Blossom Street Bundle

Ellen looked at Anne Marie and burst into tears as she bolted toward her.

Anne Marie fell to her knees, her arms open for Ellen.

They clung tearfully to each other. “You promised, you promised,” Ellen sobbed against her shoulder. “You said—you said…”

“It’s all right,” Anne Marie whispered, brushing Ellen’s hair. “You’re here now, and no one’s going to take you away from me.”

Ellen sniffled. “Grandma Dolores went to live with Jesus.”

“I know.”

“I don’t have anyone who loves me.”

“I love you, Ellen,” Anne Marie whispered, tears streaking her face. “You’re going to be my little girl from now on.”

“I can live with you?”

Anne Marie couldn’t speak, so she just nodded.

“I don’t have to go back to the foster house?”

“No, not ever again.”

Still sobbing, Ellen tightened her arms around Anne Marie’s neck. “Everyone I love goes away.”

“Not anymore, Ellen,” she promised. “Not if I can help it.”

“I loved my mommy and she…she did bad things and she left me and then Grandma Dolores d-died and then you left me.”

“I didn’t leave you,” Anne Marie insisted. “I would never leave you.”

They continued to hold each other until Baxter started to bark at the foot of the stairs. Anne Marie released Ellen who ran to open the door. The dog immediately did a dance of joy at the sight of his friend.

Wiping the tears from her face, Anne Marie stood to find Evelyn Boyle watching her.

“I believe we have a good placement for Ellen,” she said, her own eyes moist.

Anne Marie wasn’t going to make another mistake. “I’ve decided I don’t want to be Ellen’s foster parent.”

A look of shock broke out across the other woman’s face. “I beg your pardon?”

“I want to adopt her,” she said. “I want to make Ellen my legal daughter.” The child was already her daughter in every way that mattered. It was time to make that official.

Chapter 30

“Mom,” Anne Marie said, speaking softly into the receiver. It was late Monday evening, and Ellen had just gone to sleep. The poor kid still wasn’t sleeping well, so Anne Marie didn’t want to risk waking her. Every night since Dolores’s death, Ellen had ended up crawling into bed with Anne Marie and crying herself to sleep. The girl had suffered yet another loss. Being taken out of school, informed that her grandmother was dead and then shuffled off to a foster home hadn’t helped.

“Anne Marie?” her mother murmured. “My goodness, I haven’t heard from you in weeks. Is something wrong? There must be if you’re phoning me this late.”

“I should’ve called earlier.” Handling the funeral arrangements and looking after Ellen had kept her busy. But the truth was, it hadn’t occurred to her to contact her mother until that night.

Even now she hesitated, fearing her mother’s reaction once she learned that Anne Marie was going to adopt Ellen. Her mother had made her disapproval known when she decided to marry Robert. She’d been equally negative when Anne Marie purchased the bookstore. Laura wasn’t a risk-taker and she’d been convinced that Anne Marie would be throwing away her investment. She generally believed in living a cautious, conventional life, although she wouldn’t have put it in those terms.

Despite her mother’s reactions in the past, Anne Marie felt compelled to seek her out. Perhaps it had to do with becoming a mother herself….

Might as well just blurt it out. “I thought I should tell you that you’re about to become a grandmother.”

A strained silence followed her announcement.

“You’re…pregnant?” Once again, Laura Bostwick’s reproach was evident. “I know you want a baby, Anne Marie, but I don’t think you have any idea what life’s really like for a single mother. Oh, dear…”

“It isn’t…I’m not—” Anne Marie didn’t get the opportunity to explain before her mother interrupted her.

“If you don’t mind me asking, who’s the father? No, don’t tell me. Obviously there’s a problem, otherwise you would’ve married him. You aren’t secretly married, are you?”

“No, I—”

“I don’t need to know any more about him. He’s married, I suppose?”

“Mom!”

“Sorry, sorry. I said not to tell me and then like a fool I ask. It’s none of my business. Well, you’re going to have a child. When are you due?”

“It’s a bit more complicated than that,” she began.

“For heaven’s sake, you haven’t done anything stupid, have you?”

“What do you mean?” Anne Marie asked, a little taken aback.

“Artificial insemination, that’s what. I heard about it at the hair-dresser’s. Apparently a lot of women are using artificial methods to get pregnant. Please don’t tell me you went to one of those fertility clinics and—”

“Mother, I’m adopting.”

She’d finally shocked her mother into total silence.

“Remember Ellen Falk?”

“Who?”

“I was her Lunch Buddy. You met her the Saturday before St. Patrick’s Day. We had lunch with you.” Surely her mother hadn’t forgotten.

There was another silence. Then Laura said, “Let me see if I have this straight. This second-grade girl you agreed to have lunch with once a week is the one you’re going to adopt?” Her mother sounded incredulous.

“Yes, Mom. She came to stay with me, remember?”

“Well, yes, and I told you I thought it was rather nervy of that girl’s grandmother to call you in the middle of the night.”

“Dolores Falk died.”