Never Ask Me

by Jeff Abbott

  Soon after that, Julia wakes. Her eyes open and then lock in on her mother. Iris squeezes her hand. Ponder takes a deep breath.

  “Baby, it’s OK,” Iris says.

  Julia just looks at her, confused, dopey.

  “Julia,” Ponder says, “can you tell us what happened?”

  Julia tries to speak, but her throat is too bruised. Ponder hands her paper and a pen.

  WOMAN, she writes in a shaky hand. MEDIC. GAVE ME SHOT.

  “She came in your cell and gave you a shot?” Ponder asks.

  Julia nods.

  “Did she say why?”

  SHE SAID SHE WAS SORRY, Julia writes.

  Ponder gestures, and she and Iris step outside. Her friends all fall silent.

  “There was no medical order to sedate her,” Ponder says.

  “Someone did this to her. I want her under guard,” Iris says. “Kyle, too. No one can get near him.”

  “I agree,” Ponder says. “You want to tell me why this is happening?”

  Iris doesn’t answer. She goes back into Julia’s room. She kisses her daughter’s cheek; Julia is groggy with drugs to ease her pain, and she tries to smile at her mother. “Mama is going to take care of everything,” Iris says. “Everything.”

  “Accent,” Julia whispers. “She had accent.”

  The words are a knife in Iris’s heart. “Was she older? Graying hair?” Iris asks.

  But Julia is asleep.

  Iris goes back out and asks her friends to stay with Julia for a few hours. They all agree.

  “Where are you going?” Ponder asks.

  “You find whoever this woman was. Go look at the security footage. She wasn’t supposed to be there and she was. Someone got her access; someone bribed someone. Figure it out. You protect my daughter,” Iris says. “I have to go check on my son.”

  But she knows Grant is safe, under orders to stay at home and not answer the door or the phone. She has someone to stop first.

  59

  Grant

  Grant walks out of the house. They still haven’t announced that his father and sister were arrested in separate incidents, so right now there’s no press lined up in front of their house, but word has started to spread in the neighborhood. He can tell: the man puttering in his garage who stops to stare, the woman who turns away from him as she is walking her dog, and that odd Mrs. Butler, who watches him the whole time she’s coming back from the mail station as he walks past her.

  He goes to Mike’s house. Mike’s car is in the driveway; so is Peter’s.

  He knocks on the door.

  Mike answers it. He just stares at Grant for a moment.

  “I’m sorry,” Grant says. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He can’t say more, the tears welling up inside him, and suddenly big Mike is hugging him, holding him close, saying, “It’s not your fault, Grant. It is not your fault.”

  They step inside to the foyer, and Mike shuts the door.

  “Everything that happened with Danielle…” Mike starts to say.

  Grant says, “I didn’t know anything.”

  “I know. Of course not.” Mike doesn’t seem to know what else to say. “It’s not your fault.”

  “Can I talk to Peter, please?”

  “I’m not sure he’s up for a visitor. Finding what looks to be the murder weapon, it upset him.”

  “I understand.”

  “Hold on.” He pats Grant on the shoulder and goes upstairs. Grant can hear soft talking and Peter clearly saying “no,” and he closes his eyes. He hears more talking, Mike pleading his case. After a few more moments, Mike reappears at the top of the stairs and gestures Grant up.

  Grant walks up the stairs.

  “Grant, does your mom know you’re here?” Mike asks quietly.

  “She’s at the hospital with Julia. I just wanted to talk with you and Peter.”

  “You shouldn’t be alone.”

  “I don’t need a babysitter.” And he wasn’t sure he could bear for Mike to worry about him. “She’ll be back soon. Can I ask you a question?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did Danielle ever talk to you about my adoption?”

  He hesitates. “Not really. What would there be to say?”

  “I just thought maybe she said something. If it was weird in any way.”

  “She said your mom kept a journal about the adoption.”

