You Were Always Mine

by Nicole Baart

  But Meredith wasn’t going to let Jess sleep. She was sliding her hands under Jessica’s arms. Crouching in a weight lifter’s stance, Meredith took a deep breath. Then she heaved Jessica to her feet and slung one of Jess’s arms around her shoulders.

  “Where are we going?” Jess tried to mumble. It came out jumbled and wrong, and Meredith didn’t answer.

  They were a few agonized steps away from the couch when Jess’s phone buzzed against the coffee table. Somewhere in the back of her mind she felt a compulsion to answer, a need to break free from Meredith’s powerful embrace and grab her phone, but her limbs refused to comply. They shuffled along in the direction of the door, ignoring the muted hum. She didn’t want to go, but Jess’s leaden legs stomped their slow progress obediently.

  “Come on,” Meredith said, heaving Jessica over the lip of the door and down the single step into the garage. Jess’s feet were heavy, but they complied.

  Jess wanted to say, “Where are we going?” but the question floated just out of reach. She lunged for it, and felt the ground swim up to meet her as Meredith spat out a curse.

  “Stop it!” Meredith almost fell but managed to right them both. She yanked Jess close and propelled her the remaining distance. Gasping a little, she propped Jess against the car and wrenched open the driver’s-side door. “Here we go,” she said.

  Somehow this was comforting to Jess. Someone else had taken control and she didn’t have to worry about it anymore. Jess wasn’t even sure what it was. But if Jess listened closely, she could almost make out the sound of someone screaming. No. No, no, no . . . She closed her eyes and tried to still herself but was interrupted by Meredith wrapping both arms around her middle and picking her up. Jess was only a few inches off the ground, but her limbs flopped like a rag doll, and it took Meredith three tries to get her into the driver’s seat.

  The task accomplished, Meredith sighed heavily and lifted Jess’s legs one at a time until they were also in the car. Then she reached over and turned the ignition. The car revved to life.

  “I wish you wouldn’t have done this,” Meredith said. She took Jessica by the chin and looked deep into her eyes. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, but Jess couldn’t imagine why. “I wish you could understand that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”

  Well that was interesting, wasn’t it? Jess knew she should be focusing on something else, but she recognized that line. That sentiment. She had taught it before. In the far reaches of her conscious she dug and came up with names like winter bulbs. Shakespeare, Thoreau, Poe. She discarded them all. Austen? No. When it finally landed in her palm, real and solid and true, she smiled a little: Dickens. Jess tried to say it, to tell Meredith that she knew what she was talking about.

  But Meredith wasn’t paying attention to her anymore. As Jess watched, her friend lowered the driver’s-side window a couple of inches and then shut the car door. She let herself out of the garage without a backward glance.

  BEFORE

  “HOP IN,” MEREDITH said. “I can take you somewhere.”

  Getting in the car with her was the last thing Evan wanted to do, but a quick glance over his shoulder at the ruined LeSabre assured him he had no choice. She wouldn’t leave him anyway. Not now.

  Evan heaved a sigh and yanked the door open, climbing into the passenger seat with a sense of dread. He didn’t realize until he was halfway into the vehicle that there was another person in the car. A man was in the backseat, his face in the shadows. “Who’s this?” Evan asked, his hand still on the door and one foot firmly planted on the gravel road. He could still run. Slam the door and sprint to the cover of the trees. But that was ridiculous.

  “A friend,” Meredith said noncommittally. “Don’t you have a bag or something? Do you need to get anything from your car?” The question was innocent, but her intent was far from it. She was pretending, but there was no reason to.

  Evan gave her a long look. Meredith’s face was tinted blue from the dashboard lights, but she was still lovely. Hair shiny, lipstick in place. Her mouth was the red of a rose about to turn, but maybe it was just a trick of the shadows and his own grim imagination. She was almost regal in her wrap coat, and the creamy wool drawn sharp against the line of her jaw gave her a queenly bearing. Meredith certainly considered herself above the law.

  “I don’t have anything with me,” Evan said, holding up his empty hands. “And just so you know, Jessica has no idea what’s going on.”

