Page 3 of His Daughter

"I will not."

I dragged my attention from the file so I could shoot him a look. "Caleb, you slept through the fire alarm last month."

He opened his mouth to argue, then closed it. "I'll set two alarms."

I laughed. Caleb nudged my shoulder with his. I nudged him back. I glanced at the door. I looked at the clock on Janet's wall. The second hand ticked past the twelve.

"Hmmm…she's been gone for a while," I said.

"It's only been a few minutes."

I shook my head. "It's been ten. I hope everything’s okay. Do you think it has anything to do with the adoption? I mean…maybe…"

"It’s fine, baby. It’s probably nothing."

I nodded, but there was a lump in my throat. I stared down at the file in my lap. "I know."

I crossed and uncrossed my legs. I read the birthmark line again, put the file down, and picked it back up. Caleb reached for my hand. I gave it to him, but I was still watching the door.

Janet walked back in. She stood behind her chair, one hand on its back. Her glasses were off. She wasn't looking at us. Why wouldn’t she look at us? Janet wasn’t the type to avoid eye contact.

"Is everything okay?" Caleb asked.

Janet put her glasses back on and took them off again. She set them on the desk, picked up a pen, and put it down.

"Janet." Caleb leaned forward. "What was the call about?"

She glanced at the clock on the wall behind her. I followed her gaze, watched the second hand complete a full revolution. She still wasn't speaking. The fluorescent light overhead buzzed, a sound I'd never noticed before.

"I just received a call." Janet's voice came out thin. "From the birth mother."

My ears began to ring. I turned to Caleb. His face was still, rigid, and held in place.

"What about?" he asked.

Janet sat down, stood back up, pulled her chair out, and sat again. Her fingers found a paperclip on the desk and bent it, straightened it, bent it again. Her eyes went to the file, then to the window, then to a spot just above Caleb's head.

"So…" She cleared her throat. "There are…um… There are situations, in any adoption process, where certain…” She paused and cleared her throat again. “Where circumstances can shift…and the…the, um, agency has protocols in place to ensure that all parties are…"

She stopped, swallowed, and looked down at the paperclip in her hands.

"Janet?" Caleb said.

"Right." She blinked fast. Her gaze darted to the door, like she was measuring the distance. "What I'm trying to say is that we always want to prepare families for every possible…for the full range of…"

She couldn't finish the sentence. She started a new one about timelines, about options. Her voice kept catching on words and rerouting around them, and her eyes wouldn't stay anywhere longer than a second — the desk, the wall, her own hands, the clock.

The ringing in my ears climbed higher. My hands were shaking. The file trembled in my lap. I pressed my palms flat against it to stop the shaking, but it moved into my arms instead, my shoulders, the back of my neck.

The room was shrinking. Janet was still talking, still circling, her fingers white-knuckled around that ruined paperclip, and she wouldn't look at me. She kept glancing at Caleb and then away, at the file and then away, at anything in that room that wasn't my face.

How long had it been? Two minutes? Three? Every word she spoke pushed the real one further away, buried it under policy and procedure. I was sitting there vibrating in that wobbling chair with the file in my lap and the ringing in my ears, and she wouldn't just say it. She wouldn't just…

"Just tell us!"

My voice came out raw and too loud, cracking the careful quiet of that small office. Janet stopped. Caleb's hand tightened on mine.

Janet's mouth opened. “The birth mother changed her mind. She wanted to keep the baby. The adoption could not proceed.”