Invisible String

9

Voicemail.

I sighed and wiped my hands on a dish towel, unlocking the screen with barely a glance.

Unknown number.

That made me pause. My stomach flipped a little as I tapped play.

“Hi, this is Rebecca from the agency—we have a situation we wanted to talk to you about. If you have a moment, please give us a call back. It’s about a potential placement.”

I swear I stopped breathing.

I didn’t move for at least ten seconds. The wooden spoon dropped into the soup with a soft splash and I stood frozen in place, staring at the phone like it might disappear. Then I was moving, fast, out the back door and onto the patio where Travis was bent over a toolbox.

“Trav,” I said, and my voice was just barely mine. “They called.”

He straightened up, blinking at me through the sun. “Who?”

“The agency,” I whispered. “They said it’s… a situation.”

I watched the gears turn in his head. His mouth opened, closed, then he wiped his hands on his jeans and took the phone from me gently. “Okay. Let’s call back.”

We didn’t go back inside. We just stood there under the shade of the porch, hearts pounding, listening together on speakerphone as the caseworker answered.

“Hi again—Taylor, Travis. Thanks for calling. I’ll get straight to it. We have a birth mom due in about two weeks. It’s a baby girl. She saw your profile. She’s interested in meeting you.”

I sat down hard on the patio chair.

A baby girl.

Two weeks.

It felt surreal. Like I was watching someone else’s life unfold. We asked the basic questions. She was healthy. The birth mom was twenty-one, already parenting another child, and felt she couldn’t do it again right now. She wanted her baby to be safe. Loved. She wanted her to have a home.

And she picked us.

Us.

After the call ended, Travis crouched in front of me and took both my hands. I could tell his mind was racing too, trying not to get too far ahead, but also not daring to slow down.

“You okay?” he asked softly.

I nodded, slowly, but my eyes were already filling with tears. “I don’t know if I’m ready to be excited.”

“That’s okay,” he said. “We’ll be scared together.”

I let out a shaky laugh and leaned forward until our foreheads touched.

We didn’t know if this would be the one. We didn’t know if it would fall apart, or if we’d drive across the state only to come home empty-handed. But for the first time in a long time, the ache in my chest had a name:

Hope.

And this time… I was going to let it in.

We were kneeling on the floor, surrounded by car seats, plastic packaging, instructions we weren’t reading, and pieces we weren’t totally confident belonged together. Travis was trying to snap something into place while I held up one of the tiny headrests, my hair in a claw clip and a trail of packing foam stuck to my pants. We’d decided we needed a car seat in both cars—just in case. Just in case. Those words had lived in our house for four years now.

I was just about to carry one of them out to my SUV when my phone rang again.

Same number.

I locked eyes with Travis as I answered it on speaker.