The Sisters (42 page)

“No, no,” Lynn said, sipping her coffee and winking at her husband. “This is
quality
journalism.”

Sam rubbed her shoulders and leaned down to kiss her on the head. He picked at the roots of her hair with his fingers. “Not a sign of gray, Judge.”

“They did make a point to say I’ve ruled in favor of the adoptive parents in other cases,” Lynn said, “but then they as much as took it back by saying those were mostly surrogacy disputes. They said I have a history of social activism—showed some photo of me in college, waving a sign for immigration-law reform—and then they implied I may be politically motivated to rule in favor of the Hispanic father.”

“Motivated? Why? He’s not an immigrant. What—do they think you can’t win your seat again without the Hispanic vote? In Indy? All four percent of it?”

Lynn set her coffee on the table, pulled Sam down to the couch, and swung her feet into his lap for a massage. “They’re just making something out of nothing, as usual,” she said. “Have to keep those viewers from turning over to CNN.” She leaned back, eyes closed, and stretched her legs while her husband worked the tight muscles in her calves. “Oh, yes, they did make sure to mention that Taylor’s adopted. And they found out somehow about Daddy, too—about my finding him after being kept away from him for years—and so they’re twisting that into evidence of bias.”

But if they were looking for bias, Lynn thought, they were reading her far too simply. Though Julio Ortiz was the child’s biological father, if she ruled in his favor, she’d have to watch Julianne Howard being torn from the arms of the parents she loved, the parents who loved her. Just imagining that moment had rekindled Lynn’s childhood nightmare, squalling and reaching out with all her might to her receding father.

What would those reporters think—always so busy trying to guess a person’s motivations to get the jump on the competition—what would they think if they knew how much she had struggled, especially in the early years, to be fair to the more vindictive parent in custody disputes? It was usually the mother, determined to cut the children off entirely from the father. Two or three times, Lynn had ruled fully in the woman’s favor, but only when the evidence of danger to the children from the father was insurmountable. More often, she had played it safe, granting at least visiting rights to the other parent, and frequently joint custody, but at times she had paid with nagging doubts about whether she’d done the right thing. Maybe the bitter parent was bitter for a reason.

The phone rang, and Lynn said, “That’ll be Mother.”

Sam stretched toward the end table to read the caller ID. “Yep,” he said. “I can tell her you’re not here.”

Lynn held out her hand for the receiver. “I might as well get it over with.”

Rainey waited only for Lynn’s hello before starting to talk. “Don’t tell me you’re going to take that child away from her parents and give her back to that Mexican.”

“He’s not Mexican, Mother. He’s American. Third or fourth generation. And he’s her parent, too.”

“I’ve been watching the news, listening to him talk,” Rainey said, “and I don’t believe he really wants that little girl. He just wants the attention and he’s trying to make everybody feel sorry for him because he’s been in the war.”

“Well, if that’s all he wants, then why—” Lynn caught herself, annoyed that she had once again nearly let her mother embroil her in an emotional debate. “Look, I can’t talk about the case. Why do I have to explain that every time?”

“Well, you just tell me one thing.” Mother’s voice pricked Lynn like cold spurs. “What would you have done if some other judge had tried to take Taylor away from you?”

“The cases are altogether different,” Lynn said, feeling her skin hardening to steel. “The mother, as you know very well, OD’d on crack. The father won’t be out of prison until Taylor’s in grad school.”

“Then tell me this,” Rainey went on. “How do you think a man like that Ortiz fellow can take care of a little child? The army’s liable to send him to Iraq.”

“I really can’t talk about it, Mother.” With the press of Lynn’s thumb on a button, Rainey evaporated. For now, anyway. Eventually, Lynn knew, she would have to apologize for her brusqueness—her truce with her mother was ever fragile and needed tending. But it could wait. Later, when she called to check her messages, Lynn would tell her secretary to send flowers—white poppies, if one could get them. For peace.

