by April Henry
“What do you mean?”
He waved the note at her. “Sometimes the only cure for a woman who starts hemorrhaging after labor is a quick trip to surgery for a hysterectomy. And the clinic certainly isn’t set up for that.”
“But if he didn’t go to St. V’s - where did he take her?”
“Maybe Good Sam. Or Oregon Health Sciences University, especially if he were afraid she was going to bleed out in the car. They’ve got a Level One Trauma Center. Tell you what - I’ll do some calling and get back to you.” Claire watched as Dr. Gregory rapidly tapped his pen on his desk, then he turned his attention to her again. “You said there were two things you wanted to ask me about?”
Claire had almost forgotten about what she had learned about the Lieblings. She quickly recapped what she had learned from their neighbor. “Don’t you think it’s too much of a coincidence that two of their children died from SIDS - especially since we know one of those children was adopted?”
Dr. Gregory rocked back and forth in his office chair. “Stranger things have happened. But if I were the DA or their doctor, I’d be very interested in ruling out other causes, such as a pillow across the face.”
“So you think they really could have killed those two babies?” She thought of Monica Liebling, of the tight press of her lips as she drove past Claire.
“In my line of work, you quickly learn that everything is possible. I’ve seen bank presidents who beat their wives, and wives who beat their bank president husbands. I told one woman she was terminally ill, with less than six months to get her affairs in order. That was eight years ago and now her tests don’t show any sign of cancer. On the other hand, I once treated a Hmong immigrant who was convinced that he had been cursed and was bound to die. He sat right where you are now, trembling with fear, while I explained through the interpreter that he was perfectly healthy. Two weeks later, he went to bed and didn’t wake up in the morning.”
“But what about the Lieblings?” Claire demanded, a little impatient with his doctor stories.
“From what I’ve read, what sometimes happens in these cases is that the first child dies of natural causes. And that death triggers something in the mother. She craves that attention and sympathy again. Or maybe she realizes deep inside herself that she doesn’t want to be a mother, and that a dead child is much easier to deal with than a live one. And for one reason or another, maybe they’re Catholic or maybe the husband really wants children, she keeps having more babies - and then killing them.”
“Why do keep saying ‘the mother’?” Claire asked. “What about the father?” She thought about Monica’s husband, the man she had seen twice now, but only behind the wheel of his car. David Liebling had sharp-edged features and straight dark hair slicked with enough gel that it stood up in points.
“Because the mother is the one who’s implicated in most of these cases. When men kill children, it’s usually more violently. Men might be more likely to throw a kid down the staircase or drown it in the bathtub, even torture it “ - Claire winced, but Dr. Gregory didn’t seem to notice - “especially if they aren’t the biological father of the child. But when it isn’t a clear-cut case of abuse, from what I’ve seen and read, it’s most often the mother who is the culprit. Traditionally, mothers are supposed to the nurturers, but they are a number of women who can’t deal with the huge demands of the role of selfless caregiver. Have you heard of Munchhausen by Proxy?”
Claire shook her head.
“Basically, the mother makes her child sick over and over again, just so that she can get attention. The doctors are baffled, run dozens of tests, sometimes even hospitalize the kid. And all the while they are telling the mom, ‘Aren’t you a saint to put up with this uncertainty, with your child sick all the time?’ Even health care professionals - who should pick up on this sort of thing faster - can take a long time before they start suspecting that something is wrong. Last year, I saw a videotape where someone in a hospital finally got suspicious and had a hidden video camera installed. You can actually see the mom leaning over to put her hand over the kid’s mouth and nose. Even though I knew that’s what I was going to see when somebody played the tape for me, it was still shocking.”
Claire thought of the dark-eyed little boy in the back seat, the woman at the wheel with her perfect French braid and pinched mouth. “What if Monica Liebling did kill her two kids? What about the little boy they have now? Would he be in any danger?”
“How old did you say the child looked again?”
She hazarded a guess. “Six or seven.”
“If someone in that household had a predilection for killing babies, then a seven-year-old is probably not in any grave danger. Currently.” He got up and began pacing around the room. “So where are you now with the search. You had four little girls you wanted to look at, right?” He held out four fingers, then bent down his pinkie. “And one seems to have died. Whether by natural or unnatural causes, we don’t know. What about the other three?”
Claire shook her head. “One of them can’t be Lori and Havi’s daughter because her coloring is all wrong.”
He bent down another finger. “What about the people with the Hispanic last name? That sounded promising.”
“I’m going to go see them this afternoon.”
Only his index finger was left and he pointed it at her “That leaves Portland’s most famous stars, Amanda and Kurt Price. What about them?”
“I haven’t been able to think of any way to see their child without them knowing. Their estate is completely secluded. That means I have to talk to them face to face. Charlie pointed out to me that we did have their phone number. I called and left a message, but no one’s called back. I feel bad invading their privacy, but I don’t see any other way to figure out whether they have Lori’s daughter. How they got their child is certainly one secret I’m sure they want to keep. And deserve to.” Remembering the delight Dr. Gregory had taken in seeing the actors’ names on the photocopy, Claire regarded him, narrowing her eyes only half in jest. “You haven’t told anyone, have you?”
