Who Loves You Best

by Tess Stimson

  I meet Rania the next day. Yes, she says, folding three hundred-dollar bills into her pocket. A blond, blue-eyed boy who cries all the time for his mother. Rowan.

  But we have to be sure. So Josef takes me to Jounieh, a high-rise sprawl across the slopes of a large bay north of Beirut. During the civil war, this was the Christian East. You took your life in your hands crossing the Green Line, the no-man’s-land in downtown Beirut that divided it from the Muslim West. Josef risked his life for me a dozen times. I can count the number of men I trust on the fingers of one hand. Josef is among them.

  A new American-style six-lane highway cuts through the mountains from Beirut to Jounieh. The Lebanese drive as if it’s still a dirt free-for-all. Neon signs blink fitfully on all sides. Washing is draped between apartment buildings still pockmarked with bullet holes from the war. Somewhere, hidden in this concrete jungle, is Clare’s son.

  Josef takes me deep into an unfamiliar neighborhood. We stop at a café on the corner of two narrow, gritty city streets with old movie posters peeling from the walls. We drink thick, burnt coffee, and we wait. An hour passes, then two. We smoke filterless cigarettes. Every now and then, a small man with gold teeth comes over to our table and mutters in Arabic to Josef. I’m patient. This is the way it is in the Middle East. We share more coffee, sweet pastries, more cigarettes.

  Suddenly, there’s a commotion outside. A silver car with a badly painted green passenger door pulls up. Two youths get out, and the gold-toothed café owner goes out to talk to them. After a few minutes, he beckons. As soon as we get outside, Josef and I are hustled towards the vehicle. I would never get into a strange car in Lebanon without Josef. Even so, I’m alert to the tension in his shoulders. I have a bad feeling about this.

  After fifteen minutes’ uphill drive, we arrive in front of an elegant, faded apartment building high over the bay. We sit in the hot car, waiting. A young woman comes out, glancing nervously at the car and twisting her hands. The two youths go over to her. There is gesticulating, shouting; one of the boys shoves the woman in the shoulder. I put my hand on the door handle, and Josef holds me back with a warning arm across my chest.

  Without explanation, the youths climb back in and we’re driven back to the café. Josef huddles in a corner with the gold-toothed owner, who smiles at me and shrugs: Shit happens.

  “The man with the child left,” Josef explains in low tones. “Someone warned him an American was looking for him. He was there until twenty minutes before we arrived.”

  Josef and I wait down the street in our own car until the youths have gone, and the café owner comes out alone. We follow him as he walks through the town, keeping well back, but he doesn’t look around. He turns a corner and stops to hawk on the ground and scratch his ass. I grab Josef’s jacket from the backseat and leap out of the car, throwing it over the man’s head and bodily tossing him into the backseat of the vehicle. He weighs perhaps a hundred pounds soaking wet. Josef guns the engine and races up into the hills. I pin the man, screaming in terror, flat against the seat. No one has even noticed us.

  Josef doesn’t stop till he reaches a deserted parking lot high over the city. I press my knee into the café owner’s back, shoving his face into the leather seat.

  “Now imagine you’re seven months old,” I snarl.

  “Please, habibi!” the man cries, his voice muffled. “He said he’d kill me!”

  “He’s not here. I am.” I tighten my grip. “Talk.”

  Ever since Ella broke the news, I’ve refused to permit myself to think about Clare in any other context than as Rowan’s mother. I haven’t dared to wonder what might happen, now that she’s free. She made no promises.

  But now that I’m with her, separated by a few inches of charged, electrified air, it’s impossible to maintain my resolve. We sit next to each other on the plane to Beirut, my second such journey in a week; almost, but not quite, touching. Occasionally, our elbows brush on the armrest, and we both jump as if burned. Neither of us can look the other in the eye.

  Jenna leans across the aisle and taps my shoulder, breaking the spell. “Are you sure it was Rowan?”

