by Jeff Abbott
For a moment I stopped thinking of her as the nagging coach on what I should say or do or the adoption consultant we’ve paid thousands of dollars and I see her at my front door, beyond excited with the news that the Russians found a baby for us. Us falling into each other’s arms in relief and joy, sisters in battle. I must get my mind right. I took her hands in mine.
“We are not giving up,” I said. “That boy is meant to be with us and he’s going to be with us.”
“I won’t have you in danger,” Kyle said.
“Look, someone identified us, maybe because of my work”—Kyle flinched, as he sometimes did when I mentioned that I used to work for some very famous people—“and decided to make an example of us. Because we’d get press coverage of it. Maybe they want to not scare just us, but any foreign families wanting to adopt Russian children.”
A horrified look crossed Danielle’s face at this idea. “I need to make some phone calls.” She left us.
In our room Kyle and I collapsed on the bed. We held each other. The lobby called later and told us two journalists from the major newspapers in town wanted to talk to us. We declined.
“Five weeks,” Kyle whispered to me. “We have to hold on for five weeks until he’s ours. Then we never have to come back to this place.”
“Promise me he’ll be ours,” I said to him, and Kyle nodded and kissed me with resolve.
34
Iris
When Iris comes downstairs the next morning, Peter Horvath is drinking coffee at the kitchen island while Grant eats his cereal.
“This is an early start,” Iris says. The boys were awfully quiet; she didn’t even hear Grant let Peter in the house.
“Grant asked me to take him to school,” Peter says. “He didn’t want to take the bus today.”
“Do you feel up to school, babe?” Iris asks Grant. He nods.
She wonders if Kyle will go to work. He should, she decides. They can’t just sit in limbo.
“Ned is going, too.” Peter’s gaze meets hers.
Iris stares. Surely Ned should take at least a week off. Peter shrugs.
Peter says, “I’ve never told you how cool it is that you write songs.”
“Oh, well, used to. I don’t really write anymore.” The last time she heard one of her songs out in public, it was at the grocery store, piped into the aisles, and she embarrassed herself by singing along as she shopped for breakfast cereal.
“I have my mom’s CDs from the nineties, and I went through them and found five songwriting credits to you.”
Iris flushes with pleasure. “Oh. Well. How nice.”
“You’re, like, the coolest mom in Lakehaven,” Peter says, and for a moment Iris wonders about this boy who has kept to himself so much, who hasn’t seemed to mind when his own father spent extra time with Grant. He’s an odd duck but a sweet kid, and she feels a swelling of gratitude that Peter is shepherding Grant through this difficult time.
“I wish I knew how to write a song,” Peter says. “I’d like to write about what it’s like to come to America.” He laughs. “All the way from Toronto.”
“Just write it. You learn by doing,” Iris says.
“Did you ever want to write about bringing Grant from Russia?” Peter asks. “The way you wrote about Julia being so ill when she was little?”
The smile freezes. For the barest moment. “Oh, gosh, no. I don’t know that he would want me to.”
“I wouldn’t care,” Grant says, not knowing if he would care or not.
“Who would sing it, honey, except me?”
“Danielle once told me,” Peter says, “that she encouraged all her clients to keep an adoption journal. I bet one written by a songwriter would be fascinating reading.” He sips at his coffee. He glances at Grant. Iris notices that Grant is staring at her.
Iris keeps her smile steady. “I did not do that. With the tidal wave of paperwork, I couldn’t manage it.”
“Where in Russia did you get Grant?” Peter asks. “Moscow?”
“Saint Petersburg. Well, near it.”
“Have you ever wanted to go back?”
“Never,” Iris says. “I mean, if Grant wants to go, of course we’ll take him, but he’s never wanted to go. It would be best to wait until he’s an adult.”
“I’ve changed my mind,” Grant says. “I’d like to go back soon. Like, maybe my next school break.”
“Not during winter,” Iris says, laughing weakly.
“Would that bother you? If I wanted to go back?” Grant asks.
She sees he’s serious. “It would be fine with me. But you’ve never wanted to go back there before.”
“Do you want to go back to Russia, Mom? Like a tourist?”
She measures her answer. “I don’t think so. I don’t much like snow.”
Now he gives her a long look, the kind she gives him when he’s dodging a question. “Was there anything weird about my adoption?”
“All adoptions are weird,” Iris says. “What’s brought this on?”
“Danielle has made me think of all that. What it must have been like for her, and for you and Dad, to go so far away to get me. You never talk much about it.”
“It was a process. It doesn’t matter. What matters is you are our son and you are deeply loved.”
“You’re my mom,” Grant says. “My real mom. But my biological mom and dad…I’d like to know about them. I could have asked Danielle, or her contacts there, about them.”
Peter looks uncomfortable, trapped in this family conversation, and he stares deep into his coffee mug.
Iris pours herself a cup of coffee. “Once adoptions stopped from Russia, Danielle didn’t do business there anymore,” Iris says. “I don’t know if she still even stayed in touch with anyone there.”
