Never Ask Me

by Jeff Abbott

  Boris: I have nothing to say. I am a happily married man with children.

  Garcia: But you are his biological father.

  Boris: Yes. There was a brief friendship with his mother during a separation from my wife, while I was living in Paris and Anya was modeling there. A mistake.

  Garcia: Anna Averina is his biological mother, yes? She is listed on the adoption form. Are you in touch with her?

  Boris: No. Not since she decided to give up the baby. We parted. It seemed the best decision for all.

  Garcia: The Pollitts came to see you in Russia when they were adopting your biological son. Is that true? I have their adoption consultant’s notes here; her company shared them with me. Her name was Danielle Roberts and she’s the murder victim.

  Boris: Yes, so I read in what you sent me.

  Garcia: She advised the Pollitts not to meet with you.

  Boris: If you say so. I would not know.

  Garcia: But later that week, according to her notes, she met with you. Why? She didn’t need to. You had made no claim on the child. Custody had already been awarded to the Pollitts. They hadn’t left Russia yet, but she came to see you. Without them.

  Boris: I do not remember meeting any Danielle Roberts. I’m sorry. I must go now. I cannot help you, and please do not call again.

  Garcia: How do I reach Anna Averina?

  Boris: I have no idea. Look, she gave up a child before. I would think she does not want to be found by the children she gave up. Can you not respect that? What business is it of yours?

  Garcia: Do you have any desire to see your son?

  Boris: He is their son now. I wish him well. Goodbye.

  Garcia: Why did Danielle meet with you again before leaving Russia? Sir? Sir?

  62

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

  2002

  Home with our son. And our beautiful daughter.

  Ready to build our lives together.

  Waiting for the sword to fall.

  We settled back into what was our new life. The change was not just you becoming ours, Grant.

  It was what we had seen. What we had done.

  I routinely checked the English-language news stories from Russia. Nowhere could I find mention of a dead woman found in an abandoned village outside Saint Petersburg. Had it simply not made the news? Or at least the English-language news feed from Russia? That was my suspicion—it wasn’t about the government, or business, or something bad happening to a foreigner, so it didn’t rate the English feeds out of Moscow. And I could hardly recruit a Russian speaker here at home to ask.

  I didn’t tell Kyle about the bribe offer. He would have tried to go back to Russia, hire investigators, see if he could find who it was and “fix” the problem. And just no. They could have come after us when we were in Russia. They didn’t. Why poke the hornet’s nest? We’d won; they’d lost.

  It didn’t always feel like we’d won.

  Danielle would not discuss it with me, because It Had Never Happened. I could hardly blame her. She focused more on adoptions from Africa and China—I don’t think she ever went back to Russia. If she did, she never told me.

  I thought of emailing Anya’s boyfriend, Boris the investment banker, but…if her body had been found, I didn’t want to raise suspicion. Her boyfriend knew us. Knew our names. Knew how desperate we were to dissuade Anya from fighting the adoption. If she was found dead, wouldn’t he speak up? But he was married. He might not want to jeopardize his happy life.

  I couldn’t wait for the anvil to fall. We lived our lives. I was the mother Julia and Grant needed. Grant, you got older, started walking, started learning English words, played with your sister, who gave you hugs and kisses, turned into an American boy who stared at the stars at night and loved the Houston Texans and the Houston Astros and soccer and video games and hip-hop and superhero movies.

  From Russia, only a long silence.

  We didn’t see Danielle much after we got home. Death makes things awkward. We did not enjoy each other’s company. Julia and Ned had become playmates during the adoption process, and sometimes they still asked to play together. The only reminder that Danielle had touched our lives was Grant. And the moms group, where I went because I genuinely liked the other moms, but it was also a way to keep track of Danielle. Keep an eye on her, make sure she wasn’t cracking under the pressure. Sometimes killers just up and confess to a friend, and I could not have that. She joined us sometimes, and it was like a neutral ground between us, where we could observe each other. Take each other’s pulse on how well secrets were being kept. Danielle lived in a different neighborhood in West Austin; we didn’t see her around very much. Playdates with Ned and Julia (after her illness I was very reluctant to cut off Julia from any friends), dinners and barbecues and birthday parties with the Mommy Club and their kids.

