Every Secret Thing

by Laura Lippman

  “What’s this about the baby, Mrs. Manning?” Nancy asked, sliding into the chair Infante had vacated. “Why does Alice think this child is hers?”

  “Please—call me Helen. I think of Mrs. Manning as my mother.”

  She had made this plea before, more than once, but Nancy continued to ignore it. “Why does Alice think this baby is hers?”

  “Oh, she doesn’t really. I mean, she’s very fixated on this issue, but she knows her child was put up for adoption. She thinks because she never named the father that the adoption wasn’t legal. But given Alice’s circumstances, I had the power of attorney. If she hadn’t hidden the pregnancy from me into her third trimester, I would have forced her to get an abortion.”

  Nancy wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Alice had concealed her pregnancy for just that reason.

  “She got pregnant while in the juvenile facility?”

  “Oh, yes. Shocking, isn’t it? We begged Alice to tell us who the father was. Because lord knows, he might still be out there, preying on other girls. But she was quite stubborn. She thinks the man loved her. Which I’m sure is what he told her. Don’t they always? It was a mess, actually, getting the courts to allow the adoption. But Sharon helped.”

  “So who adopted the child?”

  “Not this Maveen Little woman. This is not Alice’s baby.”

  “We know that.” It was hard, concealing her exasperation with Helen Manning. But any sign of irritation only wounded the woman, bringing on a pretty fit of weeping that slowed everything down. “But do you know who did? Was it an open adoption?”

  “Oh, no, it was confidential. I wanted Alice to move on, to forget about it.”

  “So why is Alice so convinced that Brittany Little is her child?”

  Helen Manning lied so badly, so baldly, that there was almost a perverse charm to it. Now, for example, her eyes drifted to the acoustic ceiling tiles overhead as if they were the most fascinating bit of decor she had ever seen.

  “I haven’t the faintest idea.”

  “You know, we’ve been very patient with you, Mrs. Manning.”

  “Helen.”

  “We’ve been very patient with you, Mrs. Manning,” Nancy repeated. “We have not treated you as an accessory to this crime, or accused you of shielding your daughter or withholding information we need. But that moment is coming, sooner rather than later. The time is past where you can keep anything from us, for any reason.”

  “Alice doesn’t confide in anyone, even me.” Helen leaned forward and lowered her voice. “She’s always been a little secretive. Self-contained. And she’s not the most, well, normal young woman. This could be all in her head. She may not have anything to do with the kidnapping. She could think the girl is hers because she saw her on television, and it got all mixed up in her head.”

  “Why would she even think that?”

  Helen sighed, looked away. Now it was a poster on the wall, an admonition to wear seat belts, that demanded her unwavering gaze.

  “You have to understand. She had been obsessive on this topic since she came home. Where was her baby? What had happened to it? How could I give it up? Why hadn’t I kept the child and raised it? She wouldn’t leave it alone, and the simple truth—that the child had been put up for adoption and I had no idea where she was—didn’t satisfy her. She kept hounding me for answers. I had to tell her something.”

  “And?”

  “I made up a little story that would provide a sense of closure. So I said I had seen her little girl in the Catonsville area—they have such pretty houses over there, lovely old Victorians. I knew Alice would like that. I said the baby had wonderful parents and she was beautiful, with café-au-lait skin and amber hair, which fell in ringlets. Oh—and that she had a birthmark on her left shoulder blade, like a little shadow of her heart.”

  “And how did you come up with a description of a child who happened to match Rosalind Barnes so closely? Sheer coincidence?”

  “Well, yes and no.”

  Helen Manning was flirtatious in her candor, peering at Nancy with rounded eyes, as if she were a child who was always forgiven for her transgressions.

  “You see, I saw the other mother in the grocery store one day, around the time Alice came home.”

  “The other mother?”

  “You know. Cynthia Barnes. The one whose child Alice…” Helen Manning’s eyes traveled back to the ceiling for a second, but not in search of a lie this time. She was pausing to allow Nancy the chance to finish her thought. “Anyway, she was with this little girl. And I thought to myself: ‘That child would not exist if it weren’t for Alice.’ ”

  “What?”

  “Think about it. The Barnes mother had a baby in her forties, four years after the other girl died. Which isn’t to say that what Alice did can be rationalized in any way. But the fact remains. A baby died, and it was my daughter’s fault. I never lost sight of that. But another child lives, a beautiful child, and I’m not sure she would if it weren’t for Alice. My daughter helped to bring that little life into the world. In a sense. I didn’t see the harm in using that child’s description to assuage Alice’s unhappiness.”

  “But what about the birthmark? Where did that come from?” Nancy was thinking of the tips that had come in over the past four days, stories of other curly-headed girls who had disappeared, then reappeared. One, in the Catonsville library, had her shirt on inside-out when she was found. It must have been Alice, looking for the telltale heart.

  “Oh, I made that up. I told Alice that the mark was like a little shadow of her own heart and she should feel happy, knowing that her daughter would always have this shadow heart.”

