Chapter 5: The Arrangements He Made
My mother arrived eighteen minutes later.
I heard her car in the driveway, heard the front door, heard her footsteps stop when she reached the kitchen and saw my face.
"Oh, sweetheart."
"Willie is upstairs," I said.
"Can you sit with him?"
"Of course." She touched my arm as she passed.
At the kitchen doorway she stopped and looked at Robert.
She didn't say a word to him.
She just looked.
Then she went upstairs.
Robert and I were alone again.
"Tell me about the arrangements," I said.
"If you go to the police, it becomes a legal matter.
That takes time.
Weeks, maybe months.
Dana has a passport.
The baby has a birth certificate in a different name."
"You had a birth certificate made."
"I had everything prepared.
I told you, this was not a decision I made lightly."
"What name?"
He hesitated.
"What name did you put on my daughter's birth certificate?"
"Grace," he said.
"We named her Grace."
I had to put my hand on the counter.
We had already chosen a name.
Lily.
Willie had been calling her Lily for months.
He had written it in crayon on the back of the stuffed rabbit's ear so she would always know it belonged to her.
"You renamed her," I said.
"Dana needed a clean—"
"You renamed my daughter and gave her to your sister and told me she was d*ad." Each word came out separately, like I was reading from a list.
"And you are now threatening to have her taken out of the country if I try to find her."
"I'm not threatening.
I'm telling you how it is.
If you want to see her again, we handle this quietly."
"Quietly," I repeated.
"What does quietly look like to you?"
"You agree to a private arrangement.
Dana raises her.
You get supervised visits.
We tell Willie she was placed with family for medical reasons.
In a few years, when you've shown stability—"
"Get out of my kitchen."
"—we can revisit custody—"
"Get out."
He stopped.
"I want you out of this house in the next ten minutes," I said.
"Take what you need for a few days.
Do not take anything that belongs to Willie.
Do not go upstairs."
"This is my house—"
"It is also my house.
And right now I am asking you to leave before I call every person I know and tell them exactly what you have done." I picked up my phone from the counter.
"You have ten minutes."
He looked at me.
Then at the phone.
Something moved behind his eyes — calculation, not remorse — and he walked out of the kitchen.
I listened to him move through the house.
The study.
The bedroom.
The front closet.
The door.
When his car pulled out of the driveway, my mother came back downstairs.
"Willie's asleep," she said softly.
I sat down at the kitchen table.
"He made a birth certificate," I said.
"In a different name.
He said Dana has a passport.
He said if I go to the police she'll disappear."
My mother sat down across from me.
She reached across the table and covered my hand with hers.
"Do you believe him?"
I thought about the call log.
Eleven calls.
The speed with which he had moved toward that phone.
The word arrangements, said so carefully.
"Yes," I said.
"I believe he planned all of it."
My mother was quiet for a moment.
"Then we don't go to the police first," she said.
"We go to a lawyer first.
Tonight."
I looked at her.
"I know someone," she said.
"She handled your aunt's custody case.
She is very good and she does not frighten easily." She squeezed my hand.
"Robert thinks he is the only one who can make arrangements.
He is wrong."
May you like
For the first time since Willie had whispered that name, something in my chest loosened slightly.
"Call her," I said.
