by Alina Adams
"Do you think I go around kidnapping strange children for my own amusement?"
"I think," Officer Ho replied, "that I am obligated to find out who the boy belongs to before I hand him off to the first bidder. Surely, as a father, you appreciate my being cautious in this manner."
Idan gently set Omri back down in his car seat, the force of how hard he'd wished to slam the safety contraption down visible in the tension vibrating through his forearms. "This is ridiculous. Why would I claim a random child?" When Officer Ho didn't answer, Idan threw both hands dramatically in the air and announced, "Fine. We will play your game. What do you need to see from me, sir?"
"Some sort of legal documentation should do the trick."
"I do not walk around with my boy's birth certificate, if that is what you mean."
"Perhaps you could go get it, and bring it here."
"And leave him alone with you people?"
"He seems well cared for. You said so yourself."
Idan let loose with a few words Bex couldn't quite recall from Hebrew school, but whose meaning was crystal-clear. "Very well. I am going home. Right now. I will be back shortly. Do not dare take him out of here before I come back."
"We'll keep an eye on him for you."
Bex would have said that Idan stomped out of the room, except that he was too graceful for such a linebacker of a word. Idan moved like an unfurling flag; the slightest twitch of his finger appeared to emanate from a single, perfectly balanced center. He stood as straight as might be expected of a former-soldier, and moved as stealthily as someone trained to silently creep past the enemy. He was nearly sea-otter-like in that respect, simultaneously aquatic and feline. It was the latter trait that had held him in good stead when Idan Ben-Golan, at the unheard-of ancient age of sixteen, decided that he wished to represent his desert country at the Winter Olympics in figure skating. He had no figure skating experience. Israel had no regulation-size rinks. Idan did not let those things stop him. He bought videos of previous competitions from the United States, transferred them to PAL format, watched closely, took notes, then went onto a rink one third the size of an Olympic rink and proceeded to teach himself jumps and spins. He represented Israel at the subsequent Olympics because there was no one else to challenge for that dubious honor.
He came in dead last. His technical scores, if the judges could have managed it, would have been in the negative numbers. And yet, when it came to the artistic portion — the in-between parts designed to connect jumps to spins, trick to trick — even those who'd temporarily forgotten about figure skating's reputation for good manners and actually laughed out loud during Idan's programs had to admit that he had... something. Working without a coach schooled in the "right" way to execute a maneuver, he'd come up with moves and body positions that were truly innovative. Unaware that some skaters merely used their music as an audio prompt to remind them when to start their program and when to end it, Idan choreographed every single beat, not allowing a measure to go by unacknowledged. He may have finished the Olympics in last place, but he left the competition with several requests to consult (just consult, no one was willing to trust him outright quite yet) on the programs of those who'd placed well ahead of him.
It took nearly a decade (three years of which he spent doing military service) for Idan to work his way up to solo choreographer, and another five years for him to move into coaching. But over the past three seasons, he'd guided both Cooper Devaney and the dance team of Adler & Vama to U.S. titles.
Adler & Vama
He won the PSA's "Rising Star" Coach of the Year Award. And along the way, he married the richest woman in skating.
Her name was Pandora Westby, a.k.a. Cash of the Pan. Her wealthy father had indulged his little sweetie's dream of becoming a champion figure skater by building an entire training facility purely for her enjoyment (they accepted other, paying customers, too, but the reality that their training center was always in the red was never a source of concern for the Westbys). When that dream failed to materialize after repeated tries on Pandora's part to simply qualify for Nationals, much less the Olympics, all that lovely money was recycled into Pandora's attempt to build her own champions. She sponsored various up-and-comers over a period of seventeen years. Always young men. Always handsome, always muscular, always at her beck and call. One incomparable year, she arrived at Nationals surrounded by her own private harem; Pandora, wrapped in a floor-length silver fur coat, and a six-pack of towering young men at her side, all dressed in tops so tight-fitting, they might as well have been shirtless.
