Alice looked at Sonja. “What?”
“I didn’t know Zoe was his daughter,” she said. She seemed apologetic. “Not until last week.”
Alice knew she needed to get it together, but it was all too much. Dr. Sanders was here. He’d seen Zoe. Sonja was his wife.
“You can’t just show up like this,” Alice said finally. “How did you even know where to come?”
“I followed Sonja,” he said. “But you’re right. I haven’t gone about this the right way. But neither did you. You should have told me I had a daughter, Alice. You owed me that much.”
“I owed you—”
“Yes,” he said. “What’s more, you owed it to Zoe.”
Alice stared at him. She thought about how awed she’d once been by his confidence, the authority he commanded. But now she saw him for exactly what he was. Delusional.
She drew herself up to her full height. “Let’s get one thing clear. You have no rights here, George. Rapists aren’t owed anything.”
Dr. Sanders flinched a little, and Alice realized it was because she’d called him George. After all these years, after everything that had happened, he still thought he was owed respect. She was ready to continue, but before she could she felt a great twist in her belly that stole her breath.
“Where is Zoe now?” he demanded.
“It’s none of your business,” Alice panted.
“I’m her father.”
“Like hell you are!” Alice opened the door a little and slammed it again, hard, against his foot. He barely flinched.
“Alice, can we just talk for a minute? Like adults?”
“No.” Her stomach was full of knives. “We can’t.”
“I know you’re ill,” he said. His voice was quiet, but somehow it carried strength.
“It’s none of your business,” she repeated. “Get your foot out of my door.”
“I want to know what you’ve put in your will. For guardianship of Zoe!”
Alice shoved again on the door, but it was useless. “Hey! What’s going on here?”
Paul stood behind George in the hallway. He looked at George, then at Alice, in confusion. But it only took a moment before understanding came to his face. “This is the guy?”
Alice had barely nodded before Paul grabbed him by the back of the shirt. He spun him around and punched him, clean, in the jaw. Sonja cried out. Despite herself, Alice felt a tingle of satisfaction. She yanked Paul by the wrist into the apartment, locking the door. “What was that?” she cried.
Paul shrugged. “I told you I was going to step up and be a good brother.”
In other circumstances, Alice might have been touched. Unfortunately these weren’t other circumstances. And Alice couldn’t hold it any longer, she doubled over and vomited.
70
“He can’t do this,” Paul said, pacing. Alice lay on the sofa. She felt hot in the face, and her stomach radiated pain. She’d vomited another two times, mostly bile—a strange greenish color.
“He might be able to,” Alice said. “I’ll have to get a lawyer.”
“But he’s a rapist!” Paul said.
“I never filed a report. As far as the law is concerned, he’s an upstanding citizen.”
Alice felt weak. The pain in her abdomen was getting worse—little twisting blades in her gut.
“He won’t get her, Alice.”
Alice thought about Sonja. Alice couldn’t believe she’d found herself becoming fond of the woman who had been plotting to take her daughter away. All this time she’d thought Sonja was concerned about her when actually she’d been George’s wife! But it wasn’t just the betrayal that worried Alice. Frustrating as it was, Sonja lent a certain legitimacy to George. A judge might not give a child to her biological father if he was an alleged rapist. But if he was happily married to a social worker who could vouch for the fact that he was a good man? What happened then?
“Where’s my phone?” she asked Paul.
Paul had no idea. Eventually Alice located it, charging, by her bedside. She called Kate.
“Hello?”
“It’s Alice.”
There was just something about her voice that undid Alice.
She opened her mouth, but all that came out was a giant sob.
“Alice?” Kate said. “What’s the matter?”
In that moment the pain in Alice’s belly was so sharp that it stole her breath.
“Kate,” she said, when she recovered. “Can you come over here?”
“Are you all right, Alice? Tell me.”
“Just … come over,” she said, and then felt her stomach seize.