  Helen Manning looked at Nancy with bright, hopeful eyes, as if she expected to be praised for her imagination and tenderness. Nancy said nothing, didn’t even bother to excuse herself as she stood up and walked back into the interview room.

  In a matter of minutes, a defeated Alice Manning had finally let go of all the secrets she held, the old and the not-so-old. She told them of the man who had seduced her, the man she had protected because she loved him, a man who would now do whatever she told him as long as she didn’t give away his name. She told of her long walks through Baltimore, looking for a girl with amber ringlets, a girl with the birthmark her mother had described. Brittany Little did not have a heart-shaped birthmark, but she had an oversized mole on her back. Alice figured it must have changed since her mother saw it last.

  Once Alice had found the child she believed to be hers, she hid in the bathroom and waited for the baby’s father to come and get them, bringing new clothes. Summoned from his current landscaping job on his cell phone, he had cut his hand badly as he put away his tools, possibly because he could never decide what he feared more, Alice’s love or Alice’s threats. The wound on his hand opened again as he trimmed the girl’s hair with his pruning shears. The blood on the T-shirt was his, and Alice had assumed that DNA testing would show it matched the missing girl’s. She believed the police had found the baby’s father, and thus found her. She still believed it, even now. He had driven her home in plenty of time to meet Sharon for dinner.

  “And then what happened?”

  “He took her to where he lives, down south, to wait.”

  “Wait for what, Alice?” The girl was an endless source of amazement to Nancy. What had she expected, what did she want? A new life, or her old one?

  “We were going to prove she was ours, and make them give her back to us. And maybe give us money, too, because it was wrong, what happened to me. Rodrigo was working for the state when we…met. They let me get pregnant, then they took my baby away. I didn’t say they could. I wanted to keep her.”

  “Why?”

  Alice looked as if she found Nancy stupid beyond belief. “Because she was mine.”

  “You said they’re down south. In Maryland? Virginia? Someplace farther still? We need to know where the girl is, Alice.”

  She started to answer, but Rosario Bustaman
te actually placed a hand, loaded with grimy rings, over Alice’s mouth.

  “Before she tells you that,” the old lawyer said, “let’s discuss what you’re willing to do for my client, now that she’s cooperating.”

  The house in Waldorf was a rental, a shabby one, the kind of place that landlords could foist off on recent immigrants, comfortable in the knowledge they would never complain. Even the legal ones didn’t know their rights, didn’t understand that broken plumbing and lead paint were not things they had to endure. Rodrigo Benitez was in the country legally, but some of his roommates were not, and they fled into the night when the police cars began arriving outside the shack, running across the same tobacco fields where some of them had first found work.

  The old woman stayed, the child in her lap. She did not know why Rodrigo had brought her this child and demanded she care for it. He said it was his daughter, and that the girl’s mother was in trouble. He swore he had done nothing wrong, despite all signs to the contrary—his nervousness, his odd comings and goings over the weekend. Then, yesterday evening, Rodrigo had simply disappeared, and she knew her grandson had lied. He was in trouble, which meant she was in trouble, and it would be only a matter of time before police officers came, screaming questions at her. In the meantime, the child cried for her mother, cried constantly, but little else she said made sense to the abuelita. She tried to comfort her as best she could.

  Yet she had promised Rodrigo she would care for the child, no matter what. So when the police arrived, she did just that, holding the girl tightly to her, shaking her head, incapable of making sense even of the halting Spanish spoken by one of the uniformed men. The girl clung back. She was three years old and in the course of four days she had been taken from her mother and brought to a house of strange smells, and now she saw that someone else was going to take her yet again. This unknown place suddenly became desirable, an island of certainty, even if people here spoke mysterious words, full of vowels, and she was given soft, mashed brown food, which looked like pudding but had no sweetness to it. Brittany Little held the old woman, refusing to let go until a blond woman with a round, tired face held out her arms and spoke her name.

  “It’s okay, Brittany. Your mom is outside, waiting for you. Come to your mother, Brittany.”

  Maveen Little was reunited with her daughter in a patrol car outside the shack in Waldorf. It was a messy, incoherent moment, with the woman more hysterical than grateful, her emotions out of sync from fatigue and worry. Nancy understood how she felt. The child had been found, Tuesday was now Wednesday, but Nancy still had to process Alice’s arrest before she could go home. Still, it had been her decision to drive the fifty-odd miles to Charles County, to see this moment firsthand. She didn’t need Lenhardt to tell her that homicide cops had precious few chances to see their victims alive.

  Infante must have been thinking the same thing, for he said: “A few more cases like this, and we’ll be out of business.”

  “A few more cases like this,” Nancy said, “and I’m going to get a job at Circuit City.”

  Actually, she had never loved her job more than at that moment.

  The media relations office would schedule a press conference in the morning, probably in time for the noon television shows. Nancy was already planning to sleep through it, let the corporal tell the tale. That was how they did it in Baltimore County. Detectives did the work, and the media office relayed the results. The television types would be so focused on the breaking news aspect, they probably wouldn’t dig too deep into the whys of it all. The Beacon-Light would be left to find an angle that wouldn’t be old by the next day.