“Did you ever meet my mother or my father?”
“No, honey. It’s not allowed. Why would we want to meet them?”
“What if my mom gave me up because she was a drug addict? Wouldn’t you want to know?”
“I don’t know what she was,” Iris says steadily, “but we were told she was healthy when she gave birth to you. There was nothing in your health history to suggest otherwise.”
“So why didn’t she want me?” Grant’s voice rose.
“I don’t know, Grant. Maybe she couldn’t afford to keep you. Maybe she believed an American couple would adopt you and you’d have a better life.” Iris keeps her voice mom-steady. “We can’t know. But I’m so grateful to her for making her choice. I’ll be forever grateful to her.”
“Have you ever lied to me about anything that happened in Russia?”
“No. We have not.” Iris makes her voice steel.
Grant digests this. “I would like to see Saint Petersburg.”
“It is a lovely city. Have you ever been, Peter?” Just trying to change the subject, to get the pressure off her. “Your dad is such a world traveler.”
Peter shakes his head. “Dad loathes the Russians for what they did to Czechoslovakia back in the day. He won’t go there, won’t invest there. He says there’s too many criminals in power. Did you enjoy your time there?”
“We saw so little of the country. It was mostly meetings with bureaucrats and going to the orphanage and buying stuff and meeting with the judge.”
Grant says, “Mom, we’ve got to go.”
Both the boys head toward the backyard.
“Wait, where’s your car, Peter?”
“Back at my house,” Peter says. “It’s faster to walk there through the greenbelt.”
“OK. Be careful. Have a good day.”
“Peter, go. I’ll catch up,” Grant says. Peter walks on through the yard, the gate, into the greenbelt.
Grant stares at his mother. “Have you ever lied to me?”
He doesn’t sound like a child. He sounds like a young man, stepping into shoes he can’t quite fill.
“About what?”
“I thought it was a yes or no question.”
&nb
sp; “No, I haven’t lied to you.”
“Did you really not keep a journal?”
He knows. “I didn’t have time.”
“You’re a songwriter, Mom. You express yourself in words. Did you keep a journal?”
“Where on earth is this coming from?”
“You’re shaking,” he says, and she knows he’s right.
“You accusing me of lying is upsetting,” Iris says through clenched teeth.
“OK. I love you,” Grant says, and he turns and goes out the door. Into the greenbelt.
She can feel him slipping away from her now. The greatest fear of her life, her children turning their backs on her.
How does he know about the journal? Who told him?
She heads up to his room.
35
Julia
Ned texted Julia early and asked her for a ride to school. He also asked her for help in organizing his mother’s stuff, at least giving him an idea of what to do with it. He hasn’t paid attention to her unanswered texts, but she decides Ned is key to getting Marland off her back. So she buries her anger and walks to his house, her mind racing after hearing Marland’s threats. If her parents were involved in Danielle’s death—it was the question she couldn’t imagine asking, but there it was—it had to be dealt with.
Danielle had something on them, something bad from the past.
Maybe it was about Grant’s adoption. A bribe? A broken law? Something worse. It had to be worse, she thought. Why would Ned ask her to come over and help organize things? Either he wants to talk, or he takes her loyalty and friendship for granted.
Packing up his mother’s stuff seems rushed to her, but she takes it as a sign that Gordon is desperate to get his son out of Austin, back to London. Away from all this. Gordon must know his slightly wayward son has gone fully wayward. Never mind if there was an extradition treaty with the UK. Gordon could get his son to Africa, where there were countries without extradition treaties. Ghana would extradite, but Ned was a minor. Gordon could hide him.
So it was up to her. Maybe whatever hold Danielle had on her parents was here in this house, and it was up to Julia to find it. Make Gordon’s fear and anxiety work for her. Pretend she wasn’t hurt by Ned’s abandonment and Marland’s…insistence that she step into Ned’s role.
Ned greets her like everything’s sort of normal between them—is he for real, she wonders, or is he just in a grief-fueled daze?—and he walks her to his mother’s large closet.
“I can’t use any of this,” he says. “I thought maybe a church or a resale shop…What do you think?”
“Sure,” she says. She doesn’t want to say anything else to him. It’s easy for him to act like he doesn’t know what Marland has said, and maybe he doesn’t.
She surveys the closet. It’s a lot of professional wear, and she knows nothing about that, but this will let her search the closet. Wouldn’t it be likely, if Danielle had hidden something in the house, she would have done so in a room her son rarely ventured into? “I can organize it for you, count the number of items.” She tries to put a hint of enthusiasm into her voice.
“Before you came over,” he says, “I sat on the couch and just stared off into space for ten minutes.”
“Ned.” She’s so angry with him and at the same time she feels sorry for him. He’s never going to get over this, she realizes. He feels guilt about what happened to his mother. That is not something you shake. And here’s his father, telling him to bundle up his mother’s life, pack it up and give it away, and he’s just doing it.
