Three Weeks to Say Goodbye

by C. J. Box

  I THOUGHT I’D MISUNDERSTOOD the address or name of the meeting place as we entered because I couldn’t locate Julie Perala at any of the tables or booths. I was lifting the cell to call her when I saw her wave from a private room in the back used for meetings and parties. I pocketed the phone.

  Julie Perala was broad-faced and broad-hipped, with soft eyes and a comforting professional smile. There was something both compassionate and pragmatic about her, and we had liked her instantly when we met with her so many months before for our orientation. She seemed especially sensitive to our situation without being cloying, and was by far more knowledgeable about “placements” than anyone else we had met at other agencies. Nothing made her happier to be alive, she told us, than a placement where all three parties were perfectly served—the birth mother, the adoptive parents, and the child. She was to be trusted, and we trusted her. I also noticed, at times when she let her guard down, a ribald sense of humor. I had the feeling she’d be a hoot with a few drinks in her.

  “Coffee?” she asked. “I’ve already had breakfast.”

  “No thanks,” I said, pausing.

  Melissa held Angelina tight to her and glared at Julie Perala with eyes I hoped would never be aimed at me.

  “I know the manager,” she said, answering a question I was about to ask, “and knew I could get this room in the back. Please close the door.”

  I did, and sat down as she was pouring coffee from a thermos carafe.

  “I’m taking a real chance meeting with you,” she said, not meeting my eyes, concentrating on pouring. “The agency would kill me if they knew. We’ve all been advised to communicate only through the lawyers now.”

  “But,” I said, prompting her.

  “But I like you and Melissa very much. You’re good, normal people. I know you love Angelina. I felt I owed you a frank discussion.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  Melissa continued to glare.

  Julie said, “If this comes back to bite me, well, I’ll be very disappointed. But I hoped we could talk without lawyers around, at least this once.”

  “Go ahead,” I said.

  It took her a moment to form her words. “I can’t tell you how bad I feel about this situation,” she said. “This should never happen to a nice couple like you.”

  “I agree.”

  “We shouldn’t have kept it a secret from you that Judge John Moreland contacted us three months ago,” she said. “Our hope was we could settle it internally, and we offered to do exactly that. Our hope was you would never be troubled about it at all, that you wouldn’t even know.”

  “Who is Judge Moreland?” I asked. “The biological father?”

  “No, no. The biological father is his son, Garrett. Garrett is a senior at Cherry Creek High School. He’s eighteen years old.”

  “Unbelievable,” I said.

  She shrugged and showed her palms to me. “I agree. But if we’d been able to resolve it internally, we wouldn’t be here now. There wouldn’t be a problem at all.”

  I said, “Ninety-nine percent. Remember when you used that figure when I asked about the birth father signing away his parental rights?”

  Her face clouded. “I remember. And it’s true. It really is. I’ve been involved in nearly a thousand placements in my life, and this is the first time this has ever happened. We just didn’t think it could.”

  “Didn’t you say you tried to find the birth father?” Melissa asked bitterly. “Didn’t you say he’d agreed to sign the papers?”

  She nodded.

  “What happened?”

  “We tracked him down in the Netherlands, where he was on vacation with his mother. He was staying with his mother’s relatives, I guess. I didn’t talk with him, but a coworker did. She explained the situation to him, and she said he was surprised. He agreed to sign away custody and he gave us a fax number where he could be reached. We sent the papers over.”

  “But he never signed them,” I said.

  “We dropped the ball,” she said. “The woman who’d made contact left the agency. If any of us had had any inkling at all that he would refuse to sign, we would have kept you abreast of the situation. But as far as we knew, it was his wish not to be a parent. We can’t coerce him, you know. We can’t pressure. It has to be his decision.”

  My anger was building to the point that I had to look away from her.

  “Legally, we covered our bases,” she said sympathetically, almost apologetically to us. “We placed public notices for him and did everything we’re required to do. Not having the signed papers isn’t that unusual, because the family court judge always—and I mean always—awards full custody to the adoptive parents in a case like this. After all, we can’t let a nonresponsive birth father hold up a placement, can we?”

  “Did you contact Garrett’s father?” I asked. “Is that how he got involved?”

  “We normally don’t contact the parents of the birth father. That’s considered coercive.”

  “But you knew about him? You knew about John Moreland?”

  “No.”

  “Interesting that his mother didn’t know, since she was with him overseas when your agency contacted him. How could she not know?”

  Julie shrugged. “It doesn’t make sense to me, but a lot about this situation makes no sense. Maybe she knew but didn’t want to tell her husband. Why—I don’t know.”

  I said, “So this Judge Moreland entered the picture after Garrett told him?”

  “As far as I know, yes.”

  “And that’s when Moreland’s lawyers contacted the agency?”

  She looked down. “Yes. The letter came from them with less than ten days left in the public notice period. If they’d waited just two more weeks, custody would have been granted to you by the family court. It was bad timing for you.”

  “It sure was,” I said sarcastically.

  “If you and Melissa choose not to fight the Moreland claim, our agency will do everything in our power to make the situation right for you.”

  “Meaning what?” Melissa asked.

