Day Three

by Patricia Spencer

  Margaret looked at her, eyebrows raised, noticed her chest rising and falling, bellows fanning angry embers. She touched Brenna’s crossed arms. “I didn’t call him, dear.”

  She glanced at Margaret. “He has whole agencies to track me down.”

  The Magnificent emerged from the car. What, no regal cape your majesty?

  Margaret put her hand on Brenna’s arm. “Isn’t this what you wanted your whole life?” she asked softly. “For you father to care enough to come get you?”

  “Not here. Not now.”

  “Then, when, if not when you’re having a difficult time?”

  She stared at Margaret.

  “Brenna!” her father called, coming up the slight incline toward her.

  “I imagine,” Margaret continued, “that he’s gone through a great deal of trouble to locate you.”

  Brenna frowned. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the driver walking around to the far side of the car.

  “Isn’t your father supposed to be in Vienna?” Margaret persisted. “Think, Brenna. Be in this moment, not in the past.”

  Her father’s shadow reached her and stopped. He cleared his throat. “I’ve brought your daughter.”

  Margaret inhaled sharply.

  “What?” Brenna said.

  “Elizabeth Ann,” he said. “The baby you adopted in Kavsak.”

  His words floated in the air around her, nonsensical sounds imbedded in familiar keywords. Baby. Kavsak.

  “Squeak,” he prompted.

  Her brain reeled. How did he know about Squeak? Had she blurted something to James? She’d never mention Squeak to her father. The baby was too precious, too close to her heart. Too awful. She tried to think back. Her brain felt clouded, drugged. Had she snapped when her father was visiting her at Daniel’s? She looked away. The trees bordering the clearing, her sentinels, were tilted.

  A shadow moved into view beside her father’s.

  She caught the movement, shifted her glance, and saw a familiar woman. She stared hard, concentrating on her face, trying to make sense of it. Oh, yes. Dr. J. But she was in Maine, right?

  “Brenna?” the old woman said.

  Brenna narrowed her eyes. Dr. J was lifting her arms, cradling something. A baby, wrapped in a yellow blanket. Dark-eyed, with brown hair. Tiny rosebud lips parted and Brenna heard a mew. A single rusty sound that yanked her back to Roza’s nursery.

  Hallucinating, she thought. And the earth swallowed her.

  Brenna opened her eyes and cautiously looked around, orienting herself. Cottage. Maine. Margaret, perched on the edge of the couch beside her. No one else in the room. Mirage gone.

  “Water?” Margaret asked, picking up a glassful from the coffee table.

  She nodded and brought her elbows up beneath herself. Margaret steadied the glass while she drank. She dropped back, still feeling shaky. Too much sun, she thought. It must be heat stroke.

  “Better?”

  “Yeah. Phoo. I didn’t think it was that hot, did you? You look okay and you were out there just as long as I was. Maybe I need one of those straw hats, too. I’m not usually affected by the heat, maybe ‘cause I’m not fully recovered from the leg wound, I mean, I’m not my—”

  “Brenna. It was real. I sent them for a walk.”

  She stopped babbling. Her heart started folding in on itself like a heavy drape slowly sliding off a rod into a thick pile. She grunted, heaved herself up, set her feet on the floor and leaned forward, elbows on her knees, head propped in her hands. “Tell me what’s real,” she whispered. “Because I don’t know any more.”

  Margaret steepled her fingers and tapped them thoughtfully, her eyes scanning the blue horizon beyond the picture window. “Maric was born in Kavsak,” she said. “He belonged there, had family and friends still living there. And yet he lay it under siege. Shelled it. Shot into it. Came into its neighborhoods with his men and his guns to wipe out the very people he once lived peacefully alongside.”

  “What?” Brenna said. Margaret’s reply baffled her.

  “It isn’t the outcome of war that matters, Brenna. It makes no difference. On the ground, everybody loses. When the smoke clears, yes, there’s a new flag over the castle, a new man on the throne. But he only stays there until another, hungrier man marches to the gates and it all begins anew. What drove Maric mad was that he knew this, that he had been living in peace, and was nevertheless forced to choose sides, to participate in a war that he knew was pointless.”

  “Margaret. Dr. J’s walking around with a baby I thought was dead.”