  “Yeah. I’ve never seen it.” Grant wonders where this journal is now. “But Mom says she didn’t keep one.”

  “Huh. Danielle said she wrote a note to you in it. I remember her telling me that.”

  Grant stares, thinking.

  Peter appears in the doorway of his room. He looks like he hasn’t slept. “Can we talk for a minute?” Grant asks.

  “Do you need me here?” Mike asks, and Peter shakes his head. He nods and goes downstairs.

  “What?”

  Grant says, “I guess you think it was my dad who tore down your camera and put that bag and pipe in the tree.”

  “It seems likely.”

  “But that’s all happening here, so why is someone emailing me from Russia?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t want to do this anymore, Grant.”

  “But I have to know.”

  “I understand. But Danielle is dead. This Marland guy is dead and I tried googling him and there’s, like, nothing that matches what we know about this guy. His name is Patrick Marland, but the Patrick Marlands who come up in every search aren’t him. I think this is dangerous. Leave it alone. Let the police handle it.”

  Grant bites his lip. “I go back to Russia and the CIA software. You think this has something to do with me being from Russia? How? I was a baby then. The CIA wouldn’t be interested in Russian adoptions. And let’s say they were. Why wait all these years? Why contact me this way? Why not come to the front door and knock?” He shook his head. “I’m a kid. The CIA doesn’t do this.”

  “Maybe Danielle was a CIA agent,” Peter says. “I mean, she went to Russia a bunch, right? And China? That would be a good cover, wouldn’t it, for a spy? An adoption consultant.”

  Peter’s words shift something in the room. Grant and Peter look at each other like he blurted out an uncomfortable truth.

  “But spies want military secrets and financial information and stuff like that. How would she get that? All she went to was hotels and orphanages. I know that much.”

  “People with the secrets to give to the CIA could meet her there and give them to her,” Peter says. “No one would be watching her.”

  Grant feels cold. “So, she’s not a spy. More like a courier, bringing back secrets?”

  “Yeah.”

  “OK. So let’s say your guess is the right one. She worked for the CIA during the time she was going to Russia. What does that have to do with my family and me? Did my parents know that? Or did they see something that they shouldn’t have seen?”

  “Wouldn’t you have to ask your mom?” Peter says quietly. “We’re just guessing here.”

  Peter is right and Grant knows it. “Thanks, Peter. For everything you tried to help me with.”

  “Don’t talk to my dad about this.”

  Probably because it sounds crazy. Grant nods.

  After a moment, Peter offers his hand and Grant shakes it. Peter pulls him into a quick hug and then turns away.

  Grant goes downstairs. Mike is in the kitchen. Grant can hear him puttering around and he doesn’t know what else to say. He opens the door to leave and Mike hurries to him.

  “Your dad is my best friend here. I adore your sister. I don’t want to believe this of either of them. But.”

  “But,” Grant says. “Thanks for the times you took me fishing.”

  Mike looks like he might cry. “If I could help you, chlapec, I would.”

  “If all this is true, then it’s Ned’s fault,” Grant says, unable to keep the bitterness down. “My mom told me he started this drug thing. He drew in my sister. His mother found out and mayb
e that’s why she and my dad fought, or whatever. It goes back to him. I wouldn’t loan him your friend’s plane again to make it easy for him to get out of the country as fast as his dad got here. But I know you’ll help him if he asks. You’re just too nice.”

  He walks away, and when he looks back, once, Mike is still watching him.

  Then he heads toward home. That journal. It has to be somewhere where no one would find it and Danielle could get to it to write him a note, like Mike said. The police have already gone through the house after his father’s arrest. So where might it be?

  60

  From Iris Pollitt’s “From Russia with Love” Adoption Journal

  2002

  I didn’t relax when we boarded the plane eight days later. We had flown first class over but flew economy back; I felt people would be more understanding about a baby in the back. Grant fussed and cried, and that kept me busy. People looked at me as if wondering why I would be flying transcontinental with such a young child. I ignored them. He would quiet down for Kyle more than me, so he became more Kyle’s problem. (This bothered me, and I wondered if it was because, at some deep level, he felt more protected with Kyle…considering what had happened.)

