Other People's Children

by R. J. Hoffmann

  Jon and Gail,

  Please contact me as soon as possible. A reporter from Fox News called asking me a lot of questions. He said that you’re taking Maya to Canada. An FBI agent also called asking the same questions. I think that you’re running out of time to do the right thing.

  Paige

  How could they know about Canada? Jon gripped the sides of the computer as if to steady himself. Maya stretched and began to whimper, so Gail dropped the phone back into the backpack and plucked her from the bed.

  “What did you tell your dad?” Jon asked through his teeth.

  “Nothing. I just told him we were OK.”

  “Then how the hell do they know about Canada?”

  Gail looked down at Maya, adjusted the baby in her arms. “I told him we were leaving the country,” she said quietly. “But I didn’t tell him where.”

  “Goddamn it, Gail!”

  Her own anger surged. “I didn’t say anything about Canada.”

  “Did you tell him where we are?”

  “No. I didn’t tell him anything else.”

  “Then how the hell did they figure out where we’re headed?”

  His eyes were red and wild. His whole body quivered. He thought she was lying. After everything, he didn’t believe her. “It didn’t come from my dad, Jon. Because I didn’t tell him anything else.”

  Jon glared down at the screen. The heater near the window clattered. Maya started to cry.

  “Emails from the reporter and the FBI. Damn it, Gail.”

  “You think I’m lying.”

  Jon stared at the computer for a long time. He didn’t look up when he spoke, and his words were clipped short. “How else could they have found out?”

  Gail went still and stared at Jon, her mouth open. They didn’t fight often, but when they fought, they fought hard. They had yelled and screamed and cried and gone silent, but never, in the heat of their worst arguments, had Jon ever called her a liar.

  Marla

  Marla stood in the laundry room behind Wendy, peering over her shoulder, feeling itchy and impatient. It took twenty minutes of shouting to get Wendy’s lazy ass off the couch and another half hour for Wendy to figure out how to connect Carli’s printer and get it working. The printer now grumbled on top of the dryer, spitting out sheet after sheet, and Wendy pecked at the keyboard. She knew how to work a computer better than Marla, of course, but not as good as Carli. She was able to find what Marla needed, but it was slow going. She typed with two fingers and didn’t seem to know where to click.

  Wendy hit print again and then looked at her watch. “I gotta go.”

  “Is that all of ’em?” Marla demanded.

  “Yeah,” Wendy muttered. “That’s all of ’em.” She stood, pushing the chair back into Marla’s knees. She brushed past Marla on the way to the door.

  “You sure?”

  Wendy stopped, turned, and leaned against the doorframe. She crossed her arms and glared at Marla, chewing her gum furiously. “Why Grand Forks?”

  Marla wanted to tell her to mind her own fucking business but decided that Wendy had earned a true answer. “It was in that notebook. The Durbin lady wrote it down.”

  Wendy stopped chewing, narrowed her eyes. “Are you fucking kidding me? She writes down the name of a town and you waste an hour and a half of my life?”

  Marla grabbed the stack of paper off the printer and thumbed through it. Her lower back prickled. She squinted up at Wendy. She tried to think of something to shut her up, to get her out of the doorway, but instead, the truth slipped out again. “It’s all I got.”

  Wendy’s eyes drilled Marla. She blew a bubble. It popped, and she gathered the gum back into her mouth with her tongue. “Why?”

  Marla felt the heat creep up her spine. “Whattaya mean why?”

  “I mean, why do you give a shit about that baby? Why you wanna find it so bad?”

  Marla set the papers down on the washer. “It’s Carli’s baby.”

  “Bullshit. It’s like you want that baby more than Carli does.”

  The heat found Marla’s neck. She didn’t have to explain shit to this spoiled little bitch. She didn’t have to tell her about what it was like to get beat up by Sean, or to work fourteen hours a day, or to drag herself from one shit job to the next. She didn’t have to tell Wendy about the cockroach-infested apartment that she was probably too young to remember, or about that one and only boyfriend who treated Marla more like a whore than a girlfriend, or about how she used to come home from work every night and watch her two young daughters sleep for just a few minutes before she fell, exhausted, into her own bed. And she could tell by the look on Wendy’s face that she wouldn’t listen to any of it anyway, so Marla said nothing.

