“Why? You don’t want to be a mother?” Simona asked.
Surprised by the bold question, Waverly hesitated. “I want to be a mother more than anything,” she answered honestly, finally. “But we don’t always get what we want.”
Simona made a small huff of agreement. “I never wanted a baby,” she said.
“Oh?” Waverly glanced at Nadia. The little girl was intent on scooping frosting from the bowl onto another cupcake. Her fingers were pink-tipped where she’d been liberally sampling the frosting.
“The first time I was sold, I was seventeen,” Simona said quietly. “They took me to Kiev to a brothel. After six months I was pregnant. They would not let the girls keep the babies. They made us get an abortion or they would sell the babies to families for adoption.”
Waverly shuddered, glancing at Nadia, her hair in two little pigtails, her tongue stuck in the corner of her mouth as she concentrated on completely covering a cupcake top with frosting.
“So I tried to kill myself,” Simona continued. “I tried to jump out the window one night when a customer was smoking a cigarette with the window open. Six stories. I wanted to die. But he stopped me. He was not such a bad man. When he heard I was pregnant, he helped me escape.”
Waverly was speechless. Simona told her story so matter-of-factly, but there were many layers of horror and sadness underlying her words. Waverly imagined her at seventeen, trapped in a life of misery and sexual slavery, pregnant with Nadia and perched on a window ledge six stories up, seeing only one way out. It made her feel sick. Her life was so sheltered, her suffering and worries shrinking to insignificance in the face of Simona’s story.
“I’m so sorry,” Waverly said at last. She could think of nothing else to say. She had suffered and lost and grieved, it was true. But not like this. No one should suffer like this. It was inhumane. It was almost unimaginable.
A dollop of frosting fell from Waverly’s spatula and landed with a splat on the counter. Nadia looked up and saw them both watching her. She smiled, holding up a cupcake to show her mother, chattering for a few seconds in Bulgarian. Simona grunted in appreciation, and Nadia beamed at the attention.
Simona watched her daughter for a moment. “I love my daughter, but this is not the life I thought I would have,” she admitted.
Waverly sighed. “So often we don’t get the life we thought we would have,” she said. She thought of the six pregnancy tests in her closet, the pink lines now faded with time, and closed her eyes briefly. She didn’t know what else to say. “She’s a beautiful little girl,” she added. “You gave her a gift when you chose to have her. You gave her life.”
Simona laughed, a bitter sound. “Yes, and for what? So when she is eighteen she can have the same fate as her mother? There is nothing for us in Bulgaria anymore. It is not a safe place for her. There are people who are waiting for us if we go back—” Simona stopped abruptly. “It is not a safe place. No place is safe for us,” she said bleakly.
“But surely if you win your court case . . . ,” Waverly protested. She wanted to offer some hope, but as she spoke she remembered Charlie telling her about the rampant organized crime and corruption that allowed human trafficking to flourish in the region. Perhaps Simona was right. Perhaps there really was no safe place for them back in their own country. She shivered, suddenly worried for Nadia. What would happen to the little girl? Waverly picked up a cupcake and expertly frosted the top. The party was still going on outside, and the women and children were waiting for the treats. Still, in light of their current conversation, frosted cupcakes seemed pointless, almost flippant.
“Do you know anyone who can help you?” she asked instead, twirling the spatula through the frosting to make a perfect swirl. “Anyone who can keep you and Nadia safe?”
Simona shook her head. “There is no one.” She turned and looked at Waverly for a long moment as though weighing and measuring something internally, then turned back to look at her daughter. “Do you know what Nadia means?” she asked finally. Her face was inscrutable.
Waverly had a fleeting impression that she was being tested somehow. “No, I don’t.” She cleared her throat. “What does it mean?”
“Hope,” Simona said, and for one brief moment her expression was tender as she gazed at her daughter. “Her name means hope.”
“It’s a beautiful name,” Waverly said. “It fits her.” She placed the last frosted cupcake on the tray.
