A Slow Ruin

by Pamela Crane

  “Hear me out,” I pleaded. “I have no idea where she came from, but here’s the thing. If we turn her in to the police, they’ll likely find her parents and she’ll end up right back in the horrible situation she was already in. But if we keep her, she’ll lack nothing! She’ll get endless love. We’re her second chance at a great life.”

  “There’s proper channels for this.” Joe again. “She needs to be in the custody of the state where they’ll place her in foster care. Maybe you could then arrange to be her foster parent and adopt her.”

  “Do you know how long of a process is involved? There’s no guarantee I’ll get her.”

  “I’m pretty sure you’d go to jail if anyone ever found out, Felicity,” Cody added. “I’m pretty sure it’s considered kidnapping, even if you technically didn’t steal her.”

  I couldn’t help but notice Oliver’s silence. What was he thinking? I needed to appeal to his shared desire for a family.

  “We’ve been waiting for a baby, Oliver. What if this was what we were waiting for? We’re her miracle just as much as she’s our miracle.”

  Still Oliver contemplated, or perhaps he was in shock. I’d never known him not to have a strong opinion, about everything from what color to paint the bathroom to who played the best James Bond (his pick: Daniel Craig, though Sean Connery still did it for me). No one spoke, just stared. At me. At the baby. Her eyes peeled open and she cooed, pursing her lips and rolling her head, searching for a nipple.

  “No foster care. You should keep her.” Everyone turned to look over at Debra, the most law-abiding blinker-using one of us all.

  “Mom, what are you saying?” Cody replied.

  She shrugged, reached down and unclipped the car seat, lifting the baby into her arms. Her gaze fixed lovingly on her new granddaughter. “I don’t know if Cody will ever give me grandkids, and you two have been trying for a while with no luck, so what if this is my only chance to be a grandma?”

  “Mom, you’re talking crazy. They shouldn’t steal a baby just to fulfill your dream of being a grandmother,” Cody grumbled.

  “It’s not like I’m the only one who wants this,” Debra said pointedly. “Felicity was created to be a mom. She’d be amazing at it.”

  “And how do you propose they get away with it?” Joe asked.

  “It won’t be hard.” Debra turned to me. “Sweetheart, all you have to do is go to the hospital tomorrow pretending you’ve given birth at home, and ask how to file for a birth certificate. They’ll help file one for you. I’ll go with you. Considering she looks to only be a day or two old, she probably doesn’t even have a birth certificate yet. Once they issue that, we just…raise our beautiful little addition to the family as our own. And never speak of what happened tonight—ever. She must never know. If we can all do that, everything will be fine. It’ll be more than fine. She’ll have a wonderful home, you’ll have the most loved baby in the world, and no one will ever know the difference.”

  “Are you kidding?” Joe yelled. “Oliver could go to jail over this. How could you endorse this madness?”

  “You know why, Joe.” Debra shot him a silencing glare, her word stern and final.

  “Is this about you? Because it shouldn’t be. It should be about the baby. And about our kids staying out of jail.”

  “What’s he talking about, Mom?” Cody asked.

  “Nothing,” Joe interjected, holding his hand out to end the conversation.

  “Mom?” Cody pleaded.

  “No, it’s not nothing. They deserve to know,” Debra said. “When I was little, my biological parents abused me. Tortured me, actually. It was a horrific life, if you even want to call it a life. They tried to hide the abuse from everyone by pulling me out of school, never letting me leave the house. Eventually I slipped outside one day and I just kept running and running until I had no idea where I was, but I was more afraid of being in that house than I was being lost out on the streets.”

  Tears welled in her eyes as she sniffled, adjusted the baby in her arms, and sucked in a breath.

  “Well, a really sweet lady, Miss Frances, I called her, saw me and asked me where I came from, and I was petrified to tell her, because I didn’t want to be taken home. Despite my tight lips, I think she knew it was somewhere bad, because she ended up taking me in that night. We spent the next couple days together baking, gardening, watching movies…she even took me shopping and made up a bedroom for me. A beautiful pink princess room. She gave me the best days of my life up until then.”