  Wendy’s lip curled and her eyes narrowed. “It’s like you want that kid more than you wanted your own.”

  And then Marla felt nothing but the heat, her vision went black around the edges, and her fists hardened. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath before stepping forward, but when she opened them, Wendy had disappeared from the doorway. Marla somehow stopped herself from chasing her into the front room. Which was good, because she didn’t have time for all that. Besides, she had already punched one of her daughters that day.

  Paige

  Paige pulled into the Denny’s parking lot and turned off the engine. She could see Carli, sitting still and alone at a booth by the window. Framed by the big sheet of glass, she looked tiny. She stared straight ahead in a way that spoke of exhaustion and sadness. Carli sipped from her mug and turned to the window, but because it was dark outside, she was probably just staring at a reflection of herself. Paige wondered what Carli saw reflected in the glass. And she couldn’t help wondering whether she had looked so alone sitting in that Steak ’n Shake so many years ago, fresh off the bus from Des Moines, pregnant, waiting for her aunt to pick her up.

  Paige heaved herself out of the car and went into the restaurant. Carli spotted her as soon as she came through the door. She pushed her hair out of her face and tried to smile. Paige wedged herself into the other side of the booth and reached for Carli’s hand. She gave it a little squeeze.

  “How are you?” she asked, because she really wanted to know.

  “I’ve been better.”

  “I’m glad that you called.”

  Carli looked down at her coffee. “I’m so sorry about all this.”

  Christ. She was blaming herself. “Stop. I should be the one apologizing to you.”

  “This isn’t what I meant to happen.”

  “You had every right to do what you did.”

  “But if I didn’t—”

  “Carli,” Paige said, louder than she intended. With an effort she softened her voice. “Maya’s your baby.”

  Carli fell silent. Her eyes flickered up at Paige, out the window, and then settled back on the mug. “If you knew where they were, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”

  “Of course. And I’d tell the police. I’ll do anything I can to help.” Paige shook her head, tried to swallow all the anger she’d been chewing. “I still can’t believe that Gail would do this.”

  “I can,” Carli said.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “She wants that baby as bad as I do.”

  Paige took in a big breath, held it, let it out. She hated Gail and Jon for what they had done to this girl. She hated herself for letting it happen. “I talked to Agent Bradford again on the way here. It sounds like they’re doing everything they can.”

  “But they haven’t found them.”

  “No. They haven’t found them.”

  Carli swallowed. “Do you think they will?”

  Paige looked at the table and then back at Carli. If she could give the girl nothing else, she could at least give her the truth. “He said that if they make it across the border, the odds go way down. He just doesn’t think that the Canadians will make it a priority.”

  “What about her parents?”

  Paige s
hrugged. “I keep calling them, but they’re hard to read. I don’t think her mom knows anything. It’s harder to tell with her dad.”

  Carli put her hands flat on the table, swallowed, and then looked Paige right in the eye. “Will you help me?”

  “Any way that I can.”

  “Will you lend me some money?”

  “For what?”

  “Gas. Food. Hotels.”

  “To go where?”

  “Winnipeg.”

  Oh shit. Paige reached to squeeze Carli’s hand again, but she pulled it away. “Carli—”

  “I’ll pay you back.”

  “It’s not that, honey. I’d give you the money. But Winnipeg’s such a big place. And we don’t even know for sure that’s where they’ll end up. You’ll be looking for a needle in a hayfield.”

  “I need to do something. I can’t just sit here and wait for the FBI to tell me my baby is gone forever.” She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her palms. “I have to see her again. I have to go.”