  “Get in the car, Evan.” The man in the backseat had a voice like warm honey, rich and syrupy. “You’re bleeding. You need help.”

  “I know who you are,” Evan said. He felt brazen, suddenly indomitable. He had put the pieces of the puzzle together, and here was his final proof. James Rosenburg.

  The man leaned forward and offered his hand over the backseat. He was wearing a gold Rolex and his skin was unnaturally tan for a cold October night. “You should have been a detective, Dr. Chamberlain.”

  Evan shook his hand reluctantly, but it was an entirely ordinary handshake. If he had been expecting James to crush the fine bones of his hand like some cartoon villain, he was disappointed. In truth, James’s smile seemed genuine, his concern sincere. “Shut the door,” James said, sitting back.

  What choice did he have? Besides, now that he was half-seated, Evan wasn’t sure that he could stand up again. His head was throbbing, his hand trembling just a little where it rested on the handle. Evan slid the rest of the way into the passenger seat and closed the door behind him. “Clearly you’ve been following me,” he said, pulling the seat belt over his chest and struggling to find the buckle. He found he couldn’t focus on two things at once—the seat belt and the predicament he was in—so he held his tongue until the belt finally clicked. Finally. “Maybe you can answer a few questions I still have.”

  “Oh?” Meredith put the car in drive and pulled away. She flicked her eyes in his direction as if a mere glance could help her discern the truth from lies. A small smile played at the corner of her mouth. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”

  Evan ignored her. “Francesca told me how it works.”

  Meredith turned to stone beside him. She held her shoulders straight, her chin slightly lifted as she crawled down the gravel road. Pebbles pinged the underside of the car, but she gave no indication that this bothered her. Only her hands on the steering wheel and the way they were pinched white told Evan that he had struck a nerve.

  “The business card. The promise of money. Five thousand dollars, Mer. I think a court would consider that a bribe.” Evan watched her closely, waiting for a reaction that never came.

  Instead of exploding, Meredith gave him a pitying look. “Adoptive parents are allowed to pay for the medical, legal, and counseling expenses of the birth mother. You did.”

  “Through the agency,” Evan said. “The legal way. Is that where you come in?” He swiveled in his seat and glared at James. The strange man was cloaked in shadow, but Evan could make out the hard line of his jaw, the spread of his broad shoulders. Maybe he played football in high school. Or maybe he was just big boned. Either way, he cut an intimidating silhouette. Evan had no doubt it did him many favors in court—although he seemed harmless enough, he looked threatening.

  “Here,” James said, ignoring Evan’s question and handing him a wad of tissue from somewhere in the recess of the backseat. “You’re still bleeding.”

  Evan took the tissue and pressed it to his forehead. Almost immediately it was wet, but when he tried to pull it away, a thin layer stuck to his skin. He blinked hard, trying to clear his head, to get his bearings. It didn’t help. He felt tired, confused, and he found himself staring at the lump of bloody paper in his palm. For a moment he didn’t know what to do with it, but then he rolled down the window and threw it out. The blast of cold air was invigorating.

  “The money,” he said, more to himself than to Meredith and the mysterious James. “Those women—they did it for the money.” He
was losing what little composure he had. What Meredith and James were doing was unbelievable. Sick and twisted and a perversion of a system that he had believed in heart and soul. “A private account? A lump-sum deposit? From what I can tell, it’s a Class C felony. And just the tip of the iceberg.”

  Evan wasn’t sure how far they had come, but when Meredith swung her car down a field driveway and lumbered off into the woods, he realized that they were really and truly in the middle of nowhere. There were no more headlights, no distant glow of the farmsteads that dotted the Minnesota landscape. It was so dark Evan could feel the weight of the night press down on them. Meredith put the car in park and swiveled to face him.

  “What do you think you know, Evan?” It was James, from the backseat, and he was talking so quietly Evan should’ve turned around. But he couldn’t. His head hurt too much and he was afraid he might throw up again. But he knew the answer to the question. Everything. I know everything.