  Until the day she moved to Lakehaven, two doors down from us.

  It was like a cruel joke. Hi, new neighbor! Remember that time we covered up a murder? I’ll see you at the community picnic. Bring your chocolate chip cookies—everyone loves those!

  Why would she even want to be near us? We were radioactive to each other. There was no reason for us to interact now. Our business was concluded. Our lives, moving on.

  Yet here she was, walking onto our stage.

  She hadn’t even told us in advance that she was becoming our newest neighbor. The house was sold (the former neighbor was a widow who spent a lot of time visiting her grown children who had moved to California). The moving van for the new residents arrived. And then a car, with Danielle getting out of it (and Ned coolly strolling toward our house to surprise Julia).

  It made my blood run cold. Danielle, flexing her fake smile, and me thinking: You better be a real estate agent now, because there is no other reason for you to be on this street.

  I walked out to meet her in the yard. I wasn’t sure I wanted her in my house, and then Grant’s rushing past me to go greet her. Of course he loved her. He thought she was the reason he got paired with us.

  Grant hugged Danielle and she hugged him back and watched me over Grant’s head. (This was before the human beanpole caught up and passed both me and Danielle on height.)

  “You’re moving in? Here? Really? That’s awesome!” Grant said.

  I managed to put on a smile. If Grant was a daily reminder of what had happened, then I could deal with Danielle. “I want Ned at Lakehaven High when the time comes,” she said. “And his father agrees it’ll be best for him.” But she couldn’t meet my gaze.

  So that was how she could afford the house. Gordon, helping out. I had wondered.

  “The schools are great,” I agreed. Grant moved on to go see the house’s interior and its backyard with Ned and Julia.

  “Iced tea?” My tone made it sound like I was offering arsenic.

  “Sure.”

  We went inside my house and I closed the door. I kept my voice friendly but low. “There must be dozens of houses for sale in Lakehaven, yet you pick the one closest to us. Really?”

  “It’s a great house. We each have our own lives. And…It. Never. Happened.”

  I felt sick. Tired. “I dreamed about her the other night. It happens less often now, but I worry, what about when I’m old and losing my mind in the nursing home? What if I trip up and say something to Grant. What if he finds out?”

  “You’re the only mother he’s ever known.”

  “Because of what happened.” I shook my head. “Of all the cul-de-sacs in Lakehaven, she walks into mine.” I tried to make it light, ease the tension. It was wrong, thoughtless. There is no way to do that.

  “I gave you this great life,” she said suddenly. “And you dare to stand there and judge me. To look down on me. If we hadn’t done what we did, then either we’d both be dead, or she’d have your son. And you’d be in a Russian prison.”

  “We?”

  “Both our hands were on the gun.”

  “Wh
atever you need to tell yourself to sleep well at night.”

  “Whatever you need to tell yourself to raise that boy. You’ll never tell him the truth. Of what you did or who you are. You’re too scared he’d turn away from you.”

  “You’ll never tell either.”

  Were we testing each other, then? Wondering if either would tell? Nothing to be gained by it. It was mutually assured destruction.

  “Was her body ever found?”

  “No.”

  “But we left her in that town.” The abandoned town, where no one apparently went, not even drug addicts looking for a place to rest and hide and shoot up. It wasn’t that far from Saint Petersburg. It made me wonder. “What was the name of the town?” There had been a sign but only in Russian. She knew enough Russian.

  “Bukharin,” she said, as if reluctant to say the name aloud.

  “You never told me,” I said.

  “Why would you need to know? You were never there. None of us were.”

  I had no answer to that. “I don’t think you moving here is a coincidence, Danielle.”

