By her fifth month, she was working with an adoption agency, which passed along several “family profiles” so she could select the adoptive parents. She interviewed several couples, and while they were all very nice with different degrees of desperation, the couple she liked the most was Nori and Mark Kent.
They were twenty-eight and thirty, respectively, around five to ten years younger than most of the couples who were hoping to adopt. Nori Kent had something called polycystic ovarian syndrome, which Geo had only heard of because two other hopeful women she’d met with had it, too. She liked the couple instantly. They had been together since their freshman year of college, had been married for three years, and had been on the adoption list since then.
“We know we’re young,” Nori Kent said. She was Japanese, born in Tokyo, but had grown up in Oregon. Her skin was porcelain and unblemished, her hair long and straight and jet-black, falling over her shoulder in one silky sheath. Her eyes were almond shaped and hazel. “But I was diagnosed with PCOS at twenty-one, after I stopped menstruating. Went to several doctors who said it would be very difficult for me to get pregnant. Adoption has always felt right to us.”
“We got on the list because we were told it could be a while before someone picked us,” Mark Kent added. He was tall, with sandy curls that were beginning to thin a little at the front. He had a classic white Anglo-Saxon complexion, pale with rosy cheeks, and large hands that gestured when he spoke. “We understand there’s a lot of competition, that a lot of other couples are older, have bigger houses, have better jobs.”
Mark taught math at Puget Sound State, and Nori was a buyer for Nordstrom. Normal jobs for normal people. They had recently bought their first house, a small starter home a little north of Seattle. They had an English bulldog named Pepper and a Siamese cat named Kit Kat who bossed the dog around. They showed Geo pictures of the room that would be the nursery. It was at the back of the house, with a large window that looked out at the rose bushes in the yard. Nori drove a four-year-old Toyota Highlander, and Mark took the bus to work. They weren’t rich, but they were in love. There was a deep friendship and a fierce commitment between them. It was in the way he looked at her, the way he touched her hand when she was nervous and speaking too fast. It was in the way she rested her head on his shoulder when she leaned against him, and the way she rolled her eyes at his cheesy jokes.
Being with them made Geo feel sad and happy at the same time.
“I pick you,” she said at the end of the two-hour meeting. They were sitting across from each other on matching red love seats in a comfortable room at the agency office. Between them was a coffee table and their family profile book. “I’m not supposed to tell you directly, I’m supposed to tell the lawyer who’ll then tell you, but I’ve made up my mind and I don’t want to make you guys wait.”
“I—” Nori began, and then she burst into tears.
“Are you sure?” Mark Kent said. He was staring at Geo in disbelief. “Because we understand if you need a couple of days—”
“I pick you,” Geo repeated. She stood up, struggling a little to get up out of the deep sofa. Mark reached out a hand, but she waved him off with a smile.
“Why?” Mark Kent asked, his eyes shocked and huge, and his wife turned to him with a look that said, Oh god, don’t ask her that; what if she changes her mind?
“Because you remind me of my parents when my mom was still alive,” Geo said. It was the best way she could explain it—to herself, anyway. She could see that it didn’t make a lot of sense to them. “Do you promise to love the baby?”
“Yes,” they said in unison.
“Do you promise to love each other?”
“Yes,” Mark said, squeezing his wife’s hand.
Nori nodded, her eyes and cheeks wet. “Yes,” she said.
“Okay,” Geo said, and she allowed them to step around the coffee table and embrace her. She could feel Nori shaking, the bones in her slender frame vibrating from her legs to her torso, and she squeezed the woman tighter.
She gave birth three months later, two weeks early, in a private room at her dad’s hospital. The contractions started early Saturday morning and grew increasingly painful until the point where she didn’t know if she could get through one more. Then the epidural kicked in and she was able to sleep for a few hours until she was dilated enough to push. Her father stayed by her bedside, although it was Nori she wanted in the room with her in the middle of the night when she started pushing.
The spinal block killed all the pain up until the first push, and from there Geo could feel everything. It was the most unbearable agony, and even though the nurse kept telling her to push anyway, it seemed like an impossible thing to do when it felt like pushing meant splitting wide open. Nori squeezed one hand, her father the other, and Geo pushed and pushed, her hair sticking to her sweaty face in greasy strands, her teeth clenching so hard she thought her molars would crack. Two hours later, she heard the OB say, “One more big one,” and she bore down as hard as she could, screaming because the burning and pressure was unlike any other kind of pain she’d felt before. She heard Nori say, “I see the head!” and a few seconds later, after a rush of activity, the baby cried.
“It’s a boy,” she heard one of nurses say. “Six pounds, thirteen ounces.”
The nurse had the baby wrapped in a white blanket with a blue-and-pink stripe, and a pink-and-blue hospital hat. It was noted in Geo’s file that the baby was going to the Kents, but the nurse still looked at Geo to see if she wanted to hold him. Geo shook her head, lying back on her pillow as Mark came into the room and Nori took the baby in her arms for the first time. Her face crumpled with joy, and she looked over at Geo and mouthed, “Thank you.”
