than I expected.
I hadn’t seen many of the photographs in years. I quickly set aside the ones of my mother in her wheelchair. I didn’t want to think of her like that. I only wanted to know her as I had for the last thirty years, as the woman Daddy spoke of so often and had loved so much.
Instead, I confronted my father’s smiling face in the albums, his healthy grip enclosing the small hands of Kate and I as we stared adoringly up at him in front of the Alamo or Disneyland. Those photos brought a fullness to my chest I hadn’t felt since that day he collapsed in front of me.
I turned more pages and witnessed the progression of men through Aunt Caroline’s life, each a blur in my memory. None of them ever stayed around long.
Willis made his regular appearances in the pictures as well—at Christmases or birthdays, usually alone, but occasionally with some strange female. The nannies were familiar, some Kate’s favorites and some mine. But one thing stood out, page after page—Daddy’s enduring grin. His lighthearted smiles diminished as the strain of my collapsing marriage appeared in all our eyes in the newer photographs.
The camera truly doesn’t lie.
Christmas... right before the divorce. We stood side by side, mouths forced into bleak crescents, my gaze not toward the lens but focused on the longneck in Steven’s hand. I skipped past those pages, eager to forget, then piled the albums in boxes, wishing I could pack the sadness away as well.
I missed Daddy... missed him terribly. He always insisted he was the small end of nothing, whittled down to a point, said we were specks of dust in the big picture. But if that were so, why did he occupy such a huge part of my heart?
A tear escaped, and I wiped it away with the back of my hand, shifting my attention to bags and boxes of clothes.
16
Terry had agreed to be my husband on the visit to Parental Advocates, and we held hands when we walked into the foyer-office for our appointment the next day. Kate, who would wait for us at the Victorian, assured us when we dropped her off that we indeed looked like we could be a married couple. This time I was in full costume, my old wedding band burning on my finger. I hated the thing.
We decided I would play the “I’ll do anything for a baby” role, and Terry would act like the skeptical consumer. I had done a little acting in college, but I felt none of the exhilarating tension I had experienced before a stage performance. With my palms sweating and my mouth feeling wiped dry inside, I was plain scared.
Hamilton wore an emerald-green tailored shirt, and her newly cut hair was feathered around her face, a style that softened her angular features. Thin wasn’t always flattering, but she’d made a successful adjustment.
She reached across her desk and offered her hand to Terry. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Deer.” She nodded at me. “Good to see you again, too.”
She folded her hands in front of her and smiled expectantly. “You’ve had a chance to fill out the paperwork, I assume?” she asked.
Terry said, “We’ll get to that, but I’m sure you won’t mind a few questions, Ms. Hamilton. See, I’m not ready to commit to anything in writing.”
“As I explained to your wife, putting things in writing in this business
“Is this how all adoption agencies work?” asked Terry.
Her eyes shifted for an instant. “Basically, yes. But don’t let me alarm you. We protect your investment and do ten times the business a charitable operation might in a given year.”
“Ten times?” I said, not bothering to hide my surprise.
She nodded. “You’re fortunate to live in Texas. The baby market is booming here.”
I kept my eager smile in place, even though I didn’t feel the least like smiling. If I truly did want to adopt, her words might be music. But markets for babies didn’t excite me. It sounded as if we were talking about racehorses, not children.
I said, “So our chances are good?”
“Like anything worth having, it depends on what you’re willing to spend, both monetarily and time-wise. This agency specializes in privacy, and we will serve you well, but surely you understand I’m unwilling to discuss details until I have a cash commitment.”
“How much cash?” asked Terry.
“The processing fee is ten thousand.”
“What do I get for my processing fee?” he asked, sounding wary.
“Part will pay for adoption insurance. Then we meet with you for several hours and assess exactly what you’re looking for in an infant. I assume you want a white child, or you wouldn’t have come to us.”
“You only deal in Caucasian infants?” I asked. I knew for a fact she didn’t, after what I’d seen the day I followed her, but I was curious to see if she would tell the truth.
“We have a few black couples, but we’re talking supply and demand, aren’t we?”
I could read her demeanor, and she didn’t need to add, “Black babies aren’t profitable.” It was getting harder to keep my fake smile in place.
“Are you ready to work with us, then?” she asked, focusing on Terry and ignoring me.
“You mentioned adoption insurance,” Terry said, skipping over her veiled reference to the processing fee she was itching to get her hands on. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“We connect you with an independent insurance broker. If you lose out on the first birth mother we match you with, you are insured for the ten thousand. So you see, the processing fee is actually covered if there’s a disaster. We can start all over.” She smiled as if she’d just invented water.
“And what’s the actual cost of the insurance?” he asked.
Her smile shrank to a tight pucker. “Twelve hundred.”
“And the rest of the ten grand is just to meet with you people? That doesn’t even include the actual cost of the adoption?” he said.
I didn’t think he was acting anymore. He sounded too astounded.
“That’s correct,” she said. “Each adoption is unique, sometimes quite complicated.”
“Darling,” I said quickly, “it’s worth it. They’ll find us the perfect baby and make sure we don’t lose her.” I smiled at Hamilton. “We want a girl.”
“Can I set up a meeting?” she said, switching her pitch to me.
“Yes. We’re ready,” I replied.
Terry put a hand on my shoulder. “I’m not forking over ten thousand dollars until I know more about this company. Do you have lawyers? Doctors? Where do these mothers come from? How do we know we won’t get some poor child with AIDS or—”
“I’m sorry,” said Hamilton. She still sounded pleasant, but her steel-gray eyes hardened. “What is it you do for a living, Mr. Deer?”
My throat tightened. I’d forgotten to fill Terry in on his background.
Thank goodness Terry slithered away from a direct answer. “I’ll save my answers for the expensive processing meeting, if we decide to go ahead. After all, you people have ten thousand dollars to earn.”
“Touche,” said Hamilton. “I only wanted to point out that you wouldn’t give away computers, would you? So you can’t expect us to provide valuable counseling services free of charge.”
So she did remember what I had told her the other day. She was slick, all right.
I said, “Did you notice Ms. Hamilton’s computer, darling? It’s one of the brands you sell. And she has a point,