Still, her mother, as a fairly typical representation of the American television viewer, had raised the specter of what questions the media, ravenous for scandal, might ask. Since they had already introduced the subject of Taylor’s adoption, might they next begin to speculate on whether Lynn had taken advantage of inside information to adopt a child who could never be reclaimed? Or would they study the local news archives and soften in her favor when they found the features applauding her good citizenship for adopting an older, at-risk child?

As with all things public and political, the pendulum of mood might swing either way, but right now, it seemed that pendulum was swinging for her head. No—that image was as absurdly overdramatic as the YouTube video. And yet, given the media’s current feelings about her, it wasn’t unreasonable to imagine that one of those reporters could spin the facts to suggest that Lynn and Sam’s reasons for adopting Taylor had been less than pure.

Hadn’t her own sister once hinted at the same thing? They hadn’t talked much, she and Grace, not since they were girls, and when they did, their conversations were brief and strained, but in spite of this, Lynn had let herself believe Grace would celebrate the news of the adoption, so she’d made the call.

The seconds of dead air on Grace’s end had set the tone for what followed. “You’re adopting?” Grace said at last. “Wow. Congratulations.”

Now it was Lynn’s turn to be silent, so Grace could think about what she’d done.

“What I mean is,” Grace stammered, “I’m just surprised. I didn’t know you wanted children.”

“Sam and I have been trying since we were married,” Lynn said, too angry to admit she’d probably never told Grace that. “It’s not going to happen, and it seems wrong—to both of us—to go through the long process for in vitro or surrogacy when there are so many children who need homes.”

“That makes sense,” Grace said, not sounding truly convinced. “But why this child? I mean”—Grace’s voice lifted toward the lighthearted—“I know there’s a long waiting list for an infant, but wouldn’t they pop a judge to the head of the line?”

“I would not take advantage of my position like that,” Lynn snapped.

Though Grace stumbled through an apology, her remark had unnerved Lynn. If her sister had thought to mention it—whether in earnest or in jest—others might do the same. The truth was, when she began considering adoption, Lynn had weighed her options carefully. Healthy white infants were hard to come by, and their adoptions were far more vulnerable to being challenged. The chance of any adoption being contested was slim, but Lynn had learned in law school to consider all the odds. As for her influence—and Sam’s—was her husband supposed to pretend that he wasn’t the most sought-after human rights attorney in Indiana? Was she supposed to apologize for being a newly elected judge and therefore of interest to reporters? But even the appearance of her and Sam’s taking advantage of their public status might make the adoption less secure, so, together, they had decided an older child would be safer—perhaps three or four years old—and they were open to taking a mixed-race child, too, which would increase the chances of completing the adoption sooner. And, yes, they had talked about the impact their adopting Taylor would have on the low adoption rate for nonwhite children. If their choice to adopt in this way could bring attention to other needy children, so much the better. What was wrong with that?

She could have said all that to Grace, but she didn’t. She had long suspected that Grace resented her success, and this confirmed it. Poor Grace—living in that sad little house in the middle of nowhere, left to her by that crazy Vietnam veteran who shot his horse, and himself, in the head. After he was dead, Grace might have done something with her life, gone back to school at least—even Mother had done that. Over the years, Lynn had told her sister two or three times, “Sam and I will help you with the cost. You could study graphic design. Or architecture.” But no, time after time, Grace thanked her without even considering the offer, saying she was content to spend her time growing vegetables, shoeing horses, and making armor.
Armor,
for God’s sake.

When Lynn had made that call to tell Grace about Taylor, she had wanted more than anything to share the whole story: how she had gone to the orphanage simply to make a few inquiries, never expecting Taylor would peer out from around a corner and penetrate her with her eyes—eyes so deeply brown they were nearly black. Lynn was utterly helpless after that, helpless against the absolute love that overtook her. When she went home, she told Sam she’d found her child—at the time she didn’t even know the girl’s name or age, nothing about her except that she was meant to belong to Lynn.

