Three Little Words

Ashley moves into fifth grade and, “for the first time in my life,” is “no longer the new girl” (159). She is even elected as the new Student Council president. Despite this, she is still “hungry for attention” (160) and sometimes acts up in class. Instead of lecturing her about “my past not being an excuse for poor behavior,” one teacher tells Ashley that “she had come from a rough background herself and [knows] what it [is] like to struggle without support at home” (160).

Ashley and Luke attend adoption picnics and even appear on the Christian Television Network, but when no one responds, Ashley feels “hopeless” (161). She misses her mother and “believe[s] that she yearn[s] for me as much as I [do] for her” (163), which sometimes breaks through her defenses and reduces her inconsolable tears.

When the children have their photos taken for a book for prospective adopters, Ashley enters a competition to have her drawing on the front of the book. Under her entry, she writes a poem about wanting only a loving family, but nobody tells her if she has won or not. At the next adoption picnic, a couple named Jess and Les buy her and Luke hotdogs. A woman named Gay also shows an interest in her, and after Luke tears her bag, a man named Phil helps Ashley take her belongings to the van.

Ashley is distressed that her primary caregiver, Ms. Sandnes, is leaving to pursue a master’s degree and “hug[s] her as if I [will] never let go” (171). Ms. Sandnes promises, “‘Everything good is going to happen for you. I know it’” (171), and Ashley later learns that she knew that Ashley had found a family. Phil and Gay wish to adopt Ashley, and another family who lives nearby wants to adopt Luke. Ashley has some reservations but concludes that it “look[s] like a good deal; I’d get a lot of attention, a lot of stuff, and it [can’t] be worse than most of the places I [have] been” (175).

Slowly, Ashley gets to know Phil and Gay Courter, eventually visiting their house. One bedroom has “a sign that read[s] ASHLEY’S ROOM” (179). Ashley still has some reservations and does not like Gay’s cooking. However, when Gay gently coaxes out stories about Ashley’s time with the Mosses, Ashley ends up “reveal[ing] more to her in two hours than I had to Mary Fernandez in two years” (182). She still wonders whether “this balding man and this intimidating woman [are] really going to be my parents” (182).

A judge allows the Courters to take Ashley on holiday to New England. Before the flight, Ashley learns that the family used to have a small aircraft but crashed it some time ago. Gay recalls Phil saying, “‘I think we survived because we’re meant to do something else,’” and Phil nudges Ashley and says, “‘And that, my dear, would be you’” (186).

They visit Gay and Phil’s son Josh at Hampshire College. He greets her with “a wide grin” and exclaims, “‘So, this is my little sister!’” (188). The next day, Gay and Phil’s other son, Blake, joins them from Boston, and they travel to New Hampshire to have lunch with more relatives. The family are “so busy catching up and joking with one another that they [do] not pay much attention to [Ashley],” and she worries that no one notices that she is “overwhelmed and frightened” (188).

Ashley continues to strongly dislike Gay’s cooking. Gay makes efforts to be accommodating, but “for some reason, [Ashley] resist[s] every attempt” (190). Gay gets frustrated with Ashley’s unhealthy eating and thinks that she uses it as a way to assert control. Phil points out that Ashley has “‘lost control of her whole life. Isn’t it good that she has some now?’” (192).

After Halloween, Ashley moves in with the Courters full-time. After they tuck her in at night, Phil says that it is fine for her not to kiss them goodnight, and Gay reassures her that “‘[i]t’s okay not to love us’” (194). She even says that she does not yet love Ashley but that she can “‘feel the buds of love growing’” (194). Ashley cannot “believe she [is] being so honest,” and Gay explains that “‘[t]here is nothing we can say to make you believe that we’ll be here for you. You will only learn it by living with us year after year after year’” (194).

Phil and Gay reveal that they found Ashley after friends showed them a “children-in-waiting directory” that had “a clever poem and picture on the cover that was signed by someone named Ashley,” which they thought “might be the Ashley whose photo was inside” (197). Phil reveals that “‘Gay fell in love with you then […] but she’s a sucker for sappy poems’” (197), and Ashley realizes how easily she could have missed this opportunity if she had not entered the competition.

Ashley and Gay argue several times, and Ashley is rude to her new foster mother. Afterward, Gay informs her that “‘[y]ou can blame me for anything that is my fault, but you can’t hate me for what the others did to you’” (203). Josh and Blake, “my new brothers,” (198) visit home at Thanksgiving and Christmas, and the family spends time slowly getting to know one another. Josh coaxes Ashley into climbing a tall ladder to put the angel on the Christmas tree. After, he asks the family, “‘Isn’t she cool?’” (204).

Gay reassures Ashley that “‘[y]ou are our chosen child,’” and while they “‘cannot erase some of the tragedies’” from her life, they can “‘help you be the person you want to be from now on’” (206). After Gay shouts at the brothers for letting Ashley stay up late on New Year’s Eve, they reassure her that they “‘want to be your brothers’” and that that means “‘we are always going to support you, not the ‘rents’” (207). They also say that Phil and Gay “‘are the best parents ever […] They have always been there for us and they will always be there for you. And so will we’” (207).