Amber King had long ago mastered the art of assumed nonchalance. At age 13 she could make her face neutral and quiet the jitters in her hands, her stomach, her heart. But on this particular day, it was her eyes that gave her away.
From the moment she was summoned into the upstairs conference room, her eyes swept from stranger to stranger, looking for the woman who might want to be her mother.
“Is it her? Is it her?”
When someone might be getting a family, word spreads quickly through the cottages at the Tennyson Children’s Center, a residential facility in Denver for abused and troubled children. The therapists and case workers caution against getting hopes up, but they also know it is impossible to silence the gossip.
The stakes are too high. In this country’s foster-care system, only 18 percent of the children between 11 and 15 are adopted. By the time they reach the ages of 16 to 18, the number drops to 3 percent.
But in this case there was something else too. Amber had a twin, Danielle.
For the past six years, through five Colorado counties, the two girls, each with a laundry list of diagnoses, had been skidding off each other – separated by some placements, reunited in others and then separated once again.
The prevailing wisdom in adoption is to always attempt to keep siblings together. But few held out any hope these girls would ever find a home together. In fact, those who had worked with them advised against it, saying the twins’ relationship was so shattered it was beyond repair.
But then something extraordinary happened.
In the conference room that day Amber’s gaze rested briefly on a compact, tomboyish woman with short, graying hair and hip, tortoise-shell glasses. Then, just as quickly, the teenager looked away. The instinct to protect herself kicked in.
But Alena Leeds would not look away.
The iconoclastic geophysicist, who lived alone in the mountains of Pine Junction with eight horses and a collection of stray dogs and cats, kept coming back.
From the very first, Amber asked if she could call Leeds “Mom.”
Leeds was taken aback. She’d never been anyone’s mom before. But she also saw how much Amber needed to say the word, to believe in the concept.
People told Leeds she was brave to take in a girl like Amber, one who had been horribly neglected and abused as a child and then bounced through the system for years.
Leeds laughed it off. “I think that is too noble for my personality. I’d say, ‘stubborn’.”
Early on Leeds learned about Danielle. But it looked as if Danielle already had a new family in Jefferson County, one who promised to adopt her.
Then on June 29, 2005, less than three weeks after Amber left the Tennyson Center to live with Leeds, Danielle was returned there for treatment. The family who had planned to adopt her backed out.
“Will it ever be my turn?” Danielle wailed. “I’m such a loser.”
Leeds comes from a family of three sisters and two brothers. She knows a thing or two about the thickness of blood.
Against advice, Leeds went to the mat. She was determined to change the minds of those who said the girls should be in separate homes.
Twins, she insisted, belong together.
“There is something to be said for persistence,” said Rene Guerret, a therapist at the Tennyson Center, who ultimately sided with Leeds. On March 16, 105 days after finalizing Amber’s adoption, Leeds adopted Danielle too.
Amber and Danielle King were born minutes apart in 1991 on the Fourth of July. Danielle had serious medical problems at birth and spent much of her early life in hospitals. She has no memory of her father. Amber remembers him vaguely as a man with a soft voice who smoked cigarettes. He disappeared when the girls were 2.
They moved with their mother from California to Cripple Creek when the girls were very young. The childhood memories come in bursts. Some are good, most are not.
There was the nice woman down the street who fed them chocolate and graham crackers. There were the beer bottles lobbed at their heads.
Often they were locked out of the house while their mother was with a boyfriend. Amber remembers being about 6 and scrounging for food. Danielle remembers a school cafeteria worker slipping her miniature boxes of cereal. The girls would hide together in a closet, eating, so the parade of men would not get the food first.
Once, when Amber was about 8, she was attacked by one of the men. Danielle hid and watched, unable to protect her twin. Soon afterward Teller County authorities placed the girls in foster care.
The girls were sent to a family in El Paso County who promised to adopt them both. Three years went by with nothing settled. Finally the family decided it only wanted Amber. Danielle, who was not easily compliant, had to leave.
At age 12, Danielle was sent to a mental hospital and then to the Tennyson Center for the first time.
The rivalry between the girls had grown ferocious. They competed for affection and favor. Amber shrieked she was glad she was picked over Danielle.
