Authors: Rebecca Drake
Jill tried not to react. “Yes. A daughter.”
“Then you know—they all go their own way when they’re teens. But some mothers, they just can’t believe that their little precious would ever do anything bad. Bea Walsh was one of those. She acted all surprised about her daughter’s drinking, like she didn’t know, but she was even more surprised by the pregnancy.”
Stunned, Jill said, “Pregnancy? What pregnancy?”
Valerie Docimo stood up and finished her coffee in three large gulps. “It was right there in her medical records—Lyn Galpin had a kid.”
JOURNAL—DECEMBER 2011
You won’t take my calls or answer my emails. Do you think I’m going to just give up? The firm never hired weak-willed people. I’m not going anywhere until I get our child back. My child back—she has nothing to do with you. You were just a sperm donor.
I tried to go up to see you the other day, but the security guard in the lobby stopped me. Did he tell you about it? I’m sure you told him I’m just some disgruntled former employee. I tried to explain, I tried to tell him that I just needed to talk to you for a minute, but he wouldn’t listen. Fucking fake cop. I wouldn’t leave, not until a real police officer came into the lobby and escorted me out. I told him I was there to see the man who’d stolen my child, but I slurred my words a little, and the officer walked me over to a Starbucks and suggested I drink some coffee and sober up before he had to arrest me. I’d had one drink, maybe two with lunch. I was not drunk.
The adoption agency is no help. The woman they ushered me in to see, some social worker, listened sympathetically and then told me that unfortunately it was a closed adoption and there was nothing she could do. It’s such bullshit, but I know how to play the legal system. I told her that the father hadn’t given consent to the adoption. That got her interest for a minute, but then she said that if that were the case then the father had to be the one to contest the adoption. Even then, she said, it might take years for the courts to sort it out.
I don’t want to wait years. I want our child now. “Do you really want to take her away from the only parents she’s ever known?” you said during the one and only meeting we’ve had since that day on the street. We met at a bar just as seedy as the hotel you probably still frequent. You told me I was beautiful and I’d fall in love with someone better and have his child. I’m so proud of how I replied: “Children aren’t interchangeable, asshole.”
You’ve blocked my calls and I have no one else I can turn to. I can’t sleep, I can’t concentrate. The head of the penny-ante law firm in Butler actually put me on probation for taking too much time off. I told that toad-faced fucker he’d been lucky to have me for as long as he did. I hoped to provoke a reaction, but all he said was, “Have you been drinking, Ms. Galpin?”
I’m going to follow you home one day, D., and confront you in front of your precious wife. Maybe then you’ll help me get my little girl back.
DAY TWENTY-THREE
“What happened to the baby?” Jill asked, an icy finger trailing down her spine.
The nurse shrugged. “Who knows? Lyn Galpin didn’t keep it, that’s all I know.” She trudged out of the cafeteria, clearly done with the conversation, but Jill hurried after her.
“Could she have had an abortion?”
“No, definitely not.”
“How can you be so sure?”
Valerie Docimo smirked. “Basic pelvic exam. Your cervix doesn’t lie.” She must have seen the confusion on Jill’s face because she snorted and said, “Guess you’re not a ob-gyn are you, doc? When you give birth your cervix changes—less round, more oval—it’s very obvious. Bea Walsh just didn’t want to believe the truth about her precious daughter, she was sure there’d been a mistake in the transcript. After a couple of the docs spoke with her she finally stopped talking about it.” She pushed open a door that said
STAFF ONLY
on it, but Jill grabbed her arm.
“But the baby,” she said. “Did she try to find out what happened to it? Did Lyn Galpin give it up for adoption?” She thought of David broaching adoption after being so adamantly against it, of David arguing against tracking down the birth mother, of David seeming unaffected upon learning that the birth mother had died.
The nurse shook her loose. “All I know is that if the bitch gave away her baby then that child is way better off. Imagine having
that
as your mother. Still, I did feel a little sorry for Bea Walsh. Can you imagine finding out you’re a grandmother, but you never even got to see your own grandkid?”
Jill walked slowly back to the lobby, struggling to accept that Lyn Galpin could be Sophia’s birth mother. A man in scrubs wheeled a patient through the sliding doors, bringing in a gust of freezing air, tracking snow onto the carpet.
