by Tracy Sharp
He’d loved me, but I never knew why, and I was suspicious of that love because I had never felt worthy of it.
A hole was opening up in my chest. It was barely closed most days. But tonight it was yawning open again and the gaping emptiness I felt made me sit up and lean over, one hand over my chest.
“Christ,” I breathed. I couldn’t take it. Not one more moment of it.
And at that very moment the heavens took mercy on me and my cell phone sang Fuel’s Shimmer from the floor beside the tub.
I wiped my hands on a corner of my towel and snatched up the phone.
I grinned. A rush of excitement moved over me.
And as I murmured his name into the cell, “Lucas”, the gap in my chest winked shut.
Chapter Thirteen
“I need to see you,” was what he’d said. What I responded to were the “need” and the “you”. So what I heard was, “I need you.” He needed me, which my wounded self-understood as, “I’m worthy, lovable, interesting and exciting.”
So I invited him to come over.
I pulled on a pair of black Levis which hugged my curves and a snug long sleeved t-shirt. I let my black hair down and shook it, running a brush through the wavy tangles, then started down the stairs, aware of the spring in my step, with Pango behind me. She knew something was up, I could tell by the quizzical look on her face. I patted her head, threw a couple of dog biscuits into the air just to watch her leap up and catch them, her mouth snapping shut each time.
I set about pacing in the kitchen while peeking out the window every few seconds. Hugging my forearms, I moved my hands up and down over them. I wasn’t cold, exactly, but I wasn’t comfortable in my own skin. It was a strange feeling of wanting to leap out of it. Of wanting to get out of myself, escape for a while.
When the headlights of Lucas’s Mercedes SUV swung across my snow laden lawn, I felt a momentary revulsion with myself. He was foreign to me. The brand spankity new, GLK 350 in pearl white, was completely at odds with who I was. The class rage I’d been nurturing since I was a child reared up and I felt like I was betraying myself. It was a ridiculous thought, considering that I’d betrayed the one person in my life who actually loved me for who I was.
I watched Lucas’s silhouette emerge from the SUV, the designer coat covering the tailored clothes, making him the most ill-fitted lover for me. But I still wanted him. Some part of me needed him, despite who he was and what he represented to me, and I couldn’t figure out why.
Some part of me sensed, in the stiffness of his shoulders, in the slightly defensive way he carried himself that he didn’t come from what he presented to the world. That somewhere inside him, fairly close to the surface, was a person who had known what struggling was about. What going without was about. That it wasn’t foreign to him and perhaps never really all that far away from him in his mind.
As he made his way to the front door, I hesitated for a moment before opening it, aware that in the action of opening the door to Lucas, I was in fact closing another door inside myself.
But the space in my chest was mostly closed for the moment, and feeling his touch, his kiss, kept it tightly closed, if only for a little while.
I opened the door just as he got to it and stepped aside, letting him in.
He kept his face tilted downward as he looked up at me, an unsure little smile on his face. The frigid cold clung to him as he walked in. “It’s downright balmy out there.”
I offered a small grin. His attempt as being light was falling flat. We both knew what he was here for, and it wasn’t pleasant chit-chat about the weather.
I didn’t bother offering him something to drink, but set about helping him with his coat, which I dropped onto the kitchen table.
“It’s warm in here,” I said, and went for his mouth. He kissed me back, releasing a sigh. As soon as his lips touched mine, my mind went foggy, and I was instantly dizzy with the wanting of him. Natural feel-good chemicals flooded my brain and made me feel drunk, and I reveled in the feeling. Everything felt good, from head to toe. I’d forgotten about the bad things in the world. About cults and baby thieves, and missing pregnant women and lovers who left you because your job had tainted you forever, and you still couldn’t stop doing it.
His hands found my waist, and then moved over my ass as I fumbled with the buttons on his shirt. A shirt I had no business touching. Yet I couldn’t seem to help myself. I pushed it off his shoulders and caught it in my hand before it dropped to the floor, where his shoes had left melted snow puddles. I placed the shirt carefully over a chair without breaking the kiss. He kicked off his shoes and his hands moved over my back, making me shiver.
Rather than letting the bottoms of his pants get wet, I took his hand and led him to the staircase leading to my bedroom. I turned as we got to the stairs and found his mouth again, taking his bottom lip gently between my teeth then moving my tongue over his. I was moving up the stairs backwards, one at a time, but the heat between my legs and the rush moving over my body wouldn’t wait.
I stopped, fumbled with the button and fly of his pants. He smiled against my mouth as he pushed them down and stepped out of them. A soft chuckle escaped his lips as he kicked them off.
“They’ll get wrinkled. I hope you don’t have anywhere you need to be,” I whispered.
“Actually, I do. But screw it.”
I turned around, going on my knees on the stairs, leaning on my elbows on a step in front of me. “Please.” I was breathless, and felt my entire body flushing.
“As you wish,” he said.
I cringed inwardly. His reserved, polite way of speaking contrasted with what we were about to do, and highlighted how messed up I really was at that moment. But he was behind me now, and it didn’t matter.
I forgot everything. All that existed was all consuming pleasure. Of being filled by him.