Experts say none of this behavior is surprising. “We force children into survivor mode and then we act aghast when they act like survivors,” says Rita Soronen, executive director of the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption and advocate for hard-to-place children.
But Amber felt guilty. “I felt really bad for what I had said and done,” she remembers. “I wanted my sister back.”
She began to act out. Within a year she, too, had to leave. She was sent to another foster home. It didn’t work either.
In January 2005, Amber also landed at the Tennyson Center. No one told Danielle her sister was coming.
Walking down the hall one day she spotted Amber and became hysterical. “What is my sister doing here?” she cried, “This is my place. She is always coming in and taking over my space.”
During the time they were there together, the girls underwent sibling therapy. They tolerated each other, but just barely. Danielle reassured herself it was only temporary. The family in Jefferson County had promised to adopt her.
Little did Danielle know the placement would not last. Even though an adoption date had been set, the family retracted, saying Danielle was more than they could handle. Case workers admit now there was inadequate follow-up with the case.
Meanwhile, a few miles away, Leeds was feeling restless: “Something wasn’t finished in me.”
She had recently finished a Ph.D. in engineering. Nearing the half-century milestone, she was finally living out her dream of studying earthquakes. She never married because she never found the right man. She wanted children but the timing was always off.
Then one day in her office, she saw a television segment on adopting older children. A beautiful 10-year-old girl named Jessica was featured.
“I could do that,” Leeds realized.
She had done a stint as a middle- school teacher and loved the challenge and quirkiness of early adolescence. Leeds immediately logged onto the Adoption Exchange website looking for Jessica. Instead, up popped a picture of a girl named Amber. The notation said an ideal placement would be a rural setting with horses.
Leeds printed out the picture and began to carry it in her wallet.
Fading into school landscape
In the hallways of West Jefferson Middle School, Amber and Danielle fade easily into the eighth-grade landscape. Few people know their history.
It irks Danielle when she hears classmates complain about their parents. She wants to shout that they don’t know how lucky they are.
They have added Leeds to their last name with a hyphen. Amber easily uses the word “love” and “Mom.” Danielle isn’t there yet. She may never be.
“I do love being taken in by her, but I’m not sure I can trust her,” Danielle says.
Leeds accepts that. It is all so new. The three still are getting used to each other. Leeds reassures both girls that they are a family – not just until they are 18, but for the rest of their lives.
The notion of unconditional parental love remains elusive for Amber and Danielle.
“It means they’ll love you even if you mess up,” Amber says. There is wonder in her voice.
Amber worried at first that she would have to compete with her sister for Leeds. She feared history. But lately she is relaxing.
“I guess I realize Danielle needs a mother too,” she says.
Danielle has begun to dream again at night. Experts who study traumatized children say that is a good sign. The tightly coiled rope inside her may be starting to loosen.
All three attend family therapy. Leeds runs her house with narrow boundaries and lots of chores. While tempting to overindulge to make up for all the hurt, Leeds is certain it would be a mistake.
Amber desperately wants a boyfriend. Leeds has said no boyfriends until she brings her grades up to a B average. When she was caught sneaking a phone call to a boy, she lost phone privileges until the end of the school year.
Both girls have some learning issues. Leeds is hopeful they will be back on track by high school. Amber wants to be a horse trainer some day. Danielle wants to be a crime scene investigator or an actress.
Amber is sure she wants kids so she can be a good mother. The idea of children terrifies Danielle.
One day Amber came home to find a stray dog, a reddish Australian shepherd and border collie mix. She had always wanted a dog that was just hers.
Leeds told her to check the collar to see who the owner was. The nametag read Amber Leeds.
Soon afterward she let Danielle pick out a cat at a pet store. Having an animal to nurture is good therapy, she figures.
Leeds is not naive. She knows there is nothing easy about becoming a first-time mother at age 50. And there is certainly nothing simple about raising teenage twins who come with more than their share of grief. But if not her, who?
“I think,” Danielle says, “when I came to this house I exhaled. I like being treated like I’m normal.”
Reach staff writer Jenny Deam at 303-820-1261 or jdeam@denverpost.com.