  I nod curtly. Wissam Ghanour, the gold-toothed café owner, was surprisingly helpful once we persuaded him to our point of view. He took us to the “safe house” Marc had prearranged with him, a two-story building off the main road back to Beirut. The three of us waited in the car until it got dark and we were able to see movement through the uncurtained windows. One blond baby looks much like another, especially one you’ve never seen in person; but I’d studied the photograph of Marc until it was burned on my retina. I recognized him the moment he walked into view. We had the right place.

  Yesterday, Josef arranged a brief vacation for Ghanour in the Bekaa Valley with some of his relatives, while I flew back to Britain for Clare. I hated to involve her, but I had no choice. Besides, she’s his mother. How much more involved could she be?

  “How do you know Marc won’t have vanished again since yesterday?” Jenna presses. “Why didn’t you just take Rowan when you had the chance?”

  “Marc has his passport, in case you’d forgotten,” I say tersely. “Even if I had it, I’d never have gotten him back into Britain without Clare. An American man, traveling alone with a British child who has a different name? Alarm bells would’ve gone off in all directions.”

  “So why didn’t you go to the Lebanese police? They do have police here, right?”

  “Don’t be damn ridiculous—”

  “Jenna, if Rowan gets caught up in the Lebanese legal system, I might never get him back,” Clare interrupts. She leans across me, her white shirt pulling tight across her breasts. “Nicholas warned us: Fathers nearly always get custody of children in Beirut, especially if they’re boys. It could take years for an appeal to be heard, and even then I probably wouldn’t win. It’s too risky.”

  “But you—”

  “Please, Jenna,” Clare says, and sighs. “Listen to Cooper.”

  Jenna shrugs and picks up her magazine.

  Clare sinks back into her seat, closing her eyes. I glare at Jenna. The girl’s a real pill; I wouldn’t have brought her, but we need to get close to Rowan, and a woman is far less likely to attract attention. Clare’s too blond and recognizable. She stands out like a sore thumb. With her dark hair, Jenna could pass for European Lebanese. She may be a pain in the ass, but the girl’s our best shot.

  We land at Beirut Airport, a vast new marble concourse very different from the crowded, sweltering concrete shoe box of the civil war days. Jenna and Clare collect their visas, and we hurry outside. The humidity is smothering. Even this late at night, we’re all sweating by the time Josef pulls up to the curb to collect us.

  He drops us at an anonymous small hotel in Hamra, the busy downtown shopping and commercial district of Beirut. It’s full of tourists: an easy place to blend in. Plus, the manager owes me. Anyone starts asking about us, I’ll be the first to know.

  “I think I’ll call Davina,” Clare says anxiously. “I know it’s late, but she’s never looked after Poppy before. She’s really not very good with babies—”

  Jenna snorts. “Mrs. Lampard’s the one who’ll be changing the shitty nappies. Stop worrying. Poppy will be fine.”

  “I know, but … honestly, I won’t be long. I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

  “Don’t get gung-ho on me,” I warn Jenna, as we find a discreet corner in the bar. “This isn’t going to be easy. Clare’s entitled to have access to her child. Whereas you—”

  “Name, rank, and serial number. I get it.”

  “You need to understand what you’re letting yourself in for.”

  “You said. Forget it, Cooper. I’m in.”

  She has balls, I’ll give her that.

  Clare returns downstairs. I notice other men in the bar watching her. Exhausted and sick with nerves, she still has an indefinable something that turns heads.

  Her eyes flicker around the room, and then find mine. Her sho
ulders relax slightly. Or do I just imagine that?

  “I’m going to bed.” Jenna yawns. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Clare takes the seat she’s just vacated. “I’ll be up in a minute, Jenna. Can you leave me the bed next to the phone?”

  “How was Poppy?” I ask, as she picks fretfully at the arm of her chair.

  “How was Davina, you mean,” Clare says tiredly. “Jenna must have powers of persuasion I don’t: Davina would never have agreed to mind Poppy if I’d asked. Anyway, they’re all fine. Davina spoke to Nicholas this evening. He’ll file a Residence Order as soon as we get home. That should make it much harder for Marc to leave the country if he tries to take Rowan again.”

  Josef has already asked if I want Marc to be permanently taken out of the picture (an offer I reluctantly declined). He finds our Western reliance on the rule of law a strange way to do business.