Simona nodded. “It’s what I want to give her,” she said sadly. “But I don’t think I can.”
“You’re doing your best,” Waverly replied. She picked up the tray, ready to take it outside to the waiting party. “She knows you love her, and that counts for a lot.”
Simona nodded. “Maybe,” she said at last, “but I don’t think it is enough.”
CHAPTER 30
The morning of her trial, Simona vanished. Vesna woke Charlie with the news at just past six, and together they searched Simona’s room. Her bed was empty, her cupboard bare. Only a bobby pin and a sock under the bed remained.
And Nadia. Simona had left her daughter. The girl slept peacefully in the other twin bed, clutching a glittery rainbow-colored stuffed unicorn, unaware that her mother was gone. Charlie noticed a folded piece of paper half tucked beneath Simona’s pillow. In a bold black scrawl it said only, Call Sandra.
Sandra picked up on the first ring and arrived at the house twenty minutes later. Armed with cups of strong coffee brewed by the taciturn Vesna, Charlie and Sandra set to work. In dismay and then in growing resignation they retraced Simona’s flight. She had taken money from the grocery petty cash jar in the office. She had used the office computer to look up bus and train schedules out of Belgrade to several points around Eastern Europe—Skopje, Thessaloniki, Bucharest. She was well and truly gone.
Sandra sighed, running a hand through her sleek pageboy haircut. She looked both worried and exasperated.
“Did she give any warning?” she asked Charlie. “Do you know if something happened to make her run?”
Charlie thought of the phone call in the garden at the birthday party a few days before. She told Sandra about it and about Simona’s reaction. “Do you think someone forced her to go?”
Sandra nodded. “It’s likely. She probably ran because someone threatened her. She was planning this yesterday. I didn’t see it until now.”
“She left Nadia,” Charlie said incredulously. “How could she leave her daughter?”
Sandra sighed in resignation. “I think she thought she was doing the best she could for Nadia, that leaving her was safer than taking her. And she’s probably right.” She sighed again. “What a mess.”
The door opened and Vesna poked her head in. “I find this by the toaster,” she said. She held an envelope out to Sandra, who took it, glancing at the name scrawled on the front. “I need to speak with your sister as soon as possible,” she said to Charlie gravely.
“Waverly? Why?”
“Because Simona left something for her.”
Standing in the tiny front office of the safe house facing the crisply pressed and steely-faced Sandra Ling, Waverly stared incredulously at the legal papers in her hand. She pulled the tie of her silk robe tighter around her waist and blinked hard, trying to make the words come into focus. She had been sound asleep when Charlie roused her with the news of Simona’s disappearance and the discovery of an envelope addressed to her. Now she squinted at the contents of the envelope, attempting to follow Sandra’s rapid-fire explanation. Her mind was still sleep muddled. She had been dreaming of Andrew again. They had been on their sailboat, the Allegra Day, on a pristine Sunday afternoon. She had been spreading brie speckled with truffles on homemade parmesan crisps while Andrew handled the lines with a deft hand.
“I don’t understand,” Waverly said, shaking her head and blinking. “What do you mean she left Nadia to me?”
She heard the words Sandra was using but couldn’t quite seem to align them with reality. Simona was
gone. That much she could comprehend. Simona had left Nadia asleep in bed. But after that Waverly was having trouble grasping the situation. She glanced at Charlie, who was sitting in an armchair in the corner watching the exchange with unconcealed astonishment. Charlie shook her head, as baffled as her sister.
“Simona named you as legal guardian of her daughter,” Sandra said baldly, gesturing to the papers. “She had me draw up the legal document yesterday. She said it was for Nadia’s maternal grandmother, to give legal custody of Nadia to her. But she put your name on there instead. Look.” She leaned over and pointed to the blank spaces where Simona had scrawled Waverly’s name. The document was dated the night before.
“But why me?” Waverly asked in bewilderment.
