The Life Intended (27 page)

I twist my engagement ring on my finger as I wait for Dan to finish his food, and I’m hit with a new wave of shame. I never should have said yes to him, never should have taken the ring. Misgivings were already rumbling in the pit of my belly, but I had grown accustomed to ignoring them, since I thought there was no real pressure to make up my mind.

In fact, I realize as Dan chews, maybe I never should have gotten serious with him in the first place. The first time I met
Patrick, there was an instant spark between us, a glimmer of something that seemed to grow brighter and brighter the longer we talked. I felt butterflies and tingles and all the things you read about in bad romance novels. But with Dan, there weren’t butterflies. There were nerves, of course, which perhaps I mistook for something else. But most of all, there were whispers of logic.
He’s great. He’s perfect for you. It’s time to move on.
And in retrospect, not all those whispers came from my own head. The people who were most concerned about me—my mom, Susan, Gina and other friends—thought Dan was the answer to a question I hadn’t actually been asking.

I thought, at the beginning, that it was only natural that I wouldn’t feel the things for him that I felt for Patrick. Patrick was one of a kind, after all, and so was the love we shared. But that shouldn’t have meant giving up a chance to have butterflies in my stomach again, nor should it have made me talk myself into falling in love with someone simply because he was there.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Dan says, smiling uneasily at me as he finishes the last of the frozen lasagna I threw in the oven when I got home.

I force a smile back, take his plate from him, and chicken out. “I’m not sure they’re worth that,” I say, heading for the kitchen without looking back. I know I’ve wimped out again, and the longer I hide my head in the sand, the harder it will be to blink it all away.

I
t’s not until the glowing red numbers of my bedside clock have ticked past midnight that I wonder for the first time if Allie has triggered a latent maternal instinct in me, and that everything else leads back to that. Am I so attached to her because I know she needs a good mother and she reminds me so much of Han
nah? And is that making the gulf between Dan and me even wider, because the more I realize I want to be a mother, the less likely it is that my future includes him?

I roll over on my side, away from Dan. It’s foolish of me to be thinking like this anyhow. Allie already has a mother, and it’s not me.

Just then, the text alert goes off on my phone, a bright
ding
that pierces the silence of our bedroom. Dan shifts in his sleep and mumbles something, and I glance at the clock. 12:37. Who could be texting me this late?

I pick up the phone, angling it away from Dan to avoid waking him with the bright light. The text that’s shown up on the screen is from an unfamiliar 917 number, and it reads,
No one wants me.

I frown. It must be a wrong number. But just as I’m setting the phone back down, it beeps again with another text:
So you don’t care either?

Who is this?
I type back.

There’s silence for a moment, then a single-word reply:
Beethoven
.

Dan stirs again. “Everything okay, babe?” he asks.

“Um, I’m not sure,” I say, my mind racing.

He mumbles something else then rolls over to go back to sleep. I hunch over my phone and type,
Allie??

Yeah,
she replies.

How did you get my number?
I write, then I cringe a split second after hitting Send. If something’s wrong, I don’t want to push her away by making her feel like I’m accusing her of something. My phone is silent for long enough that a pit of dread starts to form in my stomach. When it dings again, I’m relieved.

Andrew wrote it down for my foster mom. I saw it on the paperwork. U mad?

No,
I reply. I hit Send, then I type,
Are you ok? Where are you?

Silence for a moment. Then her response comes:
What do u care anyways?

Of course I care!
I respond immediately. The dread is back. Something’s not right.
Are you at home?
When there’s no reply, I try again.
Allie? Where are you
?

But there’s no response. I watch the clock as one minute ticks by, then two.
Please answer,
I type after three minutes have passed.
I’m worried.

But she’s gone silent. I try calling her, but it goes straight to voice mail. I sit there for another minute, staring my phone, before gently shaking Dan awake. “I have to ask you something,” I say.

He rolls over, and when I turn on my bedside lamp, he blinks into the sudden light. “What’s wrong?”

I tell him quickly about Allie and the cryptic texts I just received from her. “What do you think I should do?”

“It’s not really your problem, is it, babe?” he asks, punctuating the question with a yawn.

