Chosen by Chandra Hoffman Page A

won’t be able to do this job once you do.”
    “But I’m making a family ,” Chloe protests. She feels the exhaustion, the wear and tear of the last two days on her, a sandpaper burn behind her eyes. She sniffs furiously.
    “Whatever you need to tell yourself to get to sleep at night, honey.”
    “Yeah, I’m familiar with things left in ‘God’s hands’!” Chloe replies.
     
    W HEN C HLOE WAS TEN , her mother died of a brain tumor, shattering the sweet trio that had made up the Pinter family. There were only three slim months between diagnosis and her death on the Fourth of July. Chloe can still picture her father that night, silhouetted against the red explosions of light, the familiar swing of his simian arms as he walked across the baseball field to where Chloe sat on a soft tartan picnic blanket, shoulder to sunburned shoulder with her best friend. The day’s humidity lingered so that when her father touched her arm, her skin felt wet, though she’d been out of the community pool for hours.
    “I won the swim race for ten and under!” she crowed as they walked toward his car, her hand damp in his. She can rememberhow long it took to cross the parking lot, the flickering orange of the goosenecked overhead light, her stomach twisting at her father’s silence, the steamy, tarry smell of the humidity-saturated blacktop. She knew before he said it.
    “Your mother died this morning.” Dr. Pinter opened the passenger side door for her. “It was peaceful, she didn’t suffer, and I was”—his voice broke—“I was holding her hand when she went.”
    Chloe closed the car door and watched as her father collapsed against her side window, his long arms wrapped around his middle, hunched over, shaking.
    When he got in the car next to her, she had pressed her knuckles to her mouth, hating the way the two of them didn’t even use all the spaces of the front seat of the nine-passenger station wagon.
    We’re not a family anymore, she thought.
    She said simply, “We need a smaller car.”
     
    “I’ M DOING SOMETHING GOOD . I’m making a family!” Chloe calls again after Penny’s nurse, but the answer is just the disapproving squeak of her white clogs.
    Chloe’s cell phone rings. It is Dan, but all she can hear are lyrics from the Counting Crows song “Raining in Baltimore.” Accompanied by a mournful accordion and sad, somber piano chords, Adam Duritz wails to her in his distinctive whine, You get what you pay for / But I just had no intention of living this way. There is a glitch in the CD, or perhaps Dan means it to, but the line is repeated, I just had no intention of living this way. And then he hangs up. Chloe has a sinking feeling that the message is in the final lines, a purposeful repetition—Dan had no intention of living “this way,” as grown-ups, in Portland Heights, making the rent and grocery lists and dinners for their wallpapered breakfast nook. She could spend more time thinking about this, wondering what he wants from her, but she doesn’t. She wraps the thin flannel blanket around her shoulders and lets his call go unreturned.
     
    I T IS JUST AFTER midnight. The McAdoos are home in their lovely, warm, clean bed while for the second night in a row Chloe is chasing sleep on the love seat in the seating area outside Penny’s room. She wakes up with the sensation of being watched—Jason is sitting on the sofa opposite her, his blue/brown eyes staring.
    “How are things going in there?” Chloe croaks, surprised by the scratchiness of her voice.
    “I don’t know how they’re going to get that thing outta her. Doc just went in there now.” He sounds anxious. “They’re coming back, Francie and John?”
    “Yeah, yes, why?” They had all agreed, around eleven, that nothing was happening, and that the McAdoos should go home and wait for a call. Chloe sits up, wide awake now. “Why?”
    “You think they really want this kid?” Jason stretches out his legs, his enormous motorcycle