Authors: Jacqueline Sheehan
“The DNA testing may be unnecessary. You should have told me about the appearance of this girl,” he said, drumming his fingers on his desk. “But why would she even assume that Bob was her father?” David closed his eyes, shutting out all the extraneous stimuli so that he could race through legal implications.
He opened his eyes and looked at Caleb. “Did you know about the paternity question?”
Caleb sweat buckets all day, and now his thick hair was stiff. He looked like a blond Rastafarian. “I am completely out of this loop.”
“David, keep going. Before I told you about the girl reaching out to me, what were you going to tell me about this money from Bob's uncle? The uncle that Bob never contacted once while we were together?”
Rocky could see more court cases fluttering through David's brain as he tried to call up the relevant case law. “There is a very good chance that Bob's uncle is the father of this girl. He donated DNA to his lawyer ten years ago, after his fourth and ultimately successful rehab treatment. There's a reason why this guy was banished from the Tilbe family,” said David.
Another clump of orange dirt fell off Caleb's shoe, smashing on the gleaming polyurethane finish of the old flooring. Caleb nudged the clump toward a corner of the desk.
“What did the other lawyer tell you?” asked Rocky. The file in front of David vibrated with trouble.
“Richard Tilbe was solidly addicted to cocaine when he could still afford it. He taught electrical engineering at a community college in Des Moines. His descent was disastrous, leading the charge of the crack epidemic that worked its way through an unsuspecting Midwest in the nineties. He unfortunately took others with him, including a young woman whom Bob had briefly dated and introduced to his uncle at a family picnic. Richard suspected that there was a child, but the woman refused to have contact with him. He claimed to have sent money once through a bank, but the check was never cashed. He simply gave up and assumed the worst. There is no mention of a child in his will.”
Rocky's mouth was dry, and her tongue felt large and clumsy. “Natalie showed me a birth certificate that listed Robert Tilbe, not Richard. . . .”
Caleb looked at Rocky. “Who is Natalie? Am I correct in assuming that this is a shit storm?”
David sat up straighter and lobbed questions at Rocky.
“When did Natalie contact you?”
“Three weeks ago.”
“Did she show you any identification? Like a driver's license?”
“No.”
“What exactly did Natalie say when she first contacted you?”
“I already told you.”
“Did she request money?”
“Not once.”
“Do you have a copy of the two birth certificates in question?”
“No.”
“How exactly did Natalie locate you?”
“In case you haven't noticed, you can now use the Internet to locate your classmate from kindergarten who moved away to New Zealand.”
Caleb spoke up. “And now may I ask a question? What were you thinking? Why did you let this girl move into your house? Is your brain shrinking?”
Rocky put her hands over her ears. “Stop it, both of you. She is just a girl. I thought she was just a girl looking for her father and that there was the tiniest chance that Bob might have fathered a child that he didn't know about or that he did know and never told me. . . .”
Caleb stomped both feet on the floor, dislodging every remaining bit of clay from his boots. “Not Bob. Not that he couldn't have screwed around eighteen years ago, but he wouldn't have left a kid to fend for herself. I saw this man fix the broken leg of a duck, for God's sake. A duck!”
Rocky remembered the duck that had been hit by a car, the way Bob had held the bird to his chest after setting the leg, the way he had talked to the unfortunate creature. “You'll be as good as new. I hope your lifetime mate will wait for you. She'd be so sad without you.” He'd only been talking to soothe the bird, but the truth of it ground through her. Rocky had been so sad without Bob that she had overlooked a world of coincidences with Natalie.
Rocky's voice was quiet. “I thought if there was a chance that she was his daughter, I'd still have a part of him. We had talked about children, and we had still imagined that one day we'd have a baby. And if Natalie was his, he would have wanted me to help her.”
David turned to his computer monitor and began to tap away with the pointer finger of each hand. “I'm sending an e-mail to Mr. Tilbe's lawyer. I've requested that he secure the inheritance money in another bank with an alert for potential online intruders. I will follow up with a phone call right after you leave.”
Rocky had a sense of things rearranging, like molecules shifting around to form a new chemical. “Are you worried this has all been a scam?” asked Rocky.
