An Act of Persuasion

by Stephanie Doyle

  He remembered being trapped in a foreign embassy where he was planting a listening device. He remembered hearing footsteps getting closer to the room where he was working. He remembered seeing the bars on the window and knowing that the only exit was through the door where the enemy was about to walk through and capture him.

  He’d felt this same sensation then. A sense of hopelessness.

  No way out.

  Except he’d managed to find a loose panel in the dropped ceiling. He’d been able to lift himself up into the crawl space and replace the panel just as the door to the room had opened.

  He’d stayed in that space for hours until the diplomat who had returned to the office to work late had finally left.

  It taught him a valuable lesson.

  There was always a way out.

  “Over?” He shook his head. “Hell, Anna, we’re just getting started.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “HEY.” ANNA WAVED at Mark through the glass partition. He was on the phone, but he lifted his hand in acknowledgment.

  She’d avoided Ben this morning by getting a ridiculously early start to the day and taking the bus into the city. She imagined he was parked outside her apartment building right now waiting for her. She told herself that only served him right for being so high-handed and presumptuous as to ignore her insistence that she would be taking the bus.

  She would not feel guilty.

  Anna settled into her office chair and booted up her computer. As the machine went through its processes, she thought about last night.

  “Over?” she said out loud in bad imitation of Ben. “We’re just getting started.”

  Why did he have to be like that? Why couldn’t he let it go? She thought her confession would have freaked him out. She knew him well enough to know that he was not comfortable with difficult things like emotions and feelings. The very idea that she’d been suffering from unrequited love should have sent him running for the hills.

  Ben didn’t do romance. He certainly didn’t do romantic tragedy. As far she could tell, Ben didn’t do love, either.

  Instead of bolting out the door, he’d made his proclamation. They weren’t over. They were just beginning.

  It was enough to give a pathetic girl hope. Anna wasn’t sure she wanted it. She didn’t need another six years of suspended animation. What she needed was to move on from him. All those years of loving him and waiting for him to love her back was enough. If something was meant to happen between them, surely it would have already happened.

  Although getting angry at him because she had fallen in love didn’t exactly seem fair. It wasn’t exactly his problem, it was hers. But who cared about fairness when you were knocked up and alone?

  “Hey,” Mark said, popping his head around the glass wall. “Ben said I have to fire you.”

  “What did you say?”

  “To shove it. Also, I implied you’re my girlfriend now.”

  Anna sighed. “I wish you wouldn’t do that.”

  Mark wiggled his eyebrows. “I have to have my fun. Come to my office and bring your notepad. I’m going to need you to take some dictation.”

  “Hardeehar.”

  Mark loved to use secretary references from the 1950s because he thought it made him sound cool. Occasionally he shouted from his office that he needed coffee or martinis. Every once in a while she brought him a cup of tea, just to be difficult.

  Anna sat in the chair in front of his desk while he took his seat.

  “So what do you need?”

  “A case,” he said. “We don’t have one.”

  “You solved the Monroe case already?” Anna was stunned. The case had been cold for more than eight years.

  “Child’s play. Turns out Caroline Monroe had run away with a boyfriend and hadn’t been kidnapped at all.”

  “That’s awful! All those years she was alive and wouldn’t let her parents know.”

  Mark shook his head. “She wasn’t alive. A couple of months after she ran away she overdosed on whatever her drug of choice was. The boyfriend then promptly took off. Once I found him, I was able to track down the record of the Jane Doe who had been left at a hospital in Boston in a coma where she died a couple of days later.”

  Anna slumped in her chair. “Her mother was right, then. She knew her daughter was dead. She just wanted to know how and where.”

  “Parent intuition. Get ready for it. You’ll sprout some the minute the kid makes his or her arrival. Anyway, while I think the boyfriend was more than culpable at least in not calling for an ambulance when the girl was obviously in trouble, there are no real criminal charges that can be proven against him. His story is he came back to the motel room with food and she was out cold. He called the police anonymously from a pay phone.”

  “Sounds too easy.”

  “It does. But there’s no evidence to refute his claim so there’s no way for me to go after him. Anyway the Monroes will get to bury their daughter after all these years. So there is that.”

  “Yeah, swell.” Anna thought about Mark’s words. Would she be blessed with parent intuition? Could a girl who hadn’t been given good parents actually become a better parent? Her mother, and even her father, had been looming large in her mind lately.

  Actually, they’d taken up occupancy ever since Anna had decided she couldn’t stay with Ben any longer. When they had their fight over his decision to do the stem cell transplantation, she remembered what it had felt like to be left alone that day. A crowded room, people walking around her, bumping into her, but no one paying attention to her. Her mother missing.

  In the dark days after she’d left Ben, while she waited to hear if he would live or die, she spent the time trying to recall details of that day her mother was gone so she could let the pain sink in deeper and take root, ensuring she wouldn’t forget. Like an immunization, she hoped the memory of losing her mother would serve to keep her protected from ever falling in love again. Because the pain of it, of not having that love reciprocated, had felt too heavy to bear. She’d decided then she wasn’t ever going to have her happily ever after like other people did.

