“What?” Ellen asked, stricken.
“Don!” Barbara shouted, so loudly that he stood stunned for a moment. “Shut up. Right now.” She faced him head-on, despite her tiny frame. “I can’t believe what I’m seeing. I can’t believe this is the man I just married. I know you’re a better man than this.”
“Wha?” her father said, but accusation had left his tone.
“This isn’t about you, or even Will.” Barbara raised a manicured hand. “This is about your daughter, your only daughter. Start focusing on the child you have, instead of the one you don’t.”
“But she shouldn’ta said anything. She shoulda just shut up!”
Ellen felt slapped, and Barbara’s mouth dropped open.
“Don, she did what any good mother would do. She did what was right for her child, even though it cost her.”
Ellen recovered, listening. Barbara had given the clearest and best statement of why she’d followed up on that damn white card. She’d never thought of it exactly that way.
Her father’s gaze shifted from Barbara to Ellen, suddenly very sad. He raked his thin hair with trembling fingers. “I’m sorry, El. I didn’t mean it.”
“I know, Dad.”
“It’s just that Will was my . . . chance.”
“What do you mean?” Ellen asked, mystified, and tears came to her father’s eyes. The only other time she’d seen him cry was at her mother’s funeral, and the sight caught her by the throat.
“He was my chance, El. My second chance.”
Ellen touched his arm, sensing what he’d say before he said it. She gave him a big hug, and he eased into her arms, with a little moan.
“Everything I did wrong with you, I was gonna do right with him. I wanted to make it up to you. To your mother.”
Ellen thought her heart would break, and in the next minute, her eyes brimmed with tears, and she found herself crying like a baby in her father’s arms.
“I’m so sorry, honey,” he whispered as Ellen sobbed and breathed in his expensive aftershave, and she drew real comfort from his embrace in a way she never had before. The deepest pain in her heart eased just a little, and she let herself feel how very powerful is something so simple, yet so profound, as a father’s love.
And she thanked God he was alive.
Chapter Eighty-nine
It wasn’t until they had gone and Ellen was rinsing their coffee mugs that the phone rang in the kitchen. She turned off the faucet, crossed the room, and checked caller ID, which showed the newspaper’s main number. She picked up. “Hello?”
“Ellen?” Marcelo asked, worried. “Are you okay? I’ve been calling your cell.”
“I think I left it in your car. I was going to call you, but my father and my new stepmother just left.”
“How are you?”
“Good, okay.” Ellen glanced over and saw that the Coffmans still weren’t home, their house dark. “You probably want me to look at that story, huh?
“Only if you feel up to it.”
“I’m not sure.”
“Then let it go. I loved what you wrote for the homicide piece.”
“Good, thanks.” Ellen felt a warmth she couldn’t deny.
“I’ll be done here around nine. Happily, there’s news besides you.”
“You’d never know it from the crowd outside.”
“Would you like company tonight? I don’t think you should be alone.”
“I’d like that.”
“I’ll be there.” Marcelo’s voice softened. “Take care of yourself, ’til then.”
“See you.” Ellen hung up and left the kitchen by the other exit, feeling an odd sensation when she reached the upstairs landing. It was exactly the spot where Carol had set Will down, before she’d made her final stand.
Ellen felt a tightness in her chest, then forced herself to step over the spot and climb the stairs. She caught a glimpse of the scene outside on the sidewalk, and the reporters were still there, smoking cigarettes and holding cups of take-out coffee against the cold. The afternoon sky spent its last hour before twilight descended, dropping purple and rose streaks behind the cedar shakes and satellite dishes, a suburban night in winter.
Ellen’s clogs clattered on the wooden stair, echoing in the silent house, and she wondered how long she’d go on noticing every noise that she’d never noticed before. She lived in a house of echoes now. She’d have to exchange her clogs for slippers if she wanted to keep her sanity.
