Part 5
Hannah came back the following Saturday.
She returned the Saturday after that, and the one after that.
Sometimes she drove an hour to Riverbend for a visit that lasted only forty-five minutes. Once, a winter storm slowed traffic to a crawl, and she arrived with wet hair, cold hands, and eight minutes left before the visitation room closed.
She never said the trip had been difficult.
She never said Eli should be grateful.
During their fifth visit, she handed him a photograph of the blue house. The broken porch rail had been replaced, and the ramp was clear of boxes.
“Mr. Talbot from across the road helped,” she said. “He’s been trying to fix that rail for three years. Grandma wouldn’t let him because she said it made the place look ‘institutional.’”
“It looked rotten.”
“I told her that.”
Eli almost smiled.
The old sewing room had become a bedroom. Hannah removed decades of fabric, repaired the window, and painted the walls a soft gray. She placed a bed against one wall and left the rest of the room empty so Eli could decide what belonged there.
A smaller room across the hallway received another bed.
Emma saw it during their first supervised day visit.
“Who’s that for?” she asked.
Hannah did not pretend not to understand. “It’s available if the county approves your placement.”
“Available isn’t the same as mine.”
“No.”
“You could put someone else there.”
“I could.”
Emma looked around the room, searching for the trick. There were no stuffed animals arranged for display, no painted sign with her name, and no framed sayings about family. Only a clean mattress, a dresser, and an empty corkboard.
“You didn’t decorate it,” she said.
“I don’t know what you like.”
“That hasn’t stopped other people.”
Hannah leaned against the doorframe. “Then they weren’t decorating for you.”
Emma turned away quickly.
Ruth received a home-health aide three afternoons each week, and two neighbors agreed to serve as emergency contacts. Hannah left the nursing agency where her shifts changed without warning and accepted a steadier job at a family clinic in Mason Junction.
At night, she completed foster-parent classes online.
Eli learned about these things from Ms. Alvarez, not Hannah. Hannah seemed determined not to turn effort into leverage.
The second home inspection passed.
Her background check passed too.
Then came the interviews.
A licensing worker asked Hannah what she would do if Eli rejected her, if Emma damaged property, if either child stole food, lied, ran away, or refused to call the blue house home. Hannah answered until her voice went hoarse.
She was not approved immediately.
The county wanted more financial records. Ruth’s health plan had to be revised. The house needed a smoke detector in each bedroom and a lockbox for medication.
Every solved problem revealed another form.
By spring, Eli had begun taking part of the process personally. When a meeting went badly, he decided Hannah had answered incorrectly. When a visit was rescheduled, he assumed she had changed her mind.
Emma prepared for disappointment more efficiently.
“It isn’t happening,” she said one evening at Bridgeway. “You should stop acting like it is.”
“The inspection passed.”
“Inspections pass. People don’t.”
“Hannah does.”
“You’ve known her four months.”
“She’s my sister.”
“She was your sister when she didn’t know where you were.”
Eli flinched.
Emma’s face changed immediately, but the words could not be pulled back.
“You think she only wants me because of you,” Emma said.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Why do you want her to fail?”
“Because everybody gets nicer right before they fail.”
She left the recreation room and did not come to dinner.
The next supervised visit was held at the blue house. Hannah made grilled-cheese sandwiches, and Ruth sat in a wheelchair near the kitchen table. Boone slept beneath her feet, his muzzle now almost entirely white.
Emma spoke only when someone asked a direct question.
Halfway through lunch, she reached for her glass and knocked it to the floor.
Milk spread across the boards.
“I told you not to put it there,” she said to Hannah.
No one had told her where to put it.
Eli waited for Hannah to point that out.
Instead, Hannah took two towels from the sink and handed one to Emma.
“Help me keep it from reaching the rug.”
Emma stared at her. “That’s it?”
“It’s milk.”
“I did it on purpose.”
“I figured.”
“Why aren’t you mad?”
“I am a little annoyed.”
“You don’t look annoyed.”
Hannah wiped beneath the table. “I worked in a nursing home for three years. You’ll have to do better than spilled milk.”
Ruth made a sound that might have been a laugh.
Emma knelt and pressed the towel to the floor. Her shoulders began shaking, though her face remained hidden by her hair.
“I don’t want to be your good deed,” she said.
Hannah sat back on her heels. “You aren’t.”
“You don’t know me.”
“That’s true.”
“I steal food.”
“Eli does too.”
Eli looked offended. “Only granola bars.”
“You hid six beneath your mattress after the last visit.”
He glanced at Ruth, who raised one eyebrow.
Emma gripped the wet towel. “My last foster family said I made the other kids nervous. The one before that said I needed more attention than they could give. People like me until they have to live with me.”
Hannah’s answer came slowly.
“I don’t know whether the court will let you live here. I don’t know whether you’ll like me, and I’m sure there will be days when I don’t like you very much.” She folded her towel. “But I submitted your name on every form they gave me. I’ll keep showing up unless someone legally stops me.”
Emma’s chin trembled.
“Don’t promise forever,” she said.
“I won’t.”
That evening, Ms. Alvarez asked Eli to speak with her on the porch.
“The kinship committee is ready to recommend a trial placement for you,” she said. “Emma’s approval is taking longer.”
“I’m not going without her.”
“That is your choice, but I want you to understand what it means.”
“It means I’m not leaving her.”
“No. It means you are refusing a safe placement. It does not guarantee Emma stays with you, and it does not protect her from being moved elsewhere.”
Eli stared across the field. The hay shed was visible beyond the tree line, its roof dark against the evening sky.
“So I’m supposed to leave her?”
“You are supposed to decide whether going home is the same thing as abandoning someone.”
He hated the question because there was no answer that did not hurt.
Emma found him near Boone’s water bowl.
“You should go,” she said.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“What if they move you?”
“They might move me anyway.”
“I’ll tell them no.”
Emma shoved her hands into her sweatshirt pockets. “You spent your whole life waiting for somebody to find you. Don’t make me the reason you hide when they finally do.”
Before Eli could answer, a county car turned into the driveway.
Ms. Alvarez stepped out carrying two blue folders.
Hannah came onto the porch, wiping her hands on a dish towel. Ruth watched from the living-room window.
Ms. Alvarez climbed the steps and placed the folders on the railing. One bore Eli’s name. The other bore Emma’s. “The judge signed both temporary placement orders,” she said…
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