She read Will a few books before bed and tucked him in, then went downstairs to close up the kitchen. The cardboard box of her mother’s things sat on the butcher-block counter, and Oreo Figaro crouched next to it, sniffling it in his tentative way, his black nose bobbing to and from the box.
Ellen stroked his back, feeling the bumpiness of his skinny spine, regarding the box with a stab of sadness. It was so small, not even a two-foot square. Could a mother be so easily disposed of? Could one mother be so quickly traded for another?
You could swap ’em out, and nobody would know the difference.
Ellen opened the lid of the box, and Oreo Figaro jumped from the counter in needless alarm. Stacked inside the box was a set of photographs in various frames, and the top one was an eight-by-ten color photo of her parents at their wedding. She picked it up, setting aside her emotions. In the picture, her parents stood together under a tree, her father wearing a tux and his I-made-my-quota smile. Her mother’s smile was sweet and shy, making barely a quarter moon on a delicate face, which was framed by short brown hair stiffened with Aqua Net. She had roundish eyes and a small, thin nose, like the tiny beak of a dime-store finch, and at only five-foot-one, Mary Gleeson seemed to recede in size, personality, and importance next to her larger-than-life husband.
Ellen set the photo aside and looked through the others, which only made it tougher not to feel sad. There was a picture of her parents in a canoe, with her father standing up in the boat and her mother laughing, but gripping the sides in fear. And there was another of them at a wedding, with her father spinning her mother on the end of his arm, like a puppeteer.
Ellen set the photo down. She remembered seeing it and the others at their house, and now they were all being exiled, along with that part of his life. She resolved to find a place for them here. No mother deserved to be forgotten, and certainly not hers.
She went to the cabinet under the sink, got a spray bottle of Windex and a paper towel, and wiped the dust from the top photo. She cleaned all of them, working her way to the end of the stack until she noticed that between two of the photos was a packet of greeting cards, bound by a rubber band. The top one was a fortieth wedding anniversary card, and she took out the packet and rolled off the rubber band. She opened the card, and it was from her father to her mother, the signature simply, Love, Don.
She smiled. That would be her father. He was never big in the elaboration department, and her mother would have been happy just to have the card, on time. Ellen went through the other cards, all saved by her mother, but the last envelope wasn’t a greeting card. It was an envelope of her mother’s stationery, the pale blue of the forget-menots that grew by their sugar maple in the backyard.
Ellen knew what it was, instantly. She had gotten a note like that from her mother, too, written right before she died. The front of the envelope read, To Don. The envelope was still sealed, and she ran her fingertip along the back of the flap, double-checking. Her father had never opened the note.
Ellen didn’t get it. Had he really not opened the note? Didn’t he want to hear the last words of his wife, written after she knew she was going to die? She wasn’t completely surprised, but she slid a nail under the envelope flap, and tugged the note out, its paper thick and heavy. The top flap bore her mother’s embossed monogram, MEG, in a tangle of curlicues, and she opened the note, welling up at the sight of her mother’s handwriting.
Dear Don,
I know that you have always loved me, even if you have forgotten it from time to time. Please know that I understand you, I accept you, and I forgive you.
Love always, Mary
Ellen took the note and went to sit down in the dining room. The house was still and quiet. Oreo Figaro was nowhere in sight. The windows were inky mirrors, the dark sky moonless. For an odd moment she felt as if she were suspended in blackness, connected to nothing in this world, not even Will, asleep upstairs. She held the note in her hand and closed her eyes, feeling its heavy paper beneath her fingers, letting it connect her to her mother through space and time. And at that moment, she knew what her mother would say about Will and Timothy, in that soft voice of hers. It was what she had written to Ellen in her final note.
Follow your heart.
And so there in the quiet room, Ellen finally let herself listen to her heart, which had been trying to tell her something from the moment she first got the card in the mail. Maybe her father thought it was crazy to worry, but inside, she knew better. She couldn’t pretend any longer and she couldn’t live the rest of her life looking over her shoulder. She couldn’t feel like a criminal when a cop pulled her over. She couldn’t hide Will from his friends and neighbors.
So she vowed to follow her heart.
Starting now.
Chapter Forty
Ellen entered the lawyer’s office and took a seat, surrounded by bronze, glass, and crystal awards, like so many blunt instruments. She had met Ron Halpren when she did the series on Will’s adoption, having interviewed him for his expertise on family law, and she counted herself lucky she could call on him on such short notice.
“Thanks for meeting me on a Saturday,” she said, and Ron walked around his cluttered desk and eased into his creaky chair.
“That’s okay, I’m in most Saturday mornings.” Ron had light eyes behind tortoiseshell glasses, a halo of fuzzy gray hair, and a shaggy graying beard to match. His frame was short and pudgy, and he looked like Paddington Bear in his yellow fleece pullover and thick jeans. “Sorry we’re out of coffee. I was supposed to bring it in, but I forgot.”
“No problem, and thanks for accommodating Will.” Ellen gestured to the secretary’s desk outside, where Will was eating vending-machine Fig Newtons and watching a Wizard of Oz DVD on the computer.