  That would feel good, screwing the paper and that girl who had tried to trick her.

  Ronnie Fuller had taken almost two hours to walk home after running away from the flashlights in the woods. She had tried to stick to alleys and side streets, venturing out on Route 40 only when absolutely necessary. Once she arrived at the house on St. Agnes Lane, she had stood across the street, looking for signs that her parents were up and waiting for her, searching the street for a patrol car. But the house was dark, her parents out somewhere, and there was no cop car in sight. She crept up to the front door, only to jump when a small rectangle of paper floated to the ground. It had been stuck between the storm door and the frame.

  “Mira Jenkins, Beacon-Light,” said the front of the card. On the back, in neat block letters, someone had written. “I really, really need to talk to you. Call me!”

  Ronnie let herself in, and all but crawled up the stairs to her room. Sleep. She would sleep.

  But once on her bed, sleep would not come. All she could think of was Alice, her threats, her taunts. Alice could make a person do horrible things. It would be nothing for Alice to make others believe that Ronnie had taken this child and carved her up. The newspaper knew her name, just as Alice said, they were going to tell people about her. Alice always got her way, in the end.

  You be the daddy and I’ll be the mommy and this is our baby.

  That was how the game had begun, and it was only a game at first. They were going to take care of the baby they had found. She lived in a big house, Alice said. Her parents would probably give them a lot of money for finding her and keeping her safe. But it might take a day or two before a reward was offered, so they had to take good care of her until then.

  How much money? Ronnie had wondered.

  Oh, a lot, Alice had said with confidence. Enough so I can go to St. William of York again next year.

  And me, too?

  No, Alice had said, looking vague. You still have to go to public school. But you might be able to buy your mother a new car.

  It was on the second day that the baby had gotten sick and fussy. Alice stopped talking about the reward and started imagining the kind of life that a sick little baby would have in a big house where everything was perfect. Except for her.

  No one loves her, Alice had said mournfully over and over. No one will ever love her.

  Should we take her back? Ronnie had asked. Should we call someone and tell them where she is?

  They’ll only leave her on the porch again, hoping someone else will take her. They don’t want her. She’s not pretty, and she cries all the time, so they want her to disappear.

  It was so hot tonight, especially in Ronnie’s windowless room. Unable to sleep, she decided to run a tepid tub, something she did when she needed to cool off. She locked the bathroom door, even though no one was home. Naked, she slipped into the tub, frowning at her body. She had never liked having such big breasts, which looked silly and out of place on a skinny girl. Clarice had once asked if they were fake. Even her dad sneaked looks at them, although not in a gross way. He seemed dismayed, as if he were scared for Ronnie, as if he knew how other men acted around her.

  You be the daddy and I’ll be the mommy and this is our baby.

  As the daddy, Ronnie had been responsible for bringing food to the cabin and Alice had served it. The baby hadn’t liked what they gave her and she cried, and her poo turned green, and that’s how they knew she was sick. The only scarier thing than her crying was her not crying.

  By the third day, she became listless and dull, probably from eating the wrong things, but Alice had insisted they could not take her back. The baby was dying, she announced. It was only a matter of time. She had been sick all along, and her parents had left her outside, hoping someone would take her off their hands. Funny, Ronnie always remembered the exact phrase: off their hands. She had never heard that before.

  “You have to take care of this baby,” Alice had told Ronnie. “You have to help her. If you use a pillow and then get rid of it, no one will know. They’ll think she died in her sleep. Babies do that all the time. And this baby is going to die anyway. It’s cruel to let her suffer.”

  “Can’t we take her back?”

  “It’s too late,” Alice said. “They’ll think it’s our fault. But it’s not. You have to do this, Ronnie.”

  She hadn
’t used a pillow, though. She had brought one as Alice had instructed, the one from her bed, still in its Scooby-Doo pillowcase. But in the end, it had seemed wrong to put something so large over the small face. Instead, Ronnie had placed her hand over the baby’s mouth and turtlelike nose, counting her own breaths until the baby’s stopped. One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand. This was how they had been taught to count seconds back in third grade, and Miss Timothy, a lay teacher, had told them to put their heads on the desk and raise their hands when they thought a minute had passed. Four one thousand, five one thousand, six one thousand. Ronnie had not raised her hand until she began to hear small giggles around the classroom. She had forgotten to count, and ninety seconds were gone before she realized she should fake it. Seven one thousand, eight one thousand, nine one thousand. It seemed to Ronnie that the little girl’s eyes, which had been dull and unfocused for the past two days, met hers with gratitude. She knew she was sick and unloved. She wanted to die. Ten one thousand, eleven one thousand, twelve one thousand.

  When the body was still and the baby quiet, Ronnie realized the enormity of what she had done and the impossibility of taking it back. Instead of crawling into her house through the bedroom window she had been using to come and go that week, she hid beneath the honeysuckle vines in Helen’s backyard, waiting to be discovered. She knew Helen would find her somehow. And she did, drawn to the hiding place by Ronnie’s sobs. Once there, she listened to Ronnie’s story without comment or criticism, rocking her in her arms.