Kith and Kin

chapter 1

1

Singer

7 hours until Miles

Singer’s phone rang as he was staring deeply into his empty coffee pot. Every now and then his eyes slid to the note hastily held in place with the sticker from the side of an avocado:

No coffee. My bad. Will stop on the way home. SORRY.

The SORRY was appropriately retraced in order to signify contrition.

Damn. The phone. He really needed his coffee.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Singer, it’s Brandi Leone from Social Services. Is Jake with you?”

Everything stopped.

“He’s at work.”

“Rats, I was hoping he’d be there. Listen, I have a foster placement and you’re the first family I’m calling, but I need a commitment from you right away. Ten-month-old African American boy named Miles, drug exposed at birth, but developmentally on target. I’m really looking for a permanent placement for him. Reunification with Mom was terminated a month ago and his recent placement had some complications, so I’m only looking at adoptive placements right now. I need an answer from you, ASAP.”

All the websites, all the books talked about this. Don’t let them rush you. Don’t let them pressure you. Singer, heart pounding, forced himself to be reasonable.

Termination of reunification. “So is Mom out of the picture? There’s a TPR?” Questions. Ask questions.

“Mom didn’t follow through with her plan, and she’s missed more visits than she’s showed up for. We’ve still got one or two scheduled, so hopefully she’ll make it.” Brandi didn’t sound all that hopeful, but Singer cautioned himself not to read into her tone. “It’s still too soon for the Termination of Parental Rights, and I’d like to have him nice and settled well before then. I completely understand if the risk feels too high, Singer, but I need a yes or no.”

Singer and Jake didn’t want foster placements. They wanted an adoptive placement with a TPR on file. Singer closed his eyes.

Nine months. This was the first call in nine months for a kid less than a year old. And it had hurt to say no to the three calls they’d gotten for older kids.

“Can I have fifteen minutes?” he asked.

“Fifteen, okay. Then I start calling other families because I need a home for this kid pronto.”

“I understand. I’ll call you back.”

“Thanks, Singer.”

His “No, thank you” was lost to the click of the line disconnecting.

Oh my god. Oh my god, oh my god. With shaking fingers he hit Jake’s number and waited. Please pick up, come on, I know you’re in the office somewhere, pick up.

Voicemail.

He dialed again.

Ten-month-old boy. Ten months. Not talking, but maybe crawling? He’d have to look it up.

Voicemail.

No, don’t look it up. Don’t get attached to the idea. It’s a bad call. Wait for a kid with a TPR, or at least with a permanency order. Wait for a kid who’s available for adoption. Except what if one never came? What if the people who fostered those kids snapped them up the second they could?

Jesus, it wasn’t like foster kids were limited-edition flat-screen televisions on Black Friday, available while supplies last, except everything in the adoption process made him feel like they were. The system was sick. Or maybe that was Singer.

If Jake were here, he’d be jittery and freaked out, but he’d probably want to go for it. If Brandi had called Jake instead of Singer, Jake would have said yes.

He tried one more time and left a fourth voicemail message. Then he dialed Brandi back.

“When?”

“This afternoon.”

“We’ll do it. We’ll take him.” Singer braced one hand on the counter and tried to breathe slowly.

“Great. I was hoping you’d say that. Now I need you to have a crib and a car seat on hand, obviously.”

Brandi kept talking for a few minutes, but Singer lost track of what she was saying while he scrambled for something to write with. He ended up with a whiteboard marker and the glass carafe of the coffee maker: crib, car seat. What else had she said?

“Fantastic. I’ll see you around four.”

“Wait. Did you say there are visits scheduled?”

“One, next week. Um, Tuesday at 10 a.m. here at Social Services.”

Singer added that note to the carafe. “Okay. So, what happens now?”

“Now you get ready to meet Miles. I’ll see you at four.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

Brandi laughed. “Thank you. This is exciting!”

Click.

Singer bent all the way over and fought a wave of nausea.