“It’s great to see him so healthy. What a difference, eh?”
“Really.” Ellen shifted forward on the chair. “So, as I said on the phone, I’m seeing you in your official capacity, and I want to pay for your time today.”
“Forget it.” Ron smiled. “You made me look like Clarence Darrow in the paper. I got tons of clients from that press. I owe you.”
“I want to pay.”
“Get to the point.” Ron gestured toward the door. “I hear the scarecrow singing. We don’t have much time.”
“Wait, let me ask you something first. Is what we say absolutely confidential?”
“Yes, of course.” Ron nodded. “How can I help you?”
Ellen hesitated. “What if a crime is involved? I didn’t commit it, but I know, or I suspect, that a crime has been committed by someone else. Can you still keep this confidential?”
“Yes.”
“So if I tell you about this crime, you wouldn’t have to report it to the police?”
“I’d be barred from so doing.”
Ellen loved the authoritative note in his voice. “Here goes. I think that Will could be a kid named Timothy Braverman, who was kidnapped in Florida two years ago.”
“Will? Your son Will?”
“Yes.”
Ron lifted a graying eyebrow. “So the crime in question is the kidnapping?”
“Yes, it was a carjacking gone wrong, and the kidnapper murdered the boy’s nanny.”
“Those are past crimes, unless we consider the fact that you retain custody of a kidnapped child as a continuing crime, which I don’t think it is. You did legally adopt him.”
“Here’s what I need to know. If Will is really Timothy, what are my legal rights? Could the Bravermans, his birth parents, take him from me? Would I have to give him up if they found out or if they came and found us? Wouldn’t it matter to the court that he lived with me for two years?” Ellen had so many questions that they ran into each other on the way out of her mouth. “That I’m the only mother he’s ever really known? Would that—”
“Please, slow down.” Ron held up his hands. “Tell me how you found this out, about Will.”
So Ellen told him the story from the beginning,
showing him her adoption file, the composite drawing, and her computer printouts of Timothy and Will at their various ages. “By the way, my father thinks I’m crazy. He’s the only other person I’ve told.”
Ron studied the photographs on his desk, even placing the composite tracing over the photo enlargement of Beach Man. Finally, he looked up at her, his expression grave behind his glasses.
“What do you think?”
“You’re not crazy, but you are speculating.” Ron’s gaze remained steady. “The composite drawing is the linchpin, and you can’t support your belief that Will is Timothy Braverman by comparing the composite with a photograph. It just isn’t reliable enough. I see some similarity, but I can’t be sure it’s the same person.”
Ellen tried to process what he was saying, but her emotions kept getting in the way.
“I’m not an expert, and neither are you. Composites, as a legal matter, cannot stand alone. Any one of my first-year law students can tell you that a composite is merely an aid to the identification and apprehension of a suspect. They’re not a positive identification.” Ron shook his head. “You don’t have enough information on which to base any conclusion that Will is the kidnapped child.”
It was the same thing her father had said, only in lawyerspeak.
Ron continued, “Now, the first question you should have is whether you have an obligation to go to the authorities with your suspicion. Answer? No, you don’t.”
Ellen hadn’t even thought of that.
“The law doesn’t impose responsibility on the citizenry to report crimes that are so speculative in nature.”
“Good.”
“That’s not to say that you couldn’t voluntarily report your suspicion to the authorities, if you wished. I’m sure there are fingerprints of Timothy Braverman on file, or blood tests that could be done, or DNA analysis that would determine if Will is Timothy.” Ron tented his fingers in front of his beard and looked at her directly. “Obviously, you’re concerned that if you tell the authorities and you’re right, you would lose Will.”
Ellen couldn’t even speak, and Ron didn’t wait for an answer.
“You’re also concerned that if you’re not right, you’d cause the Bravermans more pain and upset.”
Ellen hadn’t thought of them, but okay.
“Let’s take a hypothetical. Assume for a moment that you’re right. Will is Timothy.”
Ellen hated the very sound of the sentence. “Could that even happen?”
“Hypothetically, it’s easy, now that I give it some thought. All that is required for a valid adoption is a birth mother to produce a birth certificate, which is easy enough to fake. Unlike a driver’s license or a passport, it doesn’t even have a photo.” Ron stroked his beard. “And she has to supply a signed waiver of her parental rights, from the birth father, too, which is also easy to forge, and she could make up the father’s name. There are plenty of cases from mothers who put a child up for adoption without the father’s consent. They’re very common.”
Ellen was remembering the elementary school, where Charles Cartmell’s house was supposed to have been. The Charles Cartmell that nobody had heard of and who didn’t exist.
“The second question is what are your parental rights, if any? And what are the Bravermans’ parental rights, if any? That’s the question that’s worrying you, isn’t it?” Ron paused. “If you’re right, who gets Will?”
Ellen felt her eyes well up, but kept it together.
“You raise an interesting question under Pennsylvania law, and one not well understood by laymen. It involves the difference between adoption cases and custody cases.”
Ellen couldn’t take the suspense. “Just tell me, would I get to keep Will or would I have to give him back to the Bravermans?”