  Evan didn’t have anything to lose. It wasn’t like Meredith was going to kill him for what he had discovered, dump his body, and go on as if nothing had ever happened. Meredith was cunning, but she wasn’t a sociopath. She had a heart. Larger than most, actually. He had seen it at work many times over the years. Meredith cared deeply about the birth moms she worked with, the kids, the families. She loved his wife, his children. She was passionate and tenacious and loyal. And clearly appallingly misguided. Evan hated what this would do to her. To her family.

  And James was in a suit, for heaven’s sake. Evan couldn’t turn around, but now that he thought about it, he knew that the man was wearing a dark suit coat with a pale shirt beneath. A tie. He had glasses and hair that was blond or white or gray. James Rosenburg was a lawyer. A professional, a mere man, just like Evan.

  “Leave it alone,” Evan said, and wasn’t aware that he had said it aloud until James laughed.

  “Leave what alone?”

  “That’s what your secretary told me when I called your office. I said I had some questions about a woman named River Han and the son she gave up for adoption.”

  “Good advice. How did you find me?”

  “They’re putting it all together,” Evan said quietly. “The women you’ve used. Francesca filled in the missing pieces.”

  Surely Meredith and James already knew that. How else had they found him? Eagle Ridge Women’s Prison was hours from quaint Auburn, Iowa, and it was ludicrous to believe that the two of them had just randomly happened upon him on a gravel road in south central Minnesota. They had been following him. And wasn’t that exactly what he had been afraid of all along? That this thing was bigger than he could imagine. That there were powerful forces at work. It’s why he dyed his hair and wore strange clothes and sold his car. Evan wanted to step out of his own skin, to shed himself and any connection that might link his family to everything he was learning. Clearly his efforts were in vain.

  Evan realized that Meredith and James had probably talked to Francesca before he did. When he started investigating, he had realized that his path would converge with whoever was pulling the strings behind this unethical operation, but he hadn’t believed it would be his wife’s best friend until the moment she rolled down her car window. He had his suspicions, but he had hoped they were unfounded.

  “Tell me.” Meredith sounded as if someone had a belt around her throat, but her face was calm and impassive.

  “I know you’ve been buying babies.”

  She blew a hard breath through her nose and jerked away from him. “You couldn’t be more wrong.”

  But Evan kept going. “So far I’ve found twenty-five women spread over four states. They all tell the same story. A pregnancy, a prison sentence. What’s a convict supposed to do with a baby? But then one day someone catches her alone. The whisper network tests the waters, and if she’s open to the possibility, she’s given a business card. Name on one side, number on the other. Simple. Unobtrusive.”

  Meredith stared out the windshield and refused to acknowledge his words. So Evan kept going. “Initium Novum. I had to look it up. Latin for ‘New Beginning.’ ” He laughed a little in spite of himself, but it made him instantly nauseous. He pressed a hand to his stomach. “I have to give you credit for that. It’s clever, concise. A bit mysterious. I’m sure it made those moms feel like they were doing something noble.”

  “They were.” James sounded unreasonably calm. Evan’s blood was starting to boil in his veins, throb in his temples and forehead and fingertips. “What they did was honorable. It was right. What do you think happens to babies whose mothers are in prison?”

  Evan ignored him. “What you’ve been doing is coercion, Mer. It’s buying and selling human beings.”

  “That’s not true!” She screamed the words, her sudden outburst fragmenting the quiet of the night. “Have you seen what I’ve seen? Have you removed a child from a home where he has been neglected? Abused? There are people in this world who treat kids like animals, Evan. Worse. I know you know that.”

  “I do,” he conceded. He reached for Meredith, touched her arm gently. “And it defies explanation. It makes me crazy. I feel like I could kill anyone who would hurt a child with my bare hands.”

  “So you understand.” James leaned forward, catching Evan’s gaze. “I represented a little boy who was chained, Evan. Chained up like a dog. A girl who was sold by her father. She was four.”

  Evan’s stomach lurched and it had nothing to do with the car accident and his pounding head.