  She took a quick breath and raised her eyes to meet Melissa’s. “I’ve been a party to the meetings we’ve had with our executives and our lawyers. I know we would immediately refund all fees and arrange, free of charge, for a new placement. You would be moved to the top of the priority list for a new baby. And we’d offer a very large settlement to you and Melissa and our apologies. That’s if we can keep this whole thing out of court and out of the news. I think you’d agree with me that the last thing anyone would want to do is discourage children’s chances of future placements with loving families who might be scared out of adoption by this situation.”

  “This can’t be happening,” Melissa said, as much to herself as to Julie Perala.

  “Why didn’t your lawyers contact our lawyer about these meetings?” I said. “Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work?”

  “I thought they had,” she said.

  “We’ve heard nothing.”

  She shrugged. “I’m not a lawyer.”

  “Neither is ours, apparently,” I said, spitting it out.

  “You don’t understand,” Melissa said. “We can’t lose our baby.”

  Julie started to speak, then bit her lip and looked away.

  “We can’t lose our baby,” Melissa said again, but this time her voice was close to a shout.

  “Judge Moreland is a powerful man,” Julie said softly. “I get the impression he’s used to getting what he wants.”

  “Tell me about him,” I asked. “Tell me what kind of man I’m up against.”

  “He’s a wealthy man,” she said. “His wife has the fortune, from what I understand. Judges aren’t paid that much, I guess. He owns lots of real estate. I’m telling you this because you mentioned something about buying off Garrett. I hate to say it, but I don’t think you could. And the judge comes across as such a nice man. He’s handsome, confident. He’s the kind of man you instantly like, and you
hope he likes you because you don’t want to displease him, you know?”

  I said, “Julie, when I think of you all having these meetings and talking about us it makes me ill.”

  She nodded, then looked away again. “We discussed what his options were. He was very concerned about doing things the right way so as not to hurt you and Melissa.”

  “How kind,” Melissa said.

  “Tell me, Julie,” I said, “how do you live with yourself?”

  She put her face in her hands and cried. I couldn’t help it—I felt terrible for making her cry again. But I didn’t take my words back.

  Finally, she grabbed a napkin and wiped the tears from her eyes, smearing eyeliner down her cheek, making it look like a faded scar.

  Melissa stood up with Angelina. “I’ve got to change her diaper,” she said, and left the room. “We’ll be back.”

  For a moment we just sat there not looking at each other.

  “There’s one thing you can help us with,” I said.

  “What?”

  “If you were Melissa and me, would you fight this in court? Knowing what you know, do we have a prayer?”

  She shook her head sadly, said, “The best you could hope for, I think, is some kind of joint custody that a judge would decree. But I don’t think either of you would be happy with that. And if I were you, I’d pray to God your baby is raised by John and Kellie—that Garrett is kept as far away from the baby as possible.”

  I felt my skin crawl. “Why do you say that?”

  She shook her head. “There’s something wrong with that boy. He scares me. And it isn’t anything I can quite put my finger on—there’s just something wrong about him.”

  “Oh God,” I said.

  She pursed her lips and looked down at her hands. “It’s like the temperature in the room goes down ten degrees when he enters. There’s no warmth. He seems bloodless and cunning. I wouldn’t trust him with a child—or anyone.”

  I felt myself tingling. I leaned forward. “I understand what you’re saying, but do you have anything I can use? Have you heard anything about Garrett we can investigate to prove what a bad father he’d be?”

  She was still, her hands mindlessly caressing her coffee mug on both sides. Thinking.

  She said, “I think there’s been some trouble at school,” she said. “Once, when we were meeting with John, he got a call from someone at Garrett’s high school, and he had to cut the meeting short. I don’t know who called or what it was about, but the judge was quite upset.”

  “This happened within the last month?” I asked, trying not to show my anger that the Morelands and the agency had been meeting behind our backs in secret.

  “Yes.”

  “Anything else?”

  “One thing, but it’s no more solid than the first. When we were looking over your placement application with them …”

  I took in an angry breath, but she continued.

  “… the judge pointed out you owned a dog.”

  “Harry.”

  “The judge said they couldn’t have pets because Garrett couldn’t get along with them. I thought that was an odd choice of words. Not that he was allergic to them, or wouldn’t take care of them or something, but that he couldn’t get alongwith them. When he said it, I could see he wished he hadn’t.”

  “Is that all?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “And it all sounds so baseless when I say it.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “At least it gives me something to go on. But it also makes me feel a little sick.”

  “Yes,” she said, then she lifted her chin and looked at me. “I think the only answer is somehow to convince Garrett to sign the papers giving up his parental rights,” she said.

  She took a deep breath to compose herself, mumbling that she hated to cry in front of others.

  “Maybe he needs some strong persuading,” she said, letting an angry edge into her voice.

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning,” she said, leaning across the table, her eyes flashing, “if Angelina were my daughter, I’d hire a couple of mean-ass bikers or wranglers and have them scare the living shit out of Garrett so he’s only more than happy to sign anything put in front of him. He needs the kind of persuading that makes him think his father’s determination is the least of his concerns.”