Idan Ben-Golan, for the record, was never one of the boys. Which was why the wedding announcement, two years earlier, of the thirty-one-year-old coach marrying the forty-seven-year-old diva came as such a shock to those in the skating world who prided themselves on knowing not only everything that happened, but everything that was going to happen as well. The rumors began swirling instantaneously, with only a pair of details accepted as written in stone: She was after his body, he was after her money (and maybe her American citizenship, too — that part was open for further discussion).
Bex could only imagine what sort of firestorm the dirt about Allison and Idan's baby was already igniting in the arena. She was about to step out for an earful when a uniformed policeman blocked her way and, addressing Officer Ho, pointed his thumb at a husky man dressed in a baseball cap and gray-hooded rain slicker not quite broad enough to zip comfortably over his ample gut. The cop said, "Girl's dad is here."
"Ralph Adler." He shuffled inside and introduced himself awkwardly, not sure whom he should be addressing, which caused his eyes to ping-pong over every person in the room. He looked at the baby for a beat longer than he did at anybody else, so that it almost seemed like he was addressing the infant when offering his name. Which made sense, in an odd way, since they were, after all, related.
"Hello, Mr. Adler, I'm Officer Ho. I am very sorry about your loss."
"Ralph Adler," he repeated, still staring at the baby. He shook Ho's hand without looking at it, and only noticed that he'd done it when he felt Ho disengage. His own hand was still frozen in midair. He looked at it in surprise, then stiffly lowered it to his side. "I'm Allison's dad," he mumbled to no one in particular.
"Yes," Ho agreed. "Thank you for coming, sir."
"I didn't know," Ralph looked around, dragging his plea like a roll of cloth meant to envelop Ho, Bex, Francis, Diana, the baby, and his temporary caretaker.
"You didn't know your daughter intended to commit suicide?' Ho prompted.
"Yes." He nodded his head, then changed in mid-gesture to shaking his head. "No. I didn't know she was going to kill herself. I didn't know about the baby."
"It's a rather difficult condition to hide," Francis drawled. "Especially in spandex."
Ralph tugged on the hood of his rain slicker. It fell back to reveal a mostly bald head, with only a half moon of wispy, blond hair along the base of his skull to indicate where pinkish scalp ended and sunburned neck began. Ralph ran his fingers through the remainder, scratching until he drew blood. He said, "Allie moved out almost a year ago. Right before Worlds. The Worlds she didn't go to. We had a fight."
"About the baby?" Diana interjected.
Ralph had to turn around to look at her. The question obviously bewildered him. "No," he said slowly. "No. I didn't know about that. I said that, right? I didn't know."
"So what was the fight about, Mr. Adler?"
"Worlds. Allison — she said she wasn't going to Worlds." He looked helplessly at Francis, figuring the former champion would understand his confusion. "I didn't — I couldn't figure out what she was saying, at first. What did she mean, she wasn't going to Worlds? She and Sebi just won their first National title. This is what we've been working for since she was a little girl. National champion, World champion, that was always the dream. Well, Olympic champion, that's number one, I suppose. But you need to go to Worlds first." To Ho, Ralph helpfully explained, "It's almost impossible to
come out of nowhere and win an Olympic title without first earning a World title. It happens once in a while, but not often. Especially in Dance. You really have to pay your dues and wait your turn in Ice Dance. As long as Allison and Sebi were the American runners-up, we couldn't expect the judges to take them too seriously. They were top ten the previous year, which is excellent, we knew that. But they needed that title to really contest for a medal. We were thinking top five, last year, then this year. Who knows? They could have..." Ralph trailed off, remembering that none of it was going to happen now.
"Did Allison say why she'd decided not to go to Worlds?' Diana asked, trying to sound like she was just helping Officer Ho out, but primarily for her own curiosity.
"She wouldn't." Ralph looked at the baby again, making the connection. "She wouldn't tell me why. I kept asking, but she wouldn't tell me."
"And so she left home?"