  “Clare, we will get Rowan back,” I reassure. “We know where he is. Someone’s been watching the house since we found them. Marc’s not going to get away again.”

  She drops her gaze to her lap. “But what about afterwards?” she whispers. “What’s to stop him doing this again? I can’t play Ping-Pong with my children. Maybe next time Marc will take both of them. Maybe I … maybe I should let him keep Rowan. At least I’d still have Poppy.”

  “Marc may be planning to come back for Poppy anyway,” I say gently. “It was only luck she wasn’t with Rowan. You can’t think like that, Clare. Your son needs you.”

  Her expression is anguished. “I know I’m not a good mother, Cooper, but I don’t deserve to lose my children, do I? First Poppy nearly died, and now Rowan’s been taken from me. What do I have to do to show I’m sorry?”

  “You have nothing to be sorry for,” I say forcefully. I take her hands in my own, forcing her to look up. “Clare, listen to me. You are a good mother. But good doesn’t mean perfect. Good doesn’t mean you won’t get tired and angry and make mistakes. No one gets it right all the time; or even most of it. You do your best, you fuck up, you figure out where you went wrong, and you fuck up again. You aren’t perfect, and neither are your kids. But you’re their mother, and you love them. In the end, that’s all that counts.”

  “Jenna’s so patient and organized—”

  “You think they give a damn how neat their closets are?”

  “It’s not just that—”

  “You’ve got to get this idea that you’ve failed out of your head. This isn’t a test. There aren’t any perfect scores. What are you looking for, someone to tell you you’ve made class valedictorian?”

  She blinks back tears. I fight not to pull her into my arms.

  “Give yourself a break, Clare,” I say softly. “So, you’re not Soccer Mom of the Year. You have a job. Sometimes your kids cry and you don’t know what’s wrong. Do you think any of that really matters?”

  “Oh, Cooper. This isn’t the kind of mother I ever intended to be—”

  I thumb her tears away.

  “None of us are the kind of parents we intended to be. If we even intended to be parents in the first place.” I think suddenly of Jackson, the closest I will ever get to a son. “Clare, you’re tearing yourself to pieces wondering if you’re good enough. Don’t you get it? The fact you even ask the question is your answer. Rowan and Poppy are lucky to have you.”

  She catches my hand, and holds it against her cheek. “What must you think of me? This is the second time you’ve rescued my children—”

  “Next time,” I promise, “it’ll be you.”

  “If we are to do this, habibi, we must do it soon,” Josef mutters. “People are starting to ask questions about Wissam Ghanour.”

  I glance back along the street. Josef and I have taken it in turns to keep watch on the house for the past two days, while Jenna and Clare stay out of sight at various cafés and diners nearby. At night, I’ve made them return to the hotel, though not without a great deal of protest from Jenna.

  So far, the only person to enter or leave is an old woman dressed in black, who arrives each day with a plastic bag of groceries, and stays for a few hours. I figure she must be the new baby-sitter. I know Marc’s still there; I’ve seen him moving about the house. But until he leaves Rowan alone with the sitter, we can’t do anything. Josef is right; the longer we stay, the more risky this gets.

  I leave him watching from a diner down the street, and drive back to the café where the girls are dragging out their fifth cups of coffee.

  Clare looks up hopefully as I enter. Even though it’s not my fault, I feel a bastard for letting her down yet again.

  “He can’t spend the rest of his life in there,” Jenna groans. “Sooner or later, he’s going to drop his guard.”

  “How has he managed to arrange all this?” Clare frets. “He doesn’t know anyone in Lebanon. How can he have rented a house and found a baby-sitter and done all this so fast?”

  “It’s not difficult. Money talks, and Marc had a lot of cash to throw around.” Jenna looks at her feet. “Sorry, kid.”

  “I keep telling her it’s not her fault.” Clare sighs. “Even if I’d known Marc had so much cash, I’d never have thought he’d do something like this. I’d have assumed he was trying to steal my money, not my children.”

  “Why don’t we just bribe them more than he has?” Jenna suggests, after a moment.