“You find what you were looking for?” Brisk called from the front desk. Jill pulled the fleece jacket back on, buttoning it with hands that already felt numb.
“Not yet.”
* * *
Back in the Impala, she dialed Andrew’s number. He picked it up on the first ring. “Jill? Where in the hell are you?”
“What was the name of Sophia’s birth mother?”
“What? Where are you?”
“The birth mother’s name—what was it?”
“What does this have to do with anything? She’s dead, Jill.”
“Was it Lyn Galpin?”
Silence for a long moment. Throat clearing. “Yes, but Jill, listen—”
She hung up.
* * *
Whoever named Riverview Estates had delusions of grandeur. Even the snowfall couldn’t mask the sheer ugliness of the place—rigid rows of identical townhouses, each clad in industrial gray siding with dingy white trim. The front doors were the same shade of dirty white, and the seasonal wreaths hung on some of the doors seemed like desperate attempts at individuality. The gates surrounding the complex might have been to keep people in, not out.
Jill tried to turn the Impala’s windshield wipers up a notch so she could see the sign more clearly. Was this really it? But there was the name in large, fading gilt letters:
ESTATES
. What a joke. Listing in the snow next to the large sign was a smaller metal realty sign with
APARTMENTS FOR RENT
. It was faded, too. Jill pulled slowly through the front gates. A small guardhouse sat like an afterthought in the median dividing entrance and exit. Jill caught a glimpse of a portly, balding man in a security uniform leaning back in a chair, playing something on a tablet. He glanced over at the sound of the Impala lurching past, but made no move to stop her.
She had to circle twice before finding the townhouse marked with a flaking brass 7B. Jill got out and knocked on the door, moving from one foot to another, trying to stave off the cold.
Nobody answered. She knocked again, more loudly, and jammed both hands in the pockets of her sheepskin coat. Snow settled on her hair, her shoulders. She knocked a third time before trying to peer in the windows, but there was only a slit visible through drawn plastic blinds and she couldn’t see anything. “Sophia?” she called at the glass, but her words were swallowed up by the wind.
She drove back to the guard booth and kept the motor running as she hopped out and rapped on the dirty glass window. The man looked up from his tablet as if it cost him a great effort and reached up to slide the window open just enough so that she could hear him. “Yeah?”
“I’m trying to find Bea Walsh.”
“Yeah? Get in line.” He laughed at his own joke, revealing crooked, tobacco-stained teeth. “Like I’ve been telling every other collection agent—she ain’t here no more.”
“Do you know where she went?”
“If I did d’ya think they’d still be bothering me?” He slid the window shut and looked back down at his screen. Jill tapped on the glass again. He gave her an incredulous look before getting up and sliding the window fully open.
“Look, I really need to get in that apartment.”
“I told you already—she’s gone and she ain’t coming back.” He tried to slide the window closed again, but Jill stopped it with her hand.
“This is urgent—she has my daughter.”
He didn’t seem impressed. “The only daughter she had was a no-good drunk. Do you know how many vacancies we got ’cause of her? People don’t want to live next door to no murderer, not to mention them reporters snooping around day and night. Months they was here! All them news vans blocking the drive—who wants to put up with that? And when that drunk bitch finally dies her parents up and leaves in the middle of the night. No forwarding address, nothing. Place stinks, too—management can’t get anyone to rent it.”
Jill latched on to that. “I’m interested in an apartment—show me that one.”
That stopped his rant, but the man looked scornful. “If you really wanted to see an apartment you’d ask to see one of them bigger end units.”
“I want to see apartment 7B.”
* * *
The townhouse was empty, just as the security guard had said. He stood in the doorway, keys dangling from one hand, tablet from the other. “You can’t trust no one these days,” he said when she glanced at it.
His voice echoed in the empty space. Jill stood in the living room, feeling disappointment dragging her down like a weight. There was nothing here. She’d been sure she’d find Bea Walsh with Sophia, but it was clear from the funky, musty smell: no one had been in the place for months. Thick dust coated the ceiling-fan blades and window blinds. Cobwebs crisscrossed doorways and even the kitchen faucet. If she’d brought Sophia here, it wasn’t recently. The guard closed the front door behind them, shutting out the cold, as Jill tried to think. “When did she leave?”
