by Jim Nelson
“How did Ruby get away from you in the first place?”
“I left the house to check on a trespasser. I was gone for ten or fifteen minutes at the most. When I returned, Ruby was gone.” Hanna compressed the details knowing the full explanation would only make her look more negligent.
“We take a dim view of parents leaving their bridges unattended.”
Hanna struggled for a response. “I’m doing my best.”
“So you’re saying you weren’t in the Warming Hut to participate in the event?”
“Of course not!” Hanna said.
“Did you offer any aid at all to the girls there?” she pressed. “Financial or otherwise?”
“Why would I ever?”
Deborah tapped the blunt end of her pen against the table. “These cases here?” She motioned with her face at the stack of file folders leaning perilously beside her. “You might be surprised the number of parents we have to prosecute for endangering their bridges.”
“You mean abuse?”
“I mean arranging for them to undergo a Blanchard’s,” Deborah said. “Parents who are killing their children and forcing their bridge daughters to live with the consequences. In recent years, there’s been a sharp uptick in parental coercion cases.”
“Coercion?” Hanna said, a kind of naive confusion settling upon her.
“The legal term is derelictum vitae,” Deborah said. “Any person, bridge or otherwise, arranging for a bi-graft. The bridges can’t be prosecuted as adults, of course.”
“Parents do that to their own bridge daughters?” Her father demanding Hanna go through the procedure. Uncle Rick’s suicide note.
“More often than you think,” Deborah said. “Men in particular. Messy divorces, or a dad with notions of, you know, getting a kind of revenge. Some of them have white knight complexes. Want to save all the females in the world from harm.” She shrugged. “They say they’re thinking of their bridges, but it’s never so straightforward.”
“I love my children,” Hanna said softly. “I would never put them in harm’s way.”
“And yet,” Deborah said, “you were caught associating with known bridge fugitives. Calling the non-emergency line—” Deborah shrugged. “That’s easily dismissed, although it could be interpreted as trying to lead the police away from the Warming Hut. These other charges—” She held her outstretched hand over the open file. “They’re considerable.”
After uncomfortable seconds of silence, Deborah staring down at the paperwork, Hanna acquiesced with a short resolute nod. “I’ll answer your questions,” she said.
Deborah closed the folder and slid it aside. “Ruby will be released today. The question I face, Ms. Driscoll, is to whose care I will remand her to. It could be you. It could be a family member. Or it could be a state worker—”
“No—”
“These are the options I have to weigh,” Deborah said. She spoke as though powerless. “You have no children, right?”
“Only my bridge daughters,” Hanna said.
“Are they your priority, Ms. Driscoll?”
“More than you can know,” Hanna said.
“Then do yourself a favor,” Deborah said. “Tell us what happened so I can recommend what is right here. Right for Ruby,” she added.
The police had offered Hanna windows to make a statement. They also offered windows for her to contact legal counsel, always insinuating that a lawyer would only extend her separation from Ruby. Although Hanna was not the type of person who believed everything the police said, she did, in this case, believe their advice had foundation, for no other reason than they were in the position to extend the separation.
“Ruby was kidnapped,” Hanna announced, “out from under my nose. A Hagar’s sister named Piper—”
Deborah held up a finger, asking for a moment of time. She leaned down to her briefcase on the floor, rummaged around, and came up with a photograph.
“That’s her,” Hanna said excitedly.
“Hope Elizabeth Andover,” Deborah said, adding the photo to the pile before them. “Of Youngsville, Pennsylvania. She’s wanted in ten states and a person of interest in six more. You might’ve heard the press call her ‘The Pied Piper of Youngsville.’”
The information loosened Hanna’s jaw. She shook her head, lightly stunned. She felt vaguely the fool.
“Andover goes into towns and cities, organizes these meetings of bridge fugitives, generally causes trouble,” Deborah explained. “She’s destroyed a lot of lives, Ms. Driscoll.”
