Chapter 5: What Grandmothers Know How to Do
I spent the rest of that day making phone calls of my own.
I want to be clear about something: I am not a dramatic person.
I am not someone who looks for trouble or inserts herself where she doesn't belong.
I spent thirty-one years as an office administrator, I raised two children largely on my own after my husband left, and my primary hobby is growing tomatoes.
But I have also spent sixty-three years watching how the world works.
And one thing I know is that men like Derek count on the people around them being too frightened, too uncertain, or too polite to act.
I am not too polite.
My first call was to a woman named Ruth, who I'd met eight years ago through my church's community outreach program.
Ruth had spent twenty years working in family advocacy before she retired, and she still knew everyone worth knowing.
"I need a safe placement," I told her.
"Mother and infant.
Needs to be outside this county.
Needs to be somewhere a local officer wouldn't think to look and wouldn't have contacts."
Ruth didn't ask unnecessary questions.
That's one of the things I've always appreciated about her.
"How soon?"
"Two days."
"Is she documented?
Does she have ID?"
"I'll find out and call you back within the hour."
I called my daughter.
Carla had her ID, her birth certificate, and Lily's hospital discharge papers, all in a small zippered pouch she'd kept hidden in the lining of a bag for months.
She'd been planning this longer than any of us knew.
I called Ruth back.
"She's documented.
She has the baby's papers too."
"Good.
That makes it easier." Ruth paused.
"There's a placement in a town about ninety miles north.
Small house, private, run by a retired nurse and her husband.
They've done this before.
They're careful."
"Can you reach them today?"
"I'll call you back in an hour."
Ruth called back in forty minutes.
It was arranged.
I drove back to my daughter's house that evening and sat in the garage with Carla while Lily slept in a laundry basket lined with a folded quilt.
My daughter had made that little nest that afternoon, and something about it — the care in it, the ordinary domesticity of it — made my throat tighten in a way I hadn't expected.
"We have a place for you," I told Carla.
"Ninety miles north.
A retired nurse and her husband.
Ruth — the woman who arranged it — has known them for years.
You'll have a room, a proper bed, a kitchen."
Carla looked at me for a long moment.
"Why are you doing this?"
"Because you need help and I can help."
"You don't know me."
"I know Lily," I said.
"And I know what it means when a woman has her documents hidden in the lining of a bag."
She looked down at her hands.
"He's going to come after me," she said.
"Even up there.
He won't stop."
"I know.
But distance buys time.
And time lets you build something he can't easily tear down." I leaned forward slightly.
"Ruth also has a contact — a lawyer who works specifically on cases involving law enforcement.
She's helped women in situations like yours before.
She knows how to document, how to file, how to make the right kind of noise in the right places."
Carla's head came up.
"A lawyer."
"If you want one.
That's your choice.
Nobody's going to push you into anything."
She was quiet for a moment.
Lily stirred in the laundry basket, made a small sound, settled again.
"He told me no lawyer would take my case," Carla said.
"That they all knew him.
That I'd just be wasting money I didn't have."
"He told you that because he needed you to believe it."
She looked at me steadily.
"You sound very sure."
"I've watched men like your husband operate for sixty-three years," I said.
"They're not as powerful as they need you to think they are.
They just need you to believe they are.
The moment you stop believing it, the whole thing starts to fall apart."
Something moved across her face.
Not hope exactly.
Something quieter and more durable than hope.
"Tomorrow night," I said.
"We move you tomorrow night.
Tom will drive.
I'll follow in my car.
We'll leave after dark."
"Okay," she said.
Just that.
Okay.
I stood up and smoothed my skirt.
"Is there anything you need before then?
Anything at all?"
She thought for a moment.
"Could you — could you bring Noah to say goodbye?
He doesn't need to know where I'm going.
I just—" She stopped.
"He brought me a drawing of a dinosaur on the third day.
A T-rex with a bow on its head because he said all dinosaurs should have something pretty.
I've been keeping it."
My throat did the thing again.
"I'll bring him," I said.
"Tomorrow afternoon."
I said goodnight and walked back through the house.
Tom was at the kitchen table with a road atlas open in front of him, tracing routes with his finger.
My daughter was washing dishes, her back to the room.
I stopped in the doorway.
"She's braver than she knows," I said.
My daughter turned around.
Her eyes were red at the edges, though her voice was steady.
"I know."
"You did a good thing, taking her in."
"We couldn't not."
"A lot of people could not." I picked up my handbag.
"Get some sleep.
Tomorrow's going to be a long day."
I drove home in the dark, watching my mirrors out of habit now.
Nothing followed me.
But when I got home and locked the door behind me, I stood in my hallway for a moment with my hand still on the deadbolt.
May you like
Somewhere across town, Derek was in a house that was too quiet, and he was thinking.
I needed tomorrow to come before he finished thinking.
