Free And Then I Found You by Patti Callahan Henry Page B

favorite things now make me sick. It’s like
     an opposite world.”
    His face crumbled, a puzzle undoing. I needed to move on and I did. And now you’re
     telling me that we are going to have a child?” He paused, struggling for the words
     she didn’t want to hear. “I’m married. I love…”
    “Please don’t say how much you love her. I can’t have the words in my head for the
     rest of my life. I know you don’t love me anymore. I’m only here to tell you so that …
     well, I thought you should know.” Katie said.
    He knelt before her, taking her hands into his. He admitted that he’d always love
     her, but that he’d made a vow to someone else and that promise had to be kept. He
     didn’t want to leave his life or his wife; that much was clear. And yet he cried out,
     “What now? This is our child.”
    Katie didn’t have the answers and yet she knew that if she begged Jack to leave, it
     would ruin them both. He seemed far away, as if the life of him had gone deep inside
     where Katie would never again find him.
    “We could try to find a way to split the parenting … or,” he said.
    “Raising a child isn’t something you just try, Jack. Being married isn’t something you just try. Seeing what I’ve seen, knowing what I now know, even the best parents, even
     with love and resources and family, parenting is not something you try. You do it all the way or you don’t do it all, and even when you think you’re doing
     it right … still…”
    He held out his hand to stop her flow of words. “Let’s not decide anything right now.
     I can’t. I can’t breathe.”
    “I know you don’t want Maggie to know I came here, so I’m going to leave. We’ll talk
     and figure this out. We have months.”
    They didn’t cry, either of them, but their bodies shook with the three words that
     changed everything: we are pregnant. He took her in his arms, held her until she couldn’t tell where he began and she
     ended. Someone had to let go and it was Jack who did so first.
    *   *   *
    Time heals all wounds. That was the old adage, but for Katie Vaughn, these were hollow
     words. A decision needed to be made and time wasn’t helping at all. In fact, it was
     rushing by too fast.
    The final choice to place her baby for adoption wasn’t made in a single day or even
     a month, but like the tributaries that fed into Katie’s beloved river, the facts joined
     in a raging and moving body of one tear-drenched choice.
    Katie was never alone. She was surrounded by her family and Norah. But it was Jack’s
     absence she felt, wider and deeper than anyone’s presence. And it was that loneliness
     that ached the most. Katie had always thought herself strong and sure, but now she
     found herself weak and unable to make the slightest decision. Her wildness and strong
     will seeped out, leaving her hollow.
    In the end, she wanted to offer this baby, her child, every chance in life she could
     have. And she questioned—every day she questioned—whether or not she could give that
     child her every chance. It was with those very questions that she found herself in
     an adoption agency in downtown Savannah, her heart almost dead inside, seeming to
     beat as little and as slowly as possible.
    The small blond counselor, Barbara, leaned forward on her desk. “Kate, I know it’s
     incredibly difficult to talk about this. We can move as slowly as you’d like. I am
     here to listen and I’m here to help you answer all of the questions you have to help
     you decide whether parenting or adoption is the right plan for you and your baby.
     You want to consider adoption?”
    Katie nodded and with that acknowledgment, she began to weep, bent over with the force
     of her own admission. “Yes,” she stuttered. “I need to talk about it … consider it…”
    For what seemed like hours, but was probably much less, Barbara talked to Katie, going
     through “parenting plans” and “adoption plans.” The counselor