  We were ten minutes late pulling away from the gate, me thinking the whole time that the police will come onto the plane and arrest us for murder. I was having second thoughts about our reaction. If we’d called the police immediately, well, the orphanage already knew Anya had tried to see her child at Volkov. Her kidnapping us would have sounded plausible. The Russians would have had to understand the shooting was an accident, a horrible tragedy, not a murder. Not a murder.

  But we hadn’t played it that way.

  The next few days, in Moscow, had been a nightmare. I constantly glanced over my shoulder, looking for the warning woman, looking for Anya’s ghost to materialize in the snow like a winter’s specter from a dreadful fairy tale. Grant was restless, shocked to be away from the only world he knew. The caretakers might not miss him, but he missed them; Kyle and I were strangers. I felt like a stranger. I kept waiting for the deeper bonding to kick in, that thread between mother and child that no force of nature or man could break. He writhed in my arms, he frowned, he cried, he reached for Kyle (Julia had rarely done that as an infant, but now she was a daddy’s girl), and I felt vaguely abandoned.

  What were we doing with this baby? Would he ever love us? We’d chosen for him.

  By blood and violence.

  How had I let Danielle talk us into turning this awful tragedy into this permanent secret? Now we could never tell. Me writing this down is the only telling, my own way to process it, my own way to rebel against Danielle’s order, my only way to chronicle for my child what we saved him from.

  My only way to convince Grant that he must never, ever come back here.

  Kyle had gone to the airplane lavatory as our fellow passengers continued to board. I pulled the warning woman’s phone out of my purse. Powered it on. Selected the one number.

  It rang.

  “Yes, Mrs. Pollitt?” Her voice, calm.

  “No,” I said, just the one word. She told me I’d find out what would happen if I said no to her.

  Silence, for a moment. Then she hung up.

  I tossed the phone back into my purse. Kyle returned to his seat and Grant gurgled and fussed, but I wanted to hold him right then, not hand him over to Kyle. I got a bottle ready to help him with the stress of takeoff.

  The plane took off. Grant cried harder. I’d nursed Julia, and it had always seemed a comfort to her, a way to quiet her, but I couldn’t nurse with Grant. The bottle didn’t ease his burdens.

  I waited for the “OK to stand up” light to click on, and I stood up and surveyed the other passengers around us. “I’m sorry,” I said, in the tone of a public announcement. “I’m sorry our baby is crying. We’ve just adopted him. He’s not used to me or my husband. He just isn’t. So, he may cry a lot of the flight. I apologize in advance and we’ll do our best to keep it to a minimum. Thank you for your understanding.”

  An older couple clapped and smiled at me; several others looked blankly at me and then went back to their books or tablets or screens. A man with an English accent joked, “Buy me a beer and I won’t complain,” and so Kyle did, and the man toasted our handsome new son, to long life for him and much happiness.

  From her seat, across the aisle, Danielle just watched me. Then gave me a slight smile, like everything was normal.

  I tried to curl the crying Grant into my arms, get him comfortable. I didn’t look at the screen in the back of the seat in front of me. But Kyle had his on and instead of a movie or a TV show like a normal person, he was watching our flight path.

  He was watching to see when we left Russian airspace.

  Grant settled down slightly against my shoulder; I patted his back and he eased down, letting me comfort him. Danielle got out a novel to read, losing herself in a Harlan Coben paperback. She’d canceled her longer stay; it seemed prudent to leave when we did. I couldn’t imagine she’d ever come back to Russia.

  I stared at the flight path on Kyle’s screen, forgetting to breathe, holding Kyle’s hand, feeling my son shift into sleep on my shoulder, and waited and watched until we were clear of Russian airspace.