“I’m sorry I didn’t answer your texts last night. My dad just kept talking at me. I don’t know what to do about anything,” he says. “I’ll talk to Marland about leaving you alone, Jules.” His voice is small.
It will make no difference, except then he can claim that he tried. “That’s fine,” she says. “I’ve got it handled. You have enough to worry about.”
“You do? Oh, good.” Now he’s absolved from responsibility. She can almost see the relief in his face. “Papa is sleeping in the guest room, so you can lay out clothes on the bed if that helps. Papa is working on her office.”
Danielle’s office is another interesting place where secrets could be hidden. But she can focus on only one room at a time and so she starts here.
She begins by organizing the suits first—a couple of them have dust on the shoulders. Then a long lines of slacks and jeans. With the pants, she starts checking the pockets and she goes back and checks the suit jacket pockets as well. Nothing. She starts on the blazers. Nothing. She notices some discarded clothes on the floor, roughly tossed toward the laundry hamper, and those will need to be washed or dry-cleaned before they’re donated. She organizes them and then starts to work through the clothes already in the closed hamper. She picks up one—a navy blazer—and a phone falls out from its inner pocket, onto the floor.
Julia kneels by it.
Hadn’t Ned said he lost a phone and Marland told her he wanted Ned’s burner?
Danielle had it. And had hidden it. Tucked in a jacket down in a hamper.
She turns it on. It still holds a charge, a slight one. There is one number in the phone.
It’s the same number she’s seen before. Marland’s number.
This burner was what Marland wanted in exchange for that video of her father walking at night with Danielle.
Julia remembers to breathe. She goes to the text app and looks through them. Ned had been using Critterscape to communicate with his customers, but not with Marland. She opens the text app and reads the last and final text:
Listen to me, you punk. You are going to leave Ned alone and never contact him again or I’ll have the police on your ass so fast your head will spin.
There is only one person who could have written a text like that—a parent. It screams parent who found my son’s burner phone he used to communicate with a drug dealer and rather than turn over my son to the police I’ll just break off the business relationship how do you like that?
There was one response: bitch don’t threaten me
Julia stares at the message. She hears Ned calling for her, and she shoves the phone into her boot, smooths the hem of her jeans over it.
“Yeah, what?” She steps out of his mom’s closet.
“I don’t know that I can do this right now. It’s all too soon.”
“You have to deal with it eventually,” she says.
Ned holds up a document. “I found this in her files.”
“What?”
He looks guilty for a moment, and she feels the weight of the phone against her ankle. The text would kill Ned, the idea that this so-called harmless prescription pill dealing he’d engaged in had led to his mother’s death, that Danielle had threatened Marland and he’d killed her to ensure her silence.
Ned holds a folder with more papers in it. “I wondered…well, Papa asked me if she had a will.”
Julia hasn’t thought of that. Wills were something for adults to worry about. “I’m sure she must have,” Julia says. “She was a lawyer.”
“Yeah, well, yes, she did, and she left everything to me. The problem is…the house isn’t in her name.” His voice is a whisper.
Julia waits.
“It’s held in the name of a company. Firebird Investments.” He shows her the papers in the folder. “My dad started making phone calls. They don’t call back. Their website is super basic. No one knows who this company is. It’s like in a movie—it’s like a front company.”
“Why would she buy a house and then not have it in her name?”
“I guess the answer is that someone bought it for her.”
“Bought. Her. A. House. For real.”
“Yeah.”
“Who would buy your mom a house?” Most of the homes in Winding Creek had been moderately priced when first built, but the property values in Lakehaven skyrocketed as Austin grew and money poured in from Californian and New England buyers. Now the homes cost well over twice wh
at they had fifteen years ago. She knew that because she’d heard her parents talk about whether or not to sell once Grant started college… The money would help finance his education, but where would they buy a house in Austin at a reasonable price? It was a dilemma.
“My dad looked up Firebird Investments. They don’t seem to exist. I mean, they’re not at the address used in the home purchase papers. At least not now.”
Mystery upon mystery. But she thinks, sickeningly, that the solution to the murder lies in her boot. “I need to go outside. I need some fresh air.”
“What’s the matter?”
“I’m going through your dead mother’s clothes first thing in the morning and it’s overwhelming,” she says snappishly, when she didn’t mean to use those words or that tone. Ned’s mouth trembles, but she cannot stand to see him cry right now. It would undo her grief and her rage. So she pushes past him and goes out into the yard. The day is cloudy, perfect for mourning, and she sinks to her knees in the grass.
What is she going to do? The weight of her bad choice presses down on her like a giant’s fist.
If she shows this phone to the police, Ned will be exposed as a…drug dealer. There are no kinder words. Sure, he wasn’t trafficking heroin, but what he was doing was illegal. Earlier she’d done an internet search, and yes, there were examples of nice suburban kids getting busted for drug dealing at high schools and colleges, and guess what, often they went to prison. She knows about the ring. She hasn’t reported it. With a murder complicating this, she knows she is in serious trouble.