“Of course it is,” I insist. “She reached out to me. What if something’s wrong?”

“She’s probably just messing with you,” Dan says. “You said she was sort of a brat.”

“I never said that!” I exclaim, wounded on Allie’s behalf.

Dan shrugs. “Well, I don’t know. Call that Andrew guy. He’ll take care of it. But this isn’t your job, Kate.”

I don’t reply, and after a moment, he rolls over and mumbles, “Turn out the light when you’re done, okay?”

I wait another few minutes to see if Allie will text back, and then I quietly get up from bed, go into the kitchen, and scroll through my phone until I find Andrew’s cell number.

“Kate?” he says as he answers, his voice cloaked in sleep. “What’s wrong?”

In the background, I can hear a muffled woman’s voice asking who it is. “Um,” I begin awkwardly, immediately flustered.

“Kate? You there?”

“Sorry to bother you,” I blurt out, “but I just got a few weird texts from Allie. I have a feeling that something’s wrong. Do you think you could call Rodney and Salma and have them check on her?”

“Yeah, of course.” He sounds concerned and instantly awake. “Can I call you right back?”

“Of course.”

I hang up and stare at the phone. The seconds tick by, stretching into a minute. Finally, my phone rings again. I answer right away. “Andrew? Is she okay?”

“I don’t know.” His voice is grim. “Kate, she’s gone.”

Twenty-Three

A
ndrew and I agree to meet at Allie’s foster home in a half hour. In the meantime, I’ll continue trying to text and call her on the way there.

“Should we call the police?” I ask before I hang up.

“From what you’ve said, it sounds like she ran away,” Andrew says after a brief hesitation. “It’s against the agency’s rules, but let’s give it an hour. I don’t want to do anything that will affect her mom’s custody proceedings.”

“Her custody proceedings?”

“Yeah. I’m sure you know she’s been visiting with Allie a couple times a week and working toward getting her back. I’m on the fence about whether she deserves another chance, but if it turns out to be for the best, and if it’s on Allie’s record that she ran away, it could complicate things. So let’s cross that bridge in an hour, okay? We’ll see if we can track her down first.”

I try calling Allie’s phone four times from the back of a cab on the way to Queens, and I text her another dozen times, but there’s no reply. I’m beginning to think Andrew’s making a mistake; Allie’s twelve years old and is out there all alone. Anything could happen to her.

Andrew is already outside Allie’s foster home when my cab pulls up. “Rodney and Salma are out looking,” Andrew tells me, holding the car door open as I pay the driver and get out. “They went left. I told them we’d go right. There’s a strip of bars and restaurants in that direction that are open late.”

“Okay.” We begin walking quickly up the street. After a few seconds, I add, “Andrew, I’m worried.”

“She’ll be okay. She’s a smart kid. She’ll be fine.” The words come out in a rush, followed by a moment of silence. “Yeah, I’m worried too,” he concedes.

We decide to split up at the corner, keeping in touch by cell phone. I head right on Thirty-First Avenue, and by the time I reach a long string of restaurants and bars, I’m almost running. I walk into the first place I come upon, a restaurant called Pace Caldwell’s, but it’s closing for the night, and there’s no one there.

“Have you seen a twelve-year-old girl, brown eyes, straight brown hair?” I ask a busboy hurrying by with a stack of plates.

“No, ma’am.”

I thank him and head back out into the night. My luck is similar at an Italian restaurant called Prosecco and a twenty-four-hour coffee shop called Up Latte. I’m passing three darkened storefronts when I hear it: piano music wafting out of a restaurant up ahead. It takes me a few seconds to recognize the tune, but when I do, I break into a run. It’s the song Allie played the first day I met her, the song she wrote herself.

The place is called Simond’s, and when I duck inside, the lighting is dim, the place looks seedy, and there are three middle-aged men sitting at the bar, each in various states of drunkenness. A couple’s making out in the corner, and a trio of men who look like they just stepped out of
Duck Dynasty
are hunched around a table, a dozen empty beers between them. No one seems to be
paying any attention to the girl in the corner, who’s now playing “Hey Jude” on a piano that looks like it’s seen better days.

