08-The Color of Joy

by Julianne MacLean

  “Riley,” Lois said, gazing across at me intently. “We haven’t given her a name yet. I can’t believe we went so long without deciding.”

  I gently closed my hand around her wrist. “Maybe sometimes the right name just needs a little time to reveal itself.”

  She narrowed her eyes with curiosity. “What do you have in mind?”

  Sitting back and tapping a finger on the arm of the chair, I tentatively asked, “What do you think of the name…Leah?”

  “After your sister?” she replied, sounding surprised.

  “Do you like it?”

  “I love it. I can’t believe we didn’t think of it before.”

  I was pleased she didn’t hesitate. Not for a single second. “But what did you mean about the name ‘revealing itself’?”

  I sighed with exhaustion and began to wonder if certain events of the past twelve hours had been figments of my imagination, or a lucid dream of some kind.

  But no… Holly was there. She’d also heard what Trudy said.

  “When I was at the airport,” I explained, sitting forward in my chair, “and you and I were talking on the phone, you asked how I knew where to look for Jenn Nichols.” Lois inclined her head, waiting patiently for me to continue. “It’s kind of an interesting story, and I don’t know if you’re going to believe it.”

  “Try me,” she said as our daughter fell happily to sleep in her arms.

  “All right then.” I leaned back again and relaxed in a lazy sprawl. “It all started with Trudy’s description of the woman who came to our house. Remember she said she had a tattoo on her arm?” Lois nodded. “It took us a while to figure that one out, and we never would have known what it meant if Josh and Holly hadn’t arrived when they did…”

  Chapter Fifty-one

  After explaining the extent of Trudy’s so-called encounters with her dearly departed Auntie Leah, I ventured to the ER to get a few stitches in my lower lip, then spent the night in Lois’s room with our beautiful baby. Wrapped tightly in each other’s arms on her bed, we slept with little Leah in a bassinet beside us. After what we’d both been through, no one at the hospital dared to argue with that arrangement, and the pediatrician was more than willing to make a “house call” to examine Leah in our room.

  The following morning, Miller came by to talk to me. He asked if we could speak privately.

  I said, “Sure,” and followed him into the corridor.

  He led me toward the visitors’ lounge. “I thought you should know that Jenn Nichols is in custody, here in the hospital. She was admitted last night to recover from a seizure.”

  “So that’s what happened in the airport bathroom?” I confirmed as I walked with him down the hall. “Will she be okay?”

  It was the polite, socially responsible question to ask, but deep down, a part of me was not sorry she was suffering. To me—as a father who had just recovered his newborn daughter from a kidnapper—it felt like some sort of perfectly rendered poetic justice.

  “We’re not sure about that yet,” Miller replied. “She was unconscious for most of the night and just woke up an hour ago. We tried questioning her but she’s pretty groggy. She barely makes sense when she tries to talk. Her husband, sister and mother are with her now.”

  As I contemplated the idea of her family at her side, I tried to swallow an innate urge to become empathetic, because I didn’t want to feel sorry for her. This woman had abducted my child. What if I hadn’t known to look for them at the airport? Where would we be right now? Would my child even be alive?

  I endeavored to redirect my thoughts, however, because I was doing it again—obsessing over all the possible “what ifs.”

  “Did she tell you anything about why she did it?” I asked.

  Miller stopped when we reached the private lounge area. He gestured with a hand for me to enter. As soon as we were seated, he crossed one leg over the other. “That’s what’s going to make this case complicated,” he told me. “Unfortunately, Ms. Nichols has no memory of anything that happened yesterday and she’s still not able to explain much more than that. The doctors say she’s suffering from post-seizure fatigue but that she will eventually come around and become more coherent.”

  “So what are you telling me?” I asked. “That you can’t charge her because she can’t remember what she did?”