The security guard kept looking from her to his tablet as if he were anxious to get back to his game. “I don’t know—May, June? I think it was June.”
Jill scrubbed a hand over her face, trying not to despair, but to think of something, anything, that could be useful. “Did she say where she was going?”
The guard shook his head, sniffing the air. There was a peculiar smell in the place, an odd sickly odor that had grown worse since he’d shut the door. There had to be something here, something that would tell Jill where this woman had gone. She started opening cupboards in the kitchen and sliding back drawers, hoping that she’d find an answer. They were empty, except for discarded scraps—twist ties, a paper clip, greasy takeout menus, a scribbled-on flyer for a local realty company. Jill left them piled on the counter, starting to feel pity for the woman who’d lived in this depressing space.
“She probably let her dog crap all over the carpet,” the guard muttered, sniffing the air. The smell was really bad. He set up his tablet on the kitchen counter and started his game again, turning up the volume as if that would somehow cover the odor.
“She had a dog?” Jill had to repeat the question to get his attention.
“Little furry mutt—it was against the rules, but she didn’t care.” Something about the dog—it pinged Jill’s memory, but it was just an odd sensation, nothing tangible. She opened the refrigerator, but it was as empty as the rest of the place. A lone box of Arm & Hammer sitting on the shelf. Clearly the smell wasn’t from here. She headed down the hall, feeling increasingly desperate. The smell was stronger; she held her hand against her nose.
There had to be something, some clue. The first bedroom had a metal bed frame with a stained mattress on it. Jill went through every drawer in the cheap dresser standing against the wall. She got down on her hands and knees and searched under the bed. Nothing but an old sock and several dust balls.
“Management needs to fumigate again,” the guard said, blocking the bedroom door. He had one arm covering his nose. Jill pushed past him and into the bathroom, hitting the light switch, but of course the electricity was off. Dim light shone through a tiny window set high on the wall above a cramped shower and tub combination. She pulled back the shower curtain, which had mildew creeping along the edge, and felt the shower head. Dry. The drain was dry, too. The vanity was dingy white, foil-pressed covers peeling back from particleboard drawers. She pulled open the drawers one by one. A ponytail holder with a strand of hair twisted in it. A cheap emery board. A plastic ring.
Jill shut the drawer, then immediately jerked it back open. She stared at the ring for a second before reaching in with trembling fingers to pick it up. “What’s that you got there?” the guard said, straining to see what she was holding. “If you find anything of value it belongs to management.”
This was Sophia’s ring, the pink plastic ring with the pink glass gem that she’d lost that day at the park. Jill was sure of it. Sophia hadn’t wandered off that day at the park; she’d been taken by Bea Walsh. “Oh my God.”
“What is it?” The guard deflated when he saw what she was holding. “Oh, it’s just a piece of junk.”
She ignored him, clasping the ring and pushing past him. The second bedroom was exactly like the first, except for a bigger closet. Jill opened the folding doors, and metal hangers pinged against one another. A man’s large blue windbreaker hung in a far corner. She searched the pockets, but there was nothing in it.
There was only one door left. “That’s just a utility closet,” the guard said, retreating back down the hall with his tablet. She opened the door anyway. The smell poured out at them, an overwhelming scent, sickeningly sweet and rancid, reminding her of a childhood trip to a farm, where the odor of cow manure had mixed unappetizingly with that of apples rotting in the orchard next door. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” The guard’s voice came out muffled through the hand he’d flung over his nose. “What the hell is that?”
Jill flung the door closed, breathing hard, then clamped a hand over her nose and opened it again. Water heater, furnace, and a stackable washer and dryer unit all crammed together in a tight space. Brownish liquid puddled on the floor near the front of the washer/dryer. She caught a glimpse of something white behind it.
Please no, please no, please no. Please let it not be what she thought it was. A prayer repeating inside her as she pulled and pushed against the unit in a frenzy, finally shifting it far enough that she could see a cylindrical looking package wrapped in white sheeting and lots of duct tape. It was too tall, too big. She sagged with relief, just before it fell toward her. Jill jumped to the side, crying out as the package brushed against her before landing with a thud.