I sigh in relief then pull out my phone.
Found her,
I text Andrew.
Place called Simond’s on the main strip of 31st
. Then I put my phone back in my pocket and cross the room. Allie doesn’t look up as I slide onto the piano bench beside her, but she finally stops playing when I put my right hand over hers on the keys.

“Allie,” I say gently, “what are you doing?”

She doesn’t make eye contact as she signs,
Who cares?

Me,
I sign back.

“Whatever,” Allie says aloud. “You didn’t even text back.”

I stare at her. “Allie, I texted you like a hundred times!” When her eyes narrow, I add, “Check your phone if you don’t believe me.”

Muttering to herself, she pulls her phone from her bag and pushes the Home button. Nothing happens. She looks up at me sheepishly. “My battery must have died.”

“Boy, you really thought this running-away thing through,” I say.

She glowers at me. “I wasn’t running away. I just needed to be alone.”

I look around pointedly at the other restaurant patrons. “You’re not exactly alone.”

“Whatever,” she grumbles. She reaches for the piano keys and plays a few notes with her right hand. “So I saw my mom,” she says nonchalantly.

“On one of her visitations with you?”

She shakes her head without looking at me.

“Well? What happened?” I press. When she doesn’t answer, I say, “She came to see you at your foster home?”

Allie laughs, a bitter sound. “Yeah, right. No. I went to go
see her at her stupid apartment after school. But the guy who answered the door said she was busy. Said my mom had to be by herself for a little while and I should go home.”

“So then what happened?”

She shrugs. “I went around to the side window and looked in. And there she was. Not alone at all. She was talking to this other lady, and then she was laughing like the lady said something real funny.”

“Oh, Allie.” I sigh. “So she didn’t see you?”

“She totally did. I know she saw me, because she stared like she’d seen a celebrity or something. Then she turned her back on me. Like I wasn’t important to her at all. Like she’d rather be laughing with some stranger.”

“Allie, maybe you’re wrong. Maybe she just saw her own reflection in the window or something.”

“She saw me!” Allie snaps loudly enough that the couple playing pool in the corner glance over at us. “She saw me,” she repeats more quietly. “She just didn’t give a crap.”

I look surreptitiously at my watch, wishing Andrew were here. He’d know what to say. I’m at a loss, so I settle for speaking from the heart. “Maybe it’s true that she saw you,” I concede. “But it’s important that you know that adults just do the wrong thing sometimes.”

“Yeah, no kidding.”

“What I mean is, it’s hard to realize a parent has flaws. But everyone has issues. So her seeing you and turning away, if that’s true, doesn’t necessarily mean she doesn’t care. You said she had some problems with addiction; maybe she’s just trying really hard to get clean, and she’s acting kind of weird. Lots of adults are a little messed up, and they do the wrong thing because of it.”

“
You’re
not messed up,” Allie says.

I think for a second. “Maybe I am.”

“Whatever.” She looks at my hands then shakes her head. “I don’t believe you.”

“Allie, no one’s life is perfect.”

She snorts. “Oh yeah? Give me one example of how supposedly messed up your perfect life is.” She smirks at me, clearly certain that I won’t be able to provide any evidence.

“This isn’t about me, Allie. It’s about you.”

Her eyes get watery, and she blinks quickly a few times. “See? You’re full of crap. You don’t have any problems. You probably have a perfect husband and a couple of perfect kids and some perfect brownstone somewhere. People like you always have perfect lives and try to tell people like me what to do.”

I’m not supposed to get personal, but it’s the middle of the night, and not only is my patience wearing thin, but I suspect it will help a little if I can blow Allie’s stereotype of me out of the water. So I take a deep breath and say, “I don’t live in a brownstone, and I don’t have kids, Allie, because I can’t get pregnant.”

She stares at me then drops her gaze and mutters, “Yeah, well, I bet your husband is some perfect Prince Charming who has, like, a yacht or a limousine or something..”

“My husband’s dead, Allie,” I hear myself say. I feel instantly guilty for the overshare, but her expression tells me it was the right thing to do. The triumphant look on her face is sliding away.