  I just had to hope that we weren’t met by police while changing planes in London.

  We landed at the same terminal we came through the first time in London. No police waiting for us.

  I went to the same bathroom where the warning woman spoke to me. I washed my hands in the same sink. Looked again in the same mirror.

  The warning woman. What did she know? Did Anya send her? What did Anya know?

  A quarter million dollars for our child. Who would offer such a thing, and what would they do when they found out Anya was dead?

  And another question pricked at me: How did Anya know Danielle’s name? She called her by name. I hadn’t thought of it at the time, but there it was.

  Danielle told us what to do, but not why it had happened. We were two people so frightened of losing our son, we stayed quiet. We did as we were told.

  Danielle came into the restroom; she’d stopped to make a phone call. Kyle was out in the terminal with Grant. Our gazes met in the mirror. We had a thousand things to discuss and hardly anything to say.

  “How did Anya know your name?”

  Danielle washed her hands thoroughly, and I thought of Lady Macbeth lathering up. “Never ask me. I’m stealing your line, Iris.”

  But there was no smile on her face.

  Never ask me. It wasn’t so cute when it was directed at you. When it closed a door that you needed to see what was behind.

  “Are you ever going to tell me?”

  “No,” she said. “It’s better you do not know.” Her gaze held steady against mine.

  Those final days in Moscow, I watched English-language news sites for Russia obsessively, to see if there was a body found in the abandoned village. There was not. No one had driven through. No one had found her.

  Who had Danielle been on the phone with when we were dealing with the body, me sitting in shock in the snow?

  “Who did you call…?”

  “Never ask me,” she repeated.

  Because she was right. If we were caught, we all had so much to lose. We would be considered unfit parents; no decent people would conceal the death of a desperate young woman who only wanted her baby back. We were monsters. If I had just grabbed her arm first, maybe we could have subdued her. Detained her. Called the police.

  But that wasn’t what happened.

  Of course they killed her to keep that baby, it would be said. I could imagine the whispers, the headlines, the outright accusations. It would destroy our family. Even though Danielle had killed her, although accidentally. Danielle might get extradited back to Russia; even if not, it would end her work there, perhaps mean the end of Global Adoption Consultants. What if social services back in America took Grant from us? They could d
ecide our cover-up—of murder—made us unfit. They wouldn’t have to return him to Russia. They could just give him to a more worthy family here in the United States. The whole thought pressed like an avalanche upon me.

  If anyone knew about Anya, we could lose everything.

  We left London. Grant, you had been horrible on the flight from Moscow, fussy for nearly all of it, and now you settled against Kyle’s shoulder like it was the safest place on earth. You acted like you weren’t thrilled to have me for a mother. I knew that would pass, that I would come to love you and you would come to love me. But as we settled into our seats and Danielle licked her finger and turned a page in her novel and studiously avoided looking at me and acted like a normal person who hadn’t accidentally killed another person (I mean, she did the killing, and I was the mental case in shock and dismay), I couldn’t bear to look at her, and so I looked at you, sleeping in your father’s arms, and I thought: You can never know.

  How will the carrying of this secret shape you and me?

  61

  Transcript from Interviews for A Death in Winding Creek by Elena Garcia

  (Via phone)

  Elena Garcia: I appreciate you talking to me. Can you hear me OK?

  Boris Stepurin: I really have nothing to say, and I don’t understand what you think I can tell you about the Pollitt family.

  Garcia: Are you familiar with the story? Your English is fantastic, by the way.

  Boris: I read the news article links you sent me.

  Garcia: I want to talk to you because this father is accused of murdering the woman who got them their child because there was a crime being committed between the families. And since your biological son’s adoption was the foundation of the friendship, I wanted to talk to you.

  Boris: I cannot tell you anything of interest.

  Garcia: I went through the paperwork, which is public record. You are listed as the birth father of Grant Pollitt, who was born in Russia as Alexander Stepurin.