Girls in Trouble Read Online Free PDF

a male voice in the background whisper, “Where’s the creme fraiche?” They lied outright, trying to turn themselves into what they thought she wanted. “Are you religious?” Sara asked. Not that she cared, but she just wanted to know. “We’re . . . spiritual,” said one woman.
    “They’re lying to me,” Sara said to the agency, amazed, but Margaret waved her away. “Well, you have to realize, some of these people are yearning so hard for a baby, they let their common sense fly out the window. You can’t hold it against them. You let us find out the truth,” Margaret told her. “You concentrate on connecting to someone.”
    “Please call back anytime,” the callers all said, and Sara never did.
    “No one yet?” the agency asked Sara.
    “When are you going to make a decision?” Abby prodded. She wanted Sara to choose a family who lived in Texas, who had a big dog and who said they’d be happy to send pictures, but just for a few years. “What’s wrong with these people?” Jack said, pointing to an album from a family who were moving to Spain.
    And then, like an afterthought, the agency had sent over George and Eva’s scrapbook. “I don’t know if this is right for you—” Margaret said. “But it’s worth a shot, right?” Abby hadn’t liked George and Eva the moment she saw their scrapbook. “They look like aging hippies,” she said, pointing to Eva’s filmy long dress, George’s cowboy boots. She shook her head at the picture of Eva with her preschool class, all of them, especially Eva, covered in poster paints. Abby said they were too old—in their forties, for God’s sake. Forty-three! Abby was forty-three and you didn’t see her talking about having a baby! Plus, they were too close, just twenty minutes away. “This isn’t a good idea,” Jack said.
    But Sara liked the way they looked. Real. Natural. Like they wouldn’t snow her. She liked the letter, which was the only one that didn’t start out “Dear birth mother,” but instead just said, “Hello,” as if it were going to be the start of a conversation instead of an advertising pitch. She dialed Eva and George’s number, and as soon as she said her name, Eva said, “Oh, sweetie,” in a voice so rich with feeling, that Sara couldn’t have hung up even if she wanted to. Sara spoke to Eva for twenty minutes and the whole time Eva didn’t ask her about the doctor, about the father, or about anything other than what movies and books Sara liked, and then Eva had gotten quiet. “This is so hard for both of us, isn’t it?” Eva said. “How can either one of us know what the right thing to do is?”
    “You can ask me anything,” Sara said. “But only if I can do the same.”
    “Deal,” said Eva.
    Oh, how she had loved talking to Eva. She called her the next day to see if she still felt as relaxed talking to her, and she had. She called her the day after.
    And she wrote her, too. Spilling out how she felt about being pregnant, how she felt about her parents, how she worried about the future.
Ihope this is okay I’m telling you all this
, she said.
I’m just a little scared. It helps to write, like getting it in print gives it less power
. Almost immediately after she sent her letters off, she got a response, always from both Eva and George, always soothing and happy, and always with a photograph of the two of them, or the yard, or the special room in the house that might be the baby’s.
    Sara was walking home from school one day when she saw a young mother trying to hoist up a bag of groceries in one arm and her baby in the other. The woman looked at Sara helplessly. “Please, can you help me?” she said. As soon as Sara lifted up the baby, something sharp nudged against her ribs, from inside, and she tightened her grip.
    “Thank you, thank you,” the woman said profusely. By the time Sara got home, she was in tears. She walked into the house, her face streaming, and there was Abby. “Honey, what