"I didn't tell her to go!" Ralph veered from befuddled to frantic. He focused on Bex. She guessed that being the youngest person (save Omri) in the room left her to play the part of Substitute Allie. "I never told her to go. I wouldn't do that! Allison and I are a team. We always said that: We're a team." To Ho, he said, "I'm not her biological dad. He left when Allie was a baby. I married her mother when Allie was three. That's how she started skating. I started her. I wanted to, you know, what do they call it? Bond? I wanted to bond with her. And I figured, all little girls love figure skating. So I started taking Allie to the rink. It became kind of our thing. Every Saturday morning, we'd let her mother sleep in and we'd get Allie's skates and her sweater, and this little yellow hat she really loved — it looked like it was made out of bananas — and we would go to the rink. Allie would skate and I'd sit at the barrier and watch. I always got her a cup of hot chocolate from the vending machine. I'd give her a sip every time she made it all the way around the rink without falling down. It was our thing."
"Did Allie like skating?" Bex asked. To an outsider such as Ho, it may have sounded like a strange question to ask about a girl who'd dedicated three quarters of her life to the sport. But after interviewing every competitor at Nationals, Bex possessed a long list of competitive skaters who'd told her everything from "I hated skating when I first started" to "Yeah, it used to be fun, but now it's like my job, you know?"
"She liked it," Ralph, who knew exactly what Bex was asking, insisted. "She did like it. She's the one who asked for lessons. And she's the one who wanted to keep on going after her mother died. Allison was twelve when her mother died. After that, it was just her and me. Team Adler. One year, her first one at Nationals, she made it in Novice Dance. We even had hats made up — 'Team Adler.' Sebi wore one, too. Everyone got a kick out of it. We made people laugh when we wore them."
"No wonder you were surprised when she decided to quit," Ho sympathized.
"I felt like I'd been smacked across the face. You know people say your ears ring when you get punched? My ears were ringing. I couldn't hear. We'd sacrificed so much for her skating. Allison gave up the most, sure. She's the one who had to get the bruises and put in the time and suffer the rejections. But I put in, too. I drove her to the rink and back twice a day, seven days a week, every day but Christmas until she got her license. I stood next to her when she looked at the results board and ended up lower than we both knew she deserved. I had to talk her up when she was down, keep her going and focused. And then there was the money. So many of the people in skating, they have so, so much money. I didn't realize it when we started. Admission and skate rental once a week isn't really going to break the bank, and we weren't poor. I do sales. Biotech sales; market is always good. We live pretty well by most people's standards. I just didn't know skating would cost so much. Not just the lessons and the skates, but the costumes and the travel. That's what killed me in the end. The travel. Plane fare and hotel and food when you get there. Not just for us, the coach, too. We had to sell the house. Got a smaller apartment. And I haven't bought a new car in more than ten years. I practically say a prayer every time I stick my key in the ignition. We never went to the movies. We shopped for our clothes at the secondhand stores and our food at those bulk places. But it was all supposed to be worth it in the end. Allison was going to the Olympics. That's what kept us going. I gave up so much because Allie was going to the Olympics. What the hell am I supposed to do now, huh? What was it all for? Tell me?" Ralph demanded. And then, looking at Omri, he swore, "I'm going to kill that son of a bitch, that's what I'm gong to do. Where the hell is he, anyway? Have you told him yet?"
"You mean Omri's father?" Ho asked.
Ralph nodded, the fellow apparently not even being worth a grunt.
"We've told him. He went to get Omri's birth certificate. We're expecting him back any moment."
"Birth certificate?" Ralph was back to puzzlement. "He knew about this?"
"Oh, yes." Francis enjoyed having knowledge others didn't, whether it was about skating, or the father of their dead daughter's child. "He knows all about it. He tried to convince us that Allison had agreed he should raise the baby while she left town."
The sunburn on Ralph's neck crept up to coat his lips, cheek, and forehead. He practically spit as he raged, "Bastard lied to me. He told me he didn't know where she went! No. Better. He actually had the nerve to call me and ask if maybe I knew where Allison had gone. I felt bad for him, can you believe it? He was practically crying over the phone, swearing he didn't know why Allie broke up with him, why she disappeared, what did he do wrong? He kept begging me to forgive him. I told him it wasn't his fault. That it was mine. Because of what I'd said to Allie."
"What did you say, sir?"
His face of rage blushed even more crimson with embarrassment. "I shouldn't have said it. I knew it as soon as I heard the words. But I was so angry."