Sandra raised an eyebrow. “Can you think of someone better?” she asked. “If you were being threatened, if you had to run and couldn’t take your child with you, whom would you want to raise her? Someone back in the village in Bulgaria where she might become a target for the same people who’d trafficked you? Would you want to put her in a state-run orphanage? There aren’t very many good options. I think she felt you were the best chance Nadia had at a good life.”
Abruptly Waverly crumpled onto the ottoman at Charlie’s knees. “She picked me?” Waverly asked, her mind whirring in shock. She shut her eyes and tried to breathe deeply in through her nose and out through her mouth. It wouldn’t do to have a panic attack just now. She needed to focus.
As she breathed in and out in a measured cadence, slowly she began to see the pieces drop into place before her in her mind’s eye. Her repeated dreams in which Nadia asked Waverly to come for her. All the unlikely events that had led them to this place and time. It was no accident, Waverly was sure. She had no idea how it was all happening. It defied rational explanation, but somewhere in her gut, in the space far past logic, where there was simply intuition and response, Waverly felt the slow and steady swell of rightness, of inevitability. It felt warm and full, like a flower coming into bloom, like the sun breaking over the horizon at dawn. This was supposed to happen. It was meant to be.
“Don’t be alarmed,” Sandra said brusquely. “Of course you don’t have to say yes. Unfortunately, I think Simona’s mother is in poor health and no longer able to care for the child. I’m not sure about any more distant relatives who might be able to take her. But you can turn the child over to the state system, and they will place her in a suitable foster home. You are not obligated in any way.”
Waverly looked at Sandra, her eyes wide. “What do you mean?” she asked, clutching the papers to her chest. “Of course I’ll take her. She’s supposed to be mine.”
In the hectic ensuing hours, Charlie attempted to make herself useful. Sandra handled the details of postponing the trial while she tried to locate Simona. At lunch, to the women of the safe house Sandra spoke optimistically of this simply being a delay. Once Simona was found the trial could proceed as planned, she said, but in private she was more realistic.
“She’s gone. And she’ll stay gone until she wants to reappear, if she wants to reappear. I don’t anticipate that we’ll see her again,” she confessed to Charlie, giving a weary sigh.
Waverly spent the day with Nadia, and Charlie popped in to see them when she wasn’t helping Sandra. Upon discovering that Simona had fled, they had all agreed to tell Nadia that her mother had gone on an extended trip. They did not know when she would be back, but in the meantime she was to stay with Waverly.
At breakfast Waverly broached the topic of her mother’s disappearance with Nadia while one of the other women in the safe house translated her words into Bulgarian. Nadia accepted the news with no obvious concern. She was used to her mother not being around and didn’t seem bothered by her unexpected absence. Waverly let her help make apple crumble for lunch. The little girl clearly adored Waverly, watching her every move and trying to mimic her, copying everything from Waverly’s walk to the way she flicked her hair from her cheek. She didn’t want Waverly to be out of her sight and whimpered if she left the room.
Charlie sat at the dining room table with a mug of chamomile tea balanced on her rounded belly, watching the two of them make the crumble, and wondered how in the world Waverly was going to navigate this unexpected life change. The baby gave a kick, and Charlie smiled despite the sobering circumstances. He was alive and well in there. “It will be okay, pal,” she whispered to him. “Things will work out somehow.” But she couldn’t see the way forward, just the messy reality of their present predicament.
“What are you going to do?” Charlie quietly asked her sister as they cleared the plates from the table, helping a few of the women in the house clean up from lunch.
“I don’t know,” Waverly answered. They watched Nadia feed Boris the last of her apple crumble. “But I know this is the right thing to do. I’ve never been more sure of anything.”
“What about Andrew?” Charlie asked. They had not spoken of him since the car ride from Kosovo. Charlie didn’t think he’d been in touch with Waverly. Indeed, he seemed to have vanished. “If he isn’t excited about one child, what’s he going to think about two?” She placed her hands protectively over her belly.
Waverly pressed her lips together in a thin line. “Right now Andrew isn’t my biggest concern.”