  “Don’t you see? There was no need for him to kill you, or Daniel, or the children. For that matter, there was no need not to. He knew that neither outcome mattered. That was his pain—the pointlessness, the powerlessness. The cruelty he imposed on you was the same one imposed on him. He was alone. He needed someone—you—to understand.”

  Brenna clenched her fists. “A game?” she hissed incredulously. Her body shook, trapped in the paralyzing frustration of needing to lash out but not having anyone to direct it at. “He made me think he killed the babies? I lost my sanity? Got my leg blown up? I lost Daniel over a fucking mind game??”

  She buried her face in her hands. Oh my fucking god.

  Now, she fully comprehended the futility of everything she had done. All the pain she had endured. The self-hatred. The dissolution of her sense of integrity and self-worth. The love she had thrown away. For no reason. Absolutely none.

  She sobbed disconsolately—howled, after all, filling the small cottage with her pain. She was tied to Maric’s dark knowledge.

  Margaret sat with her, steady presence, witnessing.

  Brenna cried, ashamed that she had been so stupid, that she had dared to feel so much, that she had lost everything good that had been placed before her. She cried until she was exhausted and could weep no more. Then she cried some more.

  Margaret offered her water. Brought her tissues. Waited until she finally fell silent.

  “Better?”

  Brenna nodded, humiliated herself by immediately starting to cry again. “Oh, Margaret,” she mumbled.

  “Tap’s been shut tight for a lot of years, Brenna. One expects a gush when it’s finally worked loose.”

  “God,” she moaned. “I’ll never be able to look you in the eye again.”

  “On the contrary,” Margaret assured her. “Now you will.”

  Brenna dabbed at her swollen face with a wad of tissue. “Squeak is really real?”

  “Absolutely. Dr. J took me aside and asked me to reassure you that the adoption papers her son Jasha sent with her are perfectly authentic. Elizabeth Ann—Squeak—is legally your daughter.”

  Jasha? Authentic papers? Ha. She started crying again.

  “Also, she wants you to know that the other children who’d been awaiting their adoptive parents at Roza’s are home now, too.”

  Brenna wept even harder.

  Late in the day, with Margaret by her side, Brenna picked her way down the cliff to the shore where her father and Dr. J were sitting on the big boulder. Her father’s driver/bodyguard paced some distance away, back to the ocean, surveying the shore.

  Brenna felt sheepish, as she always did when her emotions got away from her. There were unspoken rules about how feelings could acceptably be displayed. Women were allowed tears, but rage resided in a forbidden zone. For all the legitimate reasons there were to feel anger, its expression was disallowed. Stuffed inside, anger plus helplessness metastasized to rage.

  Margaret, bless her, had never tried to quell the venom spewing out of her. She sat in the face of it, accepted its need to emerge, and somehow survived crossing paths with it.

  “Thank you, dear,” Margaret said, releasing Brenna’s steadying hand, the path level now.

  Dr. J was giving Squeak a bottle. Her father was gazing down at the baby, occasionally glancing up to exchange a murmur with his companion. Brenna took a deep breath and stepped forward.

  “Hey,�
� she mumbled.

  “Hello, Brenna.” Dr. J proffered a cheek.

  Brenna gave her a peck and a warm embrace.

  “Brenna,” her father said.

  She tipped her head, her eyes glued to the swaddled bundle in Dr. J’s arms.

  “You wish to hold her now?”

  She nodded, too overwhelmed by emotion to speak.

  Her father stood up to make space for her on the boulder, but stayed near, his eyes sharp on her.

  She took his spot. Dr. J transferred Squeak into her arms, and Brenna pressed the slight warm weight close to her heart. Staring down at her, she leaned forward until her forehead nearly met the baby’s. “I went back for you,” she whispered, her voice cracking, tears streaming down her face. “I wanted you. I went back.”

  Brenna bent over her, rocking her, clutching her to her bosom, her body racked by soundless sobs.

  Squeak, held too tightly, mewed.

  Brenna straightened, sniffing, and loosened the wrap to see her better. Tiny fingers wriggled free, followed by a minuscule hand that shot out—and found Brenna’s breast. She rested her arm across Brenna’s bosom, as she had that very first time in Kavsak.