  The baby’s coos intensified, and Debra shifted naturally into mama mode as she silenced the baby with a rocking motion.

  “A couple days later Miss Frances told me she hated to do it, but she needed to go through the proper channels, but her intention was to foster me. This was back in the day where the foster system didn’t have many checks and balances, and hardly any good families wanted any part in it, only people who wanted the paycheck. So Miss Frances called social services and asked if she could have temporary custody of me until the paperwork was completed. They denied her, came to pick me up, and tried to reunite me with my biological family. Of course I ran away again, but I had no idea where to find Miss Frances. I was very young, you know? Again I got picked up, and this time they put me in a new foster home. I never saw my parents—or sweet Miss Frances—again after that.”

  Debra paused to kiss the sleeping baby on her forehead.

  “I don’t know if my parents simply never tried to see me, or what, but it was a relief. Until I got put into foster care with a family who was only in it for the money. She fostered several of us—they didn’t have all the rules that prevented overcrowding back then—and we were all treated like garbage. Again, I ran away. Again, I was found. This happened about a dozen times before I finally fit into the right family. A single woman, no less, which was highly uncommon back in those days. That woman I called my real mom—Olivia Fields.” Debra turned to Oliver. “Your grandmother, Ollie. The woman you were named after.”

  Debra handed me the baby.

  “She fostered me, loved me, ended up adopting me, and it was the most beautiful, purest love in the world. I don’t want this baby to suffer like I did. I don’t want her to be passed around, to end up broken and unloved. The chances of you getting to keep her are slim, just like with Miss Frances. We never found each other again, and I don’t know what happened to her or if maybe she decided against it, but whatever the case, right now you have a chance to save this child. I think it’s the right thing to do, screw the law!”

  Oliver bent down to pick up the worn velveteen rabbit. Then he took the baby from me, gently placed the plush toy under her arm, and snuggled her up to his chest. “It’s settled then. Welcome home, sweet angel.” He swung her gently around to view her new family. “Meet your Nana and Pappy Joe and Uncle Cody. And most importantly, your mommy.”

  As I watched my husband fall in love with his first child, I felt the crinkle of that paper in my pocket. The only evidence of my lie. I had indeed spoken to the father. We could have helped him get on his feet instead of pretending he didn’t exist. Some might call me selfish, some might call me selfless. But in that moment I didn’t care about anything but that baby. So I decided then and there that no one could ever find out the truth.

  Eventually it would hunt me down.

  Chapter 34

  Felicity

  The library lights flickered, and Oliver choked on a cloud of dust that hung over us like an apparition. The air in the room was stifling tonight. I set the Russian nesting doll back in its corner of the trunk and sighed resignation. This whole search for answers was hopeless.

  “So you knew all along who her biological father was? And you’ve been lying about it ever since?”

  I was the kid whose hand was caught in the cookie jar, mouth smeared with chocolate, and yet I still proclaimed innocence.

  “I wouldn’t call it lying exactly. I had his license plate number, s
o if I really wanted to dig, I could have found out who he was probably. But we had all decided to keep her. We all agreed that it was best not to give her back to someone who would leave her on the side of the road.”

  “Why didn’t you just tell the truth about meeting the father? We probably would have all still said the same thing—to keep her.”

  Could have, would have, should have. It got you nowhere.

  “I didn’t think that at the time. I assumed everyone would tell me to help her find her family. Who knows if the dad had a brother or a cousin who could take care of her? But I didn’t want to consider that option. I’m sorry for lying. It was selfish of me to want to give a little girl a better life.”

  Oliver rolled his eyes, because he knew a pity party when he was invited to one.

  “So the license plate number is gone?”

