when Benjamin had turned back to look at us.
With a slow and satisfied nod, he looked up at Miss Maggie almost like he knew it was time. She let us strap him into his booster seat, pretending to be occupied on her phone in order to give us the privacy we knew we needed with him as we spent our final moments together.
"Bye, Daddy Edward. I love you."
Even though he murmured the words into my shirt on my shoulder, his tears soaking through the material, it was my fractured heart that felt them the most.
-tr-
It took three days before we felt anything other than overwhelming sadness.
After he had left with his case worker on Saturday afternoon, we had spent that day and the next two days upstairs by ourselves. We didn't want any company, we didn't want any sympathy, we just wanted silence and separation from it all and everyone.
For the first time since we reopened, The Rec was closed for that Saturday and Monday.
We had signed up for this knowing that he was never ours to keep. We had always known that reunification was the ultimate goal, especially in this situation where Heidi and Marcus were great people who tried so hard to meet their own needs and that of Benjamin.
Knowing he had to leave eventually was not a factor that softened the blow. In fact, nothing about any of it was softened or sugar coated. It felt like the sharpest knife ever created was slowly and purposely digging itself into my chest, my silent screams of now echoing my abandoned childhood screams of yesterday.
Tuesday, we both went back to work. We dragged our feet, avoiding anything that would trigger our loss, throwing ourselves into work so the hours would fly by without incident.
It was in the car ride home that Bella had fallen apart, so much energy spent during the day to not think about him that now it was the only thing she could think about.
Through text, she had warned me when she had gotten home that she was in a bad place, so when I walked through the door from work an hour later I thought I was prepared for what I was about to see, but I was not.
It ended up being the first night I had ever slept on the couch away from Bella.
I ended up staying there for the rest of the week, too.
It sucked.
Apparently, Bella had moved on, at least for the time being, from being sad, and now she was angry. Livid.
At me.
It bubbled to the surface fifteen minutes after I had walked in the door.
"It's my fault?"
"Of course, it's your fault!" Bella shouted back at me as she paced back and forth in the kitchen.
I pinched the bridge of my nose. "Please explain to me why taking in a little boy desperate for a home is my fault."
"I knew this would happen," she said out loud, more to herself than to me, but I still heard it, nonetheless. "I knew it. I called it!" She stopped pacing and braced herself against the kitchen counter, her eyes closing as she tried to breathe some calmness into her soul.
"Knew what would happen? That he would leave?" I stepped closer to her. "Of course, you knew that, Bella. I told you that he would eventua –"
"I know he was going to leave!" She shouted, interrupting me mid-sentence. "And I did exactly what they all told me not to do. I got too attached and I loved him more than anything." Angry tears slid down her face and she wiped them away abruptly.
Softening at her tears and her mention of her love for Benji, I reached a hand out to touch her elbow.
"How is that a bad thing?" Loving a child was never something that should harbor regrets.
"If you didn't bring him here in the first place, that never would have happened!"
She didn't shout the words but the way she spoke them made me drop my hand from her elbow, her admission coming to me somewhat as a shock.
"So that's why it's my fault." I repeated her words from earlier. "Because I brought him here."
She shook her head. "Not because you brought him here, but because you brought him here without any warning. I had no time to prepare myself. No time to make sure that this was something I could do. You didn't even give me a heads up that he was already here outside when you came home from work! You didn't even give me a chance."
Bella is my wife, and I love her, but the mention of the word chance made my blood boil. Some people aren't born with chances. I tried to remind myself that I was a thirty-something year old man and not the ten-year-old boy I used to be, born without any choices or chances in life.
I shook my head angrily at her. "I think this is where we're always going to be different, Bella. We're never going to agree on this."
Wanting to get control of myself, I stalked out of the kitchen but then changed my mind and turned around to continue.
"You're standing there telling me all about how it was inconvenient for you or bad timing on my part, but what about him? Do you think he thought it was inconvenient to move in and out of his house, back and forth with strangers since he was a baby? Is there ever a good time for a child to have to go through that?"
I went off.
"I told you before, and I'll tell you again until the day I die – it's not about us. It's not about how we feel when it comes to fostering a child. It's about them. The children. The kids who were born to no one. You'll never know what it's like, Bella. But I do. I know all too well."
I tugged my tie angrily down from my neck as I moved into the living room but of course she followed me.
"Don't put words in my mouth. Don't act like having Benjamin with us this last year was an inconvenience for me. I never said that, and I never will. Never. I loved him and having him here made me beyond happy. To foster a child, you have to have a special kind of heart. Not because you're afraid to take care of them or worried because you think you won't bond with them, but because you may not be strong enough to let them go."
Her voice caught on her last word and right then and there I could tell just how bad she was hurting.
"You're stronger than you think," I told her, not one part of it a lie.
"Not strong enough. It hurts too much – " Bella shook her head to derail her train of thought. "And I'm angry, Edward. At you for not talking to me first about bringing him here. At myself for getting too attached. I'm even angry at Heidi and Marcus for getting everything perfect for him – what kind of person does that make me?"
There was a gray area in life where Bella hated to be, and there she was, stuck right back where she questioned all aspects of her thinking. Fostering has that gray area where someone is always unhappy. Heidi and Marcus having Benjamin was great for them, but the unhappiness we were feeling now was the same unhappiness that Heidi and Marcus had when Benjamin spent the past year with us.
