Her tea is cold. She pops it into the microwave, taps her fingers along the counter ledge, thinking.
How to find a teenager who gave birth around the time of Mindy’s birthday—August 3, 2000—who doesn’t want to be found.
A teenager who was desperate to give up a baby.
She probably used a false name; she could be anyone, anywhere.
The odds of Juliet finding her are slim to none. Without DNA, that is.
Surely, though, there has to have been a lawyer involved. Lauren said she agreed not to contact the mother, ever. That the adoption was closed. The doctor couldn’t have been facilitating private adoptions without a lawyer, could she?
Oh, this is ridiculous. There is a simple way to handle this, the shortcut of all shortcuts. It is illegal, unethical, and if anyone ever finds out, she’ll absolutely lose her job, but there is a way.
Cameron said he was willing to help. He has Mindy’s DNA coded already. If Juliet asks—begs, pleads, promises her firstborn?—he can upload it into CODIS and see if there is any kind of match, familial or direct. Not to be a jerk about it, but she knows the life of a teenager who got pregnant and gave up her kid could have led somewhere dark instead of being a way out. She sees it all the time. All the time.
And if there is a match in the system, direct, or even a brother, a father, a cousin, then they’ll have that shortcut they need to get Mindy a donor.
She sits at her desk and leans back in her chair. The very idea of doing this makes Juliet sick to her stomach. She flashes back to the conversation she had with Cameron, lets his voice ring in her ears.
It goes against everything you believe in...
She could lie...
“Screw it.”
She picks up the phone and dials Cam’s lab. He answers on the first ring.
“I got permission. Run the DNA.”
“Juliet, as always, your wish is my command.”
26
UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL
NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE
1993
VIVIAN
Together we watch her stomach grow. It is surreal. One day her stomach has a small pooch. A few days later, she is showing. For real. The nurses say it happens like that sometime. Zero to sixty, one of them said.
Ratchet took Liesel into her office, they talked, and now Liesel seems happy. She has stopped trying to cut herself. She is eating nutritious food. She is glowing. There are regular discussions of safe antidepressant medications for pregnancy and OB/GYN checks and special conversations. Someone is always knocking on our door frame or pulling her from our activities. The entire unit coddles and cuddles and leaves choice bits of meat and string and foil swans and sunny yellow crayons at the door to our room. Even the most insane among us is moved by the chance of a new life. Of resurrection, and redemption.
She says it’s driving her up the wall, but to be honest, I can tell she enjoys it. She thrives under the constant attention, blossoming like some sort of Madonna in a field, awaiting her worshippers. She is a butterfly, escaped from a desiccated cocoon, crawling toward the sunlight. It makes me think she never got any positive reinforcement at home.
I don’t like the people on the ward, and they normally give me a wide berth, too. But with Liesel as their sudden superstar, even though she coyly refuses their advances, I get their positive attention, too. We’re all a bit less lonely.
She still won’t talk in group, which means she gets sent back to the quiet room. I think it’s her plan all along, so she can get some solitude. The ward is loud. It is bright. There is no such thing as peace when you’re living among people who don’t know what planet they’re on, or who want to slit your throat to see what color you’ll bleed. Liesel takes advantage of the white space. She says she paints in her mind while she lies on the hard bed, her child growing inside her.
It has changed her, this diagnosis. I’m not sure how I feel about the transition. She was more interesting before, I think, when she was moody and gray, closed like the first buds of spring in a flower bed that’s been hit with weed killer, all gray and wizened and hurt. I didn’t enjoy finding her in our bathroom, crouched down, scraping at her flesh with a plastic pen lid, but I understood and didn’t tell.
How an incarcerated sixteen-year-old is going to be able to handle a child is lost on me. Liesel refuses to talk about what happens when the baby is born. She will still be in here, living out her sentence.
Personally, I would have screamed and yelled for an abortion immediately. The idea of being pregnant is abhorrent to me—the claustrophobia of not being able to escape the sentence of something growing inside you for nine months is too much for me to bear. But Liesel is surprisingly content. She says she has something to live for, now.
We reach a kind of détente when she is four months along. I stop bothering her to get rid of Satan’s child; she stops throwing up in my shoes.
She goes about her days with a small smile, following the routine: wake, eat, one-on-one therapy, arts and crafts, lunch, nap, shower, dinner, television, sleep. Bed checks every fifteen minutes, then thirty, then every hour, as the nurses realize she’s truly in a better place.
There’s another truth I must face.
As we watch, Liesel is being cured. The insanity which drives her to cut open her skin was superseded by the murder she committed, which now everyone knows about and feels was justified, and the punishment for her actions is to bear the child of a rapist she was supposed to trust in, believe in, a man who was supposed to protect and cherish, not rip and tear. She’s both a hero and a project for the doctors and nurses. She is our shooting star.
When she starts to spot, five months in, Ratchet herself escorts her to the clinic downstairs. Liesel is put on bed rest. She gets to luxuriate in our worn, thin, bleached sheets while the rest of us follow the routine.
When she starts to bleed, a week later, we can smell it from the dining room. I run to our room, find her writhing on the bed, the stain beneath her growing darker and wider. She doesn’t utter a sound, is biting the pillowcase, her eyes closed tight.
In the end, there is a tiny angel to be buried somewhere, we never know where. Liesel is taken away; the mattress is taken away, the room sanitized. I have to sleep there that night, with the scent of death surrounding me.
She comes back a different girl.
She doesn’t look that different, maybe not as glossy, but her eyes are dead, and her stomach has gone back to normal.
She is put back on bed checks every fifteen minutes. Ratchet asks me to keep an eye on her, too. A personal favor. She is worried about her small nestling.
Liesel doesn’t speak. It is just like when she first arrived.
So I sing to her. I bring her treats. I do everything I can think of to bring her back to life.
Eventually, it works.
She smiles again.
She laughs again.
We make plans to run away, to a beach, and live in a grass hut and eat coconuts and entertain tourists. She participates in group. She teaches some of the loons how to paint—and hit the canvas, not themselves.
And then, on a freezing cold, gray morning, Ratchet knocks on the door frame. “Are you ready?” she asks Liesel, who smiles and nods. She gives me a brief, hard hug, then waves.
And she leaves the ward. She leaves me there. Alone, in our room.
Liesel gets out.
And I am stuck inside.
I hate her as much as I love her.
27
THE WRIGHTS’ HOUSE
CURRENT DAY
Lauren wakes at dawn. Jasper is splayed out facedown next to her, naked, the sheet thrown off, sleeping deeply. She pulls the sheet and blanket up over his haunches. He doesn’t move; his breathing doesn’t change. Good. She dresses quickly, goes to the kitchen, starts the coffee, then scurries to her office to erase the history on her laptop.
Jasper is sitting naked at her desk. Her laptop is open, and he is staring at the screen.
“What are you doing?” She tries not to sound defensive or scared—but what the hell is he doing?
“Who is Zack Armstrong?”