  “I’m not saying that at all,” Miller replied. “The evidence against her is overwhelming. We know beyond any doubt that she took your child from the hospital yesterday. We have security video recordings of her at Walmart with the baby in her arms, purchasing a car seat and diaper bag and other items, and we also have a report from a hospital patient who saw her yesterday morning after leaving the blood drawing clinic, and then saw her again later with the baby in her arms, walking out. So there’s no question she abducted your child, Riley. Rest assured, we will be pursuing this aggressively.”

  I inhaled deeply with relief and let it out. “But will she be convicted if she can’t remember anything and has a brain tumor? Forgive me, Miller, I’m not an expert on the law or on neurology, but wouldn’t a jury be sympathetic to that? And what about pleading insanity? Do you know anything about the symptoms or effects of the tumor? Could it cause someone to do something like that? Or did she consciously plan it? You said she didn’t tell her husband about the miscarriage. Isn’t it possible she might have wanted a replacement baby?”

  “Anything’s possible,” Miller replied, nodding his head, “and we’re gathering evidence, talking to a lot of people, including her neurologist. Thankfully her family is cooperating. They want us to know everything about the tumor.”

  “What does the neurologist say?” I asked.

  Miller uncrossed his legs and sat forward. “He explained that the tumor is pressing on both the frontal and temporal lobes. He said the pressure on the frontal lobe causes confusion and irrational behavior, loss of normal inhibitions, and complete memory loss. Confusion at this level—leading her to mistake another baby for her own—is extreme and not at all common in most brain tumor patients, but it is possible. It’s also possible that she knew it wasn’t her child, but didn’t think it was wrong to take her. The doctor said patients can lose all sense of what’s appropriate. For instance, they can urinate in public and see no reason why not to.”

  I considered this for a moment. “You said she was scheduled to have surgery tomorrow to remove the tumor?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Will they go ahead with that?”

  “Yes. The doctors are insisting.”

  I rubbed the back of my neck and thought about what that would mean. “Will she remember what she did after she has the surgery?”

  Miller looked down at his shoes. “Not likely.”

  Feeling weary and disheartened, I rose from my seat and walked to the window to look outside. “I feel bad for what’s happening to this woman,” I said. “Honestly, I do, but there has to be consequences. A person can’t just get away with stealing someone else’s baby out of a hospital. Someone has to be held accountable for that. The hospital at the very least. Why in the world would her doctors let her out of their sight if she was this far gone?”

  “I agree,” Miller replied. “Have you spoken to a lawyer yet?”

  “Not yet,” I replied, lowering my gaze. “I’ve been kind of preoccupied.”

  “Of course.” Miller stood up. “Listen, you should definitely talk to someone about what happened. In the meantime, we’ll continue to gather evidence and wait and see what happens with the surgery.”

  My eyes lifted. “What do you mean, wait and see?”

  He slowly approached and laid a hand on my shoulder. “It’s a high risk operation, Riley. The family has a lot of praying to do.” With that, he squeezed my shoulder and left the room.

  Chapter Fifty-two

  A few hours later, I left Lois and the baby alone with Carol and ventured to the cafeteria to grab a bowl of soup and a salad. Choosing a table by the window, I s
et down my tray, paused a moment to calm my mind and picked up my spoon.

  The time alone provided me with a much-needed opportunity to think more deeply about everything that had occurred over the past twenty-four hours. I thought about how close I had come to losing my child and facing a lifetime of insurmountable grief.

  In the wake of all that, I’d almost resorted to taking an alcoholic drink—something I hadn’t done in over a decade—but if there ever was a situation that would put me in danger of succumbing to that temptation, this had been it.

  The stress and fear of losing my child had eclipsed anything I’d ever experienced or could imagine, so the fact I’d possessed the strength to make it through that, meant I could make it through anything. That, at least, was a comforting thought.

  On the other side of the coin, the woman who had kidnapped my baby had a brain tumor and was facing life-threatening surgery in the morning, and part of me—most of me—felt no sympathy. I wanted to be sympathetic, but I was still so angry. Rationally I knew it was a horrible, tragic thing she was going through, and for anyone else I would feel badly for the family, but I couldn’t seem to shake my protective emotions as a father.