“She took my bridge daughter,” Hanna said. “I only wanted her back.”
Deborah began writing in her tablet. It was the first time Hanna noticed Deborah’s manicure, each nail painted a slightly different shade of electric purple. The colors coordinated with her hipster glasses. The City, Hanna thought. In the silence of the room, Deborah’s pen made a hollow but officious scratching sound as she manipulated it over the surface of the pad.
“So this business about calling the police—”
“I made a mistake,” Hanna said.
“And you were at the Warming Hut—”
“To get my bridge daughter and take her home,” Hanna said.
“And Hope Elizabeth Andover found your bridge daughter…how?”
“I gave her a ride,” Hanna said, looking down at her writhing hands in her lap. “She was hitchhiking. It was the middle of the night. It was cold and the middle of nowhere.”
“Where exactly?”
“Near Lake Berryessa,” Hanna said. “On a state highway.”
Deborah remained focused on her writing. “Did you offer Andover money—”
“No.”
“Lodging—”
“No.”
“Any support of any kind?”
“The moment I realized she was a Hagar’s sister I asked her to leave my car. I wanted nothing to do with her after that.”
Deborah continued writing. She set down the pen, reached into her briefcase, and came up with a single tissue. She picked up the pen, continued writing, and blew. The horn of her nose made the unadorned governmental room seem momentarily cavernous. She returned the spent tissue to the briefcase and wrote more.
She capped her pen with an authoritative schick. “It’s impossible to recommend returning Ruby to your custody while you’re held by the police on charges. Impossible,” she emphasized. “I’ve also been informed you’ve consistently refused to make a statement explaining your presence at the Warming Hut that night.”
“The police would tell me nothing about Ruby,” Hanna said.
“I’m giving you a reason to explain yourself then,” Deborah said with a quick smile. “A full and honest statement is the only way you’re going to be released.” She began gathering her things. “I’m not a lawyer, Ms. Driscoll, but from where I stand, it looks to me they have at least enough to file charges. That only hurts your position with us.”
She could post bail, she could find a lawyer to fight it. What was the point? “I just want my daughter back.”
“How can I recommend Ruby being placed into the care of a woman charged with endangering her well-being?” Deborah said. She shrugged when she said it, not the shrug of stating the obvious, but the shrug of a person in a position of loose and selective power.
Hanna nodded. It started with one nod, a quick, slight motion, then more nods as an appreciation of her helplessness avalanched upon her.
The police officer stood and approached. He produced from his jacket a sheet of paper folded once lengthwise, a blank statement form, the same as she’d been presented several times before in rooms of incremental quality. She accepted the form and one of Deborah’s pens. Hanna took a deep breath, considered where to begin, and began putting words to paper.
Twenty-one
Hanna emerged from the police station in the clothes she’d worn for three days straight. She was conscious of the grime and stink coating her body. Even her teeth felt crusty due to not brushing.
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Her belongings had been held in an oversized manila envelope with SFPD markings across its front and back. It stored everything she’d handed over to the duty officer three days earlier. Her smartphone, a slender soap-shaped bar of metal and glass, weighed down the bottom of the envelope. She held its familiar shape in her hand. For the first time in three days, she felt like a private citizen. She thumbed its Awake button. Its screen remained dark. The batteries had died.
Hanna needed a moment to orient herself. She did not recognize this part of San Francisco. From the drive to the Bridge Protective Services building and back, she gathered she stood not far from North Beach and Chinatown, both good places to hail a cab. Her car was in impound—she needed to get it out in the morning—but otherwise, they’d dropped all charges thanks in part to her cooperation.
All these problems were secondary, of course. Extracting Ruby from Bridge Protective Services came first, and then reuniting with Cynthia. Then, perhaps, normalcy would return.
“Hanna,” called a reassuring voice.
