Francie takes the bottle from the steamy pot of water on the stove and carries Will to the rocker, a few inches from the window fan. Shading him from the sunlight filtering through the curtains, she nestles him into the crook of her arm and lifts the bottle to his mouth, hoping (she can’t deny it) that he’s going to refuse the formula, that he’ll accept nothing other than her milk, that he’ll cry in disgust at the chemical smell. She teases his lips with the gummy orange nipple and he opens his mouth—the thin gray liquid spreading across his bottom lip—and then drinks in quick, nearly frantic gulps.
Francie ignores the twinge of disappointment and reaches for the remote. Oliver Hood is being interviewed on CNN. A civil rights attorney who made a name for himself arguing for the release of six prisoners from Guantanamo, he announced yesterday that he’s taken on Bodhi Mogaro’s case, pro bono.
“As far as I understand things,” the host—a middle-aged man in dark-framed glasses and a bold checked shirt—is saying, “Mogaro is currently being held on trespassing charges. But the real interest is in determining his role in the abduction of Baby Midas. Oliver Hood, what can you tell me?”
Hood is a slight man with large round eyes. “Well, I can tell you a lot of things, but the main thing I want to say is that my client is innocent. He didn’t knowingly trespass, and he most certainly didn’t have anything to do with the disappearance of Baby Midas. This is a textbook case of racial profiling. What is the evidence against him? He was seen around Winnie Ross’s building, and he’s of Middle Eastern descent. That’s it.”
“Well, if you talk—”
“And it gets worse. I spoke to two detectives who say the man identified by an eyewitness as Bodhi Mogaro the night of July 4, the man said to be walking near Ms. Ross’s building, ostensibly at the time of the abduction, yelling into a phone, acting erratically”—Oliver Hood pauses for effect—“is not Bodhi Mogaro.”
“What do you mean?”
Hood holds up a photo of a man wearing a white surgical coat. “His name is Dr. Raj Chopra, and he’s the head of surgery at Brooklyn Methodist Hospital. He was rushing in to work, on his night off, to assist with a bus crash in which two little kids and a young mother were badly injured.”
Francie closes her eyes, letting it sink in. Bodhi Mogaro wasn’t even there that night? If that’s true, it’s possible the police have no credible leads.
“Well, some might argue you shouldn’t take anything a detective is saying about this at face value. Not with the mess they’ve made of this case. And your claim certainly doesn’t explain why Mogaro had that cash in his car.”
“I’ve spoken at length with Bodhi, his wife, and his parents. Bodhi was in Brooklyn to collect money from friends and relatives in the area, to help pay the funeral expenses of an aunt who’d died back in Yemen. It’s what they do in the Muslim culture.”
The host smirks. “And drink beer and smoke cigarettes, as Bodhi Mogaro was allegedly doing the night of July 3, as he sat on a bench watching Winnie’s house? Is that also what they do in the Muslim culture?”
Oliver Hood laughs. “Look. Mr. and Mrs. Mogaro are new parents.” He lifts another piece of paper from the desk in front of him and holds it to the camera. Francie gasps. It’s the photograph of Bodhi Mogaro she saw at Colette’s apartment; the one in which he’s smiling widely, a baby resting on his forearms, sunglasses on his head. “This is the so-called kidnapper and his six-week-old son. Did he have a drink and a smoke one night? Yeah, but come on. He’s a new dad. Cut the guy some slack.”
“And his flight?”
“He missed his flight. He overslept. It was an honest mistake. He couldn’t afford another plane ticket, so he rented a car to drive home.”
The host squints at Oliver Hood. “He was picked up three days after missing that flight. I don’t think it takes three days to drive from Brooklyn to Detroit. Even my wife’s eighty-four-year-old granny could make that trip in one day.”
“He stopped to see an uncle in New Jersey. Then he got lost on the way. He didn’t know he’d driven onto army property. I’m telling you, Chris, the guy is innocent. It’s tragic what’s happening to him. The police better show some credible evidence and charge him, or they gotta let him go.”
“Okay, I have to say, you make an interesting argument. This will certainly be fascinating to watch. Thank you, Oliver Hood. Now, with me via satellite from Santa Monica is my next guest, the author Antonia Framingham.” Francie sits forward. She loves this woman. She’s become very wealthy from a series of young adult mysteries—Francie has devoured every one of them—and announced yesterday that she was donating $150,000 to the NYPD to help with the investigation. Her own daughter was abducted fifteen years earlier. The police never had a single credible lead.
“Why, Antonia, did you decide to donate this money?” the host asks her.
“Because I know there’s nothing worse than a mother losing a child.” Francie looks down at Will, at his sparkling eyes gazing up into hers as he drinks from the bottle. “Any mother who has ever lost a child knows—”
Francie mutes the television and sets the remote on the table beside her. The brakes of a bus whine outside her window, and the taste of diesel fumes wafts into the room, settling on her lips. She doesn’t want to think about Antonia Framingham’s loss. Or about Winnie’s loss. She particularly doesn’t want to think any more, as she has these last few days—the thoughts careening around her mind—about the loss of her own three children.
The first one, a daughter. She’s been seeing it, so clear in her head when she’s alone. The white tiled room, the stink of antiseptic, the terrified faces of the other teenage girls waiting on the hard plastic chairs in the reception area. They, at least, were there with someone—equally terrified boys; girlfriends who sat nervously beside them, chewing half of the stick of gum they’d broken apart to share. One girl was even there with her mother, who wore large hoop earrings and clung to her daughter’s hand, telling the nurse she didn’t care what the rules were, she was going to accompany her daughter into the room. Francie’s mom was waiting for her in the car, driving circles around the Big Lots parking lot next door to the clinic, afraid she’d be spotted by someone from church.
“You understand the risks to your body?” a nurse asked Francie after she was finally led to a sterile, chilly room and handed a blue paper gown.
“Yes.”
“And you have the father’s permission?”
“My father is not around,” Francie says. “He left when I was a baby.”
“Not your father. The baby’s.”
“Oh.” She felt a flash of panic. “Do I need that?”
The nurse looked up. “Not legally. But it would be nice.” Francie kept her eyes on the floor. “Can I have the father’s name?”
“His name?”
The nurse’s pen was suspended over her clipboard. She released a highly irritated sigh. “Yes, his name. I’m assuming you know it?”
Of course she knew his name. James Christopher Colburn. Twenty-two years old. Graduate of St. James University, volunteer with Catholic Volunteers, science teacher at Our Lady of Perpetual Help. She’d stayed after lab and told him, explaining about the morning sickness and the positive pregnancy test. He collected his things, said he had to go, telling her he’d call later that night. The gym teacher was in his place at the front of the classroom the next day. She never saw him again.
“No. I don’t know his name.”
The nurse shook her head, her stiff blond curls swaying against her shoulders, saying something under her breath as she made a note on the paper. “Sign here, saying you consent to the procedure.” She cracked her gum. “Gotta make sure you won’t regret it.” Francie’s hand shook as she signed her name. She wanted to tell the woman that she didn’t consent to the procedure. She wanted to keep the baby. She could do it, she thought. The baby wasn’t due until the summer. She could give birth after graduation, get a job to support them.
But her mother forbade it. “No, Mary Frances. I won’t hear of it. There is no room in my life for this,” Marilyn said as she roughly kneaded a ball of dough. “Things are difficult enough, raising two daughters on my own. I don’t need a baby to feed on top of everything else.”
“Are you okay?” Marilyn asked when Francie eased herself into the front seat of her mother’s Cutlass an hour after the procedure.