“That’s all I’m doing is thinking! My daughter’s not going to prison.”
“Would you like to go there?” the doctor asked. “I know I don’t want to go there. Because that’s where this conversation is going. Think about this, Agnes. Even if Marla were convicted, you could mount a pretty convincing insanity defense. Diminished capacity, something like that. Out of her head as a result of a traumatic incident. Odds are, if she went to jail, it wouldn’t be for long. They might even just commit her for psychiatric care until such time as they deemed her cured. But—”
“You son of a bitch.”
“But if they come after us, if they find out what we did—Agnes, if they find out what I’ve done just today, with your blessing—we’ll be going away forever. Are you hearing me? If you let Marla take the blame, she’s out in a year or two and you can look after her. But if you go to jail, you’ll never be able to look after Marla. You’ll see her once a month on visiting day and that’ll be it. Is that what you want?”
“Jack, just shut up.”
“You want to be a good mother, Agnes? Let Marla go to jail. Let them treat her. And when she gets out, you’ll be there for her. Let me take care of Sarita.”
“I . . . I can’t . . . I don’t know what—”
“And, Agnes, forgive me, but Marla’s not the same kind of issue for me as she is for you. She’s your daughter, not mine. I know what I have to do to save myself.”
“God, why did I ever go along with you on—”
“You sound like Bill. We’re in this together, Agnes. You got something out of this and so did I.”
“It was all about money for you,” she said. “It was never about money for me.”
“Motivations mean fuck-all now. Just don’t try coming back at me like you had nothing to do with this.”
Agnes was quiet for another moment. Finally she asked, “Where are you?”
“David’s driving north out of town. I can see the Five Mountains Ferris wheel in the distance.”
“How much do you think she’s told him?”
“Who knows? We don’t even know how much she knows.”
In the background, the sound of an infant crying.
“What’s that?” Agnes asked. “Who’s that?”
“It’s Matthew. He’s been screaming almost the whole time.”
“You have the baby with you?” Agnes asked.
“I’m with Bill. I’ve already been through this with him. I thought it was a bad idea, too, bringing the kid, but like he says, what the hell’s he going to do? He needs a new nanny.”
“Jack, seriously, we need to think about this. What about—just give me a second—what about if there’s a way to pin it on Sarita, but . . . silence her at the same time?”
“Go on.”
“She . . . she confesses to you what she did, but then she attacks you, and you have to act in self-defense. Maybe something like that?”
“You’re grasping at straws, Agnes. And besides, what if she’s already told David everything? Have you thought about that? He may already know the whole story.”
Before Agnes could respond, the doctor said to Bill Gaynor, “It’s pretty isolated here. Flash your lights; hit the horn; get them to pull over.”
“Jack?” Agnes said.
“I have to go,” he said. “I’ll check in with you later. Think about what I said, Agnes. Think about being a good mother.”
“Don’t you hurt my nephew,” she warned. And then, “Or my grandson.”
“Oh,” said the doctor. “Now he’s your grandson.”
SIXTY-TWO
David
“A good thing,” Sarita Gomez repeated, sitting in the car next to me. “I wanted to do what was right.”
The black car behind us was still honking and flashing its lights.
“Explain that,” I said, holding my speed, debating whether to pull over.
“I wanted to return Matthew to his real mother,” she said.
I glanced over at her. Not once, but twice. “Marla’s baby didn’t die.”
Sarita nodded. “I’m pretty sure. I knew Ms. Gaynor had never been pregnant, that they had adopted Matthew. She couldn’t breast-feed; she never went through all the things a woman goes through. But she didn’t want people to know. She wanted them to think she’d been pregnant. The last couple of months before they got Matthew she spent in Boston so the neighbors wouldn’t think something funny was going on. They’d never see that she was never actually pregnant.”
“Rosemary told you all this?”