Hanna turned around, searching for the speaker. Hanna’s father stepped between two cars parked in the street and approached. He bore a wide grin, the horse-toothed smile that made Hanna giggle when she was young. After her parents’ divorce, his smile was one more thing she hated about him, as though a simple imperfection explained a failed marriage and a broken family. In her twenties, when she reconnected with him, she’d fallen in love with that smile. She felt it was her father’s best feature, his million-dollar charm point.
A weight she could not identify crushed down upon her. Her shoulders crumpled forward and she burst into tears. She couldn’t find her breath. Her father said, “Come here, come here, sssh…” With her face buried in his chest, he wrapped his arms about her and held her tight. She was once more her father’s daughter.
—
“I have a room at the Hyatt,” her father explained while he drove. “Your mother’s there with Cynthia.” He interrupted her obvious questions. “They’re fine, they’re fine. Your mother’s still coughing and sleeping a lot, but the worst is past.”
“How’s Cynthia?”
Her father chuckled. “I always thought Ruby would make a great nurse if she wasn’t a bridge. Cynthia doesn’t have the bedside manner.” He smiled across the seat. “I give her credit, though. She took charge while you were gone. When I got to the farm, she was the man of the house. I didn’t have to do anything except eat her bad cooking and help her wash the sheets.” He chuckled. “She even started ordering me around. But you know your father, I just do what the womenfolk tell me to do…”
Her father navigated San Francisco’s hills and one-way streets with an ease Hanna lacked behind the wheel. Vaughn had the same effortlessness when driving, an ability to shift gears and manipulate the steering wheel with a naturalness men don’t realize they possess. The luxuriousness of the Jeep’s seat cushion and air-conditioning, as well as her father’s casual way, relaxed Hanna. He asked for the fourth time if she wanted to stop for something to eat. Hanna told him they needed to pick up Ruby first.
They waited in the lobby of the Department of Bridge Protective Services. While Hanna filled out the forms at the reception desk, her father talked with her mother via cell phone.
“They’ve gone to eat,” he told Hanna after hanging up. “They’ll bring take-out to the hotel for the three of us.” He smiled. “Cynthia wanted me to relay to you that everything is under control and we should focus on getting Ruby.”
“She said that, did she?”
“She’s changed, I tell you,” he said. “She’s second-in-charge now. Something’s come over her.”
—
After an hour had passed, Hanna asked, “Was it on the news?”
“Yeah,” her father said with a protracted exhalation. “But I don’t think you were named.”
“You think?”
“There’s so much news out there,” he said. “I didn’t watch it all.”
“Did they ever catch her?” Hanna asked. “This Piper girl?”
“They’re still looking for her,” he said.
Hanna located a wall outlet in the corner of the lobby. She plugged in her phone and let it charge. After a few minutes, the phone powered to life for the first time in days.
Twelve voicemails awaited her attention, two from her father and the others reporters requesting interviews. Another call came in while she reviewed the messages, a reporter who identified himself as with a Los Angeles news station. She hung up without a word, silenced the phone, and allowed it to continue recharging.
She had to keep the girls out of the media glare. The image of camera crews shoving lenses and lights into the faces of Ruby and Cynthia gave Hanna a queasy sensation. It took only a little imagination to conjure up all the distortions and innuendo the press would attach to the girls, especially Ruby’s presence at Shur Spring.
After two hours of waiting, Hanna’s father approached the desk window and asked the receptionist once again about Ruby. It was nearing eight in the evening. Hanna had promised herself she wouldn’t eat until Ruby was released, but now it felt like an unwise deprivation. She wandered down the hall to the vending machines at the elevators. She purchased a bag of nacho-flavored chips, a vanilla-frosted cupcake in plastic wrap, and a can of espresso-laced chocolate milk. She returned to the lobby with artificial nacho dust on her lips and fingers and the sugar and caffeine granting her an electric lift.
“Nothing,” was her father’s full report. He shook his head and plopped back into the chair he’d been sitting in all evening. “Sit down,” he said, patting the chair beside him.