I closed my eyes, leaned my forehead against my arms, letting benevolent rapture cradle me and rush me away.
* * *
Most people feel the afterglow as a relaxing, sedating, wonderful thing. I feel it as coming down from a high. Without the euphoria numbing me, the empty feeling, the feeling of loss, seeps back in. I feel hung over. When I was with Callahan that feeling faded for a while to an occasional, barely noticeable dull ache, which most times wasn’t even there. I felt safe with Cal. Emotionally safe, because I knew he’d never hurt me. But he was gone now, and that empty feeling was back, full force.
The beginnings of a splitting headache started taking hold, but I tried to stave it off with conversation. “So tell me, are you from around here. I really don’t know much about you, Luke.”
He blinked, clearly not used to being called “Luke.” “Not far from here. Harland, actually.”
I felt my brows lift. He didn’t look up at me, and his body seemed to stiffen.
Harland isn’t known for having a lot of money, though there were some gorgeous old houses in the area surrounding the town park. The kids from my area used to call it Park Avenue. “Which part? The Park Avenue?” I smiled.
He was silent for a moment. “No. Riverfront.”
It was my turn to blink. Riverfront was the working class area. If you continued down that road to just before it turned off onto Blackwater, you would be in the poor area.
My surprise must’ve shown on my face, because he glanced down again, leaned against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest. “I come from the worst part, Leah.”
“Hey, it’s okay. I don’t come from much either, Lucas.”
I detected shame in his downcast eyes. He’d made a mint with his firm, and with the books and television appearances he’d made. Still, he would never shake where he’d come from.
I wear where I come from like a badge of honor. Something I survived and am damned proud of. Apparently this wasn’t true for him.
I could only imagine what his current house looked like. But then I didn’t want to know. If it looked anything like what I thought it mig
ht, it would do a dandy job of separating me from him in every way. Shiny things are lovely, and Lucas had earned them, every single one of them. But they were alien to me. It would remind me of how far apart we really were. Worlds apart. I couldn’t relate to it. He’d pretty much instantly become alien to me. And although that might be for the best, it wasn’t what I wanted. It would be a shame.
“I just don’t have a lot of fond memories of that time.” He looked down at the stairs.
“I hear you. But then, it’s made you who you are.”
He nodded, gave me a small smile. “That it has.”
“You save lives, Lucas. You do a lot of people a world of good, you know that.”
“I do. And I’m so grateful and honored to be able to do that. I just don’t like visiting memory lane.”
“Okay. Got it.” No discussing his childhood with him or where he’s from. Christ. The guy would be next to impossible to get to really know.
Perhaps that was the point.
Hello unavailable, noncommittal male.
I’d met my match.
Chapter Fourteen
Jack had dug up two of the women from Taryn’s address book. One of the women had agreed to come to our office. Hailey Jacobs. She had a new life now, and didn’t want her past to come bleeding into it. I was certain that it had already bled into it, and had left crimson stains all over her new life. You can’t just shove pain away and expect it not to come back and bite you on the ass. It came back in all kinds of insidious ways. I was living proof of that.
She stood in our office now, brushing a blonde lock of hair behind her ear. She was a gorgeous woman. Leggy and regal, with perfect posture as she regarded Jack and I with a look that suggested that we were more than pains in her well-shaped ass. This woman put time in at the gym.
“Thank you for coming, Mrs. Jacobs,” Jack said to her, by way of trying to break the ice.
She shifted her weight to one leg, making her hip strain against her fitted grey skirt. “What do you want, exactly?” She wasn’t screwing around. She wanted us out of her sight and out of her life as soon as possible.
“We don’t want to intrude on your life, Hailey. We just need some information about Adrian Mandell. You were in that home for pregnant girls eleven years ago. Can you tell us what you experienced there?”
She pinned me with an icy glare. “What do you think I experienced there?”
“I’m sure it wasn’t a laugh riot,” I said. “Taryn says it was a nightmare.”
She watched me for a moment, her gaze warming slightly. “How is Taryn?”
“She’s doing fine,” I said. “She’s a school teacher. She has a new life, just like you do.”
“Have a seat,” Jack said, gesturing to a chair beside his desk.
She looked at the chair, hesitated, then the fight seemed to seep out of her and she sat. “Taryn made my stay there bearable. She was a really nice girl.”
“She’s a very nice woman,” I said. “How did she make it more bearable?”
Hailey fiddled with a fingernail. “She was warm. She reached out to me. Most of the girls there were too frightened. Commiseration wasn’t exactly encouraged.”
“That’s what Taryn said,” Jack said.
“Look,” Hailey said. “I was seventeen years old. Pregnant by a boy who said he loved me, but didn’t. Like her, my family was mortified. We were in the same boat. Adrian came along and promised to make it all better.”
“Did she?” I asked her.
“For herself. Yes,” she said.
“Taryn said that she changed her mind about keeping her baby. Did that happen to you?” Jack asked her.
Hailey shook her head. “No, I hadn’t changed my mind. But I had a bad feeling and I wanted to get out of there.”
“What happened, Hailey?” I asked her.
