“Ms. Carraro, can I sit in the special reader’s chair? Please, please, please?” She slides her hand in mine, twirls a shiny dark wave around her little finger, and grins as we walk back. Her spirit has changed from dejected to upbeat with the realization that she won’t have to share the secondhand beanbag all the kids fight over.
“Of course you can, sweetheart.”
I don’t favor students. Ever. But I love this little girl to pieces. In some ways, when I look at her, it’s like my entire childhood is staring back at me.
Honor’s newest foster mom fosters four other kids, and after-school pick-ups involve dashing from one side of town to the next, from primary schools to junior highs and high schools, and praying to the traffic gods that there are no delays or surprise detours.
I was about her age when I was placed in my first home.
Little did I know, it’d be my first of thirteen.
I had so much hope, so much trust in the grown-ups enlisted to care for me. The years that followed were a cocktail of everything that is right and wrong in this world, but in the end, none of it broke me—and much of that I owe to the beautiful woman who adopted me when I was a rebellious, smart-mouthed, fourteen-year-old know-it-all.
In many ways, she salvaged my life.
Or saved it.
I want that for Honor. I want someone to teach her that her past doesn’t have to dictate her future, that she’s worth it.
Last I knew, her place in the system is temporary. Lucy mentioned to me one day in conversation that Honor’s mom had gotten into drugs and prostitution and she wasn’t sure how long she’d have her, but that was months ago, and she hasn’t mentioned a word about any of it since.
If things were different—if Honor was adoptable and I wasn’t living paycheck-to-paycheck, I’d make her mine in a heartbeat.
Until then, I have her from 8 AM to 3 PM five days a week, and a handful of minutes after school when Lucy’s running late.
Honor reads quietly to herself and I find myself thinking of Bennett Schoenbach again.
I pull up Larissa’s obituary on my phone one more time.
I put myself in his shoes.
And I decide that he was nothing more than a good person having a bad day.
Had we met under different circumstances, I’m sure I’d have found him to be nothing but lovely.
Six
Bennett
* * *
I’m in a mood Friday night so I blast Chopin so loud the aging socialite next door will be calling the building manager any minute, and then I pour myself two fingers of single malt Lagavulin.
The world outside went dark hours ago, as it does this time of year, and I’d go out for a drink or two, but Larissa’s memorial is in the morning and I won’t punish myself by suffering through it on little-to-no sleep.
Sinking into a leather armchair in my study, I reach for my phone and scroll through my missed calls, stopping when I get to the night Larissa died.
Twelve.
She called me twelve times, most of them a minute apart.
She called a dozen times before she gave up on me.
I’d never known anyone as needy as her. It was always something. She was always involving herself with nefarious types. Always finding comfort in the arms of users and abusers. I stopped bailing her out years ago.
I gave up on her first.
Only I never explicitly made that clear, I suppose.
I simply stopped taking her calls.
Stopped wiring her money.
Stopped bailing her out of jail.
I figured the message was loud and clear, and besides, actions always spoke louder than words. No need to sit down and explain my decisions.
Having to stare at her pale blue body on a frozen slab of stainless steel at the city morgue this past week and confirm that she was, indeed, Larissa Schoenbach, was the first time I’d seen her in seven years.
I don’t know what she wanted the night she died.
All I know is someone took her life outside a seedy strip club on the south side of Chicago.
Police think it was a drive-by shooting or drug deal gone bad, and she happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time—which is ironic because her entire life could be summarized like that.
She was always in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Becoming a Schoenbach was the worst thing that could’ve happened to her.
She was too soft in the middle.
Too weak.
Too gullible.
Too trusting.
She was never one of us.
My mother had just undergone an emergency hysterectomy and overnight it became her life’s mission to have a daughter. But she didn’t want a baby. No. She didn’t want to deal with diapers, potty training, snotty noses, or humiliating public tantrums.
Larissa happened to be in the system and available for adoption.
Like I said … wrong place, wrong time.
She was nine when Mom brought her home, and looking back, I’m positive she took her to Neiman’s or Saks beforehand because the girl was dressed like a show poodle … satin bows, fluffy hair, big pink dress, shiny patent leather shoes with ribbons for laces.
My mother paraded her around the grounds, showing her off to every gardener, maid, chef, and butler before the two of them joined us for a formal five-course dinner where Larissa burped between bites of steak au poivre, picked at her roasted parsnips, and attempted to eat sans utensils.
In the matter of a single hour, my mother’s brand new pride-and-joy turned into sheer horror.
I’m not sure what my mother was thinking, adopting a child. She could hardly love the two children she brought into the world—how she thought she could love a stranger’s child is beyond me.
The first year was the hardest to watch. Painful, really. There was no bonding. No love.
Not that any of that came as a shock.
Before anything was finalized, Mother refused to “send her back,” fearing how it would reflect on her. Knowing people would talk. Worried everyone would think she got a “dud.”
Victoria Tuppance-Schoenbach was married to one of the wealthiest men in Chicago, lived in one of the most expensive estates in the area, drove the priciest vehicles, took the most luxurious vacations, and gave birth to two beautiful, strong, healthy, athletic, intelligent boys.
God forbid she attach her reputation to anything subpar.
Truthfully, I think she was terrified the world would see her for who she truly was—a self-involved, miserable, coldhearted, materialistic woman with a narcissistic streak a mile wide.
So she kept Larissa.
And as soon as she found an opening at the prestigious Betancourt Boarding School five hours away, she shipped her off with two suitcases and a trunk filled with all of her pretty things. Her bedroom door was locked, not even the staff were allowed to enter. It was as if my mother preferred we pretend Larissa never happened.
After that, we strictly saw our new kid sister for major holidays and summer breaks—when the Betancourt school was closed.
With Larissa home, it was never like having a sister—it was like having this person that your family was financially obligated to support, this person who made your stiff and awkward family gatherings that much more stiff and awkward.
Bizarre little crew that we were, I never bothered getting to know her any more than necessary. I never went out of my way to spend time with her or wish her happy birthday or any of those time-wasting, ingenuous exchanges.