Never had Lynn felt so calmly on fire, and it was this strange sensation that allowed her to say to Sam that if he objected, she would divorce him. “She can be ours, or she can be mine,” Lynn said, entirely without rancor. It was just a fact she was expressing. “But she will be mine.”

Because he loved her, Sam had accepted Lynn’s decision, and when he met Taylor—she was TannaRayla then, so named by her Filipino mother and black father—he fell in love with her, too, so everything was all right.

Lynn turned up the volume on the television again. The
Good Morning America
hosts were all lined up on their couch, talking about her case.

“Hey, babe,” Sam said, playfully squeezing her foot, “You’re the topic Around the Water Cooler this morning.”

“Hooray for me.”

The particular point they were discussing was how Julio Ortiz, if he was granted custody, would deal with Julianne’s memories of the Howards. That was another question Grace had raised about Taylor.

“You said the little girl is what? Five?”

“Yes.”

“So how will you handle it?” Grace’s voice was tentative. “I mean, have you thought about what you’ll do when she remembers?”

“What are you talking about? Remembers what?”

“Her old life,” Grace said. “Her real parents.”

“Sam and I will be her real parents.”

“Lynn, you know what I mean. She’s bound to remember some things. Whether they’re good or bad, you’ll have to be ready to talk to her about them. Think about how you felt. You remembered.”

“I was older. That was different.”

“Lynn…”

She didn’t speak to Grace for nearly a year after that, not until she had to be polite over Christmas dinner at Mother’s. Thankfully, there hadn’t been much need of that. After they’d opened the gifts, Grace had made up her mind she was going to teach Taylor how to play Twister, and by the time they’d finished their second round, it was late enough that Lynn could say, “It’s time for us to say good night and head back to Indianapolis.”

It was a relief now to be able to point to Taylor, at fifteen, as a model of adjustment, and an even greater relief for Lynn to be able to say truly to herself that she had been right: At five, Taylor had been too young to remember her former life in any detail. And Julianne, only four years old, would soon forget her time with the Howards if Lynn ordered the child be returned to Mr. Ortiz.

But here was another factor to be considered—one that the
Good Morning America
reporter had brought up when she asked the Howards, “If you lose custody, will you appeal?”

Before handing down any decision, Lynn weighed the likelihood that her judgment would be overturned by a higher court, but this time, in the case of Julianne Howard, the question seemed especially heavy. If she granted custody to Mr. Ortiz, it would be several years before the Howards could hope to win the child back again—years during which Julianne would have adapted to a new life, a life that she might then be torn from—and what damage might two such tearings do—one at four and another at seven or eight, very nearly the same age Lynn had been when Mother tore her, a second time, from Daddy.

Lynn’s sharpest memories of her father, and the dearest—even after all these years—were of those few months when she was a child, after she’d overcome her initial fear of him, after she’d realized in the instinctive way of little children that he truly wanted her. How she had loved being so small that she had to look up to him as he bent to hand her a huge ice-cream cone, so small that he lifted her on his shoulders to watch a parade, so small that he could carry her effortlessly back to the car when she was tired from the day’s adventure—as if he were her personal storybook giant, noble and gentle, sent to serve and protect her.

Back in college, on that first trip to Siler, her boyfriend, Derek, had asked her, “What do you really want from him, Lynn? If we find him?” If she had told him about her fantasy, he would have scoffed—maybe even broken up with her right there in the car. Derek—like her—was a person of reason who trusted logic drawn from verifiable evidence. It was why they were together.

“I’ve heard my mother’s side of things,” Lynn said. “Now I want to hear his.”

But emotion had overtaken her reason on her father’s front porch when first she saw him, and again on the next three or four visits, months apart, through her senior year. And then suddenly she was in law school, with even less time to spare—she saw him just five times in those three years. After that, she took an internship in Indianapolis, which led her to a job at the law firm, where she worked seventy or eighty hours a week in order to prove herself worthy of a partnership. So it was a long time before she began to consider the facts and to think reasonably about her relationship with Daddy.