“This whole thing is about Mirabelle, Izzy,” he said. “Everyone involved—we all just want what’s best for her. We just have to figure out what that is.”
We, Izzy thought. Her father had become part of this already. She thought of the image the newspaper kept running of Bebe Chow: the sadness in her eyes, the palm-sized photo of baby May Ling in her hand, one corner creased, as if it had been kept in a pocket (which it had). Right away she’d recognized the woman she’d seen in Mia’s kitchen, who had fallen silent as soon as she’d come in, who’d stared at her as if she were afraid, almost hunted. “Just a friend,” Mia had said when Izzy had asked who she was, and if Mia trusted Bebe, Izzy knew where her loyalties lay.
“Baby stealer,” she said.
A shocked silence dropped over the table like a heavy cloth. Across the table, Lexie and Trip exchanged wary, unsurprised glances. Moody shot Izzy a look that said shut up, but she wasn’t watching.
“Izzy, apologize to your father,” said Mrs. Richardson.
“What for?” Izzy demanded. “They’re practically kidnapping her. And everyone’s just letting them. Daddy’s even helping.”
“Let’s calm down,” Mr. Richardson began, but it was too late. When it came to Izzy, Mrs. Richardson was seldom calm, and for that matter, Izzy herself never was.
“Izzy. Go to your room.”
Izzy turned to her father. “Maybe they could just pay her off. How much is a baby worth in today’s market? Ten thousand bucks?”
“Isabelle Marie Richardson—”
“Maybe they can bargain her down to five.” Izzy dropped her fork onto her plate with a clatter and left the room. Mia should hear about this, she thought, running upstairs and into her bedroom. She would know what to do. She would know how to fix this. Lexie’s laugh floated up the stairwell and down the hallway, and Izzy slammed the door shut.
Downstairs, Mrs. Richardson sank back into her seat, hands shaking. It would take her until the next morning to think of a suitable punishment for Izzy: confiscating her beloved Doc Martens and throwing them in the trash. If you dress like a thug, she would insist as she opened the trash barrel, of course you act like a thug. For now, she pressed her lips together tightly and set her knife and fork down in a neat X across her plate.
“Should we keep the news quiet?” she asked. “That you’re working with the McCulloughs, I mean.”
Mr. Richardson shook his head. “It’ll be in the paper tomorrow,” he said, and he was right.
On Sunday, the Plain Dealer ran the story on the front page, just below the fold: LOCAL MOTHER FIGHTS FOR DAUGHTER’S CUSTODY. It was a good article, Mrs. Richardson thought, sipping her coffee and skimming over it with a professional eye: an overview of the case; a quick mention that the McCulloughs would be represented by William Richardson of Kleinman, Richardson, and Fish; a statement from Bebe Chow’s lawyer. “We are confident,” said Edward Lim, “that the state will see fit to return custody of May Ling Chow to her biological mother.” The very fact that the paper had run it so prominently, however, suggested that the real coverage was only beginning.
At the bottom of the article, a single sentence caught Mrs. Richardson’s eye: “Ms. Chow had been informed of her daughter’s whereabouts by a coworker at Lucky Palace, a Chinese restaurant on Warrensville Road.” Even so carefully and anonymously phrased, she realized with a jolt who that coworker must be. It could not be a coincidence. So it was her tenant, her quiet little eager-to-please tenant, who had started all of this. Who had, for reasons still unclear, decided to upend the poor McCulloughs’ lives.
Mrs. Richardson folded the paper precisely and set it down on the table. She thought again of Mia’s disaffection when she’d offered to buy one of Mia’s photos, of Mia’s reticence about her past. Of Mia’s—well, standoffishness, even as she spent hours a day in Mrs. Richardson’s own home, in this very kitchen. A woman whose wages she paid, whose rent she had subsidized, whose daughter spent hours and hours under this very roof every single day. She thought of the photograph at the art museum, which now, in her memory, took on a secretive, sly tinge. How hypocritical of Mia, with her stubborn privacy, to insert herself into places where she didn’t belong. But that was Mia, wasn’t it? A woman who took an almost perverse pleasure in flaunting the normal order. It was unfairness itself, that this woman was causing such trouble for her dear friend Linda, that Linda should have to suffer for it.
On Monday, she sent the children to school and dawdled at home until Mia arrived to clean. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for, but she needed to see Mia in person, to look her in the eyes. “Oh,” Mia said as she came in the side door. “I didn’t expect you to be home. Should I come back later?”
Mrs. Richardson tipped her head to one side and studied her tenant. Hair, as always, unkempt atop her head. A loose white button-down untucked over jeans. A smudge of paint on the back of one wrist. Mia stood there with one hand on the doorway, a half smile on her face, waiting for Mrs. Richardson to respond. A sweet face. A young face, but not an innocent face. She didn’t care, Mrs. Richardson realized, what people thought of her. In a way, that made her dangerous. She thought suddenly of the photograph she’d seen at Mia’s house that first day, when she’d invited Mia into her home. The woman turned arachnid, all silent, stealthy arms. What kind of person, she thought, would transform a woman into a spider? What kind of person, for that matter, saw a woman and even thought spider?
“I’m just leaving,” she said, and lifted her bag from the counter.
Even years later, Mrs. Richardson would insist that that digging into Mia’s past was nothing more than justified retribution for the trouble Mia had stirred up. It was purely for Linda’s sake, she would insist—her oldest and dearest friend, a woman who’d only been trying to do right by this baby and now, because of Mia, was having her heart broken. Linda did not deserve that. How could she, Elena, stand by and let someone ruin her best friend’s happiness? She would never admit even to herself that it hadn’t been about the baby at all: it had been some complicated thing about Mia herself, the dark discomfort this woman stirred up that Mrs. Richardson would have much preferred to have kept in its box. For now, the newspaper still in her hand, she told herself that it was for Linda. She would make a few calls. She would see what she could find out.
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