“You’d have to give him back to the Bravermans. No question.”
Ellen felt stricken. She struggled to maintain control, teetering on the fine line between crying and screaming. But Will was in the next room, lost in a world somewhere over the rainbow.
“The Bravermans, as the child’s birth parents, have an undisputed legal right to their child. They’re alive, and they didn’t give him up for adoption. If he was kidnapped, your adoption is simply invalid. Therefore, as a legal matter, the court would return Will to them.”
“And he would go live in Florida?”
“That’s where they live, so yes.”
“Would I have the right to visit him?”
“No.” Ron shook his head. “You would have no rights at all. The Bravermans may permit you to, perhaps to wean him from you, so to speak. But no court would order them to permit you to visit.”
“But I adopted him lawfully,” Ellen almost wailed.
“True, but in the hypothetical, no one gave him up for adoption.” Ron cocked his head, tenting his fingers again. “As you remember from when you adopted him, you presented the court with signed waivers, consents to adoption from his mother and his father. That’s a prerequisite to any adoption. If the consents were false, forged, or otherwise fraudulent, the adoption is invalid, whether you knew it or not.”
Ellen forced herself to think back to her online research, done last night in anticipation of this meeting. “I read online about the Kimberley Mays case, in Florida, do you remember that? She was the baby who was switched at birth in the hospital, with another baby. In that case, the court let her stay with her psychological parent instead of her biological parent.”
“I know the case. It got national attention.”
“Doesn’t that help me here? Can’t we do it that way?”
“No, it doesn’t help you at all.” Ron opened his hands, palms up. “That’s what I started to tell you. There’s a fundamental difference between adoption and custody. The Florida court in the Mays case was applying a custody analysis, which involves an inquiry into the best interests of the child. The court decided that it was in the child’s best interests for her to stay with her psychological father.” Ron made a chopping motion with his hand. “But we have an adoption case here. It has nothing to do with what’s in Will’s best interests. It’s simply a matter of power. Your case is like those in which the father’s consent to the adoption was forged by the mother.”
“What happens in those cases?”
“The child goes to the biological father. It’s his child, and he didn’t validly waive his right to him.”
Ellen tried a different argument. “What if Will were ten or older, you think he’d get sent back?”
“Yes. As a legal matter, time won’t cure the fact that he was kidnapped, even though you were unwitting.”
“So it doesn’t matter that I’m the only mother he’s ever known?” Ellen found it impossible to accept. “My house is the only house he’s ever known. The school, the classmates, the neighborhood, the babysitter. We’re his world, and they’re strangers.”
“They happen to be his natural parents. It’s a very interesting dilemma.”
“No, it’s not,” Ellen shot back, miserably.
“Aw, wait.” Ron’s voice softened, transitioning from professor to friend. “We were speaking hypothetically. Come back to reality with me for a minute. I was there, when you were considering adopting him. Remember when we met, back then?”
“Yes.”
“There was, and there still is, no reason in the world to think there was anything wrong with his adoption.”
“But what about the mom with the twisted ovary? The lawyer’s suicide?”
“People who can’t get pregnant get pregnant, every day. My daughter-in-law, for one. And sadly, lawyers commit suicide. Life happens. So does death.”
“I’m not crazy, Ron.”
“I didn’t say you’re crazy. I don’t think you’re crazy. I think you got a bee in your bonnet, like my mother used to say. It’s what makes you a good reporter. By the way, it’s what made you adopt Will in the first place.” Ron wagged a finger. “You couldn’t get him out of your head, you told me.??
?
“I remember.” Ellen nodded sadly. Her gaze found a heavy crystal award, its beveled facets capturing a ray of sun, like an illustration of refraction in a physics book.
“You want my advice?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Then listen to me.”
Ellen felt as if it were a moment of truth. She hardly breathed.
“Take these papers and put them away, at the bottom of the drawer.” Ron slid the file, the photographs, and the composite drawing across his messy desk. “Your adoption was valid. Will is your child. Enjoy him, and invite Louisa and me to his wedding.”
Ellen packed up her papers, wishing she could take his advice. “I can’t do that. I want to know what’s true.”
“I told you what’s true. You’ve elevated suspicion to fact.”
“But it doesn’t feel right.” Ellen fought her emotions to think clearly, and it was clarifying to talk about it out loud. “You know what I really feel? I feel that my kid is sick, but the doctors keep telling me he’s fine. Not just you, my father, too.”
Ron fell silent.
“But I’m his mother. I’m Dr. Mom.” Ellen heard a new conviction in her voice, which surprised even her. “Call it a mother’s instinct, or intuition, but I have it inside, and I know better.”
“I hear you. You believe what you believe.”
“Yes.”
“Nobody can tell you different.”
“Right!”
“You feel certainty. You are certain.”
“Bingo!” Ellen said, but a slow smile eased across Ron’s face, spreading his beard almost like a stage curtain.
“But you have to have a valid proof to support your certainty, and you have none. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Ellen answered, and she did. She gathered up the photographs and papers, and rose with them. “If proof is what I need, then proof is what I’ll get. Thanks so much for your help.”