Beth frowned, confused. “But you said you didn’t even know anything about me before the arraignment.”
“I did the research,” the lawyer repeated, “for me.” She leaned forward, her head bent, propped against the heels of her hands. “I was thirteen weeks pregnant. Just at the point where you can tell people you’re having a baby, without tempting fate. My husband and I were at the ultrasound,” she said. “I wanted to name her Millicent, if she was a girl. Steve said no little Black girl is named Millicent. He wanted a boy named Obediah.”
“Obediah?” Beth repeated.
“Knock, knock,” Mandy said.
“Who’s there?”
“Obediah.”
“Obediah who?” Beth played along.
“Obediah-dore you.” Mandy closed her eyes. “Steve told me that joke, and then after that, everything went to hell. The technician came in and turned on the machine and started the ultrasound and just went white as a sheet.” She shook her head. “The doctor who came in wasn’t my usual doctor. I remember exactly what he said. This fetus has a genetic abnormality inconsistent with life.”
Beth sucked in her breath.
“It was called holoprosencephaly. It happens when two sperm fertilize one egg at the exact same moment. There was a heartbeat and a brain stem, but the forebrain had never developed. If it survived birth, it would die within a year.” Mandy looked up. “I didn’t want to terminate. I was raised Catholic.”
“What did you do?” Beth asked.
“I went online and looked up pictures of the babies who had it. It was … it was horrible.” She looked up at Beth. “I know there are mothers who have kids with profound disabilities, and who see that as a blessing. It was kind of a wake-up call to admit to myself I wasn’t one of them.”
“What about your husband?”
Mandy looked up. “He said it was a no-brainer.”
A laugh burst out of Beth; she clapped her hand over her mouth. “No he didn’t.”
“He did.” Mandy nodded, smiling faintly. “He did and we laughed. We laughed, and we laughed, until we cried.”
“Did you … do you have children now?”
Mandy met her gaze. “I stopped trying after the third miscarriage.”
Silence fell between them. Beth spun through another scenario, one in which she had been brave enough to tell her father she was pregnant, one in which she had carried the baby to term, and given it to someone like Mandy. “You must hate me,” Beth whispered.
For a long moment Mandy didn’t speak. Then she lifted her chin. “I don’t hate you,” she said carefully. “If you and I both told people our stories, even the most pro-life advocates would see mine as a tragedy. Yours is a crime.” She thought for a moment. “It’s funny. The logic goes that as a minor, you can’t exercise free will to consent, because you don’t have the mental capacity to do so. But in your case, the fetus is getting the protection you’re not, as if its rights are worth more than your own.”
Beth stared at her. “So what happens now?”
“You’re going to get discharged from the hospital, in a day or so. And then you’ll stay in custody until the trial.”
Beth’s heart monitor began to spike. “No,” she said. “I can’t go to jail.”
“You don’t have a choice.”
I never did, Beth thought.
—
“YOU’RE LYING,” GEORGE SAID. “MY daughter isn’t here.”
Fuck that cop. He might be fishing for information, but that didn’t mean George planned to give it to him. Yet now that Hugh McElroy had brought up his daughter, he couldn’t stop thinking about her.
Was Lil all right?
Was she looking for him?
“Because she doesn’t know what you’re doing,” Hugh said. “Am I right?”
Lil knew that he loved her. He loved her so much that he had come here to make things right, even though it seemed impossible. George would never meet his grandchild. He just hoped this had not cost him Lil, too.
“How would she feel about you being here, George?”
He had not been thinking about that, clearly, when he came. He was just an avenging angel for her suffering. And he had been thinking of God’s word. An eye for an eye.
A life for a life.
“What’s her name, George?”
“Lil,” he said, the syllable falling from his lips.
“That’s pretty,” Hugh said. “Old school.”
George hated that he’d left her after they argued. He knew she’d be well taken care of in his absence, but he also knew he had fucked up. He’d just never been good with speeches. He didn’t know how to say what he was feeling. Pastor Mike used to call him a man of few words, but reminded him that deeds spoke a thousand times more loudly.
That’s why he was here, wasn’t it?
The drive here had been long, and his thoughts had provided the soundtrack for the journey. He had imagined Lil in all the incarnations of her life—the time she was a baby with croup and he sat up with her all night in a steamy bathroom, the shower blasting hot water; the Father’s Day when she tried to make him pancakes for breakfast and set a dish towel on fire; the sound of her voice harmonizing with his when they sang at church. Then he’d pictured himself like an avenger, swollen to comic-book-hero proportions, bursting through the doors of the clinic and leaving destruction in his wake.
He had imagined screams and falling plaster and a haze of dust. But somehow although he could see himself when he started shooting, everything afterward was fuzzy. Revenge, in theory, throbbed with adrenaline and was clean with conviction. In reality, it was rushing into a house on fire, and forgetting to map out your exit.
Behind him, George heard a ripple of conversation. He turned around, the phone still clutched to his ear. “Quiet,” he ordered.
“What’s going on in there?” Hugh asked.
George ignored him, trying to focus on the scene in front of him. The women were whispering, and the baby killer he’d shot was still lying on the floor, a bandage twisted around his thigh. “Joy needs to use the bathroom,” said the kid.
The one who’d scratched him.
He glanced at her hands, making sure they were still tied.
“Well, hold it in,” he muttered.
The nurse who was kneeling on the floor looked up. “It’s not that,” she said. “She needs to check her pad. She just had a—”
“I know what she had,” George snapped, interrupting.
“Is everything okay?” asked the cop. There was a strange note in his voice, a vibration.
“I have to go.”
“Wait!” Hugh said. “George, I wasn’t lying before. I didn’t say your daughter was here. I said she wants to talk to you. She’s listening to the news, George. And they don’t get things right. They’re not going to give your side of the story to her. Only you can do that.” Hugh paused. “I can make that happen, for you. I can get her on the phone.”
“Wait,” he muttered, distracted.
“What’s wrong, George?” the cop asked. “Talk to me.”
He was staring at the television that had been on the entire time. When he first got here, there was some daytime food show on. But now, there was a breaking news banner and a picture of a reporter with the clinic behind her. Her lips were moving, but the volume had been lowered; George couldn’t tell what was being said.
What if Hugh was right? What if Lil was listening?
“Where’s the remote?” he asked. When the women stared at him like he was crazy—was he? Or was he thinking clearly for the first time in hours?—he barked at them again. “The remote!”
The old lady pointed to a shelf near the television.
“Get it,” he commanded. He was still holding the phone, but he had tuned out the cop’s insistent voice.
The old lady was fumbling with the control. She dropped it, picked it up, and pointed it at the television. “I think this is the right button,” she said, but nothing happened.
“Faster!” George yelled, and he jerked the gun at her.
The woman screamed and dropped the controller again.
“Leave her alone!” the kid cried.
“George?” Hugh’s voice blistered against his ear. “George, who was that yelling?”
“Give her the damn thing,” he ordered, pointing to the teenager. “Kids always know how to work stuff like this.”