“Honestly, I think she’s been holding this information in a vault she never thought she was going to have to open. I don’t think she knows more than the girl’s name, or else she would have told me. Maybe it will be enough to go on. The doctors here want to go public and ask for donors of Hispanic origin, specifically from families who may know or be related to a young girl who had a baby in the right time frame, but Lauren has put her foot down. She won’t allow it.”
“I don’t blame her. It’s hard to open yourself up to public scrutiny like that, plus, we could waste a lot of time with false leads. I can work with the name. Give Mindy my love, would you? Tell her I’ll be up as soon as I can, and I’m going to find a match for her if it’s the last thing I do.”
“She will be thrilled, I know. Thank you, Juliet.”
“Of course. Good luck. And, Jasper?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t worry. Mindy adores you both beyond reason, and she’s a smart girl. Things might be rough for a few days, but we’ll make sure she understands how very wanted she is, was, and always will be.”
There is a catch in Jasper’s voice. “Thank you, Juliet. That means a lot to me. To us.”
“I’ll call as soon as I have something. See ya.”
“Oh, hey, wait a sec. Listen, this may be nothing, but one last shot in the dark. Lauren was searching for a man named Zack Armstrong last night. I saw it on her computer, and the way she reacted when I asked her about it—she got jumpy, wouldn’t talk to me. I thought it might be an old boyfriend. Does that name ring a bell?”
“Zack Armstrong? No, it doesn’t. But remember, she’s older than me by a decade. She had all kinds of guys around, and I don’t remember any of their names. I’ll take a look, though chances are you’re right, it’s probably someone she went to school with. People react oddly to stress, Jasper. She adores you, and your life together. I don’t think she’d ever willingly jeopardize that.”
“No, I don’t, either. But in light of all the other...issues...”
He doesn’t have to finish. She knows exactly what he is saying. In light of the lies she’s been telling all of us...
“I asked who he was and she refused to tell me.”
“Sounds like it might be an old boyfriend, then. I’ll look into him.”
“Thanks, Juliet. And don’t—”
“Don’t worry, Jasper. We never talked. Got it.”
He laughs quietly, says thanks again, then hangs up.
Zack Armstrong. Who the hell is he?
Juliet has a momentary longing for her mother. Kathleen would know exactly who Zack Armstrong was because Lauren would have told her everything about him, in intimate detail. She realizes Lauren even lied to their mom about Mindy. Wow.
Well, when in doubt...she doesn’t have her mom’s institutional knowledge anymore, but she does have the internet.
She hangs up and calls Cameron.
“Hello, beautiful.”
“Any news?”
“Nothing yet.”
“Damn. Listen, Jasper has asked me to look into the doctor who helped Lauren adopt Mindy. Would you help? If you want to keep playing Watson to my Sherlock, that is.”
“You never mentioned you were into role-playing. I like it. Absolutely. Your place or mine? And do I get to wear the hat and carry the magnifying glass?”
She laughed. “You’re a sicko. Who do you know who used to work at Swedish Medical in the early 2000s?”
“Spoilsport. I thought we were going to be—”
“Cameron. My dear. I’m dead serious. Who do we know?”
“I’ll call you back.”
Now it is time to talk to her boss, too. She needs to take a few days, and there are a lot of cases piling up. He answers on the first ring.
“Hi, Woody. It’s Juliet.”
“My brilliant one. What’s happening? Are you ill? I stopped by the lab this morning, and Bai said you were out.”
“I have a personal issue. You know my niece has cancer?”
“Yes, the poor thing. She’s not improving, I take it?”
“No, and we’ve had a bit of a personal family revelation about something, and my sister has asked for my help. I have vacation days accrued—”
“Juliet, seriously, take the week. I don’t know that we can spare you for more than that without advance warning, but you do what you need to, and if you need more time, just shout. We are all rooting for Mindy. She’s our champion.”
“You’re the best, Woody. Thank you.”
“No, you’re the best. That sample you ran last week, from the quadruple murder in Golden? We just nailed the sucker. Can you believe it, they’d been looking at the wrong man all this time?”
“Because they were looking for a man. It’s so rare for a woman to do something so heinous.”
“Rare, but you never know. Women can be just as ruthless as men when they need to.”
“No kidding. Thanks so much for the time off, Woody. I’ll keep in touch in case something breaks and you need me immediately. Otherwise, Bai has control of the lab, and all will be well.”
“Copy that. Good luck. Call if you need me for anything, I’m happy to help.”
Wondering how things are going at the hospital, she thinks through her plan of action. Interview hospital staff, find out if by chance there are videotapes from the time frame, which is a long shot, but neonatal is a whole different story than the rest of the hospital. It’s worth a try.
And she needs to look up everything she can find on the name Graciela. With any luck, she’ll find a last name through the hospital records and the woman will be living somewhere in the Denver metropolitan area, and life will be grand.
Yeah, right. The odds of things going smoothly from here on out are astronomical, without a doubt, but it is worth being optimistic, at least until she has reason to feel otherwise.
And of course, there is the database, churning through millions of profiles, searching for the truth.
One way or the other, their mystery is about to be unraveled.
29
VAIL HEALTH HOSPITAL
Mindy is watching the downhill from Val d’Isère, fighting feeling sorry for herself that she isn’t there, when her parents appear in the doorway, clutching a bag of her favorite cookies. She knows something major is up. Her mom was supposed to be finding a room to do yoga, and instead, here they are together, almost creeping into the room, eyes sliding to the side, not meeting hers at all.
She is dead. She knows it. They have some sort of test result that confirms it. She felt so awful yesterday morning, but once Dr. Oliver gave her the shot, she was better. But it wasn’t enough.
Tears begin to leak immediately. She doesn’t want to die. She feels the cancer moving through her, like a shadow in her blood. It has grown in the past few days, is becoming harder and harder to fight. She isn’t a quitter, though, and is doing everything she can to keep it at bay. Its snapping jaws are just there, out of reach, but for how long?
So now they are going to tell her it is all over, and she has to give in gracefully, and they are prepared to let her go. It is inevitable, but it pisses her off. She wants to ski again, wants to feel the wind whip past her face. She bets they won’t let her out of their sight for a minute now. They’re going to condemn her to rot away in this hospital bed until she can’t even move and the pain becomes so great they drug her into oblivion to make it all stop.
This is not the path she’d choose.
“You can tell me,” she says, steeling herself. “I already know what you’re going to say.”
Her parents stare at her, and for a moment, she wavers. No, she is going to be strong, she is going to decide how things end. She read the story about the girl who moved to Washington so she could have euthanasia. Mindy doesn’t think she’ll have to go that far; she’ll be able to convince them to get her out on the slopes once more. She’ll take one run for pleasure, and the second, right off the side of the mountain. She can almost feel the thin air buffeting her as she falls...
Her dad closes the door. Her mom sits on the side of the bed, pulling the covers straight. Mindy feels claustrophobic all of a sudden and rips them back. Her mother frowns once, then puts on a perfectly blank face.
“Sweetheart, what we need to talk to you about is going to come as a shock.”
“I’m dying,” Mindy says, crossing her arms over her chest. “I already know. They can’t find a donor, and I’m not going to make it.”
Jasper pulls a chair to the bed on the other side.