He drew an X on his chest. “Cross my heart and hope to die, thousand needles in my eye.” He paused. “But there is one thing, Claire.”
“What?”
“Promise me something?”
“Of course,” Claire said, hiding her reservations.
“Promise that you’ll go out with me again and tell me all about what happened.”
She couldn’t say no, not when she didn’t know if she might need another favor from him. “I’d love to,” she said, feeling cheap.
As Claire unlocked the car door, her thoughts were tangled. Was Dr. Gregory interested in her romantically - or just in what she knew? After all, the Prices’ secret might be worth a lot to a man with a drug habit to feed. And what about what Dr. Gregory had said about the clinic? He had said that the clinic wasn’t set up for a hysterectomy. But how could he know what procedures Dr. Bradford could or couldn’t do, since he had told her he had never been there? Maybe she was being paranoid. Maybe Dr. Gregory just had allergies. Maybe it was easy to guess what the clinic might have, given Dr. Bradford’s focus on outpatient visits and uncomplicated births by young, healthy mothers.
Claire didn’t know what was true and what she was imagining. One image, real or not, filled her mind as she pulled into her driveway and turned off the motor. She imagined Ginny lying still and pale in the back seat of a car, the life ebbing out of her with each beat of her heart. And with only Dr. Bradford, with his cold wolf’s eyes, to care for her.
Chapter Eighteen
There was still a stretch of farmlands and fields between Portland and Minor, a taste of the country life Claire had all but forgotten about. The drive reminded her that it was spring, the season of young things. All the sheep had lambs, all the cows had calves, and the tail-switching mares watched their foals chase each other back and forth across the meadows.
The world outside her window seemed full of life - but her con
versation with Lori at the hospital convinced Claire of the equal reality of death. If she didn’t find Lori’s daughter soon, then Zach would surely die. And even though Lori hadn’t reproached her, Claire knew that so far, she hadn’t proved to be much of a sleuth. Even if she did succeed in finding the girl, what then? There would only be more hurdles, one after another. The adoptive parents would have to consent to having the girl tested. And there was still only a one-in-four chance the child would match Zach. And even if all those nearly impossible things happened, what if Zach had the transplant and it failed? Tears pricked Claire’s eyes, making it hard for her to see. The truth was, Zach was dying now. And she didn’t know if there was anything she could do to stop it.
As her thoughts twisted and tangled, a half-grown calico kitten, orange and black spots on white fur, darted across the road in front of her. Claire smoked her tires to avoid it, then watched as it disappeared into a mile-long stretch of green field. She suppressed the urge to get out of her car and try to save it, and put her foot back on the accelerator.
Minor now rated two exits from the highway, and in her confusion Claire took the one that hadn’t existed when she lived there. Soon, she was completely lost. In her memory, Minor was still an ugly two-story false front town. Two decades before, the sawmill had been the main employer, marked by golden heaps of sawdust a hundred feet high. The sweet smell competed with the sour stench of the paper mill a mile away. When she remembered Minor, Claire thought of Pancake Mills and Pie Shoppes, of wizened old men in ball caps and short-sleeved polyester shirts, of pickups held together by rust and their “I love spotted owls ... fried” bumper stickers.
The year Claire graduated was the year the paper mill went belly up, victim of laws that declared it illegal to dump untreated water directly into the river. Too expensive to retro-fit, the owners said, and moved on, leaving two hundred people out of work. People complained, but Claire remembered how the stink of chlorine had hung over the dead gray stretch of Bear Creek long after the mill was gone.
Minor was now an uneasy mix of old and new, with just enough of the old to make Claire really confused. Those few places she recognized - a Mr. Steak restaurant, Bear Creek Park, Sam’s Feed Store, a Mode O’Day that looked as if the same clothes had been on the same mannequins since the day she left - were now surrounded by businesses and homes that had sprouted up in the intervening years. She couldn’t fit the few pieces she recognized into her mental map of the town. She began turning left and right at random, sometimes passing nothing familiar for a long stretch, a feeling that was oddly comforting. When she did recognize something, like a weathered barn now slanting sideways and surrounded by houses, Claire felt completely discombobulated.
She drove past a sprawling shopping mall that looked as if it had sprung up overnight, but then behind it she glimpsed the Pietro’s she had worked at during high school. The first thing the manager had done after he hired her was to ask her to hem her red uniform skirt up six inches. She still hated to think how unquestioningly she had complied. When it was her turn to count out her till, the manager had always insisted Claire climb the stairs ahead of him to his little cubbyhole of an office, located behind the false balcony decorated with listing mannequins dressed up in faded flapper costumes. Claire supposed she should be thankful he had contented himself with looking.
