Mother May I(30)

I’d known already. I’d seen his slack face, his eyes glossy and blank. His body had had a boneless nonresistance as Dr. Charles had pumped at his chest. But still the confirmation hit me like a blow to the chest, caving my shoulders in. God, but the mother was ruthless. And she had Robert at her mercy.

“I really did believe that they were roofies,” I told Gabrielle.

“Of course you did!” Gabrielle said. “But dosing someone with roofies is damn sure illegal. I think you’ve tripped the felony-murder rule. You didn’t set out to kill him, but you did agree to drug him. He died during the commission of a crime, and that can be first-degree murder.”

“I don’t care,” I said, fierce. “I just want Robert.”

“I know. I know that. But I’m your lawyer. I have to think about you.”

They still didn’t understand. I could see it in their faces. I said, “She took Robert, out of every baby in the world. She had me kill Spence. Me. Me specifically.”

Marshall stood abruptly, and I could almost see my words reverberating in him. “You think she picked Robert because he’s Trey’s son. Trey and Spence are partners. You think this is about some case that they worked on together.”

I nodded. “I think that was the plan all along. Two birds, one stone. I was just the stone.” There had to be a reason I’d been chosen as the weapon. You married who you married, the mother had told me. Again I thought to Trey, What did you do?

Gabrielle had been acting as my lawyer, but my words turned her human again. She pressed her hand against her mouth once more.

Marshall was seeing the whole picture now, same as me. “Jesus. You think Robert is already—”

He did not finish the sentence. I was glad. I could not bear to hear the end, not yet. Not while there was still that small “if.”

I said, “I still think she’ll call, Marshall. But not if we bring the police in. She has her own kid to protect. So we sit tight.”

A horrifying surge of pity crossed Gabrielle’s face. Marshall turned away to walk over to the coffeepot. He did not want me to see what he was thinking. But I knew. They both were thinking it: The mother had never meant to give Robert back. A foolish corner of my heart hoped she’d drive my baby far away, give him to some nice childless couple in Canada. If he was alive, if he was cared for and loved, that would be enough. But if she hated Trey as much as she had hated Spencer, she would not risk us ever finding our boy. She played for keeps.

Marshall and Gabrielle believed now that Robert was already dead. But they had not talked to her. I had. I’d felt that small, strange chain running from me to her and back again, connecting us. Her family was much like mine when I was growing up. Just a mother and a daughter, barely getting by in the small-town South. I’d told her so. I’d known how to speak her language. Our connection was real.

She’d engineered Spencer’s murder and she’d stolen Trey’s son, but he was my son, too, and she liked me. It was too frail and slim and stupid a hope to say out loud, but I still felt tied to her, and whatever was between us felt unfinished. Anyway, it was the only hope I had.

Marshall came back and gave me a coffee mug. The ceramic felt boiling hot, and so did his fingers. He said, “Your hands are ice.”

I set the mug down. “I don’t want this.”

“Drink it anyway. You need it. And so do I.” He went back to the coffeepot, and I heard him tell Gabrielle, “I think she’s in shock.”

I drank. The coffee had so much milk it was cool enough to bolt, and it was loaded with sugar. I drained half the cup. This was how I used to drink it in high school, senior year, when Marshall and Betsy and I would study late nights at Waffle House. I hadn’t actually liked the taste of coffee then.

He came back with two more mugs and handed one to Gabrielle. He sat down again beside me, and his eyes were so kind. I recognized my old friend. Betsy’s husband. All that cool reserve was gone. I let myself sag onto his shoulder, and he put his arm around me. He smelled like cedarwood and coffee and the past.

Marshall said, “Okay. If this is about a case that Trey and Spencer did, why bring you into it? Why not make Trey do the dirty work?”

I’d thought about this, too. “I haven’t any idea how well, if at all, she knows Trey, but she knows men like him, like his father. The system works for them. Trey would call his father and the cops and the FBI and the governor. I think she had me pegged for a spoiled rich girl, but I’m also a mother. She put her money on me. It was a good bet.”

I finished the coffee in another long, shuddering pull, hungry for any kind of sweetness.

Gabrielle was trying to get her cool and analytical attorney face back on. She almost had it. Lawyers, the kind who saw the insides of courtrooms, were like actors. They could be the job, tell the story, play the part. Most of Trey’s colleagues worked on contracts and settlements, never getting out of a conference room. Gabrielle shared Trey’s ability to litigate. It was one reason she was such an up-and-comer.

She asked, “Why not kill Spence herself and then take the baby. Do it all on her own?”

I thought this was rhetorical, Gabrielle thinking out loud, but I knew the answer. Knew it in my gut, and this was more proof, wasn’t it? That the mother and I were in some real way still connected?

“Because she’s sick—dying. She told me she won’t live to see the end of summer, so I’m not sure she could have. Physically. And she’s trying to keep her daughter’s hands clean.”