  “I just want a better life for my son.” Her voice shook a little.

  “It’s a really expensive house.”

  “My finances are fine.”

  “Big for the two of you.”

  “I consider a home in the Lakehaven school district to be an investment.” Danielle crossed her arms. “We don’t have to be friends, although I don’t think you’ve ever once thanked me for saving your life or saving Kyle or even saving Grant.” A hint of bitterness now.

  The silence between us deepened. “Thank you,” I said. I meant it. But I’m not sure how it sounded. Both our hands on the gun. Ignoring that it was her who turned the weapon into Anya and fired. I was having to thank a liar for my life.

  “I’m not here to remind you of the past,” she said. “I’m all about the future. I hope both of ours are bright.”

  She didn’t look good; she looked tired, haggard. Gray was making an early debut in her hair, one streak widening. Guilt wore at her. Even if she didn’t act guilty.

  “Let’s make the best of it,” she said. “I’m your neighbor. For better or worse.”

  “All right,” I said.

  “Does it scare you?” she asked suddenly. “Me being here?”

  “Of course not,” I said. “We’ll always be connected.” Not friends now. But connected.

  “I just want us all to be happy now,” she said.

  But she didn’t seem happy. I believed she had to be here for a reason. What could she want from us?

  Nothing.

  Yet here she was.

  I have a vaguely fake yet convincing smile Kyle calls my volunteer smile. “Do you need anything? Help unpacking? Meeting the neighbors?”

  “I’ll be fine. And I’ll be a good neighbor, Iris. Tell Kyle I said hello, I’ll see him later. Your kids are welcome to hang out over at the house as we get unpacked.” She left and shut the door behind her.

  I went to the computer, logged into Faceplace, and wrote on the Winding Creek Neighborhood page: I’m beside myself with excitement! Our longtime friend (who helped us with our adoption in Russia) is now our neighbor. Please welcome the wonderful Danielle Roberts and her son, Ned (grade 7), to Winding Creek!

  And I sat there and watched the “welcome, neighbor, so glad to have you here” messages start to pour in, and I wondered what it would be like if Danielle were dead.

  You might wonder why I’ve written this down. And kept it. Because if anything happens to me or your father, the police need to look at Danielle. We have her secret. We are nuclear weapons aimed at each other. We will never fire ours. But she might fire hers. And whatever we’ve done, we did out of love and we did it for you. She cannot say the same.

  And, Grant, if you ever decide to go back to Russia and look for your mother: this journal is why you cannot. You must not. Ever.

  63

  Grant

  No sign of a journal, but the file with his adoption paperwork is right where it’s always been. There have been times in the past when Grant has gotten it out and paged through it, thinking, This was my start. Once he had to look at it all for a school project on family background. He had wanted to write about where his four grandparents’ families came from—Dad was English and Czech, Pollitt a name originally from Lancashire, and Mom was Scottish, Irish, and Swedish. But his teacher had said, “Well, but it’s just so interesting that you are from Russia originally”—(he later figured out that someone had told her about all the international adoptions at that school)—“you should write about that.” Like he’d had some golden childhood in Saint Petersburg full of Russian traditions and charming customs before he accidentally wandered into the loving arms of his American family. So instead he said he’d been born in Saint Petersburg, shared a bunch of pictures that showed off the city in a charming way, then said he’d been adopted from an orphanage and the only thing he remembered was a Russian lullaby, “Tilly Tilly Bom,” a horrifying song about a mysterious man in the house who would kidnap you if you didn’t fall asleep soon. He said nothing showed the contrast in culture between home and Russia more than a threatening lullaby, and he played a bone-chilling rendition of it he’d found on YouTube and left the class sitting in shocked silence. Then he said, in defiance, “I’m an American boy now.” He got an A and didn’t have the nerve to tell the teacher (who never, ever asked him about Russia again) that the rendition he played came from a Russian horror movie made a couple of years before and wasn’t exactly a traditional lullaby as presented.