"What did you say?" Bex was in Diana country now, asking because she really wanted to know, no altruistic motive implied.
Ralph looked at the floor, sighed, cleared his throat, then went back to pulling on his lone tuft of hair. "I told Allison... I told her I expected every penny that I'd spent on her skating, reimbursed. I told her I would take her to court, I would garnish any future wages, and if she didn't pay up, I would have her arrested. She was terrified. That's why she ran away. She ran away because she thought I would put her in jail. None of you can imagine how guilty I've felt this past year. I called all of her friends, looking for her. Unfortunately, her only friends were people at the rink, and she'd made it very clear she wasn't going back there. Every time the phone rang, I'd hope it was her. So I could tell her I didn't mean it. So I could ask her to come home."
"Did you try to find her? Did you call the police?"
"Allison is nineteen years old. I didn't think they'd be willing to help me."
"So then you didn't try to find her?"
"I..." He stuffed both hands in his pockets. "No," he said. "I guess I didn't."
"So you've had no contact with Allison for the past year?"
"No. None. If I did, maybe she'd have told me ..."
“Told you what?"
"About the baby. I'd have helped her, you know; taken care of her. I didn't mean what I'd said to her, about the money. I wouldn't have turned her away. Maybe, if she'd come to me, she wouldn't have... she wouldn't have felt she needed... to do... this."
"Do you have any idea, sir, why your daughter might have committed suicide?"
"Well, it's obvious, isn't it?"
"What is, sir?"
"The baby." Ralph suddenly refused to make eye contact with the child. "Allie couldn't handle it. She was so young, after all. And all alone. She'd never lived on her own before. I'd always taken care of her. My God, now that I think about it... did Allie even know how to rent an apartment or open a checking account? She never had to do anything on her own. It must have been horrible for her, trying to survive alone."
"Was she? Alone, that is?"
"What do you mean?"
"We got the impression that th
e father was very much involved. Surely he could have helped out with the apartment and the checking account and anything else Allison might have needed while she was pregnant. Especially since, as your Mr. Howarth here blurted out earlier, he did expect to assume custody of the boy. He might have thought providing for Allie was the least he could do."
"Then why call me crying, asking if I knew where she was? It doesn't make any sense. Was he messing with me? What kind of a game was Coop Devaney playing?"
CHAPTER THREE
Bex had expected as much. Idan Ben-Golan as the father of Allison's baby made a certain amount of sense. After all, Idan was Allie and Sebastian's coach, they spent an incredible amount of time together, and he certainly would not have been the first man in history to seduce — or, to be fair, be seduced by — a barely legal pupil, married or not.
But, Cooper Devaney, Allison's boyfriend up until a year ago, made even better sense. Plus, there was the fact that Bex could imagine Coop sobbing on the telephone to Allie's father a lot easier than she could picture a former Army sergeant doing the same.
"Cooper Devaney?" Francis and Diana's synch was as perfect on their shock as it had once been on their side-by-side stroking.
"Cooper Devaney?" Officer Ho, amateur that he was, proved a beat behind. "Mr. Adler, the person who claimed to be the father of Allison's baby is Mr. Idan Ben-Golan. He is Allison's former coach, is he not?"
"Idan?" Ralph repeated. "He's... he's not interested in Allison. He's married."
No one felt the need to comment on the latter.
Ho said, "Be that as it may, Mr. Ben-Golan has claimed to be the father. He is the one getting the birth certificate. He says he and Allison agreed that Mr. Ben-Golan and, I presume, his wife, would raise the baby, and that Allison was planning to leave town."
"It's Devaney," Ralph insisted. "It has to be."
"Why do you say that, sir?"
"Because he and Allie were inseparable. Sebi Vama, he is — was — Allie's dance partner, he used to joke that he felt like he was skating with two people. Cooper came to Allison's practices, and as soon as she got off the ice, she was in his lap, him rubbing her hands to warm them up. He was at our house practically every night. He picked Allie up in the morning for practice. Idan Ben-Golan... he was just the coach. Coop and Allie... it has to be Coop."
