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It wasn’t this trauma. It wasn’t. But she did understand...
That ache. The one that came from not having what everyone else took for granted.
“I spent my whole childhood in foster care,” she said.
He stopped. Just stopped. She could feel his gaze on her, hard. “What?”
“Yeah. I was in foster care until I aged out of the system. I went back to my birth mother occasionally. But by the time I was eight or nine... That stopped. I don’t know what happened to her. It’s kind of fuzzy. Lost in all the transitions. I wish I could say I was sad. But I wasn’t, really. I had lived with so many people all the time that going back to her didn’t really feel different. And she always seemed overwhelmed, not happy to have me. There wasn’t food. That was really hard.”
“Well...” He seemed at a loss. “I mean... Isn’t foster care just a really awful system?”
“It can be. I’m not going to say that it was ideal, or that it wasn’t hard. Having to move around all the time. But I learned that there are adults that you can trust in the world. And I got to watch a lot of different mothers with their children. I learned a lot from them. There was this family... The Allreds. They had like nine children. And a rotation of foster kids. And everything was so organized.” She smiled. “They always had tons of food in this giant pantry. It felt like a party all the time at their house. We had to go to church on Sunday, but I didn’t really mind that. It was something they did as a family, and it just seemed really special. I still keep in touch with my foster sisters, particularly. They send me Christmas cards. They all have a lot of kids themselves now. They’re...family. Even though they aren’t family.”
“Oh.”
“It’s not the same as having stability all the time, but it’s... I had a good experience. I mean... The people that I lived with were good people, but every time I had to move it was really hard. And sometimes it was a family like the Allreds, and sometimes it was lonely. Or a more transitional house or a group facility for a little while, and that was really lonely. I didn’t like that. It’s the moving around. When you wished you could stay. Or staying longer in a place you just didn’t fit. I mean, that’s kind of a thing. Even if they’re nice people, sometimes you don’t fit.”
“So how did you meet your husband?”
“High school. I was living with this family, the Johnsons, and they had a really nice house. They live in this great neighborhood. They were a short-term placement, and I knew it. I was only there for a couple of months, but that was why I got enrolled in that high school. And I was allowed to keep going there, even though it was really far from the next couple of places I was placed in. I met him freshman year. And I just couldn’t believe that he... That he liked me. All my life, all through school, people whispered about the fact that I was a foster kid.” She tried to smile again, but it felt harder. “And it is different. I never felt like I could invite anyone over for a sleepover—and that wouldn’t have necessarily been true with some of the families I was with, but the house wasn’t mine. The parents weren’t mine. It never felt like... Mine. During sophomore year I got taken in by a woman named Denise Newton. And that was where I stayed until I was eighteen. It was the longest I was ever with anyone.”
“Just one lady?”
“Yes. She was in her seventies. And she took in older kids sometimes. I was the last one. An only child for the years I was with her. It was so different than what I was used to. She used to work at the high school, she was a librarian. And she really believed that it was important for kids to have stability during those years when often they had the least amount of stability, because people tend to want to take care of small children.” She could feel emotion pressing against the back of her eyes and she blinked it away. “Anyway. She was great. She gave me a lot.”
“Do you still keep in touch with her?”
Her chest clenched. “She died when I was nineteen. She was probably the closest thing that I had to an actual mother figure.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. I had... I had my mother-in-law. Well, the woman who would become my mother-in-law. Denise’s death really pushed me into wanting to marry Carter. Because he was the other stable thing that I had. I just didn’t want to lose him. I loved him. I mean, I really loved him too, it wasn’t just stability. I really did love him. Or it was what I understood of love.”
Stability. Being kept.
That for her, had been love. The epitome of it.
“I would never have any idea, looking at you, that...”
“That I ever had a struggle in my life?” She laughed. “That is by design, Brody.”
This time she couldn’t smile. This was the most honest she had ever been with anybody. Including Carter. Carter knew she was a foster kid, because she had been one when they’d met. So she hadn’t told him about the Allreds. Or the Johnsons. She hadn’t told him that she remembered the way Sue Allred organized the snacks in her pantry and made weekly meal plans, and Elizabeth had filed it away to use in her own household. She’d never told Carter that she had liked the way Natalie Johnson talked to her about her problems, like she was a person.
Never talking down to her or moralizing.
How when Elizabeth and Carter had started dating, she had taken Elizabeth aside and told her that she needed to make sure she practiced safe sex, because there was nothing worse than having a baby you weren’t ready for. Because it was what put kids in foster care. And that if she wanted to have sex, it was her choice, and she would get her whatever birth control she needed.
She hadn’t had sex with Carter for another year after that, but she had let Natalie drive her to a clinic to get some birth control.
She had a network of women in her life who had taught her how to be a functional person. Told her the secrets she’d need to survive. It had helped piece her together into the woman that she was. Little bits from each of them. Truth be told, she couldn’t remember the name of every household she passed through. Couldn’t remember all the details. But she was certain that she had taken something with her from each one. Even if she couldn’t get a clear image of it.
But she had kept all that to herself. They just hadn’t talked. They had met, and they had experienced all of high school together. They had their first times together. But they’d never talked about issues. About what they really wanted, because she had just been so grateful and happy to have him.
“I thought that Carter wanting to be with me was too good to be true. And then it turned out it was.” Her throat got tight. It still hurt. Not the divorce. It wasn’t about being heartbroken still. It was hurt for that girl she’d been. Who had believed in Carter above all else, and had thought nothing could break her fairytale. She might hurt for the girl she’d been forever. “I thought there’s no way this guy, this handsome, rich guy likes me. That he loves me. Even when we got married, I just kept thinking it was a dream. It didn’t matter that at that point we had been together for five years. It still felt like a dream.”
“Did you love him?” Brody asked. “Or were you grateful to him?”
She laughed, she couldn’t help it. Because somehow he had zeroed in on something that she had always felt somewhere inside of her, that she had never put words to.