  Paige picked up the saltshaker, rolled it between her fingers. A tiny kernel of a thought had sprouted sometime in the last twenty-four hours, but Paige had refused to acknowledge it, burying it away. She imagined Carli wandering the streets of Winnipeg, alone, searching in vain for a glimpse of her baby. She thought about going to Canada with Carli, but she knew that was a fool’s errand, her guilt getting the best of her. Finally, she let the seedling struggle through the soil. It just might work, but saying it aloud felt like a betrayal of the side that she had chosen. “I have one idea.”

  Carli looked up, her eyes hungry.

  “I hesitate to even bring it up.”

  Carli leaned forward. “I’ll do anything,” she said.

  “It’s a long shot.”

  “I said I’ll do anything.”

  “And if it works, it will only give you part of what you really want.”

  Marla

  Marla climbed the stairs to Larry’s apartment, clutching an envelope, her shoulders still tight, her mind still chewing Wendy’s words. When she reached Larry’s door, the smell of weed leaked from it. Kurt must already be there. She walked in without knocking—they wouldn’t get up if she knocked anyway. Kurt and Larry sat next to each other on the couch, tiny plastic steering wheels in their hands, their glazed eyes fixed on the TV. Mario Kart music mumbled from the television and their cars bounced off the walls and careened over cliffs. Larry leaned into every turn. Kurt’s hands barely moved.

  “Hey,” Larry managed.

  Marla knew better than to interrupt the race, so she sat on an aluminum lawn chair next to the couch. Empty Pabst cans and full ashtrays crowded the milk crates that served as coffee tables. Dirty clothes and candy wrappers lay scattered on the scarred hardwood. Marla lit a cigarette and waited. Finally, Princess Peach (Larry) won.

  “You suck,” Larry said in his flat, stoned voice.

  “Fuck you,” Kurt mumbled. He dropped his controller onto the couch and reached for the one-hitter and lighter.

  “You said it was important,” Larry said.

  “I need you to go to Grand Forks.”

  “Where the fuck is that?” Kurt asked.

  “North Dakota,” Marla said.

  Kurt held his hit and then blew it out with a giggle and a cough. “North Dakota? Fuck that.”

  “Carli’s baby might be there.”

  That shut him up. The two men looked at each other for a long moment.

  “How you know that?” Kurt asked.

  “Grand Forks was in that notebook Larry found. Right above Winnipeg.”

  Larry’s eyes narrowed. “They write the name of a town, so you want us to drive to North Dakota?”

  Ever since Bradford left, she’d been trying to figure why Grand Forks, but she couldn’t make any sense of it. The name of that town was all she had, though. If they made it across that border, the baby was gone for good. She looked from one of them to the other, tried to act more convinced than she felt. “That’s right. My gut says they’re gonna stop there on the way.”

  “Your gut.” Larry looked at her skeptically.

  Marla shifted her weight on the lawn chair, tugged at the sleeve of her sweatshirt, and then fixed Larry with a stare that he couldn’t ignore. “Five grand,” she said.

  “Huh?”

  “You get me my grandbaby back, I give you each five grand.”

  “Where the hell you gonna get ten grand?”

  Marla had been doing the math in her head since shortly after she knocked Carli to the kitchen floor. She had squirreled away almost five thousand dollars over the last decade—for when something went wrong—because something always goes wrong. She might be able to borrow the rest against the house. If not, then she’d have to sell the truck. “You let me worry about that.”

  They both leaned forward, now, perched on the edge of the couch. Marla could see the gears in their foggy brains reengage. Five grand.

  “How we gonna find ’em?” Kurt asked.

  Marla pulled the sheaf of papers from the envelope. “I got a list of all the hotels in Grand Forks and a map of the city.” She thumbed to the stack of pictures of Jon and Gail. It took half an hour to find the adoption book in Carli’s room and a trip to the UPS Store to make copies. “And photos of ’em.”

  Larry and Kurt considered, glanced at each other. Kurt shrugged. “How we gonna get there?” Larry asked.

  “You drop me off at home and take my truck. I got a thousand bucks in my pocket. Five hundred for gas and food. ’Nother five hundred to wave at the hotel clerks.” She could see that they were in. “It’ll take you eleven hours to get there.”