  “We’re saving these kids, Evan.” Meredith reached for his hand and held it. “You get that, right?”

  For a moment, Evan wasn’t sure what he believed. He thought of Gabe, shackles on his little wrists, maybe a purpling bruise on his perfect cheek. Bile rose in the back of his throat and he had to cough it down. But as he swallowed, Evan thought of LaShonna. Pretty, earnest girl with love in her eyes. She wasn’t the sort of monster they were portraying. LaShonna broke the mold. Maybe they all did.

  “No,” he said, almost against his own will.

  “Some people aren’t fit to parent,” James said. “I’d say convicts are at the top of the list.”

  “It’s not your choice to make,” Evan managed. “LaShonna hung herself because she lost her baby.”

  “I didn’t know she was Gabe’s birth mom.” Meredith reached for Evan’s hand and squeezed it too hard. “I swear, if I would have known, things would have been different.”

  Evan yanked away. “But what about the other women? What about their kids? What about the questions they’ll have as they grow, and the families that could have been a part of their lives?”

  “They’re better off,” Meredith insisted. “You get that, right? We’re giving them a stable, loving family. No drug abuse or domestic violence or pedophiles. No unsecured guns in the home or sketchy boyfriends or mean drunks.” Meredith’s chest was heaving, her cheeks flushed with color.

  What had she seen? Evan could only begin to imagine. He had treated cigarette burns on a toddler and set the broken radius of a boy who was equal parts terrified and angry when he insisted he had fallen down the stairs. Once, Evan had witnessed a three-month-old with retinal hemorrhaging. Shaken baby syndrome. It made him so upset he punched the concrete wall of the hospital where he had been working and fractured his own hand. But Meredith was a social worker. She saw this sort of abuse—and things Evan was sure he couldn’t even begin to imagine—day in and day out. How did that affect a person? Evan wasn’t surprised that she wanted to do something about it. Something that stepped beyond the carefully drawn laws, the rules that meant everyone was innocent until proven guilty. In the time it took to determine culpability, a child’s life could be forever changed. Or snuffed out.

  “I get it. I really do. But you don’t know that those kids are better off being placed with an adoptive family.”

  “I do,” she said, her eyes flashing as they caught the light blinking from the dashboard.

  Evan put his forehead in h
is hand, forgetting for a second that it was sticky with blood. He pulled his palm away, slick and warm again, and wiped it on his pants. It was a lose-lose situation and he knew it. Maybe Meredith and James were right. Maybe making these mothers an offer they couldn’t refuse was the right thing to do. He thought of his son, of the little boy who, if he had stayed with his birth mother, would have been shuffled to relatives or foster care during her incarceration. No father, no stability. A ward of the state when his mother hung herself with a sheet. What would Gabe’s life have been if he weren’t their boy? It made his heart ache.

  And yet. Meredith and James were trying to play God.

  “I can’t let you keep doing this,” Evan said. “It ends tonight.”

  Meredith was quiet for a long moment, and when Evan looked up, she was staring out the windshield into the black night. “Get out,” she said softly.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I said: get out.”

  Evan grunted. “You’re kidding, right? I have no idea where we are.”

  “You heard the lady,” James said. “You have legs. You can walk.”

  “This is insane.”

  “Get out now!” Meredith shouted, hitting the steering wheel with each syllable.

  “Okay.” Evan put up his hands. “Okay.” He found the door handle and wrenched it open. Tendrils of cold air licked his hands, his face. Fine. He could walk.

  For the first time in hours he regretted leaving everything behind in his motel room. He had carefully reviewed the visitor information for the women’s prison and knew that he couldn’t take much inside. What he did take was subject to inspection. And since he wasn’t about to let an officer thumb through his file or scroll through his phone, he left the Motor Inn with nothing but a fake ID in his back pocket. The name, Sam Nelson (an unremarkable, place-filler of a name), matched the one Francesca had written on her approved-visitors list. After he used it, he threw it in the Dumpster behind a gas station on the edge of town. His name—his real name—wasn’t linked to any of this. But it soon would be.