EPIGRAPH
God have mercy on the man
Who doubts what he’s sure of
—BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Epigraph
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Book One: June 1991 Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Book Two: September 2001 Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Book Three: November 2012 Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Book Four: August 2016 Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
About the Author
Also by Thrity Umrigar
Copyright
About the Publisher
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you, Rachel Dissell, for your generous help in explaining the family court and foster care systems to me. Thanks, Subodh Chandra, for your prompt reply to my query about the U.S. Attorneys system.
Thank you, Pat D’Sousa and Peggy Veasey, for your friendship, and profound gratitude to your parents for welcoming me into their home during those long-ago Christmas trips to Georgia that had such an impact on my life.
I am lucky to work with the finest of colleagues at Case Western Reserve University. Special thanks, Cyrus Taylor, for your enthusiastic encouragement and support.
I am beyond grateful to my brilliant and alarmingly hardworking agent, Daniel Greenberg, and to my wise and wonderful editor, Gail Winston. Thank you, Gail, for your sensitive and thoughtful edits.
To my extended HarperCollins family—thank you for the attention and care you bring to my books. Michael Morrison and Jonathan Burnham, so proud to know you.
To my readers: You are the ones who breathe life into my books. I am more grateful than you can know.
Thanks to my friends, too numerous to mention by name. You sustain, nourish, and challenge me.
As always, thank you, Eust, Gulshan, and Homai, for being my forever people.
And Dad, missing you still. Always will.
PROLOGUE
On the seventh day, the boy broke the window.
It had been sealed shut by a coat of paint applied years earlier, and after several futile attempts to open it, he picked up the nearest dining room chair and heaved it against the glass.
Even though it happened during the quiet of a Saturday afternoon in May, no one appeared to have heard. No heads stuck out from their own window to examine the source of the shattering, no feet hurried to the apartment where the boy had stayed alone for seven days.
It was a miracle, really, that he had survived. Outside, the worst heat wave in a decade was raging, and when the police got there, they reported indoor temperatures of ninety-five degrees. The electricity had been cut off four days earlier. If there had been food in the refrigerator, it surely would have turned moldy. As it was, he had finished eating whatever little was in the fridge—a few slices of pizza and two hot dogs. The rest of the time he had survived on bags of potato chips, crackers, and candy bars.
Still, he had not sought help. Nobody could understand why not. When the police asked if he hadn’t wondered whether his mother was dead, struck by a car, maybe, or worse, he had simply stared back at them with those big amber eyes. The officer suspected that this was not the first time he had been left alone while his mother went scouring for drugs, but the boy was noncommittal. “She told me she’d be back” was all he said. And so he had waited.
Waited. In the tiny one-bedroom apartment that had no air-conditioning and only one ceiling fan that could not operate with the power off. Waited in the apartment with the dead fridge and food running out and no television to watch.
Even when he smashed the window of the first-floor apartment and tumbled out onto the tiny patch of lawn outside, what greeted him was the indifferent world. No middle-aged woman walked over to see what the commotion was. No elderly neighbor appeared curious about the shards of glass sprinkled on the grass and the cement walkway. The young punks hanging around the housing project didn’t look up from their self-absorbed jousting to see the young boy dripping blood from where the broken window had sliced his left leg.
In the end, it was the blood that saved him. The cop in the cruiser who patrolled the Roosevelt projects was used to spilled blood in this neighborhood. But even from a distance, he could see how fragile and vulnerable the young boy looked. And yet he was walking, walking away from the desolate brick buildings, as if searching for something, dragging his left leg along. Something about the boy’s posture, frail but resolute, made the officer leave the air-conditioned comfort of his cruiser and step out into the blistering heat. “You okay, sonny?” he asked, but he knew the answer even before he finished the question.
It all happened quickly after that. The call for the ambulance. The call to Children’s Services. A short hunt for the mother. Turned out she was in a crack house less than three blocks away. When they found her, she was passed out and half-naked, semen caked on her thighs. A pipe lay on her chest. They arrested the other two women and four guys in the house and confiscated multiple drug paraphernalia, along with two thousand dollars’ worth of crack cocaine.
When she came to, she asked repeatedly for her baby boy. Swore that she’d intended to go out only for a hit and return home straight away, but Victor, her drug dealer, had raped her and kept her doped up. She’d locked the apartment door from the outside because the housing project wasn’t a safe place for a young boy to be alone. Hell, she did that even if she went to the food pantry. All the mothers did this to keep their babies safe, ask any of her neighbors. The cops ignored her mewing. There was nothing here that they hadn’t heard or seen before. It was 1991. There was a crack epidemic raging across the country. A few towns over, the rich white kids were snorting cocaine. But here, in the inner city, it was a goddamn jungle. Filled with animals like this disheveled, wild-eyed woman who had left her son to bake in a locked apartment in the middle of a heat wave.