Exciting. Terrifying. Oh my god.

He tried Jake again, left another voicemail, then contemplated taking a shower. But no. He had to actually say this to someone or it wasn’t real.

He’d be thinking so much more clearly if he had coffee. He could run to the store. No. He couldn’t possibly. Certainly not without showering.

He should shower. Then buy coffee. Then make coffee. And at some point in all that, surely, surely Jake would get his damn voicemail messages.

A thump somewhere in the house abruptly reminded him he wasn’t actually alone. Lisa was here. And he’d have to tell her eventually, considering this would impact her, too.

Singer walked down the hall and stopped outside his sister’s childhood room. They’d never been close. He knew he was her last choice of refuge. Still. She was here.

He knocked. “Lisa?”

“Singer?”

Like they were neighbors who barely knew each other.

“Yeah. Hi.” Was she going to open her door? In the three weeks she’d been in the house, he’d only seen her a couple of times, when he surprised her in the kitchen, or when they had the bad timing to pass through the hallway at the same moment.

Rustling. The drag of something heavy on the ground. The doorknob turned and he could see half of her face. Not the makeup-shielded face she’d had as a teenager, before the cult. An older, longer face. No makeup, no defenses.

“Hey, so, I just got a call. It looks like our worker at Social Services found a placement for us. For Jake and me.”

“A placement? Is that like a kid?”

He winced. “Sorry. Yes, a kid. A little boy. He’ll be here this afternoon.” Oh my god, he’ll be here this afternoon.

“Huh.” Lisa pushed her hair out of her face, eyes landing somewhere on the pictures lining the wall behind him. “Then … congratulations. That’s what you wanted, right?”

“Yeah. We’ve been waiting for months.”

“Okay. Well, good. That’s … good.”

Another awkward beat passed, and Singer shifted on his feet, wishing she’d at least look at him, or smile, or do something that answered the intense swirl of his own emotions.

“Yeah. It’s good.”

“That’s cool, Singer. So, I’ll see you later.” She pulled back into the room, and the door slid shut. The sound of dragging furniture again. A slight thump. Then nothing.

I’m going to go crazy if someone doesn’t get excited about this really f*****g soon. Singer walked back to the master bedroom, already dialing Alice. In a world where the Derrie brothers were inclined to get married, Alice would be his sister-in-law.

In this world, they pretended.

“We got a call,” he said when she answered.

And Alice, being Alice, jumped right in. “Oh my god. Is this happening?”

“It’s happening.” Relief flooded him. “I can’t get Jake on the phone. I just did this whole thing by myself and I keep leaving him messages. Oh my god, Alice.”

“I’m coming over. You want me to leave Care and Emery here?”

“No, bring them. And coffee. We’re out.”

“You’re out of coffee? Sweet bleeding Jesus, why didn’t you say something? We’ll be over in a minute, and then you’ll tell me everything.”

“Nothing much to—”

Click.

Between the hanging up in his ear and the door shutting in his face, Singer was going to get a complex. Were parents allowed to get complexes about silly things? Probably not. They had to be responsible. They had to be adult. Parental.

He braced himself on the bathroom mirror and stared at his reflection. He’d apparently slept on his right side, facing Jake, judging by his hair. Also, his eyes were a little wild. He looked as freaked out as he felt. Was that a bad thing? He smoothed his hair down, but there was nothing he could do about the crazy expression in his eyes.

It took roughly ten minutes for Carey and Alice to drive from their new place. A quick shower, then. One of the advantages of being enmeshed with Derries was that you only had to deliver big news to one person, and soon everyone would know. Of course, that was the downside as well. Still, the entire network would know that he and Jake were about to be foster parents without Singer having to make another phone call.

Parents. Oh my god.

Nine months of waiting. It was as if he’d been staring at a locked door for nine months and now he’d heard the key turn, the lock disengage, but he was suddenly afraid to open the door.

He and Jake were going to be foster parents. This was happening.

Of all the days to be out of coffee.