Claire supposed Minor had been changing even while she lived there. For years its economic base had been the huge stands of trees that surrounded it. Over time, the big logs got scarcer and more expensive, and the city people and the environmentalists began to complain about the clear-cuts scabbing the land. Some of the same people Minorites called “tree-huggers” even moved into town, and the old-timers said that they were simply trying to get their piece of heaven before closing the door to anyone who might follow. One of them heard a bullet whine past his ear while he stood in his own front yard during hunting season.. Afterward, the town was divided by those who said it was because he was stupid enough to wear light-colored gloves (so much like the flick of a mule deer’s tail) during hunting season, and those who believed he should heed the shot’s warning and get out of town.
Now that it had been overrun by identical-looking housing developments and strip malls, Claire found herself somehow missing the old Minor. Still seeking someplace she recognized, she drove on. And suddenly there was Hubie’s Market, right in front of her, looking as weather-beaten and unattractive as it had when she was growing up.
Claire parked the car in the empty lot and went inside. It smelled just the same, of damp and wood-smoke from the cast-iron stove that sat in the middle of the store. Under a dozen different names, Hubie’s had been in operation for over a hundred years.
And Hubie still stood behind the counter with his arms crossed over his thick chest, looking as he probably had for the last quarter-century. Built like a fire-hydrant, he had steel gray hair combed sideways across his head. Even the way he regarded Claire suspiciously through the square black plastic frames of his thick glasses was comfortingly familiar.
The store even looked like it stocked the same items it had when she was a kid. It concentrated on the staples: cheap beer and wine, brightly colored junk food, and low-priced cigarettes. There was still room on the narrow wooden shelves for some of the other goods Hubie thought you might find necessary: plastic digital watches, fan belts, wrestling magazines, romance novels for the ladies, staple foods in tiny boxes (with outsize prices), brass belt buckles, ammo, fuses, dusty balls of twine, fireworks available year-round, thumbtacks, and, skewered inside a glass case, hot dogs that had been revolving since the beginning of the world.
“Good morning, Hubie. Do you remember me?”
He continued to stare at her, his expression unreadable. Claire hadn’t thought of him in nearly two decades, but now it was like the years had rolled back and she was twelve again.
“I used ride my bike here every Saturday”- she suddenly remembered it, a lime-green Schwinn with a banana seat and kick-back brakes - “so I could spend my fifty-cent allowance. Sometimes on chips or candy, or sometimes on milk or bread if we didn’t have any in the house. And after a while, you started giving me food, stuff you said you couldn’t sell because it was past the pull date or not what you ordered.”
He recognized her now, she could tell that, even if he didn’t smile. But then Claire didn’t think she had ever seen Hubie smile.
He grunted. “Skinny girl.”
“Pardon?”
“You’re that skinny girl used to come in my store, all hair and eyes and long skinny legs about as big around as a piece of string. You looked like the wind was about to blow you away.”
Claire felt a mixture of nostalgia and embarrassment for her old self. “Yeah, that was me. I never told you how much I appreciated your giving us stuff.” Hubie had given Claire more than just the bags of Doritos and boxes of Pizza Spins that she craved. He had also given her milk and half-cartons of eggs and one-pound bags of flour. Sometimes it had been Hubie’s generosity that had put food on the table at the end of the month. “I haven’t really been back to Minor since my mom moved us out. Everything looks different, but you and the store still look the same.”
“Times change, but people still got to have their smokes. I have to cut my margin pretty thin so I can still compete. But now they’re talking about putting in a Tobacco Town franchise a half-mile a way. Guaranteed lowest prices on beer and cigarettes. The minute they do, I’m closing this place down. I’ll make my old dog move over on the porch and give me some room.” It was the most Claire had every heard Hubie say at one time. “What brings you back here now?”
“I’m trying to find someone who lives here now. You wouldn’t know the Sanchezes would you, Cindy and Kevin Sanchez?”
He looked up at the ceiling, thinking, and then shook his head.
“Well, how about Pine Terrace? Do you know where that is?”
Hubie ended up drawing her a map on a grocery sack. Before she left, Clair
e picked out a bag of neon-red Extreme Cheetos. She tried to give Hubie a twenty dollar bill for it, no change necessary, but he wouldn’t take her money at all.
###
Pine Terrace turned out to look more or less the way Claire had expected it to. The neighborhood was so new that many of houses were surrounded by churned mud instead of lawn. On the edges of the development a handful of would-be houses were in the middle of being framed. Mud-splattered yellow bulldozers smoothed out spots for more construction.
To Claire’s eye, the finished houses all looked alike, cookie cutter construction painted in skin-tone mauves and beiges. As she drove down the street, the first impression was of a long row of two-car garages. The houses were so close that you could pass your neighbor the butter through your adjoining dining room windows.
She found the Sanchez address with no problem. A pinkish tan, it had two-stories and was set back from the street. The street itself was a problem. It was a cul-de-sac, meant for kids riding their bikes or an impromptu game of basketball. A stranger jogging by several times or an unknown car parked for an hour or two would be immediately marked as out-of-place.
Claire had to think of something. She had no more answers for Lori than when she had begun this search, and time was running out. She had to find out if the Sanchezes, with their Hispanic last name, had adopted Lori and Havi’s daughter.