  When someone hurts your child, is it ever possible to forgive?

  My musings were interrupted by the tentative approach of a man and a woman. They stopped at my table and simply stood there. My gut twisted into a knot because I knew who these people were.

  The woman cleared her throat. “Excuse me,” she said. “Are you Riley James?”

  “Yes.” I sat back in my chair, wiped my mouth with a napkin, folded it and laid it on the tray.

  She gestured toward her companion. “I’m Sylvie and this is my brother-in-law, Jake. Jenn Nichols is my sister.” She looked at me directly, her eyes two piercing rays of hopeful expectation.

  This caused my heart to beat like a mallet because last night I’d imagined myself violently shaking their loved one out of her stupor until she explained herself to me. What did they even want from me? Did they hope to deliver a stirring sob story that would wear me down and make me feel sorry enough not to charge their sister with kidnapping? It wasn’t even up to me. What Jenn Nichols did was a criminal offense, which meant they’d have to plead their case to the judge and jury.

  The sister—Sylvie, was it?—cleared her throat again and spoke cautiously. “Could we sit down for a minute?”

  Shrugging a shoulder, I replied coolly, “Be my guest.”

  Almost immediately, I wished I’d said no or gotten up and walked away because this was a complicated situation and I didn’t want to screw up Miller’s investigation. But there had to be a reason I didn’t walk away. Maybe I was curious. Or maybe I just wanted to watch them squirm.

  “I can only imagine what you must have gone through yesterday,” Sylvie said with a look of genuine compassion in her eyes. When I gave no reply, she shifted uneasily in her chair. “This is difficult. I’m not even sure what to say.”

  “I’m sure you must have given it some thought,” I replied, sitting forward to rest my elbows on the table, “when you saw me sitting over here alone, enjoying my soup. Otherwise you wouldn’t have come over.”

  She glanced at her brother-in-law who looked like he could bench press a ten-foot timber log without breaking a sweat. Surprisingly, he remained silent.

  The sister shifted again. “I just wanted to tell you how sorry we are, and I want you to know that Jenn would never do anything like this if she didn’t have that tumor on her brain. Really…it hit her like a giant tractor-trailer. A few months ago she was as normal as could be, the kindest, most generous, sensible woman I know. She’s always been so helpful to me when my life’s been a train wreck. If it weren’t for her, I don’t know where I’d be right now.” Sylvie paused and looked down at her hands. “But that’s beside the point. What I wanted you to know is that she’s a good person who would never do something like this normally. And she’s really sorry.”

  I inclined my head and leaned a little closer. “I thought she couldn’t remember what happened. How can she be sorry?”

  The husband, Jake, leaned forward as well. “She doesn’t remember anything, but the cops have been questioning her relentlessly. She’s handcuffed to the bedrail, for Christ’s sake. Seriously, she’s getting put through the wringer and I’m about to lose it.”

  Sylvie laid her hand on Jake’s arm to try and calm him. “It’s been rough on all of us. Jenn, especially. She woke up from the seizure with no memory of having it and was told she’d kidnapped a newborn. Believe me, she was shocked to hear that and she’s trying very hard to remember. She wants to cooperate but she can’t, and she’s also dealing with the fact that she’s having brain surgery tomorrow, and her husband just came back from Afghanistan, and he just found out she had a miscarriage and lost their baby…”

  “Sylvie, stop,” Jake said. “You’re saying way too much.”

  “Why are you talking to me?” I asked with dismay.

  They exchanged uneasy looks. Then Sylvie leaned forward. “Because Jenn wants to see you and talk to you before she goes in for her surgery tomorrow. We’re hoping you’ll come by and visit her.”

  “Visit her?” Were they kidding me?

  But as I continued to stare across the table at the two of them, the fog of dismay in my mind began to lift. Miller had explained that the surgery would be high risk, so I could only assume that Jenn Nichols was seeking a way to atone.

