Butchers Hill

'Is anybody going to say anything?' Uncle Donald demanded. 'For God's sake, I'll start. Jackie, you know how sometimes when you're looking for something, it's right under your nose?'

She nodded, still beaming.

'Okay, so you were looking for your daughter, but you assumed she had a different name and a new birth certificate, because that's what happens when a kid is adopted. But what if she wasn't adopted?'

'I don't get what you mean,' Jackie said, her joy ebbing away.

'There was no birth certificate that could be traced back to your daughter. My…friend had the idea to run your name and your daughter's birth name through the files here, after he came up empty on the original search. The funny thing was, it kicked out, in no time flat. She was right here all along, Samantha King.'

'She was right where all along?'

'She's in foster care,' the general counsel said. 'She's in the state's custody and has been for almost all of her life.'

'How can that be?' Tess could see all the emotions battling inside Jackie-the exultation at knowing her daughter had been found, her puzzlement that she was in foster care, her concern that there was another shoe yet to drop in this conversation. Tess shared the last feeling.

'The adoption never happened,' the general counsel said. 'According to our records, Family Alternatives turned your daughter over to the state when she was fourteen months old. Whatever arrangements they made fell through, and they couldn't find another set of adoptive parents. So she went into foster care.'

'Is she okay? Can I see her? Is she in some group home, or living with a family?'

'She's fine,' David Edelman said. 'She's doing great.'

Jackie turned to look at him. 'What would you know about it?'

'I'm her foster father.'

Awkward was inadequate to describe the silence in the room. Jackie and Edelman eyed each other. Edelman looked wary and defensive, while something hateful crept into Jackie's face.

'You look like you're doing pretty well, in your nice suit and your Bally shoes,' Jackie said at last. 'Why do you have to take kids in for money?'

'We didn't take Sam in for the money, we took her in because she needed a home. My wife and I wanted to adopt her, but we can't. Policy prohibits a white couple adopting a biracial baby in Baltimore city.'

'Policy does not prohibit it,' the SSA director broke in. Robert Draper, according to the name plate on this desk. So this must be his office, even if he had given his desk chair to the general counsel. 'Each jurisdiction is allowed to set its own standards on adoptions. In Baltimore City, the social workers elect to follow the recommendations of several prominent groups, that believe such placements are harmful to the child.'

Edelman glanced at the SSA director. 'Fine, Robert. So do you want to explain how Samantha King ended up in permanent limbo in my home, or shall I?'

Draper nodded stiffly, indicating Edelman should continue.

'Did you ever hear of a lawsuit called LJ v. Massinga?' the lawyer asked Jackie and Tess. Jackie shook her head. Tess thought it sounded dimly familiar, or at least the name Massinga did.

'Wasn't she the secretary of this agency at one point?'

'Yes, more than a decade ago, when the foster care program was in a crisis state. Workers were juggling huge caseloads, there was virtually no oversight. It was a catastrophe. Social advocacy lawyers, working with private attorneys like myself, brought a class action lawsuit against the state on behalf of seven children, who had been taken from their own parents only to be placed in homes that were more abusive. LJ was a boy, the lead plaintiff.'

'Was my daughter one of the seven?'

Edelman smiled at Jackie. 'Sam was one of the lucky ones, actually. Not long after the suit was filed, I got a tip that an elderly couple had continued taking in children long past the point where they could really care for them. They had five kids in their house, three of them under the age of five. Sam didn't even have a separate bedroom, she was sleeping in the living room in a little nest of filthy blankets. It was a Friday night, and I couldn't find any place to put her for the weekend, so I took her home. She's been there ever since.'

'Does she think of you as her parents?'

Edelman was a lawyer, but he wasn't glib. He thought seriously about Jackie's question, taking it apart in his mind and examining each word. 'We think of her as our daughter. She calls us Mom and Dad. But she's aware of not being related to us by blood.'

'Has she ever asked about me? About her mother, I mean?'

Edelman shook his head. 'It's always been assumed her mother was dead. That's why we find ourselves in this delicate situation.'

'What situation?'

Again, that same nervous exchange of looks among Edelman and the other two. You tell. No, you. Again, Edelman was stuck with the short straw.

'As Ms. Chu said, the state has official custody of Sam, but your parental rights were never terminated. You were thought to be dead and Sam's birth certificate listed no known father. But you're alive.'

'I knew that when I came in here,' Jackie snapped. 'What I don't know is what you're dancing around here.'

The general counsel sighed. 'Samantha King is your daughter. You are within your rights to petition the Foster Care Review board to return her to you. Given the circumstances, there is nothing we can do to keep you from taking the girl from the Edelmans.'

Tess could see Jackie was at once attracted to this idea-and terrified of it. She could have her daughter back.

'What does-' Apparently she wouldn't allow herself to say her daughter's name. 'What does she want? Does she want to stay with you, or would she want to be with me?'

'I wouldn't presume to speak for Sam. Her biological mother has always been an abstract idea to her, just a name, Susan King, nothing more. We tried to find her death certificate once, but when it didn't show up, we assumed she must have died somewhere outside of Maryland.'

'Then you're inept, as is the state,' Tess broke in. 'I found Susan King in less than three days. A Chicago Title search would have taken you right to her. You would have found the name change. You're a lawyer, you should have known that much.'

Jackie put out her arm, as if to hold her back, the same gesture a driver might make when making a sudden stop. 'I was at Penn ten years ago. Even if they had found my name change, they probably wouldn't have tracked me there.'

'We did file a lien against you, for child support,' the general counsel offered, a little abashedly. Tess remembered that stray lien against Susan King that Dorie had picked up, the one she had dismissed as so many unpaid parking tickets. 'We're entitled by law to collect support retroactively, given your present circumstances. But we're going to waive that in this case.'

'Big of you,' Tess muttered. 'Awfully big of you.'

She had expected Jackie to be even angrier than she was, but Jackie was as dazed as a sleepwalker. She opened her purse, staring into it as if all life's answers might be resting beside her lipstick, checkbook, and Mont Blanc pen, then snapped it shut resolutely.

'Do you have a photo of her?' she asked Edelman.

'What?'

'Do you carry a photo of her, in your wallet?'

'An old one. She wouldn't let me buy this year's school picture. She said it made her look fat.' He pulled it out and flipped past photos of two freckled, red-haired boys to a girl with tawny hair, brown eyes, and a dark olive complexion. Jackie stared at it a long time, then handed the wallet back to Edelman.

'I'd like to see her,' she said.

'You just did.'

'I'd like to see her in person. You don't have to tell her who I am, just yet. But I have to see her before I can decide what I'm going to do.'

'We're the only parents she's ever known,' Edelman said. He sounded as if he might cry. 'She's so happy with us. Our sons worship her. We wouldn't be a family without Sam.'