“All right,” Kate said. “I’m on my way.”
It was a good thing, because after that Alice couldn’t talk any more.
71
As soon as Kate got off the phone with Alice, she grabbed her keys and drove to Alice’s. A familiar-looking man answered the door.
“You’re Kate?” he said.
“Yes. Who are you?”
“Paul,” he reminded her. “Alice’s brother. Come in, quick.”
Kate strode into the apartment. Alice was bent over the couch.
“What happened?” she asked Paul.
“Zoe’s father turned up.”
“Zoe’s father? But … I thought he wasn’t involved.”
“He’s not. At least he shouldn’t be. But now he’s saying he wants Zoe.”
“He’s saying…” Kate’s fingers found her temples. “No!”
“We won’t let him,” Paul said. “We’ll fight it. But—”
But Kate wasn’t listening; she was looking at Alice, half kneeling, half lying on the couch. Her face had a faint sheen to it. She kept moving around, agitated. “Alice? Are you all right?”
Alice muttered something about stomach pain, then turned her head and vomited onto a towel.
“I’ll get another towel,” Paul said, but Kate was staring at this one. Her vomit was green.
Kate yanked up Alice’s top. Her belly was distended and stretched taut. Kate launched to her feet, snatched up the phone, and dialed 911.
“What is it?” Paul said, returning with a fresh towel.
“Yes, I’m a nurse,” she said into the phone. “I have a woman in her home with acute abdominal pain and vomiting. I need an ambulance right away.” She looked at Paul. “Where’s Zoe?”
“I … I think Alice said she’s at her boyfriend’s place.”
“Do you know the address?” Kate said.
“It’s written down in the kitchen.”
“Fine. Do you want to get Zoe or should—”
Alice responded to the sound of Zoe’s name. It was, perhaps, the first time she’d even noticed that Kate was there. But as she caught Kate’s gaze she looked surprisingly cognizant.
“You get Zoe,” she said, and she didn’t break her gaze until Kate promised she would.
72
“George! George, wait!”
He was striding into the house. Sonja had to run to keep up with him. They’d returned from Alice’s in separate cars, so she had no idea what was going on his head. Certainly he’d seemed calm when he was speaking to Alice, reasonable even, but that was because he wanted something. It was no indication of how he would behave in the privacy of his own home.
Sonja closed the front door but she had barely turned around when she was suddenly slammed against it. The air rushed from her lungs. His face was right up close, so close she could feel his breath on her face.
“What the hell were you doing there, Sonja?”
“What do you mean?” she choked out. “Alice is my client.”
His hands teetered just below her throat, around her collarbones, like a threat. He pressed harder. “You said you wanted to talk about me. Why?”
Sonja struggled to catch her breath. Why had she gone there? Ostensibly it had been to find out what had happened between George and Alice the night Zoe was conceived. But she needn’t have bothered. Even before she’
d heard Alice say it, she’d known the truth.
“You raped her,” she said to George.
George released his grip on her. All of a sudden he seemed almost … bored.
“Tell me I’m wrong,” she said.
George rolled his eyes and turned away. As if he were admitting to a speeding ticket that he’d tucked away, hoping she wouldn’t find it, rather than a heinous crime. “It was … just a moment,” he said. “I lost it.”
Sonja felt a rumbling start from somewhere down deep. Although she had suspected this since the moment George had told her about his relationship with Alice, it still was a shock to hear him say it. Her husband was a rapist.
“You can’t do this,” she said, because in that moment it was clear. All this time she’d made excuses for him. She’d thought his sexual aggression was her fault! But it had nothing to do with her. “You can’t try to get custody of Zoe.”
“Sonja, she’s my flesh and blood,” George said. “This could be good for all of us. This would be good for you.”
His demeanor had changed now. The threatening man who had just pinned her to the wall had vanished. He was appealing to her sense of reason. Five minutes earlier she might have fallen for it.
“No,” she said.