  I wish I could say I was moved by this plea, but when I thought of the emotional pain and grief my wife had endured the day before—and how I felt as if my guts were being ripped out of my body—my animosity stood like a brick wall.

  “You want me to go to her room and talk to her?” I asked. “To the woman who abducted my newborn baby out of this hospital’s nursery while my wife was recovering from a delivery that nearly killed her? Did you know she almost died in the OR? And do you have any idea how hard it was for me to tell her when she woke up that her baby was gone? That she’d been taken by a stranger and we had no idea where she was or if we’d ever get her back?”

  Sylvie went pale. She wet her lips and stammered a reply as tears filled her eyes. “I know how it feels to lose a child, Mr. James, and so does Jenn. We’re both very, very sorry, and that’s why she wants to see you. Please, will you visit her?”

  I don’t know why it happened in that moment, but something in me shook and trembled. Maybe it was because of the stricken look in Sylvie’s eyes, or the fact that she said she knew what it felt like to lose a child. I wondered about those circumstances and realized I knew nothing about these people.

  My attention shifted to the husband. He was staring at me with exasperated, bloodshot eyes. A muscle twitched at his jaw.

  His wife had brain cancer.

  He’d just found out she’d lost their baby while he was gone. Deployed. Fighting a war for all of us.

  She might die tomorrow.

  I swallowed over a sickening lump that rose up in my throat and found myself forming a careful reply. “I’ll come,” I said, “but Miller has to be there, too. I want him to hear everything so it’s on the record. Will she be okay with that? Will you?”

  Jake and Sylvie both nodded. “That sounds fair.”

  They gave me Jenn’s room number and told me to stop by as soon as I could.

  Chapter Fifty-three

  I don’t know what I expected to see when I walked into Jenn Nichol’s room twenty minutes later with Miller at my side. Since the moment I’d learned my baby had been abducted, I’d had a picture of the kidnapper in my mind. It was someone who embodied pure evil, a selfish monster who came to wield great power over the fate and happiness of my entire family, without a care for anyone she hurt. I’d felt completely at her mercy. Helpless and powerless, and I loathed this monster with every breath in my body.

  But here she was before me—not a monster but a woman surrounded by her family. A woman in a hospital bed who was gravely ill with a brain
tumor.

  “Jenn,” Sylvie said, rising quickly from her chair to take hold of my elbow and lead me toward the bed. “This is Riley James.”

  The woman regarded me with a mixture of unease and relief. Neither of us said a word while I took in the features of her face, no longer concealed behind an oxygen mask. She looked to be about thirty—younger than I imagined—and had long brown hair and melancholy eyes.

  “Please sit down,” she said, gesturing to the chair beside the bed. Miller stood at the foot of it.

  “Will you all give us a moment?” Jenn said to her husband, sister and mother. At first they protested, then finally they gave in and filed out of the room.

  Jenn reclined on the pillows, regarded me ruefully, and took a deep breath. “You must hate me.”

  Her greeting took me by surprise. “I can’t lie,” I admitted. “Yesterday I did, but today, I’m trying to work it out.”

  She looked down at her hands on her lap. “I can’t blame you. I can’t even imagine what you and your wife must have gone through when you found out someone took your child. It must have been terrible.”

  “It was.”

  She hesitated and kept her eyes downcast. “I don’t know what Sylvie said to make you come here. I didn’t think you would. You certainly don’t owe me anything. So thank you for that.” Her eyes lifted and met mine.

  “I guess I was curious,” I replied, wanting, for some reason, to offer an explanation.

  She let out a small breath. “I can’t blame you for that either, and I know there’s nothing I can say to make up for what I did. I hardly remember any of it, but that doesn’t matter. What they tell me is beyond comprehension—even to me—so I hope you’ll believe me when I tell you how sorry I am. I honestly didn’t know what I was doing.”

  I found myself sitting forward in my chair, resting my elbows on my knees, staring at her with a deeper, more intent curiosity. I studied her eyes and her cheeks and her mouth, every little nuance in her facial expression.