  Because she wasn’t other people. She was someone who had been left by her father. Left by her mother. And she’d done a very good job of causing enough strife in some of the foster homes where she’d lived to make them want to get rid of her, too.

  Focusing on those memories wasn’t easy. They were vague at best. A six-year-old’s memory could hardly be trustworthy. She remembered the busy room. The people bumping into her as they walked by. She remembered the scalding fear she had when she could no longer see her mother. There hadn’t been any awareness of the separation happening. It was just suddenly her mother was there and then she was gone.

  Vanished. And inherently Anna knew from that moment on she was alone. Eventually a woman in a dark blue uniform had knelt in front of her to ask her what her name was. Anna had been wearing a pair of jeans, sneakers with holes in the toes and a Disney princess T-shirt.

  She wanted to remember if she’d said anything to her mother. If her mother had said anything to her. But Anna didn’t. She didn’t remember her even saying goodbye.

  Anna wished she could go back and tell that woman her abandonment was going to really screw Anna over.

  Not just because she would be put into the foster-care system, but because by leaving, her mother was going to turn Anna into someone else. Someone who didn’t trust people. Someone who didn’t need people. Someone who didn’t put up a fight for the people she loved.

  Ben had been the only person in her life to crack through that well-constructed wall of caution. And when she considered it, how messed up was that? The man was an emotional ice block. Maybe she’d subconsciously chosen to love him out of all other people because she knew she would never really have to deal with being loved back. Ben: the safest crush on the planet.

  “Totally messed up,” she muttered.

  “What’s messed up? I solved the case. But now I need a
nother one. I know we talked about doing discreet ads to start, but maybe we need something a little flashier out of the gate. Or maybe we should look at the major newspapers. People have to actually want me before I can be exclusive.”

  “I have a case.”

  Mark’s eyes widened. “Don’t keep me in suspense.”

  “I’m pregnant.”

  “Not news. You turn green and run for the bathroom at regular intervals.”

  “Well, I was thinking, I’ve never really tried to find my birth parents. I should probably do that…to get their health information and stuff. Any genetic conditions. Things like that.”

  Mark nodded. “Anna, you know how to track down personal information on the internet as well as anyone I know. You’ve never done that on your parents? Do you not know their names?”

  Elizabeth Rochester and Luis Summers. Those were the names on the copy of her birth certificate she had. Her first foster family had encouraged her to have a copy of it. Thinking someday she might want to try to find her parents. Under the father’s name was printed Luis Summers. Under the mother’s maiden name was Elizabeth Rochester. She didn’t know if they were married or not, but she did know her mother had said her name was Anna. Anna had been what she’d been called. She took Summers because it seemed logical. He was her father. And because she liked summer. No school during summer. A perfectly sound reason to adopt a last name.

  “Their names were fake.” Anna had been eighteen when she did her first internet search for some record of them. She hadn’t expected to find much, but wanted to see if anything popped. When nothing did, she dug deeper until ultimately she had to accept the truth.

  Anna Summers wasn’t really her name.

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’ve never been able to find any records of an Elizabeth Rochester or Luis Summers that fit the description or age of my parents in the states of New York, New Jersey, Delaware or Pennsylvania. The only thing that makes sense is either my father or mother gave the hospital fake names when filling out the paperwork for my birth certificate.”

  “They could be real names, but not from anywhere around here. Maybe they made their way across the country to the East Coast.”

  “Maybe. It’s a possibility. But I was born here. They were drug users here. I can remember that much. You might think they had a criminal record, but there was nothing in the system for either of those two names. Two fake names on a certificate, not easy to track down.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  Anna shrugged. “I’m thinking you can do your magic. There were two people in this world. They lived and breathed. They conceived me. They lived together with me for a time at least. And left me. I would like you to find them. I would like to know if there is any family history I can trace.”

  Mark hesitated. “This could open up a big can of worms for you. Emotionally.”

  She’d finally confessed she’d been in love with Ben for six years. She would become a mother in the next six months. And she had no idea what the hell Ben meant when he said they were just beginning.

  Can open. Worms out.

  Besides, after all these years, finding her parents felt like the right thing to do. She was going to be a mom. She was going to have to, by moral obligation, give a shit about another human being who, for the first time in her adult life, wasn’t Ben Tyler.

  It wasn’t right to hold on to her past like some kind of armor shield. She needed to let it go if she intended to give her child her full self. But before she could do that she needed answers.

  “I’m ready for it. Whatever you find.”

  “Okay.”

  “I get an employee discount, right?”

  “Absolutely,” Mark said, holding out his hand so they could shake on it. “Is, like, two percent off okay? Or hey, I know, I’ll write up a coupon and you can use that.”

  “I can’t believe you decided to work for the government so long ago when clearly comedy has always been your calling.”

  “I’m multi-talented. You still have that birth certificate?”