She reached the top of the stair, which ended in front of Will’s room, and faced his door, which was closed. Not that it helped. Butterfly stickers, scribbled drawings, and a WILL’S ROOM license plate covered the door, and Ellen reached almost reflexively for the doorknob, then wondered if she should go in.
“Mrrp?” Oreo Figaro chirped, rubbing against her jeans, his tail curled around her leg.
“Don’t ask,” she told him, twisting the doorknob. She opened the door, and the Cheerios-and-Play-Doh smell caught her by the throat. She willed herself not to cry, and her gaze traveled around the room, dark except for the white rectangle of the window shade, bright from the snow and the TV klieg lights outside. She didn’t know how long she stood there, but it was long enough for the daylight to leak away, so stuffed animals dematerialized into shadowy blobs and the spines of books thinned to straight black lines. Stars glowed faintly from the ceiling, and the WILL constellation took her back in time, to the countless nights she’d held him before bed, reading to him, talking or just listening to his adorable up-and-down cadence, the music of his stories from school or swimming, told in his little-boy register, like the sweetest of piccolos.
She watched almost numbly as Oreo Figaro leapt noiselessly to the foot of Will’s bed, where he always slept, curled next to a floppy stuffed bunny whose ears were silhouetted in the light from the window shade. Will had gotten that bunny at a party that Courtney had thrown for her at work, when she adopted him. Sarah Liu had given it to him.
Anger flickered in Ellen’s chest. Sarah, who was supposed to be her colleague. Sarah, who would later sell both of them out, for money. Sarah, who stole from her the choice about when or whether to give Will up. He could be here right now, home where he belonged, cuddled up with his cat, instead of in a strange hotel room, lost and confused, in all kinds of pain, going home to a house without a mother.
“You bitch!” Ellen heard herself shout. In one movement, she lunged into the room, grabbed the stuffed bunny, and hurled it into the bookshelves, where it hit a toy car. Oreo Figaro leapt from the bed, startled.
Anger flamed in Ellen’s chest, and she hurried from the room.
On fire.
Chapter Ninety
Ellen stood on the snowy brick doorstep and knocked on the front door of the gorgeous Dutch Colonial. The ride to Radnor hadn’t dissipated her anger, even with newsvans trailing her, and she knocked again on the door, drenched in the calcium white light of the klieg lights. Reporters recorded her every movement, but she didn’t care. They were doing their job, and she was doing hers.
“Hello?” Sarah opened the front door, and her dark eyes flared in alarm. She shielded her eyes from the klieg lights with a raised hand. “What are you doing here?”
“Let me in. We’re on TV, girlfriend.”
“You have no right to come here!” Sarah tried to shut the front door, but Ellen straight-armed it open.
“Thanks, don’t mind if I do.” She powered over the threshold into a warm, well-appointed living room, furnished with gray suede sectionals and a thick pile matching rug, where two young boys were sitting on the floor, playing a noisy video game on a widescreen TV.
“Wait! My kids are here.”
“I can see that.” Ellen masked her emotions to wave to them. “Hey, guys, how you doing?”
“Fine,” one answered without looking up, but Sarah shut the door and motioned to them.
“Boys, go to your room,” she said, staccato, and they set down the game controllers and rose instantl
y, astounding Ellen. She couldn’t get that kind of obedience from her hair, much less her son. They left the room, and Sarah picked up the controller, hit the red button for off, and set it down on top of the TV, which had gone black.
“Sarah, how could you do it?” Ellen kept her temper in check. “Not just to me, but to Will? How could you do that to Will?”
“I didn’t do anything to him, nothing wrong anyway.” Sarah edged backwards, tugging at the corner of her skinny black sweater.
“You cannot believe that.”
“I do, and it’s true. Your son is where he belongs, with his real parents.” Sarah didn’t look regretful in the least, her mouth still tight. “I did the right thing.”
“You didn’t do it because it was the right thing. You did it for the money.” Ellen took a step closer, fighting the impulse to hit Sarah in the face. “You couldn’t wait to quit your job, now that you’re rich.”