David tilted his head slightly. “I am more than worried. I am alarmed. Did you say that you have a DNA sample from Natalie? I want you to send it by overnight mail to this address.” David wrote down the name and address of the attorney on the West Coast. He handed the sheet of paper across his desk to Rocky. His handwriting was small and tight.
“My wife complains that my job makes me paranoid about human nature. But it's not paranoia. It's my training and experience that allows me to sniff out the opportunistic tendencies driven by greed and revenge. This new asset is safe with all the red flags that should go on it, but your own assets are another matter. I suggest that you have a very frank discussion with your young friend.”
Rocky and Caleb left the office, both dazed and squinting into the afternoon sun. They headed to their respective vehicles. Her cell phone blinked at her from the seat of the truck. The only time it ever rang was when she left it somewhere. Caleb pulled his truck parallel to her car, matching driver's sides to each other, except he was three feet higher up. He had one elbow on the open window and scowled down at Rocky. “I am so unbelievably pissed that you didn't tell me about the kid, whoever she is. I promise to extract payment for this later, but right now you've got bigger problems than me. I smell something rotten. Do you know what Bob would say?”
The death of a spouse starts with terrifying and bottomless misery that seeps into the bones and saliva. Enough time had passed that her saliva no longer tasted of desperation. Instead, she was overwhelmed with rage at Bob for dying, for not telling her about the drug-addled uncle, for inheriting an obscene amount of money, and finally for being Caleb's icon of sensibility in the midst of chaos.
Rocky leaned into the back of the headrest and looked skyward. “What could Bob possibly say at a time like this?”
Caleb gave her a hint of a smile. “He always said that you were the smartest mare in the meadow.”
“I never could train him to stop making large mammal references about me,” said Rocky, feeling the ease of Bob's humor through the conduit of her brother. “You're right, I'm not a complete idiot. I know that this has probably left the realm of coincidence. I've got three hours to think about this on the ride home. Will you be home tonight?”
“I'll wait for your call. And how's your archery boyfriend? He's not Bob, but I kind of like him.”
She hadn't told Caleb anything, not about Hill, not about the status of the remodel, not about Natalie. Since Natalie arrived, Rocky had only thought about Natalie. How had she cut Caleb out of the loop?
“Since this girl showed up, I haven't thought about anything else. I want to catch you up on everything, but right now I've got to get back home.”
Rocky watched in the side mirror as he pulled out of the parking lot. She flipped her phone open. Four messages, an unheard-of number for her. Was there a dog and cat mutiny on Peaks? Melissa had programmed Rocky's phone to caw like a crow. Each message jolted her with the bird's call.
“Rocky, this is Tess. Have you heard from Natalie? I was supposed to meet her and Danielle at my house around twelve-thirty. It's one now. Where are you? Call me.”
She looked at her watch. It was 3:05
P.M
.
Next message. “This is Melissa. Where's Cooper? I went to your house, and he's not there. Today is our final class, or did you completely forget?”
Third message, from Tess. “Rocky. Your truck is gone, and the ferry boys just told me that Natalie drove it on the ferry to Portland. Danielle and Cooper were with her. Her cell is no longer in service. Call us immediately.”
The last message. “It's Isaiah. Tess and her family are in a panic. They can't find her granddaughter. I just called the Portland police. Call me.”
Fear dropped in and coursed through her like a base metal. She tapped in Natalie's cell phone. “The number you have called is no longer in service at this time.”
She called Tess. If she hadn't been afraid before, she was when she heard her friend's voice. “Natalie, is that you? Where are you? Let me speak to Danielle,” said Tess, her voice suddenly older and vulnerable.
“It's me, Tess. We'll find them. Is someone there with you?”
“Yes. Len is here. I never should have let Danielle ride on the ferry alone. This is all my fault.”
“The best thing you can do is stay by the phone. Will you do that? I'm in Amherst. I'll be there in three hours, maybe more with traffic on 495. Call Isaiah and let him know that I'm on my way.”