“I’m fine.”
“No, sit,” he said. “I need to tell you something.”
When she was settled, her father twisted in his chair to face her. “Earlier today,” he said with a low voice, “while I was waiting for the police to release you, I made a couple of phone calls. A lawyer friend of mine put me in touch with a family legal counselor. I asked a couple of questions to see where we stand.”
“And?”
“Honey,” he said, “we have to prepare ourselves for a number of possibilities.”
“They said I could collect Ruby,” Hanna said. “They told me if I cooperated—”
“Did they give you that in writing?”
Hanna shook her head.
“That’s the problem,” he said. “It’s their discretion here. They can decide to release her now. They can release her later. They can decide a family judge needs to hold a custody hearing.”
“A hearing?” She almost shouted it.
“They can put her in a bridge house,” her father said. “We’ll fight it, but we have to be prepared for the fight.”
Exhausted, desperate for sleep, desperate for even a twenty-minute nap on a mattress rather than a hard bench, Hanna could not muster a protest. The sugar and caffeine rush subsided, and her father’s speculations sapped the last of her energy. Hanna leaned against her father’s arm, wondering when she could have Ruby in her arms. In a moment, a light breathing came from her mouth, and a moment later, she was out cold.
—
Hanna—
She awoke with a start and a sharp intake of air. “What?” she said bleary-eyed and scrambling to sit upright. “What happened?”
“They’re releasing Ruby,” he said. “Hanna, I need you to—”
“I just want my daughter back,” Hanna said to him. She turned to the evening receptionist, a young pimpled man with a nose piercing and stripes of neon green through his black hair. She called to him, “When do I get my daughter back?”
The receptionist pressed a button on the desk. His voice cackled through the speaker embedded in the window separating him from the lobby. “They’re coming out now.”
The admitting doors swung open and Ruby emerged. She stepped into the lobby with a serene expression, fresh and clean and ruddy-faced. She wore a bridge daughter dress Hanna had never seen before, a ch
eap one undoubtedly issued to her by the county, but at least it was clean. She spotted Hanna and lit up. She waddled for Hanna as strenuously as Hanna rushed for her. Hanna dropped to one knee and took her in her arms, feeling the warmth of life within her for the first time in three days.
“Ms. Driscoll,” a voice behind her said.
The soreness in Hanna’s breasts had remained since leaving lock-up. Now it receded with the relief of finally having Ruby in her arms.
“I missed you,” Ruby said into her ear.
“I missed you too, honey.”
“I’m sorry for running away,” Ruby said.
“I know, dear,” Hanna said. “I know.”
“Ms. Driscoll,” came the voice again. “I need you to step away from Ruby.”
Hanna, arms around Ruby, turned her head to face the speaker.
Deborah Jess stood behind her. “I need you to release Ruby.”
“No,” Hanna said.
“This office has remanded Ruby,” Deborah said. She reached for Ruby to gently pry their embrace. “You need to release her now.”
“I don’t understand,” Hanna said. “I’ve cooperated with the police—”
“Your cooperation avoided a hearing and enabled Ruby’s quick release.” Deborah continued to work her hands between Ruby and Hanna.
Hanna stood and faced her. “Get your hands off my daughter.”
“Ms. Driscoll,” Deborah Jess said, “there have been some changes since we last talked.”
“Miz Driscoll,” boomed a voice from the swinging doors. “Miz Driscoll.” And the booming voice laughed.
Into the lobby stepped an older man with skin the color of tomato juice and beer. A bramble of crow-black hair covered the top of his head and a graying moustache unfurled like a tent top over his wide grin. He wore faded jeans, a comfortable corduroy jacket, and a crisp white button-up shirt. He strode toward Hanna with a brash gait, his toes aimed outward with each step. His hips did not sway. Rather, his chest and arms swung as he moved. His walk always reminded Hanna of how a tank’s turret can swivel any direction while its treads continued their crushing progress forward.