  Yes. It was stupid, because she knew it wasn’t real. Not really. But it was her only connection to the parents she vaguely remembered having. “I’ll bring it in.”

  “Great. Now, how’s your shorthand, kid, because I’m ready to dictate that letter.”

  Anna stood, shaking her head. “A letter. That’s funny.”

  *

  ANNA ARRIVED HOME to find Ben waiting on the steps of her building. It was hot and humid and he looked a little wilted, as if he’d been waiting a long time. She could only hope he hadn’t been here all day.

  Part of her filled with dread. The fact that he was here meant they were mostly likely going to have another confrontation.

  The other part of her was happy to see him, of course, and she hated that part like a nagging toothache. Just. Go. Away.

  Finding a parking spot, she did a quick and efficient parallel maneuver and stopped the car within six inches of the curb like a proper city driver. When she approached him, she saw he had a stack of books and two brown bags on the step next to him.

  “Please tell me you haven’t been waiting here since this morning or I might actually have to say I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I left once I realized if you came out any later, you would be late for work. You’re never late for work. You could have told me.”

  “I told you last night I would take the bus.”

  “You could have told me this morning.”

  She could have. Only she didn’t want to send him a text because then he would have her new cell phone number. A number she’d purposefully changed after she’d left him as a way to make her feel more separated from him. So much for that strategy.

  “Or I guess I could have called and confirmed,” he admitted more to himself than to her.

  “You don’t have my new number,” she reminded him.

  He sighed. “Anna, of course I have your new number.”

  Right. Because he was Ben Tyler. Spymaster. Sometimes she forgot because, aside from the crazy things that happened every once in a while—like the current president of the United States calling to get his opinion on something, Ben was mostly a normal man.

  “What’s that?” she asked, pointing to his stack of stuff and wanting to ignore his breach of her privacy.

  “Books on pregnancy. I’ve gone through them and highlighted passages on morning sickness and the transitions that occur in the second trimester, which I think will make you feel better. I’ve also noted some questions in the margins that I’m hoping you can answer so I can better understand some things. Then I stopped at Chef Chen’s in Little China. I told Mrs. Chen about your morning sickness and she made up some special soup that she assures me will fix you right up.”

  “That’s a lot of soup,” she said, desperately trying not to be affected by his attention.

  “Mrs. Chen says I needed fixing up as well and threw in a quart of the house special lo mein.”

  Her favorite. “Okay. Come on up.”

  Might as well give in to the inevitable. Ben wasn’t going away peacefully. Besides that, Mrs. Chen was a genius with food and could cure anything from fever to the common cold with the right blend of spices and ginger. If she said this soup would make Anna feel better, then it would.

  As she walked up to the second floor with him trailing, she considered how this meeting could have been awkward. After all, last night she’d let loose with everything she’d been feeling and holding on to for all those years. Usually the day after a big confession could be weird between two people, but Anna didn’t feel it.

  Instead, she felt a little freer. Her secret was out there. She’d said it. Forget pride and forget rejection. Forget it all. She loved Ben Tyler. And it had felt good to say it because it was real and had been a part of her life for a long time.

  She. Loved. Ben. Tyler.

  He couldn’t make her unsay it. He couldn’t do anything but hear it
.

  The only thing that really pissed her off about the confession was that while he’d been staring at her as if she’d hit him with a two-by-four—looking more stunned than he had after she told him she was pregnant—she still actually thought he would say it back. It was crazy. It was insane. But she’d waited for it anyway.

  She knew the man he was. She knew he was self-contained and emotionally unreachable. She was slowly coming to grips with the fact that her love could be entirely predicated on the premise that he simply wasn’t capable of loving her.

  But deep inside, where she was really honest with herself, she knew that picture of Ben wasn’t entirely true. A man didn’t read pregnancy books and make notes in the margins if he didn’t have the capacity for great caring.

  So what now really pissed her off was that he couldn’t see it. He couldn’t see what she saw when he looked at her. He couldn’t know what had been shimmering in his eyes when he made love to her that night. Because there had been something there. Something more than desire. She’d seen…need. As though he had needed her so desperately in that moment. Didn’t that mean there had to be something more than sex between them?

  But it’s not as though she could tell him. It was something he would have to acknowledge on his own.

  That night she thought he had. She’d thought he was ready for what they could be. Except…he hadn’t been. She knew it hurt him when she left. As much as she hurt in those three months away from him, it didn’t give her any satisfaction to know he’d missed her, too.

  They reached her apartment and she dropped off her purse and flipped off the sandals she was wearing. Barely into her fourth month and already her feet would swell if she was on them for any length of time. Lord only knew how her ankles would look when she was walking around with a bump the size of beach ball.

  Ben set down the books on the coffee table and took the bags to the kitchen. Since he seemed comfortable in her space, she let him gather the plates and silverware. Picking up one of the books, she started to scan through the sections he’d highlighted. The man was crazy for information. He collected it the way some people collected coins. Reading, he said, was always one of the easiest ways to gather it.