Mother May I(36)

“Yes,” I said. “I want that.”

Gabrielle reappeared in the doorway. She’d been listening from the hall, crying silently. Her large, dark eyes were swollen, and the whites shone pink.

“I do, too.” Her voice turned musing. “Maybe I knew it even before I took your boy. Why else give you extra pills? Maybe I wanted to know if it would feel fair if Spencer Shaw was dead. It did. It does. And I don’t want to put this baby in the water. So.” She paused. “You see where I’m going.”

“Yes.” I did. My gaze fell to the silver flask holding that deadly shot of Pappy, gleaming on the table. Cyanide, or something close to it, she’d said. Marshall understood her, too, his eyebrows lowering, and Gabrielle looked close to being ill. She was already shaking her head in an emphatic no. “You want me to give Trey the other pills. You’ll trade his life for Robert’s.” My voice was dead flat. Not even I could tell if I was considering this choice.

But she surprised me. “Naw. I think that was in the back of my mind when I gave you six, but it won’t work. How would I know for sure when it was finished? You’d lie, try to fool me. You’d send me pictures of your husband playing possum with his face all powdered to look pale, maybe even bring an ambulance to your house for show, wheel out a body in a bag. I wouldn’t blame you. Even if I could be sure, so much suspicion would come at you, your husband and Mr. Shaw dying the same way, and you right there both times. You’d end up in prison, and then who would raise your kids?”

Her concern for me sounded sincere. I believed it was sincere, and yet I also believed she would kill my child. Both these truths were alive inside her. Gabrielle crept a little closer. I could see that her lawyer’s brain was still online, working behind her puffy eyes.

“I don’t understand what you want, then,” I said.

“I’ve been spooling this out in different directions all night, seeing how it might work. It’s like that riddle about the river, where you have to get a fox and a goose and a bag of corn acrost without any one of them eating the other. I’ve put the puzzle pieces every which-a-way. And I only see one path. It’s this: You bring your husband to me.”

“Bring you Trey? Trey is in Chicago.” I couldn’t imagine bringing her my husband like he was a dove or a goat, a necessary blood sacrifice. Except I was imagining it, I realized. I would trade anything for Robert, except one of my girls. And at that thought, a third path lit up. One I could walk down. I blurted out, “What about me? I’ll trade you me. Trey loves me. If I died—”

“Aw, now stop.” She clucked her tongue at me. “You’re a true mother. I seen it in you from the start, and I thought you might offer. It’s because of that, me seeing that in you, that I’m making you this deal at all. Because I feel for you. But a man can always get another wife. Especially a rich man. They’d line up three deep to heal his sorrows, pretty as you and younger to boot. The only things your husband can give me to make things fair are his life or his son. The others who wronged my family didn’t get to choose, but I’ll give that choice now, to you. You decide. Which one.”

Marshall jerked his head in a quick nod, but I didn’t need his affirmation. I was already talking.

“Trey,” I said. “I want Robert back.”

I was lying. All three of us in the room knew it. Maybe even the woman on the phone knew. I wasn’t giving her my husband. I was gaining time. But I was a good actor. The words rang true. So true that I might mean it after all. If it came down to it. And maybe she knew that, too.

“Good,” she said. “It’s what I would choose. Now, hush and listen here to me, because this is the last time we’ll talk. I’m going to smash this phone up with a hammer, soon as I hang up. I thought and thought how to work this, and you’ll only get one chance at it. First, call your husband home. You can tell him the truth if you like, or any lie that pleases you. Just get him on a plane. I’ll give you the day. Tomorrow I’m going to leave Robert here and drive to the Funtime Carousel and Gold Mine. You can meet me there if you decide to trade. You know Funtime? You know the carousel?”

“I don’t,” I said. It sounded made up.

“Well, you’re too young. It closed years ago. It’s up north of the city. You bring your husband there to me, nine a.m. sharp, mind. I won’t wait. Come together, in the same car. Then the two of you walk up and meet me at the carousel.”

“Then what?” I asked, confused.

“Then you and me are done. I’ll finish my business with your husband and this whole black world, and then I’ll give you directions to go get your baby.”

This I understood. She meant to kill Trey and then herself. Or both of them together. Marshall held his hand up, shaped like a gun, asking if I thought she was armed. I shrugged.

I asked, “So who will have Robert? Your daughter?”

She tsked. “Naw. I’m telling you, she’s clean of anything that happens to your boy. I’m keeping her clean. I’ll just leave him and come meet you.”

“By himself?” Strange that this could shock me, considering everything she’d done. I had a vision of Robert alone in a dark place that smelled of mold. Maybe hungry. Maybe wet. Crying for me, every minute an erosion to his tiny trust that the world was warm and loving. “How far away is Funtime from where you’ll leave him?”