Just Like Other Daughters (27 page)

Authors: Colleen Faulkner

BOOK: Just Like Other Daughters

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I hear the front door open. It can’t be Jin because she just left to get more diapers and formula. Whoever it is, I don’t want to see them. I don’t want to see anyone. I don’t want to talk to anyone. Not Randall, who seems more pitiful than useless to me now. Not Margaret and her platitudes. Not any of my well-meaning colleagues, who don’t know what to say, leaving me not knowing what to say to them.

“Alicia?”

I’m still resting my forehead on the windowpane. I open my eyes. It’s flurrying now. The grass in the backyard is brown and brittle, with a dusting of white. I remember playing soccer in the yard with Chloe. The picture Jin took of us is still downstairs on the refrigerator.

I’ve cried so much in the last three days that I’m out of tears.

“Alicia?” Mark’s voice drifts up the stairs.

The baby is stirring, but I can’t seem to move away from the window. “Up here.” My voice cracks.

I hear him on the stairs. He comes up the hall and walks into Chloe’s room. He walks up behind me, stands there for a minute, then puts his hand on my shoulder.

The baby starts to whimper.

We just stand there for a minute, then he moves away from me. I hear him walk to the crib. He’s making soothing little cooing sounds, the kind you make to babies. Words that don’t really mean anything.

The baby quiets and Mark walks back to me, rocking a bundle of flannel blankets in his arms. Now the baby is making little mewing sounds.

“There’s a pacifier,” I say.

“Got it.”

I don’t want to look at him. I don’t want to feel this tenderness in my heart because, somehow, I feel like it’s a betrayal of my love for Chloe. But I can’t help myself.

I turn away from the cold window and look at the baby Mark’s cradling. He looks good with a baby in his arms. With my baby.

I touch the infant’s cheek. I inhale his newborn scent. “I’m going to call him Adam,” I say.

Mark rocks Adam gently and the baby sucks on the pacifier, looking up at me with those big blue eyes. Chloe’s eyes.

“I can do this,” I whisper, smiling through my tears as I lean to brush my lips against Adam’s soft cheek.

Mark switches Adam to one arm and puts the other around my shoulders, hugging me against him. He kisses the top of my head. “We can do this.”

Please turn the page for a very special
Q&A with Colleen Faulkner!

1. What made you decide to write about the subject of a parent caring for an adult child with an intellectual disability?

I like women’s fiction that deals with real, present-day problems. I look at friends and family members who are dealing with issues that seem overwhelming to me and admire the strength I see in them. As a mother of four adults, I can only imagine how difficult it must be to make decisions for an adult child who can’t necessarily make her own decisions. I wanted to write about a woman I could laugh with and cry with . . . and admire.

2. Are you and Alicia similar people?

As a writer, I create fictitious characters, so no, Alicia isn’t me and I would not necessarily have made the choices she made. But I think there’s always a part of me in my female protagonists. Alicia has my practicality. There are times when I think Alicia could have fallen apart, but the practical side of her pushed through the pain or uncertainty because she felt she had no choice. Chloe had no one but Alicia. Alicia’s responsibility as a parent was to do the best she could for her child.

3. Did you do research for the book, or do you have personal experience with people with intellectual disabilities?

I did a lot of research on the subject of adults with mental challenges and the choices their caregivers have to make. I also read a lot about sexuality and adults with intellectual disability and talked at length with a friend who works in a group home for these special people. She’s had so many amazing experiences; she gave me a better understanding of the practical side of Alicia and Chloe’s life. I also grew up with family members my own age who are intellectually challenged, so I’ve seen the joy and the sadness in being a parent of such special sons and daughters.

4. What next for Colleen Faulkner?

One Last Summer
tells the story of four women: Aurora, McKenzie, Janine, and Lilly, bound by friendship and tragedy as preteens, who have remained friends as adults. Now, in their forties, they’ve gathered at the beach for one last summer vacation together. McKenzie is dying. This will be their last chance to share their laughter and tears, revisit the past, and look to the future, which will not be what anyone expects.

1.
When the book opens, do you feel that Alicia is giving Chloe the independence she needs/deserves? If not, give an example.

2.
Would you have responded differently than Alicia when Chloe first came home saying she and Thomas were going to get married?

3.
Do you think Randall loved his daughter? Why do you think he wasn’t more involved in her life? Was Alicia responsible for his lack of involvement? Do you think Randall’s relationship with Chloe would have been different had Chloe not had an intellectual disability?

4.
Do you think Alicia should have allowed Chloe to get married? Should Margaret have allowed Thomas to get married? Would there have been a better option?

5.
Do you think having Chloe and Thomas move into Alicia’s house after they were married was a good idea? Would the marriage have survived had they moved into Margaret’s house? A group home?

6.
How could Alicia have prevented Chloe and Thomas’s marriage from failing? Margaret?

7.
What would you have done if Chloe had been your daughter and become pregnant? How do you think others would have reacted to your choice?

8.
How do you think Alicia’s story will end?

KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by

Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018

Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

ISBN: 978-0-7582-6684-2

eISBN-13: 978-0-7582-9149-3
eISBN-10: 0-7582-9149-3

First Kensington Electronic Edition: November 2013