'How are you feeling?' Weezy said.
They hadn't planned out a good-cop, bad-cop thing, but she seemed to be falling into the more touchy-feely role.
Dawn looked at her. 'You never had a baby?'
Weezy shook her head.
'Well, then,' Dawn said, 'I'm sore. Not totally sore like I was yesterday, but sore.'
Jack tried to imagine giving birth. Gave up. He'd tried many times while Gia was pregnant but his mind couldn't go there.
He wanted to ask Dawn about her baby but held back. He sensed Weezy tacking in that direction.
She tapped a finger against her temple. 'How are you feeling up here?'
Dawn frowned. 'What do you mean?'
'Emotionally. You've been living in somebody's house, now you're on your own. You were pregnant, now you're not. You just delivered a baby and…' Weezy shook her head. 'That's got to get to you.'
Jack could see Dawn withdrawing, shutting down. Weezy must have sensed it too. She reached out and touched her arm.
'I'm messing this up. What I'm trying to say is, if you're ever feeling down or lonely or just want to talk, I'm here all by myself too. I hardly ever go out, and sometimes I get lonely, so any time you want to talk or just come over to sit and read or watch TV with someone else around, feel free.'
Jack thought Weezy might be laying it on a little thick, acting all mother hennish, which was not Weezy. Then it dawned on him that she wasn't playing good cop… this was genuine.
Dawn's voice was thick when she spoke. 'Why do you care?'
Jack wanted the answer too.
Weezy looked flustered. 'I… I'm not sure. You needed help yesterday, and you seem, I don't know… lost. I'm just offering to help until you find your bearings.'
'Lost… yeah, you've got that right. I was headed for college, everything was going my way, but I screwed up everything.' She looked like she might cry but got on top of it and turned to Jack. 'What about you, Mister Thousand Questions? Why do you care?'
So many reasons… most he couldn't tell her.
But he knew one, as true as any of the others, that would mean something to her.
'Because I let your mother down.'
Dawn blinked. 'What? How?'
'I took too long getting the job done. In my defense, I didn't know a clock was ticking, and neither did she. She was gone before I could tell her I'd dug up something that would end your relationship with Jerry forever. She loved you fiercely, Dawn, and knew you'd be ruining your life with him.'
'She had that so right. I just wish I'd seen it.'
'She was ready to do anything to save you from him. Unfortunately she died not knowing she'd succeeded.'
Dawn was staring at him. 'So she didn't know about…?'
Jack shook his head. 'I was on my way to tell her. I figured it was news that needed to be delivered face-to- face, but I didn't get to her in time.'
'So she died not knowing?'
He nodded.
She closed her eyes and let her head fall back. 'Thank God!'
He glanced at Weezy and she gave him a small smile and an approving nod. Approving of what? Comforting her? Gaining her trust? Or both?
He cocked his head toward Dawn: Your turn.
'I'm sorry about your baby,' Weezy said. 'I won't pretend that I can imagine how that feels.'
Dawn straightened and looked at her. 'I'm not sure how it feels either. I totally didn't want the baby-'
'I can imagine why you wouldn't,' Weezy said.
'I even tried to abort it. But now that they tell me he's dead…' She sighed. 'You know, it wasn't his fault. He didn't, you know, ask to be conceived. He had nothing to do with it. He's totally an innocent bystander. But after he was born they told me he had neurological problems, 'incompatible with life'…'
Remembering Veilleur's request to find out about the birth defects, Jack said, 'Weezy told me they didn't let you see him?'
'I got a peek.' She made a face. 'He looked hairy… black hair all over… kind of like a monkey, you know?'
Weezy said, 'That could be lanugo. Some infants are born with a lot of body hair.'
'I read about that while I was pregnant, but this seemed awfully thick. But that wasn't the weirdest…' She shook her head.
'What?' Weezy said.
'I thought he had… you're so not going to believe this.'
'Try us,' Jack said.
'Well, it looked… I only caught a glimpse… but it looked like he had… tentacles.'
Jack felt queasy as he remembered how they'd been making Lovecraftian jokes about the Order's schemes, but this…
'You mean like an octopus?'
'No, they didn't have suckers or anything like that. They looked more like snakes… like slim little garter snakes.'
'Instead of arms?'
'No, he had arms too, although his fingers looked kind of clawish. Two arms with a tentacle coming from… they looked like they were coming from his armpits.'
Something stirred and rustled in the back of Jack's mind. Something long buried. He glanced at Weezy and saw she'd gone dead white.
He was about to ask her if she was all right when Dawn spoke again. She was staring straight ahead, oblivious to both of them.
'Maybe he's better off dead-if he's dead. I mean, they say he is, and I kind of wish I could believe them, but…'
Jack felt like he'd just stuck his finger in a live socket.
'Wait-wait-wait! You don't believe he's dead?'
She sighed. 'I know it sounds totally paranoid, but you probably already think I'm crazy because of the tentacles, so I might as well go for the gold, right? No, I don't believe he's dead.'
'And you base this on…?'
She shrugged. 'Mother's intuition? Or maybe the way they wouldn't let me see his body.'
'What excuse did they give?'
'Well, he-Doctor Landsman-told me that since I'd already signed the adoption papers, he wasn't officially mine, and anyway, they'd already sent him to the morgue.'
Jack glanced at Weezy. Some of her color was back but she didn't look right. What was upsetting her? Had she made a connection to something she'd read in the Compendium?
'Did you mention the tentacles?'
Dawn nodded. 'He said I must have been hallucinating from all the stress of the delivery. Well, yeah, I was stressed, but not to the point where I was totally seeing things.'
'But why do you think this doctor would lie to you?'
'Ready for more paranoia?'
Jack had to smile. 'Bring it on. I eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.'
'Okay. Try this: Doctor Landsman always did the ultrasounds of the baby himself, never his tech, and he'd never let me see them. He'd show Mister Osala, but never me. I'm sure he knew about these deformities in advance, and so did Mister Osala. I've done some thinking. I think the adoption papers were fake. I think they've taken the baby themselves.'
'Why?'
She shrugged. 'I don't know. To experiment on? To put in a sideshow? I don't know. Call me paranoid if you