  But, on the legal form from the Volkov Infants Home, he had looked at the name of his birth mother, Anna Alexandrovna Averina. His birth father, Boris Vladimirovich Stepurin.

  He had never googled them. But he must now: the strange emails, the pictures, the accusations, the knowledge of his personal history, the use of the tree—now to leave him both enticing objects and a murder weapon. Why was anyone bothering to send him pictures of a stock photo of a woman dancing and a cat in the snow and a cozy house?

  He looks first for Anna Averina. There are a number of them—Averina is not an unusual name. There are a few women with that name in the West: in Canada, in Australia. He clicks through. None of them appears to have lived in Russia for a while, or ever. Most of the other results are in Russian and he can’t read it. A few results are dead web pages, no longer active, and he wonders what that means.

  Then he starts looking for Boris Stepurin. Here he gets an English-language result. Boris works for an investment firm that assists Western investors in finding opportunities in Russia, the Baltic states, and much of Eastern Europe. The photo shows a man in his forties, with blond hair starting to gray. The bio says he is married to an art history professor and that he has two sons, both a few years older than Grant.

  He closes his eyes, thinking backward, about the few times he asked about his biological parents: What were they like?

  Iris, or Kyle, depending on who he asked: You understand that we never met them. Your mother had you at this hospital—Mom would point at the paperwork—in Saint Petersburg and she never took you home with her. She came there alone, and she left alone. No one but Grant seemed to understand how sad that sentence was.

  Once, he had asked: She didn’t hand me over to you? As if that somehow would have made it easier, as if his birth mother chose the Pollitts.

  No, she didn’t. She gave you to the hospital and then the hospital gave you to the orphanage.

  What about my father?

  And every time he asked, he could see the smallest crinkle in his mother’s mouth. We don’t know anything but his name, sweetie. I don’t think they were a couple.

  Maybe he would have wanted me when she didn’t.

  He could see the pain in her eyes when he theorized about this alternate set of parents, but he couldn’t help himself. He was a kid grappling with this basic concept of his identity. Listen, I’m glad he decided to give you a better life,
Mom would say. She would never in a million years say the phrase “they gave you up.” Grant knew she never wanted him to feel as though he’d been unwanted. It was always as if his parents were sending him to a better life. Never surrendering him, never thinking to themselves, Thank God we got rid of that baby neither of us wanted.

  But they hadn’t wanted him. And it was OK, because he loves his mom and dad so much he can literally not imagine life without them. People expect him to be curious about Russia, to like Russian things, and he doesn’t even want to watch TV or movies set there. He doesn’t like to watch anything about Russia. It means nothing to him.

  He stares at the picture of Boris Stepurin.

  There are certainly other Boris Stepurins in Russia. But here is one who has a bio written in Russian and English on the website and lists his spoken languages as Russian, English, and French. He has worked in his firm’s Paris, Saint Petersburg, and Moscow offices.

  Paris. Hadn’t the stock photo of the woman in the rain been from France? It was in the first email the Sender sent him.

  Grant finds an email link on Stepurin’s bio. He presses it and writes, quickly, before he can talk himself out of it:

  Dear Mr. Stepurin:

  My name is Grant Alexander Pollitt. I was born Alexander Stepurin and adopted from Russia. I think you might be my biological father. My mother was listed on my papers as Anna Averina. I don’t want to bother you and I don’t want anything from you—you have your own life and your wife and your kids and I bet we’re probably both happy in our lives. But someone has been sending me weird emails and I traced the emails to Saint Petersburg and I think it has to do with me being from Russia, like there’s a secret connected to it.

  He attaches the pictures he’s gotten. The woman in the rain, the cat in the house.

  If you are my father I won’t bother you again, but please could you answer one question for me? Do these photos mean anything to you? I hope you have a nice life. I really do. I have had a good life; my mom and dad and sister here love me so much and I’m happy, so I hope that puts your mind at ease. I am sorry to have bothered you.