Amber Alert by Barbara Winkes

Author:Barbara Winkes [Winkes, Barbara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: UNKNOWN
Published: 2019-06-01T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

Hundreds of miles away from that coffee shop, Joan has picked up a newspaper on the way home, disturbed about what she has read regarding the murder of a young child. How can you ever protect your family against evil like that?

At least, Margaret seems to have enjoyed their afternoon out: she sings to herself in the backseat. She’s holding on to some rose petals from a flower she stole from someone’s front lawn. It was too late when Joan detected it.

“It’s my name!” Margaret says, smiling brightly as she reaches out her hand.

“Honey, your name is Margaret.”

“No, it’s not Margaret,” she insists. “It’s Rosie. See?”

At a red light, Joan turns around to look at the crumbled petals in Margaret’s hand. It’s just one of those little things that bother her, standing in the way of making the bonding with her daughter complete. Her first impulse is to blame the birthmother, which is a somewhat twisted logic, Joan knows: if she’d been a good, devoted mother, Margaret wouldn’t have needed another family, but then she wouldn’t be here.

Lately, she often thinks back to the Middletons and what information they have given her and Lloyd on the adoption process according to their institute. They handpick both children and families, they said, to help build a society with a strong Christian foundation. No single parents or queers, because—Trisha Middleton had scrunched up her face in disgust, “We all know that children don’t fare well when mother and father aren’t married.” Joan doesn’t really know, because she hasn’t read any of those studies that the Middletons quoted to her. She doesn’t know anyone who falls into that category. She doesn’t know if there’s a wrong or right, and frankly, Joan didn’t care as long as she and Lloyd fulfilled the Middletons’ requirements. If anything, she can sympathize with anyone who wants a child more than anything in the world, but she never voiced that opinion. She didn’t want them to see her as someone siding with those groups the family institute is so passionately against.

Then again, they are the experts. They have written books and given classes on the subject, not to mention, Joan and Lloyd’s pastor is friends with the Middletons. Their concepts make sense to Joan, and if a man of God backs them up, there can’t be anything wrong with them, can there?

Still, after Margaret has had her dinner and bath, safely tucked into her bed and kissed goodnight, Joan walks up the stairs into Lloyd’s office. She’s not sure what she’s going to find or what she’s even looking for. Lloyd told her a few weeks ago that everything was going to be okay, that they were going to have a child—and that’s exactly what happened. The “How” doesn’t matter. Joan just wants to make sure that there is nothing and no one who could ever take little Margaret away from her.

She finds the same file, with the payment made out to the adoption agency, the file that they got when they signed the contract.

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