  “I don’t know. I thought I had put it in this nesting doll in case I ever needed it, but it was so long ago. I remember coming up here with Vera a time or two to dig through ancestry records for her school project, but I don’t remember checking for it. Last I saw it was fifteen years ago, when we were moving. God knows where I might have misplaced it over the years.”

  Oliver scratched his chin, smearing dirt into his day-old stubble. “Do you think maybe Vera found it?”

  “Even if she did, it was just letters and numbers. I highly doubt she could have made any sense of them, or knew what they meant.”

  My gaze skimmed across the gaping mouth of the chest, glancing at the relics from Alvera’s past. A flawed hero. In her own way, a dark horse of a woman who had done so much for women’s suffrage, and likely died for it. I picked up the stack of newspaper clippings chronicling her life.

  “What’s that?” Oliver asked.

  “Alvera’s life and death, summed up in a few pieces of paper.”

  “Oh, wow, look at this.” Oliver lifted a loose article from the trunk and read it. “Her work in the women’s rights movement. This one is talking about her fundraising work.” Oliver gently handled it, set it down, and picked up another. “And here’s her marriage announcement in the newspaper. Can you imagine being forced to marry a man twice your age and having to produce his heir?”

  I examined a picture of Alvera and Robert, noticing their stiff postures, and the misery etched across both of their faces. “Just because something’s the norm doesn’t make it right.”

  “My mom told me that supposedly her personality changed after the baby was born.”

  “Isn’t that when she disappeared?”

  He nodded solemnly.

  Debra had told me about the family mystery, regurgitating the macabre details as if she had lived them herself. A couple months after giving birth to Olivia, on a cool April evening, Alvera disappeared, never to be heard from again. No one knew exactly what had happened to her, though many suspicions arose. Olivia had been told by her father, Robert, that her mother was kidnapped and murdered by someone seeking revenge on the family over their wealth and prestige. Others speculated that, in order to send a strong message, she had been killed by a faction trying to squash the women’s suffrage movement. But a few rumors circulated that she went on to fight the battle under a new identity. That the mystery went unsolved, and we would never know the truth, was heartbreaking.

  Another leather journal rested in the pile of memorabilia. I opened it up and scrolled through the pages, coming near the end where I saw a drawing of a symbol, followed by Alvera’s explanation for its significance:

  This Celtic sign of courage depicts the shared struggle that we as women must face and conquer together. Only through courage can we fight for our voice and win.

  It was Vera’s tattoo.

  Vera had seen this.

  “Oh my God,” I whispered.

  “What?” Oliver echoed.

  “I think I know how to find Vera!”

  It was the first warm thought in a heart that had been frozen for months.

  Carrying Alvera’s journal with me, I ran downstairs and into our bedroom, Oliver’s loud footsteps storming behind mine. I pulled open my bedside drawer and flipped open Vera’s journal. I had memorized its contents page by page, finding the image within a moment. The same exact drawing—mimicking the symbol from Alvera’s journal.

  “Look, Oliver. It’s like she’s following the path of her great-great-grandmother. Down to the very same day she disappeared.”

  April 16 was the day Alvera had found the courage to leave her husband, her child, and rediscover herself. One hundred and eleven years later, my daughter had done the same.

  “Well, obviously she didn’t run off to join the women’s suffrage movement, Felicity. So what does this mean? And what does this have to do with where she is?”

  I flipped page by page through her journal, searching for anything that stood out to me. All of Vera’s secrets were contained in this book, every clue we needed in order to find her. Of this I was certain. From cover to cover I searched, finding nothing, until I closed it with a heavy heart. Holding it, that’s when I felt the minutest difference. At the very back of the book, against the cover, I felt it more than saw it. A small, telltale lump where something protruded from under a page that had been glued to the back cover. I gently tugged the page free, letting loose a tiny scrap of paper that fluttered to the floor. I picked it up, recognizing the shape of it, the scrawl of numbers and letters.

  Seven, to be exact. The license plate number.