If they had their way, if they had any goddamn power, which they didn’t, of course, they’d lock up the bitch forever. Make sure she never got to hurt that poor kid again. But as it was, they knew she’d walk free in a couple of months. And so they shook their heads and drank their beer and shot some pool until they could forget about her, her and her ilk, people who seemed to exist only to make their goddamn jobs even goddamn harder.
BOOK ONE
June 1991
CHAPTER ONE
The room where he was to meet the boy was painted a cheery blue, its walls covered with posters promoting the county’s foster care program, but David Coleman barely noticed any of it as he walked in, escorted by the social worker. He was too nervous
. The two men made their way to the maroon couch, and David eased his lanky frame onto it. They made small talk for a few seconds, and then the social worker looked at his watch and stated the obvious: The boy was late.
The older man nodded. His right hand fluttered for a moment and automatically made its way to his front pocket, where he typically kept his pack of cigarettes, but then he remembered. He had quit smoking three months ago, a promise to Delores on their wedding anniversary.
Delores. It seemed wrong that she was not beside him now. She’d had a terrible migraine the previous day, but still, he’d been shocked when she’d begged off this morning. Becoming foster parents in their mid-forties hadn’t particularly been her idea, but he was here today in large part in an attempt to wipe out the sadness that had taken root in her eyes for the last five years—ever since, . . .
Ever since The Calamity. He’d be embarrassed to say those words out loud, but that was how David thought about it, what had happened to them that night five summers ago. He knew that bringing another child into their home could never change what had occurred, that in the pristine, close-knit community where they lived, they would always be the Colemans, the cursed couple who had suffered the unthinkable. But still. Even if all he could do was turn the sorrow that had taken root in Delores’s eyes into a smudge, something faint, rather than a live, burning thing, it would be worth it.
And could there be a more deserving case than the boy he was scheduled to meet, the boy who was running late? Neglected, abandoned, the son of a junkie, a woman whose case was being heard by his colleague, Superior Court Judge Robert Campbell. Quite a coincidence, really, that this was the boy they were offering him. Not that he’d needed to hear about the boy’s situation from Bob. It had been in the newspapers, how the poor kid had fended for himself for seven miserable days until he finally broke out. That was a month and a half ago, around the time David and Delores had completed their training to become foster parents. In fact, one of their workshops had been on how to take care of a black child. David had felt mildly uncomfortable as the speaker gave them pointers on how to groom black hair and how to understand black English. And really, what would’ve been the odds of them landing a black foster kid, given the racial makeup of their county? But they’d sat through it, and now David was thankful, although he hoped Delores remembered the section on black hair better than he did.
The social worker was talking, and David forced himself to listen. The young man—his name was Ernest, and David thought he’d never met a man so perfectly suited to his name—was asking whether David had any last-minute questions about Anton.
“I don’t think so,” David replied. “I think we’re okay.”
“Yes, well. It’s just that . . . I don’t want you to think . . .” Ernest looked at David for a minute and continued, “He’s a really good kid. You’ll see. I mean, it’s too bad it didn’t work out with his current foster parents. It’s not his fault, really. We never should’ve placed him with a family with five kids. After what he’s been through, he needs extra attention. And the Brents just couldn’t . . .”
David smiled. “Are you this strong an advocate for all your clients?”
Ernest looked pained. “Well. Yes. I mean, I try.” His face brightened. “But Anton is special. You’ll see.” There was a short silence and then Ernest said, “They should’ve been here by now. Mr. Brent was to have dropped him off half an hour ago. I’ll go see what’s taking so long.”
“Okay.” David smiled again. “But they’re not really that late, you know. I don’t mind waiting.”
He watched as Ernest walked to the door, reached for the knob, and then looked back. “Judge Coleman?” the younger man said. “I . . . I just want to say . . . I’m a huge fan. I think you’ve done a fine job on the bench. And I’m awfully glad you’re taking in Anton.” Inexplicably, Ernest blushed. “That is, I think you’ll hit it off. I mean, it’s a good match. So many of these kids . . .”
“Thank you.” But inwardly, David felt weary. Just once, especially on an occasion as fraught as this one, he would like to be anonymous, just Joe Schmo the electrician, say, looking to foster a kid. Anyone but Judge David Coleman, whose father had been a U.S. senator for almost twenty-five years, whose grandfather had been a much decorated admiral in the U.S. Navy. Anyone but the man whose son’s death had made the papers all over this small northeastern state. He shook his head, a gesture so slight as to escape the younger man. David had spent his entire life in the public eye. It was wishful thinking to believe that things would be different now. “Thank you,” he said again. “Appreciate it,” and he nodded in a gesture that was at once humble and dismissive.
