Page 42 of Not In The Contract

“What do you have in mind?”

“We can talk about why you’re here,” she offered. “I believe that entails some sharing.”

“I guess so.” I shrugged. “Is it okay if I record this?”

“Whatever you feel is necessary.”

I opened my voice recorder app on my phone and set it on the desk between us, mindlessly rubbing my palms on my pants.

“Tell me about what you remember from your childhood,” I started, easily falling into the role of a therapist.

“Unfortunately, I don’t remember much of it,” she said quietly. “What I remember most is the foster system at the time. Though things haven’t changed that much, it was still pretty rough. Especially for two young girls.”

“You have a sister?”

“I do.” She nodded. “Younger than me. She was barely a toddler when the system took us. Our age gap meant that we were destined to grow up in separate households.”

“You were split up,” I murmured, unable to imagine the despair and fear of being separated from my only family at such a young age.

Alex smiled ruefully. “The family that took my sister in didn’t want a stubborn ten year old tagging along.” She sighed. “The family that took me in was inclined to the same; they grew tired of having a kid with a personality and shipped me off the first chance they could get. People are far more interested in taking care of adorable babies than they are troubled preteens.”

I knew that all too well. It was another part of the foster system that I wanted to eradicate.

“How many times were you put back in the system?” I asked.

“Four times,” she answered, her eyes fixed on something far away. “By the time I was seventeen, I was ready to get out and find my sister again. I took part time jobs wherever I could to make enough money so I could go to college. It wasn’t enough, obviously.”

My heart splintered involuntarily. But Alex’s story was the reality for so many children forced into a system that doesn’t care about them.

“Paula told me you had a number of jobs while studying,” I said, tucking a curl behind my ear.

“I think the most I worked was in my second year.” She pondered. “I had three weekday jobs, and two weekend jobs. I think I got about nine hours of sleep on average every week.”

I couldn’t help the surprised choke that slipped out of my mouth. “Nine hours of sleep aweek?”

“That was the year I learned how to schedule like my life depended on it.” She chuckled. “Because my life quite literally depended on it. Unfortunately, that was also the year I met one of my best friends.”

“Who is that?” I asked, intrigued by the joyful spark in her eyes.

“Hayden.” She smiled. “That whirlwind of a human tested every single boundary I put between us. But she was also the first person who felt like family. And she, in turn, introduced me to her friends, who are now the dearest people in my life.”

“I imagine that getting acclimated to your new life outside of the system was difficult,” I mused, my focus hanging on her every word.

“It felt like stepping into a completely different dimension,” she admitted. “I’d been exposed to people from different backgrounds when I was in school, but college was on a different spectrum of confusion for me at first.”

“What was your driving force?” I asked, maybe a little needlessly considering I was sure I knew the answer.

“Finding my sister,” she said, confirming my suspicions. “When I asked the social worker who handled my foster care, he told me that my sister’s records were sealed and I couldn’t access them. I had no way of finding her without hiring a private investigator.”

I nodded absently, my mind leagues ahead of me in crafting smaller versions of Alex and imagining how difficult it must have been for her. “Do you remember your birth parents at all?”

Alex blinked at me and glanced away, her eyes drifting to the right. “I don’t remember their faces,” she mused. “I have these memories that feel as though they might not be real. But other than that, no. I don’t remember them.”

“What happened to them? If you don’t mind my asking, of course.”

“It’s part of your research, no?” She grinned. “To be honest, I never found out. I don’t know if they died or if they just didn’t want to be parents anymore. I just remember ending up in a stranger’s house without my little sister. It was every bit as traumatizing as it sounds.”

It was hard to imagine just how much damage that would have done.