"When I called yesterday, Ms. Mott, did I mention that it's customary to pay people for their time? I mean, I understand we're keeping you from your work and I wouldn't want you to think we didn't value that."
"Miss Mott," Willa corrected with a nervous laugh. "And goodness, I don't think I could take money, not when I can't be much help. Although-" she studied Jackie's face. "You're thinner than you were, aren't you? That's why I didn't recognize you at first. You're so much thinner."
"Of course I'm thinner," Jackie said. "I was pregnant when I came to the agency."
"No, it's not just that. Your face was fuller then, and you had big glasses, which you kind of hid behind. You looked a lot older than you were, didn't you? Yes, it's coming back to me now."
Tess remembered the photo that Jackie had brought her when she thought Jackie was Mary Browne and the photo was her missing sister, Susan King. Willa was right, or making an uncanny guess. Jackie had been heavier as a teenager, and the weight had made her look older than she was.
There was a loud thud in the next room, then a childish wail. "Miss Mott! Miss Mott-Brady says I look like Quasimodo."
"Chrissie looks like Quasimodo. Chrissie looks like Quasimodo." All the children were chanting it now.
"Excuse me," Willa said. "I think I'll go give them some juice packs I have in the big freezer, out in the garage. That might help to keep them quiet."
As soon as she was gone, Jackie poked Tess in the calf with the toe of her high heel.
"Give her some money."
"She said she didn't want anything."
"She's full of shit. Everyone needs money. You stopped at a cash machine on the way out here. It's all part of my tab, right? Give her some money."
Willa came back from the garage and passed through the room with her arms full of juice packs. Distributing them caused much whining and shouting, then another brief ruckus about who had the best flavor. She ran back to the garage for another grape one. Almost ten minutes had passed by the time she returned to the living room.
"Yes, now I'm remembering," Willa said, as if there had been no break in their conversation at all. "There was something about the father of your baby, too, something unusual there, but I can't remember quite what it was."
"The father of my baby's not important," Jackie said. "I know who the father was. I want to know who adopted my girl."
Willa furrowed her brow and pressed her lips together, making a great show of thinking hard. Tess half-expected her to hunch forward, chin in hand, as if sculpted by Rodin. Eventually, she did just that. Sighing, Tess pulled her billfold from her knapsack and dropped a twenty-dollar bill in Willa Mott's lap.
"Oh goodness. I don't want you to think I'm doing this for money." Tess dropped another twenty, then a ten in Willa's lap. She dropped her business card, while she was at it. Willa waited a beat, in case any more bills were going to fall, then folded the ones that were there and put them in the pocket of her cardigan, along with Tess's business card. Preferably not the pocket with the wadded-up tissues, Tess hoped, although she really didn't care if Willa Mott ended up blowing her nose on a twenty.
"Really, I don't know so very much. You had a baby girl, right? I think the adoptive father may have been an executive at one of those plants out in Hunt Valley. Could have been McCormick, Noxell, the quarry. One of those places. I remember he made real good money. You had to make good money to adopt a baby from us, it cost more'n ten thousand dollars. His wife was a schoolteacher, but she was going to stay home when they got a baby. The name was kinda common. Johnson or Johnston. They wanted a girl, and they were going to name her Caitlin."
Jackie looked skeptical. "How did you remember all that, all of a sudden?"
"Oh, I remember all the girls who came through, to tell you the truth. It just takes a little time to jog my memory is all, to hook up the face with the circumstances."
"If I took off this watch and handed it to you, would you remember anything more?"
Willa Mott looked truly affronted. "I'm grateful you compensated me for my time today, but the money didn't have anything to do with my remembering. It took me a minute there to connect you with the way you used to be, that's all. You know, when you were fat."
"I was not fat." Jackie's teeth were gritted.
A child's shriek. "Miss Mott! Miss Mott! Cal keeps poking me with his shoe."
"Am not," a boy's voice retorted.
"You are! You are!"
"I guess I better go check on my little ones," Willa Mott said. "Nice to meet you both. If I remember anything else, I promise I'll call you first thing. I've got your card right here."
With that, Willa Mott waded into the melee in the next room, picking up the offending Cal by the collar of his T-shirt the way a mother cat might grab her kitten by the scruff of the neck, then turning off the video with the toe of her navy blue Ked.
"No more Hunchback, until everyone in this room starts behaving," she proclaimed. "This means all of you-Cal, Brady, Bobby, Chrissie, and, yes you, Raffi."
Tess suppressed a laugh.
"What's so funny?" Jackie asked. She seemed angry that Tess could find anything to laugh at.
"Maybe it's a coincidence, but every kid in the Apple Orchard Daycare Center is named for someone in the Orioles' starting lineup from the year Cal broke Lou Gehrig's record. Cal Ripken, Chris Hoiles, Rafael Palmiero, Brady Anderson. It's got to be-that would have been just about the time they would have been conceived."
"White folks are crazy," Jackie said with a snort.
They were almost back in Butchers Hill before Jackie spoke again.
"You paid her too much."
"Excuse me?"
"That wasn't worth fifty dollars, what she told us. You paid her too much and she thinks we're suckers now. I bet she knows more than she's telling."
"First you tell me to pay her, then you say I paid her too much. But she did remember what you looked like. That seemed genuine enough. I saw the photo, remember. You were a…big girl. What was that stuff about the baby's father, anyway?"
"Nothing." Jackie was gripping the steering wheel so tight her knuckles looked like they might pop out of her hands.
"No secrets, Jackie, and no lies. That was our deal, remember?"
"Okay." Small sigh. "My baby's father was white." Then, before Tess could react in any way, "Don't look so surprised."
"I'm not looking anything. But you told me he was a boy from the neighborhood."
"There were white boys in my neighborhood."
"I know. I know Pigtown." Tess liked seeing Jackie squirm at the mention of her inelegantly named old neighborhood. "I wonder why Willa thought that particular detail was so memorable, though. The agency she worked for definitely did biracial adoptions. I know that much from listening to the taped testimony."
"What do you expect from some Carroll County cracker? Forget about her. Where do we go from here?"
"Got me. Looking for someone named Caitlin Johnson-Johnston in metropolitan Baltimore is definitely needle-in-the-haystack time."
"Well, I have an idea. Can you work tonight?"
"Sure."
"Meet me at your office at seven tonight, and I'll show you how to do what I do for a living. I'll even bring dinner."
"What are we going to do?"
"I'll tell you when we get to your office. You have one phone line, right? We can use my cell phone, I guess. Not the cheapest way to go, but it will take too long without it."