“Ava wasn’t sure, because she’s only ever had one period. They couldn’t count back. The OB says about eighteen weeks.”
Four and a half months. Christ in heaven.
“They’ve got Gloria down at the station for questioning, and a judge just signed off on a warrant to search her house and car. If she has those missing files . . .”
“And if she doesn’t?”
“Then we ask to expand the warrant to the other clerks and administrators. I’ll let you know.”
We stare at the conference phone in the center of the table. “Does anyone know where my car is?” I ask after a minute.
Eddison snorts, and Sterling smiles. “It’s in the garage here,” she informs me. “Level four, I think.”
“Thanks.”
A couple of hours later, when I pack up to head out, Sterling follows suit. “Can I be your DD?” she asks quietly.
“I’m not going out drinking.”
“No, but I’m guessing this has something to do with your visitor this morning, and you looked like someone told you there was a killer clown after you.”
“A killer cl . . . What?”
“So it’s emotional. And something you have to face anyway? I’m asking if I can be your designated driver, because when you’re that emotional, driving sucks. And it’s hard.”
“Who was your DD when you and dickhead fiancé broke it off?”
“Finney,” she says with a shrug.
Her old boss, who sent her on to us when we needed an agent because he’d already been promoted out of the field. Vic’s old partner, for a long time, and that makes a lot of sense as to why she fits with us so well.
I should say, No, I’ve got this.
“Thanks.”
I don’t.
So she drives me to the hotel, and I’m willing to bet Vic is paying for the room, because my mother would never spend this kind of money on herself. It’s not fancy, not luxurious or expensive, it just isn’t twenty-nine dollars a night with a roach chorus. When I was a kid, my mother could barely countenance spending money on herself, and with God only knows how many grandkids now, I can’t imagine that’s changed much.
I turn the card over and over in my hand, not moving even after Sterling parks the car, brings the windows down, and cuts the engine. She doesn’t ask, or poke or prod or push. She just pulls out a book of crosswords and settles in.
“Do you have any makeup wipes?” I ask.
“Glove box.”
It feels strange, wrong even, to strip everything off in the middle of the day, but with the aid of the wipes and the sun visor mirror, I get off every bit of it. I look like hell. The bruises under my eyes, the sallowness of not enough sleep. The scars digging pink-white tracks down my cheek.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Sterling tells me, without looking away from her page. “Take as much or as little time as you need.”
“Thank you.”
Forcing myself out of the car, I head into the hotel and take the stairs to the third floor because the thought of trying to stand still in an elevator right now makes my skin crawl. The door for 314 doesn’t look any different from its neighbors: plain white with the heavy lock plate under the handle.
Five minutes later, I still haven’t been able to make myself knock.
And then I don’t have to, because the chain scratches in its track and the handle rotates, and the door slowly opens to reveal my mother’s face.
“Mercedes,” she breathes.
My mother.
“You need to go back,” I tell her.
Once upon a time, there was a little girl who was scared of the world.
She thought, once, that it could get better, that it could be better. She’d wanted so badly to believe that, and she had for a time.
But the thing with worlds, in the human sense, is that they come crashing down. When a whole world shatters and self-destructs, is it possible to be less than apocalyptic? Wasn’t that the very meaning of the word?
She’d had a bad few days after leaving the prison. It wasn’t just her daddy’s words ringing through her head, not just his wide, triumphant smile. It was all the other things, too, all the memories crashing in. She’d taken a few days off work, trying to get her head around all of it. She’d taken off another few days and checked into a clinic. She just couldn’t stop shaking. Or crying. Or panicking.
It was too much. It was all just too much.
All those years of beatings and Daddy coming to her room at night, camera at the ready.
Mama escaping without her.
Those years of the basement and Daddy’s friends.
The hospital and the trial and all the foster homes, the parade of horrors too infrequently interrupted by goodness or indifference.
And now her father was going to get out of prison. He was going to have another baby girl. Another daughter that he’d . . .
He’d . . .
But she worked through the fear and sorrow and rage as best she could. It was absurd. If—and it was a massive if—her father was released early, there wasn’t a chance in hell he’d be allowed near his daughter. No man with her daddy’s history would be allowed near a little girl.
Right?
She returned to work, still shaky but better. A little better. Getting there, maybe. She reminded herself of the good she did. She was helping children, more important now than ever.
But this little boy . . .
Here was this file on her desk, this beautiful little boy with eyes like hers, eyes that were bruised and a little broken and far too honest. There was so much proof that his parents were unfit, and yet, he’d been given back to them. Again. Because there were rules and technicalities and loopholes, because there were too many children in danger and not nearly enough money or homes or people to help.
So this little boy with the shadowed soul and the too-honest eyes would get hurt again, and again and again.
Ronnie Wilkins needed an angel.
25
“Nineteen years, Mercedes, and that’s what you have to say to me?” Mama’s face creases in still-familiar irritation, and she opens the door all the way. “Get in here.”
“No. I’m not here to talk. You need to go back, or go wherever you want, as long as it isn’t to my job.”
“I didn’t raise you to be this rude to your mother.”
“No, you raised me to be molested by my father.”
Her open hand cracks against my cheek, and she stares at her palm, horrified, because it’s easier than looking at my scarred face.
“Esperanza told me about the prognosis,” I continue after a moment. “She told me about what you all want to do. Bring him to the house, let him die around family. But he’s not dead yet and if you think for one moment I will ever even consider letting him around children . . .”
“He never hurt any of the others.”
“Hurting me was enough. I can’t stop you from doing the petition, but I won’t be putting my name to it. Not as a victim, not as an agent, and I’ll be writing the judge to speak against it.”
“This isn’t a conversation to be having in the hallway,” she frets.
“We’re not having a conversation, Mamá. I am telling you a thing I will never do.”
Her hair is almost entirely silver but still thick and healthy, braided back into a coiled knot low at the base of her skull, single-hair wisps curling away from her scalp as they protest the severity. Her face is creased with wrinkles, her dark brown eyes are the same as I remember. She’s her and not her. Even her clothes are nearly the same, an embroidered white blouse and long, multi-tiered colorful skirt, the only things she’d ever buy for herself, because Papá fell in love with her in those skirts, she used to tell us. If the necklines are a little higher than they used to be, her arms thicker under the collar ruffle, well. It’s been decades.
“Go home, Mamá,” I tell her, and despite everything, my tone is gentle. Almost kind. “Go home to everyone else and accept the fact that you lost your youngest daughter a very long time ago.”
“But I didn’t lose you,” she insists, tears tracking down her weathered cheeks. “You are right here before me, more stubborn than ever.”
“You lost me the minute I told you what Papá was doing, and you said I needed to be a good daughter.”