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By Root 897 0

at 3 P.M. Sitting in the bar where his father used to go, which probably hasn’t changed much in all that time. He takes out his phone, checks e-mail—a note from Vivian, saying that they’ve landed, all is well, although she’s appalled by the hotel the church group has chosen and is trying to rebook; a few odds and ends from work, even though it’s a holiday on the calendar. He calls up a number that he has left on his log yet never stored in his contacts. He summons it up, puts it down, summons it up, hits the wrong button, finds himself making the call that he honestly wasn’t sure he was going to make until this moment.

McKey doesn’t even have an outgoing message. It seems odd at first, this complete void. He could be speaking to anyone’s phone, even though he’s pressing the number that her phone sent his phone last month, almost as if the technology was calling the shots. He decides the lack of a message is reassuring. McKey, unlike, say, Gwen, doesn’t need to put everything in words. You can’t imagine her with a Facebook page or a blog or a Twitter account. He speaks into the space she has left: “I’m in town. We should get together to talk. All of us—Tim, Gwen, me—or just you and me, whichever you prefer.”

He’s pretty sure which she’s going to prefer.

Chapter Thirty-six

Good Friday reminds Gwen of how deeply Catholic Baltimore still is. Although it’s not an official holiday for businesses, many companies offer it as a flex day. And if schools are not already on spring vacation, students are guaranteed the day off. So she has brought Annabelle to her office, never really a good idea. The place fascinates Annabelle—for about forty-five minutes. Then the whining begins. Gwen has parked her in a conference room with a DVD player, a stack of Disney movies, a stapler, and some scratch paper and asked her to “work” on the paper. Like many children, Annabelle yearns to be useful. She quickly abandons the project, curls up in a chair, and begins sucking her thumb as she watches princesses cavort.

“There will be something,” another parent in Gwen’s group told her when she entered the China adoption program. This woman was going back for her second child, and Gwen initially appreciated her advice and expertise. “What do you mean by something?” she asked. They had met—it seems silly now—in a Chinese restaurant up in Towson.

“Well, in our first group, one of the girls was a hoarder. She hoarded immense amounts of food, trash. She was older, almost two. Another child clearly had medical problems. The question was how serious they were. The family had to take a leap of faith to bring her home.”

“And?” Gwen could not believe how nervous she was about the answer to her question, how invested she had become, in the space of a sentence, in a family about which she knew nothing.

“She was fine.”

“Did your daughter—”

“Lily.”

“Yes, Lily. Did she—?”

The woman stared off into space, but that didn’t keep her eyes from welling with tears. “There was a bonding issue. She was very attached to my husband, but she had nothing for me for a long time. It was hard.” She swallowed, blinked, smiled. “But it turned out great. These are such great kids.”

Inevitably, Gwen started trolling the Internet. She lasted about a week on a forum for prospective parents. It was too much, an aggregation of nightmares and dreams.

In the end, she didn’t really have something with Annabelle, other than the expected developmental delays. She had been warned that Annabelle would think her new parents smelled funny and looked funny, that she would stare at the ceiling when overwhelmed. But her daughter had an indomitable spirit. It was a strange thing to think, but Gwen sometimes finds herself wondering how Annabelle would have fared if she hadn’t been adopted. She believes she would have thrived. She believes her daughter would have thrived anywhere. Though Gwen and Karl are important to her, beloved by her, they’re not shaping her in any way. She is who she is. All Gwen can do is stand by, rather helplessly, and love her to pieces.

This year Annabelle