“It doesn’t matter why I did it, what matters is that he wasn’t legally yours. He was Timothy Braverman.”
“I might have told them, but you took it out of my hands.”
“No, you wouldn’t have. No mother would.”
“Maybe you wouldn’t, but I might have, and because of you, Will was taken in the worst possible way.” Ellen’s anger bubbled to the surface. “No explanation, no phasing in, just taken. It’s the kind of thing that can mess him up for life.”
“All I did was tell the truth.”
“Don’t pretend you have the moral high ground, because you don’t. Was it moral to spy on me? To search my computer? You even tricked my son into telling you where I was!”
“He wasn’t your son. He was their son.”
“He was my son.”
“Not legally.”
“He was my son until I said different.” Ellen felt angry tears, and at some level, even she knew she was yelling at the wrong person. She wasn’t angry at Sarah, she was angry at everyone and everything. Angry that it had happened in the first place. Still she couldn’t stop herself. “I would never do anything to hurt your children, no matter what.”
“You’re not worried about Will. You’re worried about yourself.”
“You know what, you’re right. I love my son and I want him home and I’m never going to have him again. But most of all, I want him to be happy. If he’s happy, I’m happy, and thanks to you, he’s in pain and—”
There was a noise behind them, from the other end of the living room, and Ellen turned around, shocked at the sight. It was Myron Krims, Sarah’s husband, but he was in a wheelchair. She had met him only once, years ago, and he had been walking fine. Then he was one of the top thoracic surgeons in the city, but he was clearly ill. His black sweater and khakis were swimming on him, and his hair had gone completely gray. Circles ringed his eyes, and his aspect looked vague.
“Dear?” Myron asked, his voice shaky. “I’ve been calling you.”
“Excuse me.” Sarah hurried to her husband, and Ellen watched as she bent over him, whispered something in his ear, then wheeled him out of the room. Sarah returned after a moment, her face a tight mask. “So. Now you see.”
For a minute, Ellen didn’t know what to say. “I had no idea.”
“We don’t advertise.”
“What happened?”
“He has MS.” Sarah straightened a suede pillow that didn’t require it.
“For how long?”
“For the rest of his life.”
Ellen reddened. “I mean, how long has this been going on?”
“None of that is your business. It’s nobody’s business but ours.”
Ellen saw a premature fissure in Sarah’s forehead and wondered why she’d never noticed it before. All this time she’d thought she was the only one on a single income, but she’d been wrong.
“I was doing what was right for my family.” Sarah’s voice remained controlled, and her gaze unwavering. “I was doing what I had to do.”
“You could have told me.” Ellen felt disarmed, grasping. “You could have warned me.”
“What would you have said? Don’t take the money?” Sarah snorted. “It was my family or your family. I chose my family. You would have done the same.”
“I don’t know,” Ellen answered, after a minute. She was thinking back to what the cop had said at the ER waiting room. It’s no-win. Suddenly she didn’t know anymore what was right or moral, what was legal or fair. She no longer took satisfaction in confronting Sarah. She wasn’t composed enough to analyze the situation. She couldn’t even tell what she would have done in Sarah’s position. She knew only that Will was gone, and there was a deep rent in her chest where her heart had been. Her shoulders sagged, and she felt herself sinking onto the couch. Her face dropped into her hands, and in the next second, the cushion dipped down as Sarah sat beside her.
“I tell you this,” Sarah whispered. “I am sorry.”
And at that, Ellen let slip the few tears she had left.
Chapter Ninety-one
Ellen got home, hollow and spent, raw and aching. She tossed her bag and keys on the windowseat, and stamped powdery snow from her snowy clogs. She took off her coat and hung it up, but it fell onto the closet floor. She didn’t have the energy to pick it up. She was thirsty but didn’t get anything to drink. She was hungry but didn’t bother to eat. She didn’t even have the strength to be mad at the reporters, following her back from Sarah’s, plaguing her with questions. Oreo Figaro came over to rub against her shins, but she ignored him and went upstairs to read Sal’s piece.