Exhausted, Geo fell into a deep sleep. When she awoke, it was late the next morning. Her father was drinking coffee and reading the newspaper in the small chair in the corner of the room. She was incredibly sore. The epidural had worn off and she felt like she had been run over by a truck. Everything hurt. Her vagina felt like someone had punched it a thousand times. There was a glass vase filled with pink and white flowers near the bed, and a letter with her name on it.
“It’s a letter from the Kents,” her dad said. “Do you want to read it now, or later?”
“Later,” Geo said, looking down at herself.
She was surprised to see she still looked pregnant. She had naively assumed that once she gave birth, everything would snap back to normal, but apparently that wasn’t the way it worked. Her belly was still large, but it was deflated, empty. The baby she had carried inside her was gone. She had never seen his tiny face, never held his tiny hand, never got to say hello or good-bye, which was how she planned it, but the ache in her heart was deeper and more painful than the ache in her body. She touched her stomach, feeling the flesh—which only the day before had been stretched firm—yield to her touch.
She had a son, and he was gone. She had never known him, never seen him, never cradled him, but the loss of him was as great as if she had loved him and held him and breathed him in her whole life.
“Daddy,” she said, not recognizing her own voice. It was small and fearful, the voice of a child, the voice of a lost soul drifting away who could never be brought back. “Daddy, he’s gone.…”
The sobs started in her stomach, and her abdominal muscles, already bruised and tender, screamed out in pain as she cried, for the loss of her child, the loss of her mother, the loss of Angela, the loss of the person she thought she was, and the person she thought she would be. She had taken a life and had now given a life, but neither act made up for the other. It was a loss multiplied by infinity, the grief of it all feeling like a giant hole that would never, ever be filled.
“My brave girl,” her father said, his own voice cracking and choking as he stroked her hair. “My brave, brave girl.”
In that moment, with her father holding her as tightly as he could, the sobs stabbing and unrelenting, Geo wanted to die.
* *
*
The adoption was finalized thirty days later, during which time the Kents were careful to stay away. Geo understood why. At any point in those thirty days she could have asked to see the baby, changed her mind, and even taken the baby back. But as the days passed and her body began to heal, so did her spirit. The hole that had ripped open in her soul was beginning to close up, still crazy tender, but no longer a gaping, gushing wound. On day thirty, she read the letter Nori wrote to her. It was filled with gratitude and love.
What you have given Mark and me is a joy unlike any other, and we promise to love him as completely and unconditionally as we know you would have. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts. We named him Dominic John, after our grandfathers.…
She wrote them a letter back on day thirty-one, when the adoption was official.
Congratulations to you both. I know you will be wonderful parents to your beautiful baby boy.…
They did not keep in touch, although they had all agreed to a semi-open adoption, which meant that if at any point Dominic John Kent wanted to speak to her or meet her, she was willing. But it had to be his call, on his terms, and she was allowed to decide if she was okay with it.
Geo strokes the pile of letters beside her. The ones written on blue stationery, the ones that kept coming in prison that she couldn’t bear to read, but couldn’t bear to throw away. She’s read them all several times by now, letters from the son whom almost nobody knew she had. Dominic is now eighteen, older than she was when she had him.
Dear Ms. Shaw, I am your biological son Dominic.…
He wants to know her, to talk to her, to fill the gaps in his life that are there despite Geo’s best efforts to pick good parents for him. His letters are well-written, full of details that break her heart. How could she have known that when Dominic was five years old, his adoptive parents would divorce? And that Mark Kent would marry the woman he cheated on Nori with, and go on to have two biological children of his own with her? And that Mark would eventually give up full custody of his adopted son—whom he hardly saw anymore anyway—to Nori, who would never remarry and instead bring home boyfriend after boyfriend in an attempt to heal the anger and bitterness she felt over Mark’s betrayal? And that one of those boyfriends, the last one, would touch Dominic in a way that no little boy should ever be touched?
Or that one day, Nori would die in a car crash because her pedophile boyfriend was driving drunk, leaving Dominic in the care of one disinterested extended family member after another, before he finally, inevitably, ended up in the foster care system?
How could Geo have known that choosing her baby’s parents based on what she thought she saw, and on what she thought she felt, would all turn out to be lies and bullshit, because in the end, people are only out to protect themselves? How could she have known that her son was going to have a terrible life? And that in hindsight, she, a single teenage mother, might have done a better job of raising, loving, and protecting him?
How could she possibly apologize to her child for his life?
And how could she possibly tell him that his biological father was Calvin James, and that not only does she have his life to apologize for, but his genetics, too?
How does she then tell him that his father is killing his children, because people like him “should not exist”? Yes, she knows that Calvin said that, had said it out loud at the sentencing hearing for everyone to hear. She’d read about it in the newspaper while she was in prison. How does she tell Dominic he’s in danger? From his father?
But she has to. Because there’s no one left to protect him now other than Geo.
And after everything, after every terrible thing she’s both done and let happen, it’s the very fucking least she can do.
30
There are people to get in touch with, preparations to be made. But her phone is ringing, and when Geo checks the call display, she doesn’t recognize the number.
“G,” the familiar voice says when they’re connected. “How’ve you been? How’s life outside Hellwood?”