  The thought has already occurred to me. Josef followed the old woman to a run-down tenement in the Armenian quarter the first day. I just don’t know how likely she is to stay bought: by Marc or by me. If she double-crosses us, Marc could vanish again, and next time, it might not be so easy to find him.

  “We need to go,” I say, standing up. “There’s another—”

  My phone rings.

  “He’s just left,” Josef says.

  Clare’s hand finds mine. Adrenaline that has nothing to do with the task in hand pumps through my body.

  “Come on, Cooper,” Jenna snaps from the doorway.

  The spell is broken. I have to let go of Clare’s hand to drive, but every electron in my body zings with energy. I could move mountains. Forty-nine years on the planet, and I never knew. Christ, what in hell have I been doing with my life?

  With a supreme effort, I force myself to concentrate.

  “Are you sure about this, Jenna?” I ask for the final time as I park up a block away from the house. “You know what to do?”

  “Enough, already. Just keep your fucking phone switched on, all right?”

  I hand her the temporary Lebanese cell. “Hit nine on the speed-dial. I can be with you in two minutes.”

  “You’d better be.”

  We watch nervously as she walks towards the house. She’s a tourist, we’ve decided; she’s got lost, and wants to use the phone to call her friends. As soon as she sees Rowan, she’s to grab him and bolt for the door. We don’t have time for fancy cover stories, and anyway, none of us can think of one that’ll seem halfway plausible. By the time Marc finds out, we should be on our way to Syria. The plan is to fly out of Damascus, less than three hours’ drive from here, rather than from Beirut: If Marc does give chase, he won’t be expecting that.

  Clare reaches for my fingers again, and squeezes so hard I lose all feeling in my hand.

  “I don’t know why you’re doing this for me, but thank you,” she says quietly. “I’ll never be able to thank you enough.”

  “You will,” I say. “And you do know.”

  The next ten minutes are the best and worst of my life. I feel as elated and confused as a teenager. I want to jump up and down on the hood of the car and scream her name; I want to flip down the seat and have her, here and now; I want to go down on one knee and ask her to marry me. More than anything, I want to make her smile again; to wipe that haunted, desperate expression from her eyes. Everything hangs in the balance. It all depends on Jenna.

  The front door of the house opens again. Suddenly Jenna is running towards us, almost stumbling in her has
te. She’s holding something in her arms.

  “Oh, God,” Clare breathes, as I fling open the rear door.

  Jenna throws herself into the car. “I locked her in the loo, and pulled the sofa across the door,” she pants. “It should give us another ten minutes.”

  The bundle in her arms lets out a bewildered cry. Clare reaches between the seats for Rowan, tears streaming down her face as she pulls him into her arms. I can’t stop smiling.

  “Fucking hell, Cooper!” Jenna yells. “Move it, would you!”

  I throw the car into reverse, and pull a sharp one-eighty. Clare buries her face in her child’s hair, bracing herself against the dash with one hand. I glance in my rearview as we pull out onto the main road, dirt spinning beneath our wheels. No one is following us. The street behind is empty.

  I join the slip road onto the highway, my eyes flicking constantly to the mirror. Another hundred yards, and we’ll be free and clear.

  Abruptly, we grind to a halt. I wind down the window, and crane my head out. A few cars in front of us, two moped riders argue in the middle of the street, their scooters crumpled on the ground between them. A painted van covered with bells and harnesses noses out into the flow of traffic coming the other way. Within seconds, the entire road is gridlocked. Bystanders gather around, adding their ten cents to the heated debate. I scan the side streets nearest to me, searching for a way around the chaos.

  Clare moans softly and shrinks back in the front seat, clutching Rowan.

  Threading his way through the traffic, a carton of cigarettes swinging from a clear plastic bag in his hand, is her husband.

  Marc spots her seconds after she sees him. His astonished expression would be comical in any other circumstances.

  For a moment, he seems frozen; then, with a howl of anger, he drops the cigarettes and launches himself towards us, ricocheting off the gridlocked traffic as he thrusts his way between cars. Vehicles are jammed ahead of and behind me, bumper to bumper: I have nowhere to go.