though it’s a holiday on the calendar. He calls up a number that he has left on his log yet never stored in his contacts. He summons it up, puts it down, summons it up, hits the wrong button, finds himself making the call that he honestly wasn’t sure he was going to make until this moment.
McKey doesn’t even have an outgoing message. It seems odd at first, this complete void. He could be speaking to anyone’s phone, even though he’s pressing the number that her phone sent his phone last month, almost as if the technology was calling the shots. He decides the lack of a message is reassuring. McKey, unlike, say, Gwen, doesn’t need to put everything in words. You can’t imagine her with a Facebook page or a blog or a Twitter account. He speaks into the space she has left: “I’m in town. We should get together to talk. All of us-Tim, Gwen, me-or just you and me, whichever you prefer.”
He’s pretty sure which she’s going to prefer.
Chapter Thirty-six
G ood Friday reminds Gwen of how deeply Catholic Baltimore still is. Although it’s not an official holiday for businesses, many companies offer it as a flex day. And if schools are not already on spring vacation, students are guaranteed the day off. So she has brought Annabelle to her office, never really a good idea. The place fascinates Annabelle-for about forty-five minutes. Then the whining begins. Gwen has parked her in a conference room with a DVD player, a stack of Disney movies, a stapler, and some scratch paper and asked her to “work” on the paper. Like many children, Annabelle yearns to be useful. She quickly abandons the project, curls up in a chair, and begins sucking her thumb as she watches princesses cavort.
“There will be something,” another parent in Gwen’s group told her when she entered the China adoption program. This woman was going back for her second child, and Gwen initially appreciated her advice and expertise. “What do you mean by something?” she asked. They had met-it seems silly now-in a Chinese restaurant up in Towson.
“Well, in our first group, one of the girls was a hoarder. She hoarded immense amounts of food, trash. She was older, almost two. Another child clearly had medical problems. The question was how serious they were. The family had to take a leap of faith to bring her home.”
“And?” Gwen could not believe how nervous she was about the answer to her question, how invested she had become, in the space of a sentence, in a family about which she knew nothing.
“She was fine.”
“Did your daughter-”
“Lily.”
“Yes, Lily. Did she-?”
The woman stared off into space, but that didn’t keep her eyes from welling with tears. “There was a bonding issue. She was very attached to my husband, but she had nothing for me for a long time. It was hard.” She swallowed, blinked, smiled. “But it turned out great. These are such great kids.”
Inevitably, Gwen started trolling the Internet. She lasted about a week on a forum for prospective parents. It was too much, an aggregation of nightmares and dreams.
In the end, she didn’t really have
This year Annabelle will spend Easter weekend with Karl, by his request, which surprised Gwen. Karl has never been religious and had no desire to see Annabelle brought up in his faith, Catholicism. They have been taking Annabelle to the little Presbyterian church in Dickeyville, a place that Gwen attended until she announced, at age twelve, that she didn’t want to go anymore, and her parents didn’t object. Gwen isn’t sure what Annabelle is taking away from it, but it’s a nice ritual, going to church, then stopping by her father’s house for Sunday lunch.
But this year, Karl’s sister has arrived from Guatemala, and he is putting on a bit of a show for her, taking her to services at the cathedral, making reservations for brunch at one of the downtown hotels. Gwen will be alone. Well, with her father, but alone. She has entrusted Annabelle’s Easter basket to Karl, with careful instructions about where to put it this year. It kills her, not being there, but Annabelle will be out of bed by seven, maybe even six. For a moment, Gwen was tempted to tell her there was no Easter bunny, just so Gwen would have a reason to bring the basket the day before. But Annabelle is only five. She deserves several more years of believing in impossible, lovely lies.
The office, never a loud place, is still today, with most of Gwen’s employees opting for the flex day. If she could drag her thoughts away from Annabelle, she could get a lot of work done. But what she really wants to do is go to the conference room and curl up with her, watch whatever Disney princess is enchanting her. Feminist that she believes herself to be, Gwen has no problem with little girls wanting to be princesses. Want to find the damaged women among you? Look to the ones who had their femininity thwarted at every turn, the poor hulking girls who were asked to play the boys’ parts at their all-girl summer camps or schools. Margery, her most aggressive, ruthless reporter, loves bags and shoes and wouldn’t step out of the house without makeup. It’s not an either-or world. It’s possible to be a feminine feminist.
Becca, her assistant, pops her head around the door, and Gwen is instantly on alert. “Annabelle OK?”
“Oh, yeah. She’s in heaven. She can’t wait until noon, when I’ve told her we can go to the vending machines and pick two items each, as long as one of them doesn’t have chocolate. No, you’ve got a call that came through the main switchboard. A woman, doesn’t want to give her full name, very cloak and dagger, but she says she’s been calling and calling your cell and you don’t answer and she does, in fact, know the number to your cell. Clearly, she thinks this is somewhat urgent.”
Gwen glances down, realizes her phone has been on silent. When Annabelle is with her, there’s no reason to be vigilant about the cell. She touches the screen and sees a series of three calls over the morning, each from a number with the caller ID function blocked. But it’s a number she recognizes, kind of. Local. A number she has dialed recently. She touches it, the phone on speaker, and is amazed how quickly the call goes through, how a voice jumps out of the line like a coiled snake.
“Jesus, about time,” says the voice, which she recognizes as Tess Monaghan’s. “You were on the verge of missing an opportunity.”
Gwen turns off the speaker function and picks up the phone, which only piques Becca’s interest, but so it goes. “An opportunity?”
A pause, a sigh. “My client is in town. And despite the fact that I have advised him strongly not to do this, he wants to meet with you. But the window is very small. He came here to meet with his lawyer. He has to go back home tomorrow, so the only window is early evening.”
“He-so I’m allowed to know the gender now.”
She is teasing, but Tess Monaghan doesn’t seem to enjoy being teased. No one does. “You’re going to know everything soon. Look, there’s a movie theater out on Nursery Road. Meet him in the lobby there.”
“Why there?”
“He can walk there from his hotel. He’s already turned in his rental car, so he’s kind of limited in his mobility.”
“How will I know-”
“He’ll find you. Frankly, I am hoping against hope that he stands you up or backs out at the last minute. I don’t think there’s anything to be gained by him talking to you-and much to lose.”
G wen is quite familiar with the movie theater on Nursery Road, which is barely five miles from her house in Relay. It is never crowded for some reason, possibly because of the larger multiplex a few more miles down the