But Charlie could tell she was lying. Waverly was worried, and rightly so. It was one thing to bring a baby into a stable, loving marriage. It was quite another to be a single working mother and raise a newborn and a four-year-old who didn’t speak English. That thought was daunting enough to cow even the hardiest soul. Frankly, it seemed like a recipe for disaster.
Charlie sighed, wondering for the thousandth time just where her brother-in-law was and why in the world he was so silent. A few dozen times she had considered asking to borrow Sandra Ling’s phone and texting him, but had stopped herself each time. She didn’t want to get in the middle of Waverly and Andrew’s marital complications. If he was choosing not to contact Waverly, then nothing Charlie said would make a difference. It was their marriage, and they needed to work it out between them. Besides, she didn’t want to break the safe house rules about contacting outside people. It was probably best to just let things be until they were back in Budapest.
Late in the afternoon Charlie was in her room trying to rest. Waverly had taken Nadia into the backyard to play with Boris, and Charlie slipped upstairs to put her feet up and read for a few minutes, but she couldn’t seem to concentrate. The world felt turned completely on its head. Even the baby seemed cross, kicking her repeatedly in the ribs and kidneys. She had to go to the bathroom every half hour. She sighed. A couple more months and he would be here. But what did that mean now? Born into a world that looked quite different from what any of them had imagined when they had started this entire escapade. She found herself feeling surprisingly protective of him. Nadia was a darling child, and Charlie was relieved that she would have a stable, loving home with Waverly, but it still left her wondering about the baby. Where was his place in all of this?
Downstairs she heard the doorbell ring and the muted sounds of Vesna talking with someone. Curious, she listened for a moment before recognizing the deep voice and Afrikaans accent. Johan. The baby did a little somersault, and her heart leapt at the same time. She had not seen Johan since he’d dropped them off at the safe house. He had sent a message through Sandra the next day to say that he was returning to Budapest and would come to pick them up after Simona’s trial. Now there would be no trial, but he was here as promised.
She bolted upright and tried to style her messy hair with her fingers, pulling down her maternity top over her belly and feeling foolish at the blush rising in her cheeks. A moment later there was a knock on her bedroom door.
“You’re looking well,” Johan said, eyeing her with a professional scrutiny as he came into the room at her invitation. “Has the baby been behaving himself?”
“Yes, but you’ve missed a lot of drama,” Charlie replied. She filled hi
m in on the new developments.
He leaned against the doorframe and whistled. “Sounds like quite the morning. And I’m afraid I’m not going to make it any easier. I’ve come for you and your sister. You both have visitors at the Care Network drop-in center downtown.”
“Who?” Charlie asked, startled.
Johan looked rueful. “Beau swore me to secrecy about Waverly’s visitor, but I’m afraid Ursula came with me. She wants to talk with you.”
Charlie’s stomach dropped. “Oh.” She had a sneaking suspicion that she knew what Ursula wanted to talk about. It had been more than two weeks, and the decision about staff cuts had probably already been made. “Let’s get this over with,” she said, fishing under the bed for her shoes.
When Waverly, Charlie, and Johan arrived at the drop-in center, Beau was not there yet, but Ursula was waiting. Johan took Waverly on a tour of the center, keeping her out of the way while Charlie met with her boss. Nadia had stayed behind at the safe house under the watchful eye of Vesna, bribed with a cookie and cartoons to let Waverly out of her sight.
Charlie and Ursula sat in two uncomfortable folding chairs facing each other in the drop-in center’s main room. One of the center staff had made them both coffee. Charlie held hers, not drinking it.
Ursula leaned forward earnestly, her pale blue eyes boring into Charlie’s. “Charlie, we are glad to hear you are safe. We were all so worried for you,” she said.
Charlie was surprised. Ursula’s concern seemed genuine.
She continued, “And what you are doing, testifying for these women. It is a brave thing to do.”
“Er, thank you . . . ,” Charlie stammered, taken aback by the compliment. She had never received an iota of positive feedback from Ursula before.
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