  “She’s with him! Her biological father!” I screamed, nearly jolting Oliver out of his skin. It was a wonder I didn’t wake the kids. “She must have found a way to trace his license plate number to his name. We can find her, Oliver!”

  I was so happy, I broke into a herky-jerky dance to celebrate. I heard Oliver snickering and stopped. “What’s so funny?”

  “You dance like Elaine Benes on Seinfeld.”

  “Ha ha. You’re no Justin Timberlake yourself. Why the gloomy face? You should be celebrating too.”

  “This number is from fifteen years ago. What are the chances it’s still going to belong to the right name and address?”

  “There are records, Ollie. We’ll figure it out. Obviously Vera did. At least we have something now! We don’t have to tell the cops what we did. We can bring our girl home!”

  “Got any ideas how?” Oliver Naysayer asked.

  “How about we call our car insurance company and tell them we had a hit-and-run with a car using this license plate number. Maybe they’ll give us the information?”

  “It’s worth a try.”

  We headed into the den, where Oliver located our insurance agent’s contact information. I picked up the phone and dialed. I had rehearsed with Oliver all the questions I needed to ask, and exactly how to word it, then crossed my fingers that it would work.

  The agent answered on the fifth ring.

  “I’m calling because I was involved in a hit-and-run and the other driver took off. But I have their license plate number. Are you able to give me the contact information for the person who hit me?”

  The agent wavered. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but we can’t give out that information. If you’ll give me the license plate number, we can pull it ourselves and find out if they have insurance and handle it for you.”

  “There’s no way I can contact them myself to deal with it?”

  “I’m afraid not. It’s private information.”

  “Okay, thanks anyway.”

  Dead end. I hung up and shook my head. “No luck. It’s confidential.”

  Turning on the computer, I Googled license plate websites that claimed free access to vehicle owner information. After the third scam, I realized it was a lost cause. There went that unfettered hope.

  “Any other brilliant ideas for how to trace this back to a vehicle owner from over a decade ago?”

  I wanted to shove Oliver Naysayer’s snide words right back down his throat.

  “If you’
d stop being such a jerk about this, I have an idea, but you’re not going to like it.”

  “Have I liked any of this so far?” he retorted.

  He had no idea how bad it could get, because it was going to require him to do something he hated more than anything. In fact, Oliver probably would have preferred jail to what I was about to ask him to do.

  Chapter 35

  Felicity

  Dickhead Daniel was the only person in the world who Oliver hated. Truly loathed. Daniel was a one-upper. A name-dropper. The kind of person who would ask how you’re doing, then talk over you about how he spent the weekend picking up college chicks on his new yacht.

  He always cajoled his way to the front of the buffet line at company picnics and then complained about the subpar food, insisted he was best qualified to umpire the traditional softball game (so he could ogle and rate the female batters’ “juiciest asses”), and once got so stinking drunk he peed into the lake in full view of a horrified Brownie troupe. Around the office his gossipmongering and brown-nosing and goldbricking were legendary. And a talker—he was one of those guys in love with the sound of his voice, and while he had absolutely nothing worthwhile to say, he could ramble on for hours about politics (don’t get him started on conspiracy theories), his sexual prowess (a highly inflated view), or how much money he made (too much). If you wanted to keep your job, and Oliver did, you tolerated Dickhead Daniel’s boorish behavior. You see, he was related to one of the directors.

  But Dickhead Daniel had one thing I needed, and thus I begged Oliver to suffer the fool…for me. For Vera.

  It was at an after-work get-together when Dickhead Daniel’s name-dropping came in handy as he held court at a neighborhood bar. Three sheets to the wind, he bragged that he’d worked undercover with the private investigator who worked a huge national child trafficking case and put the ringleader behind bars. Everybody knew this was pure bull, and several challenged him on it, but he really knew the woman and flashed a business card from his wallet to prove it. At the time, pre-Vera’s disappearance, Daniel’s spurious claim to fame didn’t mean much to me. But now it meant everything.