“Sonja—”
“No,” she repeated, slowly and clearly. “You’re not fit to look after a child. And I won’t allow it.”
A muscle flickered in his jaw. “You won’t allow it? Why would I need you to—”
“Because no one is going to give a child to an abuser.”
George became frighteningly still. Sonja waited for him to quip back, tell her she couldn’t do anything. But he didn’t say anything. She had his attention.
“I’ve documented everything you’ve done to me. The bruises, the bumps, the injuries. I’m keeping an official log of it all.” She was fudging a little, but what did it matter? “Call it what you want, but it’s abuse. And the courts won’t just have to take my word for it. From what you’ve told me, Alice will be pretty keen to tell the story of how Zoe was conceived.”
George still didn’t move. Sonja had never seen him so uncertain. She remembered the first time George had assaulted her, the way she’d justified her staying. If you are this weak-willed and skittish with George, what on earth will you be like without him?
Now, as she stood before him, she repeated the thought in her mind. And suddenly, she could picture exactly what she could be.
“You’re not getting Zoe,” she said evenly. “I’m going to make sure of it.”
This time Sonja didn’t deliberate. She simply turned and walked out the door.
73
“What is it?” Zoe hurriedly put on her seat belt. She’d arrived home to the sound of an ambulance siren and Kate standing in front of her building. “Another infection?”
“No,” Kate said. “Not an infection.”
“Then … what?”
Kate remained quiet as she pulled out onto the road. Too quiet. She was blinking a lot, and chewing on a thumbnail.
“Is it serious?” Zoe asked.
Kate’s gaze flickered to her for second before she answered. “Yes it is, Zoe.”
Usually Kate had an extraordinary way of—a gift for—reassuring her when it came to her mother. Not today.
“Is … is she going to die?” Zoe asked. “Today?”
Kate put her hand over Zoe’s and squeezed it. “Let’s just get you there, sweetheart.”
74
When Zoe walked into the hospital room, her mom was asleep. She had a tube in her nose and an intravenous line in her arm. Zoe went to the side without the tube, lowered the rail on her bed and lay down beside her.
“Mouse?”
Zoe lifted her head. “Mom!”
“Are you all right?” she mumbled. She was pretty out of it, on all sorts of painkillers. And still she was asking how Zoe was. Only a mother could do that.
“I’m good,” Zoe said.
Her mom said something else then, which didn’t make any sense. Then she winced as a flash of pain overtook her.
“I love you, too, Mom,” she said, taking a stab in the dark, and her mom drifted back to sleep. But Zoe stayed there for hours, holding her mom’s hand. Neither of them was ready to let go.
75
“What’s your pain between one and ten, Alice?” Dr. Brookes asked.
Alice knew it was Dr. Brookes without having to open her eyes. During the past days his voice had become as familiar as her own. So had the voices of other members of the hospital staff—the nurses, the orderlies. All of these people that surrounded her, caring for her. As sick as she had felt, there was something lovely about being so cared for.
“A four?”
“Good,” Dr. Brookes said. “Much better.”
“Can I go home now?” Alice asked.
A pause. “Not yet.”
Alice opened her eyes. Kate stood in the corner of the room. Her expression was somber. “What is it?” Alice asked.
“I’ve just had a look at your CT scan,” Dr. Brookes started.
“And?” Alice prompted.
“And it shows you have a number of secondary metastases in your peritoneal cavity.”
Alice was about to ask him to speak English when Kate came to her side and took her hand, obscuring him from her view. “The cancer has spread, Alice. Most worryingly, it’s in your bowel, and a tumor has partially blocked your small intestine. That is what has been causing you such pain. It’s not allowing you to digest food.”
“So how do we … fix it?”
“Well … we’ll continue to hydrate and rest the bowel until the return of bowel sounds, and you’re feeling more comfortable. But the likelihood is that when you start eating again the problem will return.”
There was a long pause.
