Land of Careful Shadows (25 page)

S
cott Porter had missed the monthly board of directors meeting at La Casa. Adele called his home, his office, his cell—even Linda's cell—but no one picked up. In five years of being on the board, he'd never missed a meeting that Adele could recall. This was a big one to miss. Adele had presented several options to the other four board members about where La Casa might need to relocate in the event their lease couldn't be renewed.

It was almost nine in the evening when the meeting wrapped up with nothing decided. The truth was, none of the options was good. The proposed locations were either too far from town for the immigrants to travel to, or they lacked enough parking for would-be employers and volunteers, or there was too much opposition from the immediate community. The board needed to agree on some backup property soon. Any location was better than no location. But they could hardly be expected to make such a serious decision without their chairman present.

When Adele still didn't get an answer on any of Porter's or Linda's phones after the meeting, she decided to pay a visit to their house. She'd worked with both of the Porters almost since their arrival in Lake Holly seven years ago. Their families shared so much in common. Their daughters went to the same elementary school and were only a year apart in age. Both girls played AYSO soccer and belonged to Girl Scout troops. The families regularly bumped into each other at school events and in the supermarket. Yet Adele could count on one hand the number of times she'd been to their home, and in every instance, Adele's title and position were the reason she'd been invited at all.

She was always slightly uncomfortable being around the Porters socially, always aware in unspoken ways of the chasm between her life experiences and theirs. Despite their activism on behalf of Latino immigrants, they had a surprisingly monochromatic, all-American group of friends. The men played golf with Porter at the country club. The women were in a tennis league with Linda. In the summers, the Porters and their friends visited each other at their homes on Cape Cod and in the Hamptons. In the winters, they made yearly pilgrimages to Disney World and the Caribbean. Everyone knew how to ski and sail. Their kids went to each other's bar and bat mitzvahs and sweet sixteens. They had seen all the latest Broadway shows and toured the major cities in Europe.

Being around the Porters outside of La Casa felt a lot like being at Harvard all over again. They and their friends were pleasant and gracious. But there was always a forced cheer about them in her presence, always a sense that the real social interaction had gone on before Adele entered the room and would pick up again after she left. She was not one of them, and in little ways—from a comparison of notes on a new French restaurant in Manhattan to the best slopes in Vermont—that distinction was always reinforced.

Adele didn't much care for driving Lake Holly Road at night, especially since her recent encounter with a deer. She took the turns slowly. She used her brights whenever possible. She could see how easy it would have been for someone to accidentally run over Maria. There were no streetlights outside of town, no shoulders on the road. The curves were hairpin. Objects seemed to drop into her field of vision without warning like one of those fun-house rides.

The Porters' driveway was no better. She drove slowly up the steep incline, half-expecting to smash into Porter or Linda traveling the other way. But the woods on either side of the house remained still and velvety with only a thumbnail of moonlight to guide the way. At the top, the land leveled out and Adele felt her heart unclench. The outside lights were on. The garage doors were open. Porter's black Acura was in one bay of the garage, Linda's light blue minivan, in the other. The rear of the minivan was open and Porter was stuffing what looked like suitcases and cartons inside. He was dressed in gray sweats and white sneakers. Adele's headlights caught the gold rims of his glasses when he turned. The reflection on the lens obscured his eyes but the rest of his face did not seem happy to see her.

Adele pulled to the far corner of his driveway across from the garage and near the redwood play gym. Porter walked up to her car as soon as she got out. She could smell liquor on his breath. She couldn't recall ever seeing him drunk before, not even at parties. If anything, he always looked like he could have used a drink.

“Get out of here, Adele. This doesn't concern you.” His thinning blond hair was tousled. There was a wild look to his eyes. “I mean it. Go home.”

“What's wrong? Are you going somewhere?” He had no business driving in his condition.

“Not me. Just Linda and Olivia.”

The door from the house to the garage opened and Linda stepped out with Olivia in hand, their golden retriever on a leash. Linda was dressed in jeans and a shapeless oversized sweater. Her hair was pulled back into a haphazard ponytail. It looked stringy and unwashed and plastered to her face at the edges as if she'd just splashed cold water on herself. Olivia was wearing pajamas with cupcakes all over them. She had a pink-and-blue stuffed cow under one arm. She looked like she'd just woken up from a deep sleep. The dog encircled their legs, nearly tripping Linda with the leash.

Linda hesitated when she saw Adele standing there. She gave her husband a searching look and Porter nodded. The interchange surprised Adele. She had assumed the Porters had been fighting, assumed Linda was maybe spending the night at her parents' or something. That's why Scott had been drinking. That's why she was leaving with their daughter and the dog. But the look between them was a shared one. They had agreed to this, whatever it was, however painful it was. Linda helped her daughter into the rear seat of the minivan and belted her in. The dog climbed in after the child. Then Linda went around to the driver's side and opened her door.

“Let her get down the driveway first,” said Porter. “Then you can leave.”

“I don't understand,” Adele said softly. “You missed a board meeting. I was worried about you.”

“Believe me, that's the least of my troubles—or yours.”

Linda paused for a moment before she got into the car and faced her husband across the floodlit blacktop of their driveway. Something passed between them, something so intimate that Adele felt she had to look away. Porter cleared his throat as if to speak—or cry—she wasn't sure which. He did neither, instead giving his wife a slight nod of the head. She stepped into the car and started the engine. Her headlamps reflected back the contents of their garage: bicycles, sleds, Hula-Hoops. The plyboard from a long-ago puppet theater. A Dora-the-Explorer scooter Olivia had probably outgrown three years ago. Linda reversed out of the garage and did a three-point turn before shifting into drive. Then, without looking back, she started down the hill. The sound of the engine floated up to them, dying by inches as the minivan pushed aside the stillness of the night.