  Larry tried to focus on the picture of the Durbins and then on Marla’s face. “Why you payin’ us? Why don’t you just go yourself?”

  “I gotta stay here and make sure my dumbass daughter doesn’t do anything else stupid. Besides, you two can be a little bit more… persuasive.”

  Carli

  Carli didn’t sleep until about four in the morning. It made sense what Paige suggested—a terrible, brutal sense—and it just might work. What Gail and Jon did wasn’t right, and that’s what made it hard to decide, but right had nothing to do with it anymore. Being right didn’t fix anything. Gail was working to fix things. Marla was working to fix things. Carli’s mind kept settling on a sentence from the chapter on grief in her psych book. Some things you can’t fix, it read; some things you just have to carry. That made sense, a gentle kind of sense, and that helped her to decide.

  After she decided, she fell into a deep, dreamless sleep and didn’t wake until nine thirty the next morning. She felt the sun on her face, and she opened her eyes to the glare. It came through the window and through the slats of the crib. The shadows striped her bed like prison bars. She reached out and rubbed the smooth wood with her fingertips, and she almost began to second-guess herself, but instead, she pushed herself out of bed and forced herself to dress. She opened the bedroom door and listened for Marla, sniffed the air for smoke. But all she heard was Randy killing people, and all she smelled was microwave popcorn.

  She ate a breakfast of peanut butter toast and then grabbed her things and headed through the front room. Randy was slumped in his regular spot, working the controller. Wendy curled into the other corner of the couch, thumbing her phone.

  “Marla took your car,” Wendy said without looking up.

  “What? Why?”

  Wendy shrugged. “Dunno. She asked me where you keep the spare keys.”

  “Where’s her truck?”

  “I said. I. Don’t. Know.”

  Shit. Carli pulled back the curtain, and sure enough, only Randy’s orange pickup sat in the driveway. “Randy. Can I borrow your truck?”

  “Hell no,” Wendy answered for him. “What if we need to go somewhere?”

  “I’ll be back in two hours.”

  “I said no.”

  “It’s a thing I need to do for the baby.”

  Wendy looked up from her pho
ne. Randy put the game on pause and looked up, too. This was the first time that Carli had mentioned the baby to Wendy since she came home from the hospital. Ever, maybe.

  Randy looked from Carli to Wendy, and when his eyes rested back on Carli, they held a curiosity she’d never noticed before. “What about the baby?”

  “I need to do something,” Carli said. “I can’t really say, but it’s important.”

  Randy didn’t look at Wendy as he shoved his hand into his pocket. He ignored Wendy’s glare as he tossed Carli his keys. “Get me a Red Bull on the way back,” he said, and picked up the game controller.

  Wendy glared at the side of his face for a long moment, but eventually bent back to her phone. “And a pack of smokes,” she mumbled.

  * * *

  With traffic, it took Carli forty minutes to drive to Paige’s office. She waited in the conference room for ten more minutes while Paige finished a call. When Paige entered, she carried a laptop and a small stack of papers, looking grim. “You sure you want to do this?”

  Carli nodded.

  “It’s real important to me that you don’t feel like I’m pressuring you into this.”

  She didn’t want to do this, of course. She wanted to reclaim Maya like the law said she could. She wanted to hold Maya and feed her and sleep next to her and find a way to care for her. She didn’t want Maya to grow up thinking of her as that woman who gave her away. She wanted Maya to call her Mom. But none of that was possible. She didn’t blame Paige for any of it. She blamed Gail and Jon. But blame didn’t fix anything. Blame wouldn’t help her to see her baby again. Paige wasn’t forcing her to do this. She was forcing herself.

  “I want to do this,” she lied.

  Paige used the phone on the conference table to call in the notary, a short, wrinkled woman who said nothing and refused to look at Carli or Paige. Carli’s hand didn’t shake when she signed the final consent. She looked out the window while Paige witnessed it. No tears came when the notary stamped and signed.