“So,” Alice said. “What’s the plan? Surgery to remove the tumors?”
Kate glanced at Dr. Brookes, who had come to stand on the other side of Alice. “Unfortunately, due to the multiple sites of obstruction, it’s not a possibility.”
“So what is a possibility?” Alice asked, frustrated. “Will we just continue with the chemo when I’m feeling better?”
Another pause. Another exchange of glances.
“Alice, the cancer has spread too much. Your illness is now terminal and we are recommending a palliative approach … treating the symptoms. We wouldn’t recommend any more chemo.”
It was Dr. Brookes talking, but Alice looked at Kate.
“A … palliative approach?”
Kate squeezed her hand. “I’m so sorry.”
At first the news hovered around Alice. She had the urge to say “What?,” “What do you mean?,” “Explain this to me again,” but she understood what they were saying. It was just that it felt like they were talking about someone else. Telling someone else that the end of her life was near.
“If we can get your obstructive symptoms under control,” Dr. Brookes continued, with something resembling positivity, “you’ll only have to stay in the hospital for a few days, maybe a week.”
“And then?” Alice said.
“And then a hospice staff member will come in to evaluate you.”
A hospice. Alice felt the news start to penetrate.
“How long?” she asked. Her voice sounded calm and stoic—the very opposite of how she felt.
“A few weeks,” Kate said. “Maybe a month.”
A few weeks. The words bowled her over. A month. Alice’s eyes roamed the room, looking for something … what? A cure? A candid camera? Suddenly she saw Sonja hovering in the doorway. Alice felt a swell of rage but almost instantly it gave way to something else. Something more important than rage.
“Sonja, Kate—we need to talk,” Alice said.
She’d realized, as all mothers did at one point or another, that nothing was about her anymore. Not her cancer. Not even her death. It was all about Zoe. And Kate and Sonja might be the only two women on earth w
ho could help her.
76
Sonja never expected to be invited in to Alice’s room. She expected Alice to scream and cry and threaten her, the way she had when she’d had Zoe put in foster care. To this end, she had brought in a letter which she’d planned to give to Alice. It explained that she’d had no idea that George was Zoe’s father until last week. That since the altercation at Alice’s door, Sonja had resigned from her job, left George, and moved in with her sister, Agnes. Most importantly, the letter explained that she had no intention of letting George anywhere near Zoe. But before Sonja could open her mouth to say any of this, Alice was speaking.
“I’ve asked Kate if she will be Zoe’s guardian,” Alice said. Her voice was calm and matter-of-fact. “I think this is the best home for her, and that Zoe will be happy there.”
“I’d heard you’d asked Kate,” Sonja replied. “And that’s why—”
“I’m assuming,” Alice interrupted, “that if George is your husband, you know what kind of man he is. You know that he wouldn’t make a good father, to Zoe or anyone else.”
“No,” Sonja agreed. “He wouldn’t.”
Alice stopped. “You mean … you agree? That Zoe should go and live with Kate?”
“I do,” Sonja said. “In fact, I’ve spent this morning getting the legal paperwork together so you can make this official as soon as possible. I figured it was the least I could do … after everything.”
Alice appeared to be lost for words.
“I’ve left George, Alice. You may not believe this, but I had no idea that he was Zoe’s father. And I’m going to do everything I can to prevent him gaining custody of her.”
Alice was suddenly teary. “Really? But George … he can be pretty convincing.”
“Yes, but so can I. And I’m pretty experienced in this area.”
“What are you going to do?” Alice asked.
“I’m going to start by filing a restraining order against him. I have documented proof of his abuse, which I want on the record. Then I’m going to do a little digging. My guess is that you and I aren’t the only ones that George has abused. If I can get any other women to come forward, this is just the beginning. I can try to get him deregistered as a therapist. And we may be able to have charges brought against him. No judge in their right mind will give a child to a man like that.”
The Mother's Promise Page 26