Dana Corbit - Finally a Mother

He met her incredulous look with a steady one. “I started to, but he insisted on coming here first.”

Her righteous indignation fizzled. The blame was back on her, right where it belonged.

“Right. Well, take those cuffs off him and bring him in the kitchen.”

“I don’t think—”

“He can’t eat without his hands.” She didn’t care if she’d just given an order to a police officer, who was clearly more accustomed to giving them than receiving them. For whatever reason, her child was hungry. She might never have been able to do anything for him before, but she could feed him now and help free his hands so he could eat.

The trooper studied Blake for a few seconds and then withdrew a key from his pocket, stepped behind the boy and opened the handcuffs. Blake rubbed his wrists and spread his fingers to stretch them before jamming them in his sweatshirt pockets.

As Shannon led them down the hallway to the kitchen, questions ticked in her mind at the same pace as her tennis shoes on the worn wood floor. Why had Blake run away? How had he known her identity or how to locate her? Had his adoptive parents refused to let him search for her?

In the kitchen, she opened the huge, industrial refrigerator and stepped inside the chilly room to scan the contents. She grabbed a carton of eggs, a green pepper and a tomato and closed the door.

“Hope eggs are okay.”

Blake cleared his throat. “Anything’s fine. Except tomatoes.”

“You’d probably eat even those this morning,” Trooper Shoffner said with a chuckle.

“Probably.”

But Shannon wasn’t laughing, as irrational fear tightened her throat. She was about to make a first meal for her son, ever, and she knew nothing about him. What did he like to eat? Did he prefer video games or TV? Did he have food allergies? Worse than that, she didn’t know what type of life he’d led until now or what unfortunate events had landed him on her doorstep.

But she would find out. She would ask her questions and answer his. She would listen, no matter how painful his stories, no matter how much he blamed her. This was what she’d wanted: to be reunited with Blake and to have a chance to explain the past. Although this wasn’t the warm and tender reunion she’d imagined and prayed for, this was their story, and they would find a way to work through it. Her son had come looking for her. He was close enough to touch, if he would ever allow it. Having him with her was the most important thing. The only thing.

* * *

“Slow down or your breakfast is going to come back up,” Mark warned as Blake shoveled food into his mouth with barely a breath between bites.

He’d been right. The boy would have eaten even the dreaded tomatoes, and might have licked the plate afterward, if Shannon Lyndon had set those in front of him at the long table in the house’s cafeteria area. Although the boy didn’t appear to be malnourished overall, something told him that this wasn’t the first time Blake had ever been hungry. The same protective impulse he’d felt when he’d realized the boy was accused of stealing food rose in him again, but Mark tamped it down a second time. Becoming involved in this mess of a situation was the last thing he should do, even if he felt terrible for the boy who was the true victim in it.

Shannon sat across from them, staring in amazement at the boy as he wolfed down his food. She shouldn’t have been shocked. She’d known all along he was out there somewhere. Or at least some kid who was about Blake’s age. Mark shifted in his seat as the scent of Miss Lyndon’s perfume—something light and floral and too feminine for its own good—mingled with scents of Blake’s breakfast. Clearly, he was picking up on the wrong details in this case if he was mentally cataloging that one.

“You’re left-handed,” Shannon said to the boy.

Blake’s fork stilled. “So?”

“My dad’s a lefty.”

“Oh.”

As Blake scraped his plate, he met the woman’s gaze with those green-brown eyes. Instantly, Mark knew why he’d found Shannon’s eyes so familiar. They had to be related.

“Hey, any chance I could get some more?”

Setting his coffee aside, Mark patted Blake’s shoulder. “Give the food a few minutes to settle. If you’re still hungry after we talk, I’m sure, uh...Miss Lyndon would be happy to give you seconds.”

He wrapped his hands around his mug again, frustrated that he hadn’t been sure what to call her. He wouldn’t refer to this woman as Blake’s birth mother without proof, even if he suspected it was true. If she’d chosen to give up her parental rights, she had no claim to Blake, anyway.

“Sure. Whatever you want.” Shannon smiled across the table at the boy.

“Now, Blake, let’s start with you.” Mark picked up his notebook and pen. “I need your parents’ names and numbers so I can let them know where you are.”

Blake dropped his fork on his plate and pushed back from the table, crossing his arms. “Which ones? Birth parents? Adoptive parents? Foster parents?”

“Foster parents?” Shannon asked.

“And of the foster parents, which of those do you mean?” Blake continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “There’ve been a bunch. Some decent. Some not so much.”

Shannon drew her brows together, gripping the edge of the table so tightly that half-moons of white appeared beneath her nail beds. “Wait. How can that be?”

Blake looked up from his plate, trapping her in his gaze. “The state has this thing about parents who neglect their kids. Funny, they think that kids should have a few things. Food. Clothes. A place to sleep.”

Shannon shook her head. “No. The couple I met was so desperate to adopt a baby. They both had steady jobs. They could provide anything a child would need or want.”

“If not for the drugs.”

The anguished sound escaping from Shannon’s lips made something tighten inside Mark’s gut. He could understand some of the shots Blake had taken with his comments. The boy definitely deserved more compassion than the adults in this twisted situation did. But as this shot made a direct hit, the color slid from Shannon’s face like a snow cone once the flavoring was gone.

“You were temporarily removed from your adoptive parents’ home because of drug addiction?” Mark couldn’t help but watch Shannon as he asked it.

Blake made a flippant gesture with his hands. “The first few times. The state took away their parental rights when I was seven.”

“That can’t be. It can’t be,” Shannon said miserably, tears draining from the corners of her red-rimmed eyes. “I was supposed to be doing the right thing. That’s what they told me. The best thing.”

“You couldn’t have known,” Mark heard himself saying despite his intention not to weigh in.

Always uncomfortable with crying women, he scanned the room for tissues and crossed to a table near the door separating the dining area from the kitchen to grab some paper toweling instead. She nodded her thanks and dabbed her eyes, her lashes spiky and wet.

He would have reminded her that adoption was often the best choice for pregnant teens, something she had to know from working at Hope Haven, but she wouldn’t hear him now. This adoption hadn’t been the best thing for this child. For Blake. He reminded himself who was central to this situation. He couldn’t lose focus of that fact no matter how much the tears tracing down her cheeks threatened to soften him with their salt.

“Okay, I need names, an address and a contact number for your current foster parents. We’ll contact them and the Department of Human Services when we get back to the post.” He wrote down the information the boy provided. “You came all the way from Rochester Hills? That’s about seventy miles from here. Did you walk all that way?”