The Foster Girls #2: Finland

Epilogue: Dominic

"I've got to go out for a bit," I told Finland, hoping she'd let me get away with being vague. Unfortunately, she was so nauseated with morning sickness -- that lasted all fucking day and I couldn't do anything about -- she just nodded as she lay on the couch. 

"OK. I was planning on taking a nap," she yawned. "Can you bring me back some more ginger ale and saltines, please? I'm getting low."

Pressing a kiss to her lips, I assured her I'd take care of it, then pulled the little blanket she kept on the couch over her shoulders. This pregnancy was tough on her but she never complained. We figured she'd gotten pregnant the day I told her I loved her and asked her to marry me. We had a small wedding two days after Elizabeth arrived home from London and just about a week or so before Willow was scheduled to go overseas for school. Finland wasn't feeling great at our wedding, but she insisted on having it when all her sisters were home. 

"I'm not waiting until after the baby is born, Dominic," she told me in no uncertain terms when I'd stupidly suggested waiting to get married until she gave birth or at least felt better. "Nothing is going to keep me from getting married before this baby is born while all my sisters are here."

Then she'd gotten violently sick again, so I just held her hair back and kept my mouth shut about delaying our wedding. As Rome and I were discovering, it was easier to let these Foster girls have their way and, as long as there was no threat to their safety and well-being, we made sure they were given whatever the hell they wanted. (Which explained why the Dragon's Inferno now had motherfucking flowers in front of the clubhouse, but that bullshit was all on Rome.)

You'd never have known Finland was feeling "like yuck," as she called it on our wedding day. She and her sisters danced and laughed, and Rome and I just watched them, smiling at their sheer happiness.

As I walked out the door, I texted a prospect to pick up Finland's ginger ale and crackers, adding in a few other things that might tempt her appetite. He'd leave them on the kitchen table where she'd see them.

I got into the SUV and tried to think things through as I drove to the airport. I still wasn't one hundred percent certain this was the right move, but my gut said to do it, so I was doing it. Trying to find a needle in a haystack begins with one date, and in this case, it was the date that Finland was abandoned in front of that fire house. From there, it was a matter of working my hunch, checking Finnish passports around that time and methodically running down every possible lead. It had taken me longer than I'd liked, basically because the Finnish woman's last name was the equivalent of Smith in the U.S., but I'd finally found Leena Virtanen.

Finland's mother.

My wife had no idea I was searching for this woman. I'd decided if I hadn't liked what I'd found, there was no way I was letting her mother into her life  and Finland would be none the wiser. No harm, no foul, and her life would proceed.

But the woman I'd spoken to had broken down in tears when I told her who I was married to, and had told me a very sad story that I'd fact-checked the fuck out of after hanging up with Leena. 

After a few more phone conversations with Finland's mother, I'd invited her to come meet her daughter. She said yes so fast that I could feel the twenty-four years of longing behind it. This was a woman who, as a young, nineteen-year-old girl, had felt as if she'd had no choice but to leave her infant daughter behind. 

Leena had come to the States supposedly as an au pair when she was eighteen. In reality, she'd been sent here by her boyfriend, Onni, when she'd been six months pregnant so his family -- his very criminally-connected family -- would never know she was going to have his baby. The young man had wanted nothing to do with his family, and he had planned to join Leena in her tiny apartment after a few months, with documentation allowing them to remain in the U.S., far away from his relatives. Unfortunately, his family's business had resulted in Onni's death.