  I sat back. That had come from left field, but obviously it was something she’d been thinking about.

  “I’m speaking hypothetically, of course,” she said. “Not as a representative of the agency or a placement professional.”

  “Of course,” I said. “Could he be scared?”

  She thought for a moment before whispering, “I think so.”

  ON THE WAY HOME, I said to Melissa, “You’re taking this much more calmly than I thought possible.”

  “I’m not calm at all,” she said. “I’m dead inside. But this does explain why we have a phone message from Judge Moreland. He says he’s coming over tomorrow afternoon with his son.”

  “Jesus,” I said.

  “What should we do?”

  “I’m going to go see Martin Dearborn,” I said. “I’m going to his house. Don’t call the judge back. In fact, keep the phone off the hook. I’ll call you on your cell, so keep it with you. The judge may put off coming to our house if he isn’t sure we got the message, and we don’t respond.”

  She laughed—a chilling, uncharacteristic laugh I’d never heard before and never wanted to hear again. It was a false laugh filled with horror and defeat. She said, “You know how they say your life passes before your eyes before you die?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s happening now.”

  MARTIN DEARBORN, OUR ATTORNEY for the adoption, was in his driveway wearing a gold-and-black Colorado Buffaloes sweater and loading seat cushions and blankets into the back of his Mercedes M-Class SUV when I drove up in my ten-year-old Jeep Cherokee. I remembered the CU alumni awards on the wall of his office and noted the CU license-plate frame. Dearborn was plump and sandy-haired and wore thick glasses that made his light brown eyes look bigger than they were. He had a large head and a deep bass voice and ham-sized hands. He squinted when I jammed my Jeep into park because he obviously didn’t recognize the vehicle or the driver—at first.

  When I jumped out, I saw something pass over his face that told me he knew why I was there but didn’t want to admit it.

  His wife, a too-thin woman with a pinched face, also decked out in Buffs colors, came out of the garage, saw me approaching, and said, “Who is that?”

  Martin gestured for her to go back inside. He tried hard to blank his eyes and face as I came up the driveway, but he wasn’t successful. His wife theatrically looked at her wristwatch, and he said, “I know. We’ll make it in time for kickoff.”

  She said, “It isn’t kickoff I’m worried about. It’s the preparty.”

  He said, “We’ll make it, don’t worry.”

  She stomped back into the garage.

  “Jack,” he said, “this can wait until office hours on Monday. My wife and I are …”

  “You son of a bitch, how long were you going to wait to tell us?”

  “Monday. During regular office hours. That’s when we work, Jack.”

  “Monday’s too late, and you know it.”

  “Look,” he said, lowering his voice into his official lawyer tone, the one he used to impress Melissa and me, “I’ve been in the Springs on a big civil case. I wasn’t able to return the calls to them during the day because we were in court.”

  I stepped close enough to him that he flinched. “You didn’t have breaks? You don’t have paralegals who could make the call on your behalf?”

  He looked away.

  “Damn, you look guilty,” I said. “You’ve got to get us out of this, and I mean now. This guy and his son are coming to our house tomorrow.”

  His voice wasn’t as low when he spoke. “I’d advise you to be civil. He’s got the law on his side, I’m afraid.” />
  I reached out and grabbed a handful of CU sweatshirt, then quickly let it go. I couldn’t help myself. From the garage I heard Dearborn’s wife say, “Honey, do I need to call the police?”

  “No,” he said. “It’s okay.”

  I said, “So you know all about it, then. I’d advise you to pretend you’re an attorney—our attorney. We need to go to court right now and do something. Isn’t there a restraining order or something? Can’t we prevent this from happening?”

  “I’d have to research it,” he said, uncomfortable.

  “We don’t have the time.”

  He turned to me, his face flushed. “Jack, he’s a sitting federal judge. He’s been appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Don’t you think he knows the law? Hell, he makes it.”

  “So that’s it, then,” I said.

  “Our firm has cases scheduled before him next month, Jack. Big cases. Million-dollar cases with national implications. I’ve got a real conflict here.”

  I shook my head. I wanted to smash him. His wife was still in the garage, and I noticed she had a telephone, ready to call the police. She pointed to it with her other hand, and mouthed “9-1-1.”

  “Is he aware I’m your counsel?” Dearborn asked.

  “No,” I said, “because you haven’t done a damned thing. How would he know?”

  “You need to calm down,” he said. “And I’m afraid you need to get a new attorney. I’m not your man for this case. He’s best friends with the mayor and the governor, for Christ’s sake. And his name has come up for the Tenth Circuit and higher.”

  “So what are you saying?”

  “That he not only knows the law, he knows how to work the law. This is inside baseball, Jack. You never told me you were going up against Judge Moreland.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “I think you should calm down and look at this from his point of view.”

  “I think you’re fired,” I said, even though he’d resigned.

  “Good.”

  “Nine-one-one,” his wife said, holding up the phone like a totem.

  I DROVE TO LINDA Van Gear’s town house in an angry fog. I found her wearing sweats with her hair down, shuttling between a fish tank in the living room to the toilet in the bathroom carrying dead fish one at a time. Her town house was a shambles.