Read Online Chosen by Chandra Hoffman - Free Book Online Page A

extreme sports bums who dream of Maui, of Telluride, call. This is what you do when you have a house you have fallen in love with, and a job that you can’t leave, when you have birth mothers, clients, who want you to hold their hands when they scream and push out a baby they will give away, no, correction: will make an adoption plan for.
    “Hey, babe.” Dan startles her, coming from the dark living room to lean against the arched doorway. He has been asleep, prints of the corduroy couch on his rosy cheek, so lovely with his dark hair standing spiky above his dear face. He smiles sleepily. Okay, she thinks, we’re in a good mood. Okay!
    “Hi!” She wraps her arms around his waist, checking her watch behind his back. It’s only just five thirty, and he has been home long enough to take a nap? “I thought you were going to call for a ride. I tried to call your cell a few times…. How was your day?”
    “Shitty.” But his tone is light. “But we closed the shop early, so I have that going for me, a smaller paycheck this Friday.”
    “Well, but it looks like you got a nice nap in.”
    Dan shrugs, difficult again, and wanders through the dining room to the kitchen, stretching. A few years ago, before they moved to Portland, Chloe would never have used the word optimist to describe herself. Now, because she must balance the scales, it is the front-runner of her personality traits; Little Miss Sunshine.
    “I’ve got at least two births coming up; I’ll get overtime for sure,” she offers, following him.
    “It’s okay, babe,” he says, his mood swinging as wildly as theirempty birdfeeder in the gusty rain outside the kitchen window. “It’s no big deal. Can I pour you some wine?” he offers, and suddenly there is nowhere she would rather be on this stormy night than sitting in their perfect red dining room, the trio of bright white pillar candles flickering between them as they make short work of a bottle of bargain merlot. He has one of her hands casually in his, tickling the underside of her wrist absentmindedly, though he knows it drives her mad, the best kind of mad. She can see them reflected in the silver mirror and, in that, the reflection of their images on the paned window, and on and on, endless rectangles of diminishing size, their silhouettes, the wineglasses, the glow of candlelight. Conversation is easy and light, bantering that will lead them quickly to the bedroom at the top of the stairs.
    Until the cell phones ring, first his, and he takes it into the dark living room from where she can make out phrases: “next month,” “talk to Chlo about a plane ticket,” and “take some time off.”
    She is bracing herself for his reaction to her questions when her own cell rings and she switches places with him, taking it into the other room as he sits back at the table, pouring the last of the wine into his glass.
    “Hey.” The deep voice startles her, the pause that follows.
    “Hello?”
    “You heard me. I said hey.”
    “Who is this?” she asks, but she recognizes the voice.
    “You know who this is.” He laughs sharply, and Chloe has to fight the urge to look out her window—he could be anywhere, because there are things he knows about her, things a birth father with a criminal record shouldn’t know.
    Jason Xolan had called the Chosen Child four weeks ago from outside the Women’s Correctional Center in Salem, where Penny had just completed a sentence for check fraud. Jason had been released from a facility on the Washington side of the Columbia River on a parole violation four days earlier, had hitchhiked to Salem to bethere when Penny got out. Chloe had driven the hour to Salem with a yellow informational folder and the top four portfolios off the adoptive parent stack.
    “We’re hungry,” Penny had said as soon as they were in Chloe’s car. “Freakin’ starving.” In between sentences, she was kissing all over Jason’s stubbled neck, and he had one hand up under her droopy,