Page 93 of Harper

“Can you tell us anything else?” I ask. “Does everything look okay?”

The technician looks up at me and nods. “Your doctor will go over the results with you, but yes, I can tell you that everything looks good.”

Harper leans her head back to look up at me, her blue eyes watery, shining with joy and hope. I’m sure, to the technician, we look like any other happy couple, excited to become parents…which makes me feel like a fraud.

I untangle my fingers from Harper’s and take a step away.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

“I should get going,” I say, clearing my throat as complicated emotions collide inside. “Back to work.”

“I need to take a few more measurements,” says the technician. “Do you want to wait for a picture?”

I glance at the screen again, where our baby is wiggling her hand, almost like he or she is waving to us. Yes, I want to stay. Harper’s eyes catch mine, encouraging me to linger. But, sorry, I can’t.

“Let me know what the doc says, okay, Harp?”

“Sure,” she says softly as I slip out the door.

***

“You just walked out?” asks Sandra. “You shoulda stayed and gotten a picture, Joseph.”

“It was really emotional,” I say, dipping one of my sweet potato fries in ketchup. “Harper and I were holding hands and—”

“Wait! You were holding hands? With her? Ugh. Say no more! You can get a picture next time.”

My cousin and I are having an early dinner at the BBQ Shack after work. She got us an outdoor table, which I appreciate despite the 50-degree weather and overcast skies. There won’t be too many more opportunities to sit outside this fall.

“You know,” I say, “I’m not as angry with her as I was. I’m starting to understand why she did what she did back then. I get it. She was scared and young and alone. It still hurts sometimes, of course. Maybe it always will. But I don’t hate her for it anymore.”

“Fine,” says Sandra, who doesn’t like Harper, but has never judged her for placing Moriah Raven with adoptive parents. Maybe it’s because Sandra got pregnant even younger than Harper, and she had to run through similar scenarios in her mind? I don’t know why, for sure, but she’s never vilified Harper for that choice. “The adoption worked out okay. But how about the lying? The secrets? What about that?”

“She says she was worried I’d try to coerce her into keeping Moriah Raven.”

“Would you have?”

“At the time? Undoubtedly.”

“Huh.” Sandra purses her lips. “Well, I still don’t like it. You should’ve had a say in the matter.”

“But do you get it? I mean, do you understand why she lied?”

“At the time, maybe. But for years and years?” Sandra shakes her head. “No. You had a right to know you had a daughter.”

“But she finally came clean.”

“Under duress,” points out Sandra. “She had no choice.”

“She had a choice,” I argue. “There’s always a choice.”

“Joseph, if you hadn’t knocked her up again, she never would have told you. Never. I believe that in my soul.”

I take a deep breath and let it go slowly. “If that’s true, how can there be hope for us?”

“Hope?” she cries. “Hope? For what? Are you kidding me right now? Of course there’s no hope! The best you can hope for is that you have a civil relationship with Harper, for the kid’s sake. That’s it. And I swear to God, if you get it in your head to—”

“Sandra, calm down.”

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