  Brenna heard her father grunt, and looked up in time to see him exchange a ‘You were right’ look with Dr. J.

  Meanwhile, Margaret looked on, misty-eyed.

  Dr. J handed Brenna the bottle. She put it to Squeak’s lips the way Daniel had taught her, and the baby latched on. The impossible had happened. You’re my baby. I’m a mother.

  Squeak suckled contentedly, her eyes fixed on Brenna’s.

  Dr. J smiled approvingly. The Envoy’s eyes narrowed on his daughter as if he were seeing her for the first time.

  Squeak emptied the bottle and dozed off. At length, Brenna lifted her face from the child’s and looked out at the blue horizon. “Listen,” she whispered to Dr. J.

  “Silence.”

  Brenna nodded. “I’m sorry about Jasha. He was a true, dear friend to me.” She looked down at Squeak. “His final gift, Dr. J.”

  “He would like this peace,” Dr. J said, “would like seeing you with Elizabeth Ann.”

  The sun subsided silently behind them.

  Margaret invited Dr. J and the Envoy to stay for dinner, and shepherded them indoors to assemble a Salade Niçoise with tuna, mixed lettuces from the garden, blanched green peas and beans, small red-skinned boiled potatoes, and garlic-buttered toasted baguette. The older women ordered Brenna to keep Squeak happy, and Dr. J mobilized Brenna’s father to set the table. The Magnificent, setting the table!

  Over dinner, distracted by the sheer wonder of Squeak soundly asleep on her lap, her belly calmly rising and falling, and little snorty sounds emanating from her small pink mouth, Brenna listened only half-attentively to Dr. J’s story about her escape from Kavsak. More interested in the sub-text of the gathering than in the text, she studied the people assembled around her.

  Margaret was looking her age tonight. Her usually-animated face was sagging and still. Though she had asked Dr. J about the journey, and was following the story, she had a distracted air about her.

  Her shoulders were slumped. And little wonder.

  The laws of physics stated that energy was neither created nor destroyed. Perhaps the burden of violence moved from one set of shoulders to the next, down a never-ending line, so that even people who had not experienced it first-hand carried its weight. She had transferred much of her own burden to this kind woman who had served as her mother, friend, and therapist for the past weeks. Her own spiritual lightening had exacted a cost.

  Dr. J, her other stalwart ally, had experienced profound personal losses. And yet, essentially destitute, she had taken on the care of an infant and traversed half a world to bring her to the world’s most improbable mother. These women were her examples, the models she had been missing from her youth.

  She turned her gaze to her father. His behavior tonight was surprising her. For once he was not claiming center stage. He’d pulled out Dr. J’s chair for her, refilled her water glass, urged second helpings, brushed his fingertips against hers while passing the pepper. Brenna dropped her eyes to Squeak and hid a smile. Her father was in for an interesting ride with Dr. J. If there was one thing that humble old hen had learned, living with a husband and four sons, it was how to firmly but lovingly peck any rooster who strutted too self-importantly. She was old school. The woman set the tone in the home, and the men came to heel.

  Dr. J’s story progressed from Vienna to her trip into Washington, D.C. “Daniel, when I visited him, said ‘No. No hotel. You and the baby stay with me. I have a nursery’.”

  Brenna raised her head. “You stayed with Daniel?”

  “Oh! Yes. Very generous man. So kind. So sweet with the baby—”

  Brenna shifted her attention to Margaret. “You knew,” she said, her voice beneath Dr. J’s. It was not a question. Daniel talked to her all the time.

  “—Very good care, he gives, like a father—”

  Margaret’s eyes met hers, filled with silent apology.

  “How long did you know, Margaret?”

  Dr. J stopped, frozen by Brenna’s tone.

  “Five days.”

  Brenna caught a short, hard breath.

  “Think back,” Margaret said, her voice as steady as when she guided Brenna’s meditations. “Had Squeak been delivered to you then, could you have—?”

  Brenna shook off her gut reaction, her distrustful assumption. Margaret was right. Back then, she still hadn’t broken through about Maric, come to the psychological place where she could see herself being responsible for a child again. It was because of Margaret’s steadfastness that Brenna was now able to hold a daughter on her lap.