Ernest straightened. “Be right back,” he mumbled.
Alone in the blue room, David felt a tightening in his chest that he recognized as nervousness. He should’ve insisted that Delores come with him. In an attempt to tamp his restlessness, he rose to his feet and paced the room. Was something wrong? Could the boy’s current foster family have changed their minds and decided to keep him? From what he had read in the boy’s file, that didn’t seem likely. Or could some relative have come out of the woodwork to claim him? As far as he knew, before Children’s Services had placed Anton with the Brent family, they had contacted his only available kin, a grandmother in Georgia. But the woman, legally blind and of little means, had been unable to take him in. What would that feel like, David wondered, being rejected by your only blood relative after spending seven harrowing days in a dangerously hot apartment while your mother was cavorting with her junkie friends? He stopped his pacing as another thought struck him: What if this abuse was only the tip of the iceberg? What else had this poor child endured? Would the damage be too severe, too lasting, for him and Delores to handle?
And then there was the race thing. The boy had grown up in the Roosevelt projects, and shuddering, David remembered touring them with Pappy, then still a senator. What would Anton think when he saw his new home in Arborville? His new school? David and Delores had been so surprised when they’d offered the boy to them. Yes, there was a dearth of black foster parents, but still. The only dark faces in the tree-lined, affluent town belonged to janitors and the street-cleaning crew. Though wait, there were now two black cops on the Arborville police force, weren’t there?
Delores had balked when David first mentioned the call from the county. “What do we know about raising a black child, David?” she’d protested. He had put up a brave front. “For crying out loud, Dee,” he’d said. “It’s 1991. If the Spelmans can adopt a child from China, why the heck can’t we foster a black kid for a few months? Until they figure out what to do with him?”
David ran his hand through his hair as he recalled how he’d gotten on his soapbox. He’d fed Dee some bullshit line about how it was time to walk the walk, how this was a chance for people like them, to whom so much had been given, to give back. The old noblesse oblige bit. He’d believed everything he’d said, but he had also felt a sense of unreality as he’d said the words. Delores had looked at him dubiously, her lower lip jutting out. But she hadn’t fought back. She rarely did anymore. He suspected she’d given in for his sake, thinking mistakenly that this was something he wanted. But he knew the truth—he was doing this for her. Giving her something she didn’t know she needed. Not that this could take the place of James, obviously. Nothing ever could. But here was the thing: Delores had been a fabulous mother. Fabulous.
David shook his head swiftly, unwilling to let the image of James’s mangled body nestle there. He wouldn’t think of his dead son. Not today. To the best of his ability, he wanted to go into this new venture clean, openhearted, and unburdened by the past. And above all, to do it for the right reasons. This was an opportunity to give a damaged kid a stable home.
He looked around for a phone, but there was none in the room. He would’ve liked to call his wife, to inform her that nothing had happened yet, that he wouldn’t be home for at least another hour or more. She would be anx
ious to know. She had promised to make dinner for tonight, something simple—salad, baked chicken, and potatoes. Ice cream for dessert. He had felt a twinge of excitement when he’d run to the store for ice cream this morning, and then a twinge of apprehension when he’d realized he had no idea what flavor the boy liked. He’d picked up a pack of the Neapolitan, deciding to hedge his bets.
He heard the door open and spun around to see the boy walk in with the social worker. Ernest had his arm around his young charge, but David was struck by the boy’s tentative posture. David took a few steps toward where the pair stood and, suddenly aware of his great height, stooped from the waist as he stuck his hand out. “Hi there,” he said gently. “You must be Anton. I’m David.”
“Hi.” The voice was weak, barely audible, and David felt a stab of disappointment. But then the boy tilted his head up, and David’s breath caught in his throat. Anton’s skin was golden, almost luminous. His large amber eyes dominated a beautiful, slender face. When those eyes landed on David, he felt—there was no other way to say it—privileged, as if some rare bird had alighted on his shoulder. But he was also acutely aware of the guardedness with which Anton Vesper was looking at him.
“It’s good to meet you.” David smiled. “Finally.”
Anton looked up at Ernest for guidance. The man gave the boy a slight nudge. “Go on,” he said, pointing to the couch. “The two of you can chat for a few minutes. I’ll be back to check on you soon, okay?”
David waited until Ernest had left the room to ease himself down on the couch beside the boy, who stared resolutely ahead, as if hoping David would disappear. David had seen defendants in court who had seemed less upset by his presence. And he’d never had to take one of them home.
“Was there a lot of traffic getting here?” he asked.
The boy shrugged. “Some.”
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