She took a deep breath, her eyes becoming distant as she replayed the memory. “I overheard Adrian talking on the phone. I don’t know who she was talking too, but she was throwing around dollar amounts. She was talking about me and the baby I was carrying. I was blonde with blue eyes, and so was the father. She had asked me about his hair and eye color when she was taking down my information before I entered the house. I didn’t know what that had to do with anything when she was asking me, but it hit me then, listening to her on the phone. Apparently fair haired babies with blue eyes, especially boys, net a lot more money in the black market than babies with darker coloring.” She shook her head. “So do redheads, incidentally.”
Jack and I looked at each other. She’d actually said it. Black market.
She nodded at us. “Yeah. My baby would bring in more than the other girls’ babies. So they had to make sure I didn’t go anywhere.”
“Jesus,” Jack said.
“I felt like I had to get out of there. I wasn’t keeping my baby but I didn’t want him to be sold to somebody. He wasn’t a puppy for Christ’s sake.”
“Did you try to leave?” I asked her.
“Yes. I did.” She took a deep breath. Her eyes grew wet.
I leaned forward. “Hailey. I know this is really hard. But we need to know. We are looking to put Adrian Mandell out of business permanently, and have her answer for what’s she done, what she’s been doing, for all these years. Your story could help us do that.”
She looked at her hands in her lap. “I tried to leave. I was really close to giving birth. I waited until two a.m. The doors were locked from the inside. A fact I hadn’t realized until then. There were bars on the ground floor windows. To protect us, they said. I panicked and climbed out a second story window. Somehow I made my way down to the ground without breaking anything or hurting myself too badly. I just kind of twisted my ankle a little. I don’t even remember how I got down.” She stopped, for a moment then took a shaky breath. “I made it as far as the road, planning on flagging down a car. A couple whizzed past me, not even slowing down. I was so scared.” She shook her head, her voice cracking.
Jack and I nodded, listening.
“I made it maybe a mile down the road before one of Adrian’s men caught up with me. He stopped the car in the middle of the road. My heart was beating so fast I thought it was going to give out. I heard it pounding in my ears, and for just a moment, I heard the baby’s tiny heartbeat, so much faster than mine. For just that instant, I heard it.” Her voice grew thick with tears. “He had no one to rely on, no one to look out for him. Only me.” She wiped her tears away with the fingers from both hands and sighed heavily. “Adrian’s goon grabbed me and dragged me to the car, and pushed me in.”
I felt my blood boiling. Anger made me grit my teeth. I glanced at Jack. His set jaw told me that he was gritting his teeth too.
“They put me in a locked room. They drugged me. When I woke up, my baby was gone.”
Nobody spoke for a long moment. Finally, Jack said, “Jesus Christ.”
“My baby was gone,” she said again, her face stricken, as if it had happened mere moments ago. “That day, Adrian cheerfully packed me up and sent me back home. That’s the last time I saw her. I never heard about my son after that. I don’t think he was ever told who I was or how to contact me if he wanted to. He probably doesn’t even know he was adopted.”
She was probably right. In the black market, if the children are ever told that they were adopted at all, most times they are told that their biological parents are dead. Just like Adrian had told us we’d have to do when she was horny for our money and had considered selling an infant to us.
“You never tried to contact Adrian?”
“No.” Her voice was flat.
“Did you ever tell anybody about being drugged? Or about money being exchanged for babies?”
“No, I didn’t.” She looked at Jack, then me. “Who would’ve believed me?”
She made a good point. She was a pregnant teenager who had given her baby up. Who would’ve believed her?
And more to the point, who would’ve wanted to know?
&nb
sp; * * *
Elena Katlan, another woman whose name had appeared in Taryn’s address book, had not changed her name. Her phone number was not the same, but we did a search of her name on the internet and there she was on Facebook© under her maiden name. She also had a blog which she used to allow women who had similar experiences with giving up their babies could tell their stories. Her blog allowed mothers and the children they had given up to find one another.
She had an area on the site which allowed people to share their information, the circumstances under which they’d given up their babies. Also any links, such as their websites, blog sites and email they wanted to share so that their long lost loved ones would be able to find them. This was all assuming, of course, that the children they’d given up were even aware that they had a mother somewhere other than the one they had known as their mother all their lives.
Elena did not list a phone number on her blog, but she did list an email. Jack dashed one off to her, asking her to share her story about being at Adrian’s home for unwed mothers back then. He explained that we had our sights on shutting Adrian and her cohorts completely down. He gave her both our cell numbers.
We had a response from her within a half hour. She called his cell phone.
“Where are you located?” Jack asked her, after listening to her for a time. He winked at me, and slowly nodded his response to her, as if she could see him nodding. “Okay. Sounds good, Elena. Thanks for calling us.” He ended the call and held his cell in his hand tightly, shaking it back and forth a little with a grin.
“Well don’t keep me in suspense,” I said, excitement blooming in my chest. “What did she say?”
“She said she’d been waiting for somebody to contact her with a plan like ours. Her efforts to expose Adrian have gone on deaf ears apparently. Adrian’s a well-known and respected member of her community. So they say.”
“Why, with so many women who have similar stories to share, wouldn’t anyone listen?” I asked him.