  Her father rubbed his chin. “Your son must be relieved to know how well Brenna’s doing,” he said to Margaret.

  “He doesn’t know that I’ve…been here…with Brenna. Neither my husband nor my son knows.” Margaret pressed her fingertips to her eyelids, her grief ill-concealed. “I’ve been where I shouldn’t be—keeping secrets from Alden, and caught between Daniel and Brenna.”

  Brenna tipped her head, eyes narrowed on her father. What was he not saying? That he had suspected Daniel had known her whereabouts and not told him? “How did you find me, Father?” Did you browbeat Daniel?

  “FBI.”

  And how did you get Squeak out of his arms? Swoop imperiously into his home and have your bodyguards wrench her away from him? “Tell me, Father,” she said, her voice quaking with anger, “that you didn’t forcibly take this baby out of Daniel’s arms.” I’ll hate you for fucking ever.

  Dr. J’s eyes widened with alarm. “The baby was with me,” she said. “Daniel trusted her to me, Brenna. He gave her willingly, for you. And he said if you were not able to… That he would be her father.”

  Tears crept to the rims of Brenna’s eyes. Daniel. Not only had she left him, she had enlisted his mother, and taken away the baby. Even when she kept her distance, she hurt him.

  “If I can use telephone,” Dr. J said, “I must call him to tell him where we are.”

  Margaret placed an allaying hand on Dr. J’s elbow. “Please. He doesn’t know the role I’ve played. I don’t want him to hear this from someone else. May I?”

  Dr. J agreed.

  “Brenna,” Margaret said. “I need your leave to tell him I’ve been with you. I won’t discuss the content of our—”

  “Call,” she said, miserably shaking her head. “I’m sorry, Margaret. So sorry to have put you in this position.”

  Margaret came around the table and rested her hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry I’ve hurt Daniel,” she said, “but I’m not sorry I helped you, Brenna.”

  Brenna nodded. Tears slipped down her face.

  Margaret lifted her chin. “You’ve come through the worst of it. Don’t fall apart now.”

  “I won’t,” she mumbled.

  “All right. If you would all excuse me.” She walked to the front
door, pulling her cell phone out of her skirt pocket as she went.

  Too dispirited to bother fixing himself dinner, Daniel stayed glued to the computer in his home office well into the evening. Finally, his growling stomach convinced him he should at least have a bowl of cereal and a glass of milk before bedtime.

  He closed the on-screen applications and rolled back from his desk. His mind was wandering so much, there was little point in continuing. Tomorrow, he could start early. Hopefully, more productively.

  He switched off his computer and monitor, and headed for the staircase. At the top of the stairs, he glimpsed a small red dot glowing in the dark nursery. The baby monitor was still on. He veered off. Flipping on the overhead light in the nursery, he crossed to the chest of drawers and turned off the unit.

  He stood in silence, his eyes roaming over the rocking horse wallpaper, the cheerful curtains, and the empty crib. He and Aya had prepared this room nearly three years ago, their hearts filled with expectation, never imagining that that life would not materialize.

  A tiny green-and-yellow striped sock on the floor beside the rocking chair caught his eye. He bent for it. From toe to heel, it was barely longer than his thumb. It must have worked itself off while he was rocking Squeak. He rubbed it between his fingers. Where was the baby now, he wondered. Stateside? In Europe somewhere? Had she been delivered to Brenna yet? If so, how had the reunion gone?

  Not one child for me. Ever.

  Re-finding Squeak, would Brenna still feel the same way?

  He set the sock on top of the dresser, reconsidered, and stuffed it in his pocket, a foolish pretense of having her nearer. Maybe Squeak would be back.

  Maybe not.

  He didn’t want Brenna to fail, didn’t want to deprive her of the chance of expressing the maternal side that he had glimpsed in Kavsak. In fact, it relieved him to think that she’d get another chance at leading a full life, after the mess he had made of things.

  None of that, however, changed the fact that he wanted Squeak, too.

  He headed downstairs to the kitchen, pulled the corn flakes box out of the pantry, and was reaching for the bowl when the phone rang. The display showed his mother’s cell phone number. He picked up. “Hey, Ma.”