“You son of a bitch.”
“But if they come after us, if they find out what we did — Agnes, if they find out what I’ve done just today, with your blessing — we’ll be going away forever. Are you hearing me? If you let Marla take the blame, she’s out in a year or two and you can look after her. But if you go to jail, you’ll never be able to look after Marla. You’ll see her once a month on visiting day and that’ll be it. Is that what you want?”
“Jack, just shut up.”
“You want to be a good mother, Agnes? Let Marla go to jail. Let them treat her. And when she gets out, you’ll be there for her. Let me take care of Sarita.”
“I... I can’t... I don’t know what—”
“And, Agnes, forgive me, but Marla’s not the same kind of issue for me as she is for you. She’s your daughter, not mine. I know what I have to do to save myself.”
“God, why did I ever go along with you on—”
“You sound like Bill. We’re in this together, Agnes. You got something out of this and so did I.”
“It was all about money for you,” she said. “It was never about money for me.”
“Motivations mean fuck-all now. Just don’t try coming back at me like you had nothing to do with this.”
Agnes was quiet for another moment. Finally she asked, “Where are you?”
“David’s driving north out of town. I can see the Five Mountains Ferris wheel in the distance.”
“How much do you think she’s told him?”
“Who knows? We don’t even know how much she knows.”
In the background, the sound of an infant crying.
“What’s that?” Agnes asked. “Who’s that?”
“It’s Matthew. He’s been screaming almost the whole time.”
“You have the baby with you?” Agnes asked.
“I’m with Bill. I’ve already been through this with him. I thought it was a bad idea, too, bringing the kid, but like he says, what the hell’s he going to do? He needs a new nanny.”
“Jack, seriously, we need to think about this. What about — just give me a second — what about if there’s a way to pin it on Sarita, but... silence her at the same time?”
“Go on.”
“She... she confesses to you what she did, but then she attacks you, and you have to act in self-defense. Maybe something like that?”
“You’re grasping at straws, Agnes. And besides, what if she’s already told David everything? Have you thought about that? He may already know the whole story.”
Before Agnes could respond, the doctor said to Bill Gaynor, “It’s pretty isolated here. Flash your lights; hit the horn; get them to pull over.”
“Jack?” Agnes said.
“I have to go,” he said. “I’ll check in with you later. Think about what I said, Agnes. Think about being a good mother.”
“Don’t you hurt my nephew,” she warned. And then, “Or my grandson.”
“Oh,” said the doctor. “Now he’s your grandson.”
Sixty-two
“A good thing,” Sarita Gomez repeated, sitting in the car next to me. “I wanted to do what was right.”
The black car behind us was still honking and flashing its lights.
“Explain that,” I said, holding my speed, debating whether to pull over.
“I wanted to return Matthew to his real mother,” she said.
I glanced over at her. Not once, but twice. “Marla’s baby didn’t die.”
Sarita nodded. “I’m pretty sure. I knew Ms. Gaynor had never been pregnant, that they had adopted Matthew. She couldn’t breast-feed; she never went through all the things a woman goes through. But she didn’t want people to know. She wanted them to think she’d been pregnant. The last couple of months before they got Matthew she spent in Boston so the neighbors wouldn’t think something funny was going on. They’d never see that she was never actually pregnant.”
“Rosemary told you all this?”
“Not exactly. Bits and pieces came out. I was there so much, I figured out what had happened. Dr. Sturgess, he’d come over a lot and talk to Mr. Gaynor and I heard things. And I knew from my friends at the hospital that your cousin... her baby died around the same time that the Gaynors had Matthew. One time — they didn’t know I was there — I heard them talking about when she tried to steal the baby from the hospital, the doctor saying he couldn’t have predicted something like that happening. That’s when I knew what they’d done. That Ms. Gaynor’s baby was really your cousin’s baby.”
“But...” I was trying to get my head around this. “But Marla didn’t have a son. She had a girl.”
“They lied to her,” Sarita said. “You wrap up a baby, how are you going to know one way or the other? I think they told her it was a girl just to make everything very different. Does that make sense?”
“None of this makes any sense. I mean, Marla told me she held the baby. That it was dead.”
Sarita looked at me blankly. “I can’t explain that.”
The car was still honking. Sarita shifted in her seat, looked back. “That is Mr. Gaynor. That is his car. And I’m pretty sure that’s the doctor next to him.”
“Why the hell are they following us?”
“They must be looking for me.”
When had they spotted us? At the bus station?
“I’ve got a few questions for both of them,” I said, putting on my blinker, easing my foot off the gas.
“Wait,” Sarita said.
“What?” I hadn’t put my foot on the brake yet, but as the car slowed, Gaynor stopped honking his horn.
“Where is Marshall?”
“Your boyfriend?”
“He was going to meet Mr. Gaynor. He was going to get him to pay money. And there is Mr. Gaynor, but I don’t know what has happened to Marshall.”
“What are you saying?” I asked.
“I don’t know. But I have a bad feeling.”
“Sarita, nothing’s going to happen. We’re right out in the open here. With what you’ve told me, I’ve got a few questions for both of those assholes. I want answers.”
Now I put my foot on the brake, steered the car over to the shoulder. It was then that I realized we were on the back side of the decommissioned Five Mountains amusement park. Alongside the road was about sixty feet of tall grass, then a perimeter fence. I noticed that just up from where we were, a section of fence had been cut, the chain link pried back.
I shifted my eyes to the mirror, watched Gaynor steer his black Audi over to the shoulder and park a couple of car lengths behind me. I felt like I was getting a speeding ticket.
The passenger door opened.
Sarita was right. It was Dr. Sturgess getting out.
“I don’t get it,” I said to Sarita. “How would they pull it off? I mean, the paperwork alone. How do you—”
Sarita cut me off. “He is a doctor. And rich, and white. He could fake it all. Death certificates, birth certificates, all of it. Who is going to question him?” She shook her head angrily. “It is why I took the baby to your cousin. When I found out what they’d done, I looked up her address, drove by her house many times, wondering if I should tell her. But I never did. Not until Matthew had no one to care for him.”
The doctor was coming up to my side of the car. I saw his image looming larger by the second in the driver’s-door mirror.
He seemed to be holding one arm pressed closed to his side.
I powered down the window.
“Dr. Sturgess,” I said, once he was even with the door.
He smiled. “Mr. Harwood. I was pretty sure that was you.” He leaned over slightly so he could see my passenger. “Hello, Sarita. How are you doing?”