It was a never-ending cycle and I wanted Bella to realize that.
"Normal?" I offered. "I think."
Sighing, she shook her head and quietly walked towards our bedroom.
"I just want to be alone."
So, I left her alone for the rest of the week, the couch becoming my new bed and new best friend. It was comfortable, at least, if not a little lonely, especially at night when I could hear Bella crying in bed by herself when she thought I was asleep.
I knew exactly how she was feeling.
My ride to work was the hardest for me. I had to drive past his school without dropping him off. He wasn't in the backseat chatting the whole four miles a mile a minute about baseball or Minecraft or soccer or whatever was happening at The Rec. I didn't have anyone to talk to about the first leaf to change color for the approaching season. I didn't have to quiz him on his spelling words as we navigated the twists and turns of the roads between home and school and my office.
By Friday afternoon, almost a full week of learning how to live life without Benjamin, I went against my better judgement and approached Maggie at her desk as she was leaving.
I probably scared her, as she jumped when she saw me coming towards her. Well, the state of a weeks' old beard on my face and running my hair into knots on my head would definitely scare a person, not to mention the dark circles under my eyes from sleeping on the couch.
"Before you ask, you know I can't give you too many details," Maggie reminded me. I nodded, aware of the policies, but not above begging her for something.
"I know. I just need to know something," I pleaded. "Anything."
The desperation in my eyes must have swayed her.
"I just need to know if he's okay."
Maggie reached out to grasp my hand.
"He's doing great."
Her three words played on repeat in my head for my whole drive home. I barely paid attention to the road, not remembering how I got from Point A to Point B to Point C.
Point B was his school, where I sat in the parking lot with my eyes closed and said goodbye.
He was doing great. It was what we all wanted.
Benjamin deserved that, and I wouldn't let my own hurt keep him from that.
Point C was to Bella.
When I arrived home, I found her in the shower, her arms wrapped around knees bent to her chin. The water poured down on her as she sat beneath it, sliding down her hair and back in ignored heat.
She didn't push me away when I joined her on the floor beneath the hot water.
Instead she reached for me, sought me out in her darkness because she finally realized what we always knew.
We wouldn't survive this alone.
We needed each other like we had since we were ten years old.
"I'm so sorry," she sobbed into my chest when I pulled her onto my lap. She moved so she was staring at my face, droplets from the streaming shower making both of us blink away its torrent. "I'm so sorry."
I shook my head at her words and repeated them back to her, my lips landing on whatever part of her skin I could reach. For a while, it was impossible to distinguish our tears from the water of the shower as we fell apart together, our broken hearts at least recognizing that they were in desperate need of healing through each other.
Our greatest way to heal had always been through each other, and tonight was no different. When the water had turned cold and our tears had disappeared down the drain, I wrapped her legs around my waist, and we made our way back into our bedroom. Her lips were everywhere, her hands tugging in my hair as she tightened her legs around my waist, so they were locked at the ankles. We fell onto the bed in a panting frenzy, hands and lips and fingers not able to settle on one specific area for too long before desire lead into another direction.
Desperate for the connection, I entered her like I was made to be there, meant to be a part of her. She cried out against my lips, her hips rocking beneath me to meet mine, her hands pressing into me to keep me close against her.
"We'll be okay," I breathed against her neck when I felt her shatter around me, my arms looping beneath her knees to spread her legs even wider as I quickly followed her to a release we both agonizingly needed. "We'll be okay."
It took time, but eventually we did grow to be 'okay'. We walked a bumpy road for the first couple of weeks and months, finding solace only in each other and in others who kept our time with Benjamin alive. It was a reminder that he was real, that he had at one time been a dominant force in all of our lives.
When Bella was too tired to stay up at night, opting to sleep in on a Saturday or Sunday morning to join us at The Rec, I understood that sometimes she needed her own space to heal and process it all. Even when certain foods and smells from the kitchen made Bella run in the opposite direction, I knew it was because of a memory of Benjamin in that same place.
I grew to learn her triggers over the following weeks.
I knew that her sudden aversion to coffee and abrupt love for cucumbers must have some connection to Benjamin, because what else would explain the dramatic shifts in preferences?
Turns out, I was very, very wrong.
I learned how wrong I was when I came home from work one night in June to a light blue balloon and a light pink balloon waiting for me on our bed. The balloons were tied to softly twirled ribbons attached to a small, thin, and white rectangular plastic…thing. The colored balloons and whatever the fuck it was called plastic contraption meant nothing once I saw the real gift displayed on the face of the white positive test staring back at me.
That night, two very bright and very pink straight lines made my entire world shift, and it brought me to my knees in our bedroom at The Rec.
Join my Facebook group, Lily Jill Fics, to help me come up with a title for my upcoming story. I seriously cannot find one that just clicks into place!
Benjamin's gone…for now. Remember he's at Charlotte's wedding in the first two chapters. And, of course, I'll tell you how he makes his way back into their lives.
Speaking of Charlotte…here she comes!
Teaser for Chapter 8
Remember when
the sound of little feet was the music
we danced to week to week