She made sure that her phone was turned on. The tops of her shoulders clenched in heavy fear; the hard constriction moved down her arms, and she gripped the steering wheel of the car, willing the space between Amherst and Portland to shrink, yet feeling it expand instead with the ever-thickening traffic.
Natalie
“C
ooper is out in the van,” said Danielle. “You have to let him out. He needs air. Rocky would never leave him in a van. She's going to be mad.”
Danielle sat stiffly on a green plastic chair, the kind that everyone keeps outside. Except this one was in the kitchen. Franklin had found it on the sidewalk on garbage day.
Natalie wanted to hurt Rocky, and destroying people Rocky loved was part one of her plan. This would let Rocky know what it was like for Natalie to have a shit life while Rocky had a perfect life with Bob Tilbe. Rocky got all the good parts: the loving husband, the happy-go-lucky veterinarian who cooked lasagna. She knew that Rocky had been lying the whole time, that Bob had really told her that a child of his was out there in the world, helpless and looking for him. Rocky had kept him from looking for her. She wasn't fooled by Rocky.
If her father had come looking for her, he would have loved her. She had pictured him a million times, striding up to the door of each foster family, knocking firmly. He always said, “I'm here for my daughter.” And she had run into his arms, again and again.
Rocky would have to pay to get Danielle back. That was part two of the plan. Rocky had money, and Natalie wanted it. Franklin had found life insurance money. She had suffered enough. She checked the time on one of Franklin's laptops. Pretty soon there was going to be a screamfest on Peaks Island when they figured out that Natalie had taken the girl and the dog. She might have another thirty minutes or so before they started connecting the dots. She pulled the battery out of her cell phone and tossed it in the garbage can.
“Where's the other cell phone?” asked Natalie.
“Right on the mattress,” said Franklin. He wiped his hand across his mouth, nodding toward the bedroom with his head.
Natalie walked into the alcove where their mattress and clothes were. Franklin was such a toad. Had he ever washed his clothes since they had been here?
She hadn't counted on Danielle looking so small in their apartment. The kid was on the petite side, like her grandmother, that was all.
Danielle still had on her backpack. “I want to go find Gramma now,” she said, glancing at Franklin, who had not stopped staring at her since they came in. He pulled off his shirt. His skin was so white that lines of blue veins were visible along his temple, across his forearms, and up his neck.
“Well, here's the thing, little girl, we're not meeting your grandmother. If you're a good girl, I'll let you play on one of my computers,” said Franklin.
Natalie heard the slick of predator in his voice, the same way she'd heard it from the two brothers in her second foster family. She could still control Franklin, she was sure of it, but she hadn't factored in that he'd be a perv with little kids. She had never seen him around children.
“Put your shirt on and go outside to make sure that the van windows are open a few inches. If that dog starts barking, he's going to attract attention,” said Natalie.
Franklin's pupils had dilated to receive Danielle. He stepped closer to the little girl while he pulled his shirt over his head, worming his arms into it. The hair under his arms was as white as the hair on his head.
Natalie stared him down. “Go on, just a couple of inches. He's in the back. You won't have to touch him or anything.”
Franklin hesitated, as if deciding. She saw it instantlyâlife had trained her to see potential dangers in a tone of voice, a turn of the head. She could spot sexual desire in an instant, and she knew when someone wanted to get rid of her before they did. Her hold on Franklin was evaporating, spiraling out into the atmosphere. He glanced sidelong at Danielle as he left the apartment.
When the door was closed, Danielle leapt off the chair. “I don't like him. He smells like raw potato skins. Are you mad at me, Natalie? Did I do something wrong? I want to call my house now. I want to go home.”
Danielle put her arms around Natalie, reaching upward to encircle her waist. “Let's get out of here while he's gone. Come on, Natalie.”
She didn't like to be touched, but Danielle's hands were tiny and soft. Why didn't this kid get it? Was this why it was so easy to hurt kids? Danielle should not trust her.
Natalie reached behind her and disengaged Danielle's hands. The little girl trembled from her head to her toes.
“I need to make a phone call to Rocky. If she does what I say, you get to go home again,” said Natalie. There, that should make it plain enough. “If not, everything bad that happens will be Rocky's fault, not mine.”