Porter turned away from Adele and pulled off his glasses. He ran the back of his sweatshirt sleeve across his eyes.

“Are you okay?” Adele didn't know what else to say. She shouldn't have barged in like this. “If there's anything I can do—”

“—I didn't do it,” he said thickly. “I should tell you that now before you hear anything to the contrary.” His voice was slurred slightly from alcohol and nasal from crying.

“What are you talking about?”

“The police are going to say I killed Maria. Because of Olivia. They're going to take me down and the whole damn center with me. But I didn't kill her. That's the truth.”

Adele fell back against her car, as disoriented as a child playing pin-the-tail. She'd thought she'd interrupted a domestic dispute. She was blindsided by the gravity of what she was hearing. “What are you saying, Scott? Are you saying what I think you're saying?”

“I'm saying that I gave Olivia a better life than Maria ever could have. Two parents. A beautiful home. A good education. Love. What could Maria give?”

“You don't mean . . . ?” Adele felt sick to her stomach. “Please don't tell me you
stole
an undocumented woman's baby.”

“Olivia was eighteen months old when Maria got out of prison,” said Porter. “By that point, she'd spent almost half her life with us.
Half her life.
Maria would have taken her back to a dirt-floor shack in Guatemala. What I did—that's not stealing. That's rescuing.”

“But if Olivia was her child—”

“—She was the product of a rape, Adele.”

“Maria told you that?”

“She didn't have to. She got pregnant on the journey from Guatemala to Iowa. That shit doesn't happen by choice. You know that. We've both heard enough clients' stories. Imagine going through life knowing your father raped your mother. Knowing that's the sole reason for your existence. And Olivia would have known—or guessed it—or other kids would have told her. Don't kid yourself. She would have been an outcast. This was the life I saved her from.”

“And Linda? She knew about what you'd done?”

Scott leaned against Adele's car. He put his hands on his thighs and bent over. He looked like he might throw up. “She does now,” he said thickly.

“Is that why she left you?”

“She didn't leave. I ordered her to go. I don't want her and Olivia involved in this. My choices. My mistakes.”

“But Olivia
is
involved,” said Adele. “She's another woman's child.”

Porter straightened. “That woman was a stranger to her.
We're
her mom and dad—no one else. This is the only life she knows.”

Adele's head was pounding. She tried to imagine how she was going to explain this—to La Casa's benefactors, to her clients, to the Lake Holly immigrant community. Scott Porter had earned a reputation for empowering people who were powerless, giving a voice to the voiceless. Yet all the good he'd done seemed to pale before this great evil. He had stolen a poor, defenseless woman's baby—and maybe, just maybe—he'd done something far worse. She stood in front of him, her rage as strong as if someone had plucked Sophia from her own arms, her muscles aching as if they bore the strain.

“You bastard!” Adele slapped him. She had never done anything like that before—not even during the darkest days of her marriage. Her fury startled both of them. Porter's face turned bright red where she'd hit him, like a bad sunburn. He covered it with his hand.

“How dare you stand there and feed me this bullshit about how you
saved
Olivia, how you gave her a better life. You wanted to give her a better life? You could have mailed Maria a check every month to care for her daughter. You could have offered to bring the child to the United States when she was eighteen and pay for her education. This has nothing to do with any charitable impulse, Scott. You didn't save Olivia for her sake. You saved her for your own! Because you and Linda wanted a baby. Because everything people like you want, you get. You didn't care who you hurt or whose life you destroyed. It was all about you—your needs, your desires. Don't play the hero, Scott. There are no heroes here.”

Porter sank down on the curb of the driveway and put his head in his hands. The fight had left him. The fight had left them both. “Maybe you're right,” he said softly. “Maybe the love wasn't so much for Olivia. But it wasn't for me, either. It was for Linda. She'd been through so much trying to have a baby, then trying to adopt one. I knew she'd die if I took Olivia away from her. Olivia was ten months old when Maria asked me to find someone to care for her while she was detained. By the time Maria was ready to be deported, we
were
Olivia's family. I didn't create the circumstances.”

“No, but you exploited them. You made a judge believe the child's mother had given her up for adoption when she hadn't. They'll disbar you for that. They'll send you to prison.”

Porter shook his head. “I never filed any false paperwork with the courts. As far as the court was concerned, Maria had had no contact with her daughter for over a year. That's the legal definition of abandonment, Adele. I used our daughter's real birth certificate, her real everything for the adoption. Did I lie to my wife? Yes. I had a dead client with no baby and a live one with a baby and I switched them as far as Linda was concerned. She'd have never agreed to the adoption otherwise. But did I lie to the court? No.”

“Maria would have contacted Olivia if she could have and you know it, Scott. You let her go back to Guatemala thinking her baby was dead, didn't you?” She read her hunch in Porter's eyes, the way they slid away from her, the way he covered his red cheek as if he expected Adele to hit him again. “I'll bet her name wasn't even Olivia, was it?”

“It was Luz Maria Santos,” Porter said evenly. “Like I said, I've got nothing to hide.”

“Nothing to hide? You lied to a judge and to the birth mother—not to mention your wife.”

“You can theorize, Adele. But you can't prove a damn thing and neither can anyone else.” Adele watched him trying on different excuses in his head, reframing the facts to fit the image he wanted to portray. Once a criminal defense attorney, always a criminal defense attorney.

“Are you asking if what I did was moral? No. Are you asking if what I did was legal? Yes. I'm an American citizen. Luz Maria Santos was an American citizen. Her undocumented birth mother had been deported by that point and, as far as the courts were concerned, she'd had no contact with the child for over a year. The adoption will not be nullified. I told Maria the same thing on several occasions.”

“And then killed her when she threatened to ruin your career.”