The Kindest Lie(98)
Verna opened her front door wider and stepped back into the house as if she were expecting Ruth—an unspoken invitation, or just resignation. The severe, single braid Verna had worn when Ruth saw her at the river now hung loose and undone on her shoulder. She walked to the kitchen and Ruth followed her. An Obama yard sign leaned against the kitchen wall. Verna removed a reminder note stuck with a magnet to the refrigerator door.
“There’s a school trip in a couple weeks to the Children’s Museum in Indy. The permission slip is due Monday,” Verna said, sitting at the counter typing hurriedly on her laptop.
“I hear they have some nice exhibits there. I’m sure Corey will love it.” Ruth didn’t know exactly what to say or even where to stand in this woman’s home. She kept expecting her son to come around the corner any moment.
Apparently sensing her unease, Verna said, “Harold and Corey went to pick up groceries for dinner tonight. They won’t be back for a little while.”
Nodding, Ruth swept the kitchen with her eyes, taking in the matching yellow curtains and canisters, imagining her son growing up here in this cheery, storybook home Verna and Harold had made. She wondered which of the four kitchen chairs was Corey’s, but she didn’t ask.
Mothering bloomed in houses like this, where the scent of gingerbread wafted through the air, and Ruth suspected it came from something freshly baked and not an air freshener. She tried not to be too conspicuous, her eyes consuming this strange house that Corey could probably navigate blindfolded.
Ruth thought about Xavier and pictured the two of them with a family of their own, baking cookies, hustling little ones out of the house for school in the morning. Xavier in cahoots with the kids, cracking corny jokes and conspiring with them to do something indulgent while she remained the practical one.
Finally, Ruth said, “How’s he doing?”
Leaning back in her chair, Verna said, “Last night he started screaming. When I went in his room, I could tell he was having a nightmare.”
“Everything that happened at the river was terrifying.” Ruth paused before saying, “I didn’t mean for him to find out about me this way. I didn’t even know who or where he was until a little over a week ago.”
Verna held up a hand to stop her. “I thought about this day so many times. I pictured it. What you would say. What I’d say. But I knew this day would come. That you’d show up at my door. But I always thought it would be me or Harold who told Corey he was adopted.”
Unsure of how to respond, Ruth looked down at her hands and said, “I know it was hard for him to hear the truth that way. I’m just glad I showed up at the river when I did.”
Something fiery flared in Verna’s eyes. “Don’t expect my gratitude.”
“No. No, I’m not expecting anything.”
“You came to town and befriended Midnight, playing mother to him. He’s a fragile boy and you got him all worked up. Those cops could’ve shot and killed my son. Corey told us about Midnight daring him to fire that gun and then calling the police.”
“I had no idea Midnight knew the truth, and I didn’t realize how angry and resentful he’d become.” Ruth chose a chair next to Verna’s, slowly lowering herself into the seat. The two women sat quietly, avoiding each other’s eyes.
This time when Verna spoke, her voice registered low and soft, the kind you had to lean in to hear. “When Pastor Bumpus told us about the baby, I’d just had my fourth miscarriage. Some of it was from stress probably. You never know for sure, though, why your body betrays you.” She twisted the tie from a bread bag around her index finger.
Had the Cunninghams been desperate enough to participate in a fraudulent adoption just to become parents?
Verna’s eyes hardened and she looked directly at Ruth. “That boy is ours in every way that matters. We are the only family he knows.” Her words sounded like a preemptive strike in case Ruth wanted to reclaim her son.
In a reflective tone, she said, “I’ll never forget when Pastor placed Corey in my arms for the first time. It was hot that day when he brought him here to our house. I still swaddled him in a blanket, and Corey kept his eyes on me, followed me everywhere. That night, I told Harold he had the air-conditioning set too high. I didn’t want Corey to catch pneumonia.”
“What about your husband? How did he feel about raising a child that wasn’t his own? Biologically, I mean.” Xavier’s words replayed in Ruth’s head, his assurances that he could have handled the truth and loved Corey as his own.
The corners of Verna’s mouth turned up slightly. “I swear, the minute Harold laid eyes on Corey, he said, ‘That boy’s got my nose and my chin.’” Verna laughed at the memory. “The older Corey gets, the more people swear they look alike, and Harold just smiles and doesn’t tell them any different.”
Ruth looked at this woman, trying to read her face, wondering how much she knew about Corey’s adoption. “Do you worry, though, that everything could be upended?” She paused before saying, “I know about Stanley DeAngelo and what he did.”
Tess’s friend said criminal laws in Indiana had changed and crimes were reclassified after 1997. Still, he suspected DeAngelo would be guilty of forgery or counterfeiting for having Mama sign adoption forms falsely claiming to be the birth mother. He also felt certain that DeAngelo had committed a federal crime by defrauding a state institution. That meant Mama and the Cunninghams could be culpable for their involvement in the crime.