“Ella,” she says, surprised. The inmate must be calling from a contraband cell phone, and Geo’s mind begins combing through the possibilities of what the call might be about. Hazelwood’s premier drug dealer has a new accountant now, and the transition should have been smooth. Geo made it pretty clear that once she was out of Hazelwood, she was out for good, and she hopes Ella Frank isn’t calling to ask her to change her mind. She’s not the kind of woman you say no to, twice. “I’m fine. It’s good to be home. What’s going on?”
“I can’t talk long because I’m calling from the library,” Ella says. “CO’ll be back in a few minutes. This isn’t a business call.”
Geo exhales, not realizing until she does that she was holding her breath. “Oh, okay. I saw your brother when I got out, gave him all the information. Everything’s working out, I hope.”
“He told me you stopped by, and we’re all good there.” Ella hesitates, and when she speaks again, her voice is softer. “Listen, G. I wanted to be the one to tell you. Cat died last night.”
No. She can’t have heard that right. Geo opens her mouth to speak, but nothing comes out.
“She was found in her cell this morning when she didn’t get up for roll call.”
“That can’t be. I don’t understand. She was supposed to get out tomorrow,” Geo says, her mind stubbornly refusing to believe what Ella just told her. “I talked to her the other day and she was in good spirits. I was going to pick her up at the bus stop.”
“She wasn’t feeling well the last couple of days. One of the girls found her in the bathroom, half passed out, tried to make her go to the infirmary, but she insisted she was fine, that she was just dehydrated and a little dizzy. She died sometime in the night.” Ella’s voice is filled with sympathy. “They think maybe her heart gave out, or she had a stroke in her sleep. You know how sick she was, G. Her body was failing.”
“Yeah, but she wasn’t supposed to die in there!” The words come out sharper and snappier than she intends, and Geo takes a deep breath, trying to calm herself. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell. It’s just … she was supposed to live here, with me. I promised her I wouldn’t let her die in there. I promised her.”
“I’m sorry, G. She was a good woman and a good friend. I wanted to make sure you knew. I know they only notify immediate family.”
“She didn’t have any immediate family. She had me.” Ella doesn’t respond to that, because they both knew there’s nothing she can say. A few seconds pass. Finally, Geo says, “What will they do with her body?”
“They’ve already moved it. From what I heard, her husband is going to have her cremated. Apparently she left instructions with him some time ago.”
The philandering husband who was divorcing her. The cheating, disloyal husband who was already with someone else. Geo closes her eyes. “Thank you for telling me.”
“Of course. You take care of yourself, okay? And if you need anything, you have Samuel’s number.” The woman drops her voice. “I know he got you a piece, but if you need more than that—if you need protection—he’ll hook you up. I told him to watch out for you. I know you got stuff going on, I’ve been watching the news.”
“Thanks,” Geo says again, but her voice is hollow.
They disconnect, and the tears come then, hot and fast and furious. Her body racks with sobs. She’s only loved three women her entire life—her mother, Angela, and Cat, in that order.
And now all three are dead.
Enough. Enough already. She can’t bring back the dead, but she can protect the people she loves who are still alive.
Her son, for instance.
The doorbell rings as she’s walking into her father’s home office, and she peeks out the window to see who it is. It’s a police car, and the man standing at her front door is in uniform. Not Kaiser, then.
She ignores the doorbell when it rings a second time, and seats herself at Walter’s desk. Her father has a la
ptop that he uses to catch up on work at home, and it’s not password protected. As she boots it up, she glances out the window again and sees the police car is still there. The engine is shut off, and the officer inside appears to be talking on the phone.
Geo’s iPhone rings. It’s Kaiser, but she doesn’t answer. A few seconds later, a text message appears on the screen.
Where are you? Have placed police detail outside your house. Don’t be alarmed, taking precautions. Will stop by later to explain. When you get home, stay home.
She doesn’t reply. She’s already home, and there’s business to take care of. Family business.
She finds Facebook and logs in, activating her old account for the first time in more than five years. She could have accessed Facebook through her illegal smartphone in Hazelwood, but it doesn’t exactly add to the prison experience to scroll through pictures of weddings, new babies, new houses, new puppies. She couldn’t give a shit about politics and who was blue and who was red. She didn’t care about who had found spiritual enlightenment, who was checked into the gym, or what someone’s fancy meal looked like at the fancy restaurant they’d eaten at the night before. She was eating cafeteria food twenty-one times a week, served on metal plates that were divided into sections. She didn’t need to know how the filet mignon tasted at John Howie’s, fuck you very much. (For the record, she’d had it before, and it was pretty fucking phenomenal.)
Now it’s different. Geo has someone she wants to find. She types in the name Dominic Kent and at least fifty names from all over the world pop up. Frustrated, she tries Dominic Kent Spokane, based on the address on the letter, and there’s nothing. She then tries Dominic Kent Seattle. There are exactly two.
The first one can’t be him. The man in the profile picture is in his fifties and carrying a hunting rifle. The second one, however, might be. The profile shows a picture of a children’s book cartoon character with a long knife through its skull, and the tagline, “Everything is awesome!”