Chapter 42: A Girl on the Subway
"...So that's where things stand." Lola set down her pen and shook her head with genuine regret. In the forty minutes they'd been talking, she'd formed a clear impression of the young man across from her — thoughtful, prepared, not defensive when she'd outlined the obstacles. "You're a long way from meeting the requirements. I'm sorry."
Andrew nodded. He'd expected this. The age threshold was the hardest wall — twenty-five minimum, no exceptions in standard cases. Three years away. Everything else on the list was workable given time and money, but you couldn't negotiate with a birthdate.
He'd come to learn the terrain, not to file paperwork today. Now he knew the terrain.
He thanked Lola, shook her hand, and left.
The hotel was three blocks from the adoption center, which in retrospect explained the location choice.
Andrew pulled the door shut behind him quietly. Lola was still in the room, probably already back on her phone. She'd been practical about the whole thing, which he appreciated. No performance, no complications. Two adults who'd had a conversation that turned into something else and were both clear-eyed about what it was.
He was adjusting his jacket in the hallway when the door across from him opened at the same moment.
The woman stepping out stopped.
He stopped.
"Andrew?"
"Carol."
A beat of silence.
"What are you doing here?" Carol asked, with the specific tone of someone who was aware they had no standing to ask the question but was asking it anyway.
"I heard about you and Susan," Andrew said. "Apparently I'm not the only one with a story."
Carol looked at him steadily, then reached up and smoothed her hair with a composure that was almost impressive. "Susan's inside." She said it without apology, just as a fact. "I assume Ross told everyone?"
"Some version of it."
Carol was quiet for a moment, looking at the middle distance.
"What are you going to do?" Andrew asked. Not pushily — just asking.
"I don't know yet," she said, after a pause.
If she'd known, she wouldn't be here — that was the subtext, and both of them understood it. The hotel room three blocks from the family services office said everything about where things actually stood between thinking about something and deciding it.
"I hope it works out for you," Andrew said, and meant it without complexity. He smoothed the front of his jacket and walked toward the elevator.
Carol stood in the hallway watching him go, and realized somewhere in the middle of it that she'd meant to ask questions and had ended up answering them instead.
Outside, the morning had the bright flat quality of a weekday that didn't know it was anyone's crisis. Andrew walked along the block and stopped at a bodega for a bottle of water. He'd been more physically active than he'd planned for in the morning and his body was letting him know about it.
He drank half the bottle on the sidewalk and started toward the subway.
The station was quiet for mid-morning — a few commuters, a deliveryman with a cart, the usual background noise of a city running on its own schedule. Andrew swiped through the turnstile and peripherally registered someone next to him plant a hand on the barrier and vault over it in one practiced motion.
He didn't look twice. Not his business.
On the platform he waited less than two minutes before the train came. He picked an empty car and settled into a middle seat, grateful for the relative stillness.
The vaulter had gotten into the same car and was sitting near the far end by the door connecting to the next car — black hoodie pulled up, making no eye contact with anything. Young. Fourteen, maybe fifteen if he was being generous.
Across the aisle, a young woman was sitting with a large wrapped canvas beside her and the specific smell of linseed oil that meant art student. She was crying quietly, head down, the kind of crying someone does when they've been trying not to and have lost the argument with themselves.
Andrew closed his eyes.
Then the crying got louder.
"Hey." The hooded kid's voice was sharp and impatient. Footsteps. "What's all that noise?"
Andrew opened his eyes.
The hood had slipped when she stood up. Younger than he'd clocked — probably fourteen, maybe not even that. Heavy eye makeup, hair dyed in several colors that weren't coordinating with each other, and a left eye that was puffy and discolored in a way that had nothing to do with mascara.
The art student made a startled sound and cut herself off mid-sob, and then immediately started hiccuping from the interrupted breath.
The girl turned and looked directly at Andrew, who had been watching.
"What are you looking at?" She crossed the car in a few steps and grabbed his chin with two fingers. Not hard — more like a move she'd seen work in other contexts. "Don't think being good-looking means I won't hit you. Keep staring and I will."
"Okay," Andrew said, in a tone that conveyed almost nothing. He moved her hand away from his face with a loose, easy gesture. "I'll stop looking."
The girl's eyes dropped briefly to his forearms — the kind of involuntary reassessment that happens when someone realizes the person they're posturing at is more physically present than they anticipated. She pulled her hood back up and went back to her corner without another word.
Andrew reached into his jacket, pulled out the water bottle, and tossed it underhanded to the art student.
She caught it badly, got it under control, drank half of it in one go, and hiccuped twice more before they stopped.
"Thank you," she said quietly.
Andrew settled back and closed his eyes again. The train ran its route. He let himself drift.
His stop.
He came up from the station into the mid-morning light and had been walking for less than a block when he became aware of someone behind him.
He didn't turn around. He just paid attention.
Black hoodie. Same clumsy orbit she'd been maintaining since the station exit — hanging back far enough to think she wasn't visible, close enough to stay in sight. Teenagers who hadn't learned to tail someone yet had a specific rhythm, and she had it.
He understood the logic. She'd lost face on the train and wasn't done with it. Pride was a particular kind of fuel at that age.
Andrew made a turn onto a side street and then into a narrow alley that dead-ended at a wall. He stepped up onto a low ledge along the side, waited until he heard the footsteps commit to the entrance, and dropped back down behind her.
She spun around. Saw the wall ahead of her. Saw Andrew behind her. Her face went through several things quickly.
"Why are you following me?" he asked. Not aggressive — just asking.
"I'm not following you." The reflex was immediate. "I was going this way. How do you know I'm not just going this way?"
"Dead end," Andrew said. "Not many people go this way by accident." He took two steps toward her.
She stepped back, and the bravado from the train reconfigured into something more honestly uncertain. "What do you want?"
Andrew stopped.
He looked at her — the eye, the makeup, the carefully assembled hard exterior over something that was clearly not doing as well as it was pretending.
"You shouldn't follow people," he said. "Especially by yourself. Especially men you don't know." He held her gaze for a moment to make sure it landed. "That's all."
He turned and walked back out of the alley.
Behind him, no footsteps followed.
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