She clopped slowly up the stairs, the sound of her clogs like the ticking of a clock slowing down. She had never felt like this in her life. She was empty, a ghost of a person. She went into her office on autopilot, flicked on a light, and crossed to the computer. She sat down and moved the mouse, and her computer monitor woke up with a screensaver of Will posing with Oreo Figaro.
Please, no.
She opened up Outlook and watched the boldfaced names pile into the Inbox. She waited for Marcelo’s email to load and braced herself to read the article. But Marcelo’s wasn’t the email that caught her eye. She moved the mouse, clicked on another email, and opened it, reading quickly.
And then she screamed.
And when she stopped screaming, she reached for the phone.
Chapter Ninety-two
Ellen shot up like a rocket, sending her desk chair rolling back across the floor, and ran to the door, then tore down the stairs.
Clop, clop, clop, clop, like a racehorse she sounded. She reached the living room, grabbed her purse and keys from the windowseat, snatched her coat from the closet floor, then flung open the door and hit the icy air.
She slammed the door shut behind her and went flying down the steps, spraying snow everywhere, her heart in her throat, heedless of the reporters, who surged forward as they had five minutes ago, raising cameras that had been at rest and flicking on generators to power up klieg lights and microphones.
“Hey, where you going now?” a reporter called out, filming her, and the others joined in. “Ellen, what’s going on?” “You going back to Sarah’s?”
Ellen tore through the snow on her front yard, staying on her property where the press couldn’t follow, struggling in the deep snow to get to her car, as the reporters shouted questions from the sidewalk.
“Can’t you give us a statement?” “Ellen, come on, give us a break!” “What’s all the activity? You going to see Will?”
Ellen chirped the car door open, jumped in, and switched on the ignition. She threw the car in reverse while she hit the button to lower the driver’s window. “Move, move, everybody!” she hollered, gesturing frantically out the window, her heart pounding. “Get out of the way! Get out of my way!”
“Where are you going?” “Have you heard from your son? Are they letting you see him?”
“Move, move, MOVE!” Ellen reversed out of the driveway, hitting the gas until they jumped out of the way. Some shouted questions whi
le others sprinted to their cars and newsvans, ready to follow her again.
“Ellen, they’re staying at the Four Seasons, did you know? Is that where you’re going?”
“MOVE!” Ellen put the car in drive and hit the gas, spraying road salt and snow, speeding to the corner, and turning left so fast that she almost fishtailed on Wynnewood Road. She kept control of the car and accelerated up the plowed street in almost no traffic, and by the time she hit City Line, she was being followed by newsvans with microwave towers and an array of pursuit vehicles. The traffic light ahead turned red, but she hit the gas and powered through the intersection. She passed a snowplow, a bus, and even an ambulance at speed.
Nothing was going to stop her.
Not now, not ever.
Chapter Ninety-three
Ellen hurried from the waiting room behind Special Agent Orr, passing the thick gold seal of the FBI, the framed picture of the president and the attorney general, the Ten Most Wanted posters, and whatever else was hanging on the off-white walls. She followed Special Agent Orr down the glistening hallway and reached a wooden door with a plaque that read CONFERENCE ROOM.
Special Agent Orr twisted the knob. “Here you go, Ms. Gleeson,” he said, admitting her, then leaving.
Ellen stepped inside, getting her bearings. She had driven the farthest to get here, so they were all already in place. Special Agent Manning stood up at the head of the table, and on the near side, Ron Halpren stood up, too, with an uncertain smile. He was dressed in a tux from a benefit dinner, and Ellen shook his hand.
“Sorry to disrupt your night, gentlemen,” she said, sitting down next to Ron. She nodded at Special Agent Manning, who retook his seat at the head of the table. “Thank you, too, Special Agent.”
“It’s my job.” His smile was only polite and he was dressed casually, with a blue FBI windbreaker over a light Oxford shirt. Behind him was a large smoked-glass window that overlooked the snowy city at night. “I just hope this isn’t a wild goose chase.”