Other People's Children

by R. J. Hoffmann

  Gail

  The soybean fields gave way to the occasional warehouse and then a strip mall. When they crossed the bridge into North Dakota and Grand Forks, the Red River swirled beneath them, brown and muddy. Gail said nothing more to Jon as they drove, and he said nothing to her. She wanted to tell him that she called Paige, but that would just make him explode again. And she wanted to tell him what Paige said about Carli, but he wouldn’t be able to hear any of that. So, she said nothing. Jon bounced the wagon across the railroad tracks, made two turns, and then eased into a parking lot. She couldn’t avoid the smell pouring from the car seat next to her, and she couldn’t avoid the reality that her silence, her withholding, made her a liar.

  “This is it,” Jon said.

  It looked like every other UPS Store, but it wasn’t, of course. This UPS Store held the future. Maya started to cry as soon as the car stopped moving.

  “It’s been a while since you fed her,” Jon said in a careful voice.

  Gail reached wordlessly into the diaper bag at her feet for a bottle and the thermos. She could feel Jon’s eyes in the mirror as she scooped the formula into the bottle. Gail poured the water from the thermos and put the cap back on. She shook the bottle. She rolled it between her palms. Maya screamed. Jon turned, and his once-familiar face, unshaven, sagging with exhaustion, looked like a stranger’s. His eyes asked her what she was thinking, and she wanted badly to tell him, but she knew that the stranger wouldn’t listen.

  “Go get the package,” Gail said.

  She unbuckled Maya from her car seat, held her on her lap, and started to feed her. Jon turned forward and slumped in his seat. Gail willed him to stay silent, didn’t trust what she’d say if he spoke. Finally, he climbed out of the car and went into the shop. Gail studied Maya’s features as she slurped, searched her face for answers. Maya’s eyes squeezed shut, and her lips worked the nipple. Her ears wriggled with the effort. And then her nose demanded Gail’s attention. Its gentle, familiar slope, the way her nostrils squirmed. Carli’s nose. In time, she suspected, freckles would appear. All at once, Gail knew that no callus, no matter how thick, would ever protect her from that nose.

  The door to the shop opened, and Jon came out scowling, hands empty. He climbed into the car and braced his hands against the steering wheel. “It’s not here yet.”

  “What?”

  “The package. It’s not here yet. They said four o’clock.”

  “I thought you said ten?”

  “That’s what the guy told me. They’re saying four now.”

  “What time is it?”

  Jon looked at his watch. “Almost two.”

  Two hours. It didn’t seem like enough time, even as it felt like forever.

  Larry

  Larry climbed back into the truck, and this time Kurt didn’t ask him how it went. Larry checked the TownHouse Hotel off the list. Number twenty-one out of twenty-five. They had tried all the hotels and motels along the interstate first, and then the few along the river. The last four were scattered across the center of town. The seedier places had staff with hungry eyes and greedy hands that took the photo from him and folded it into their pockets. The clerks at the chains gave Larry the hairy eyeball as soon as he stepped foot into their lobby. They stood behind the counters wearing their pressed oxfords and peering over their glasses at him while he spoke. They never reached for the photo. They talked about policy and privacy, and they ignored the cash that he fanned across the counter. It probably didn’t matter. The Durbins were probably already in Canada drinking Molson. Kurt was right. The whole fucking thing was a waste of time.

  Larry’s cell phone rang. Marla again. She’d been calling him over and over for the last thirty minutes, but he had nothing to tell her, so he had let it roll to voice mail. The last thing he needed was Marla crawling down his goddamn throat.

  “How many more?” Kurt asked.

  “Four,” Larry muttered.

  “It’s a waste of fucking time.”

  Larry didn’t say anything, because Kurt was right. Four more hotels would just mean thirty more minutes of bullshit. Time to turn the truck south. His phone rang again. Marla, of course. He answered.

  “We’re done,” he said.

  “Passports,” Marla said in a rush. “They need fake passports.”

  “We’re headed back,” Larry said.

  “There’s a FedEx store and a UPS Store. They’re both on Columbus. Six blocks apart.”

  “Waste of fucking time,” Larry said.

  “Wendy’s gonna text you the addresses. Go into the stores and tell them you’re Durbin. Tell them you’re looking for your package,” Marla said. “See what happens.”

  “Screw you.”

  “Five grand, Larry. Don’t be a dumbass.”

  “Waste of fucking time,” Larry said, and he disconnected the call.

  “What did she say?” Kurt asked.

  “Some bullshit about passports.”

  “Waste of fucking time.”

  Eleven hours. If they left right now, they’d get back a little bit after midnight. Larry’s entire skull ached from lack of sleep. His eyes burned. Like buying a fucking lottery ticket. Stupid. Kurt stopped at a light, and Larry tried to figure out how much of Marla’s money they had left. They’d only spent two hundred on gas and food. They could probably get back with another two hundred. That would leave three hundred each. Of course, Kurt wasn’t keeping track, so Larry could probably keep four hundred and give Kurt two hundred. If he needed a bit for rent, he could always hit up Marla. She owed him that at least. And then he looked up and saw the street sign. Columbus. His cell phone chirped with the text from Wendy. He knew they should just keep right on driving to the expressway. But he was fucking stupid.

  “Hang a right,” he said.

  He bought a lottery ticket every week. He was that fucking stupid.

  * * *

  The FedEx store was just three blocks down, but when the guy behind the counter searched the computer for a package for Durbin, he came up blank. The UPS Store was four more blocks and it was on the way to the expressway anyway.

  When Larry opened the door, the bell jangled. The skinny, zit-faced kid behind the counter was pouring foam peanuts into a box and didn’t look up. “How can I help you?” he murmured.

  “My name’s Jon Durbin. I’m expecting a package.”

  The kid pulled tape across the seam of the box. He still didn’t look up. “I already told you. Your package won’t be here till four.”

  Larry smiled for the first time all day. Jackpot.

  Jon

  When Jon came out of the bathroom, Gail was still sitting in the armchair next to the window, bent over Maya, watching her sleep. Ever since they checked into the Wyndham, ever since they left the parking lot of the UPS Store really, she’d clung to Maya and said nothing. When he asked if she wanted to check her email, she just shook her head.

  The Wyndham was two blocks from the UPS Store. Jon knew that they had to stay out of sight, but he had to try to keep Gail on the rails, so he didn’t want to drive around looking for a motel with bulletproof glass. And the Wyndham had a parking garage, so they could keep the station wagon off the street. Jon had shit himself three times since they checked in. Not that they really checked in. Jon tried to pay the clerk five hundred dollars to overlook the fact that he had lost his credit card and driver’s license. The clerk wouldn’t acknowledge the cash on the counter and started to ramble about corporate policy. Jon pulled out five more hundred-dollar bills and laid them on top of the stack.

  The clerk stopped talking midsentence, glanced around the empty lobby, and then swept the bills off the counter. He clacked his keyboard, swiped a key, and handed it across without looking up. “Room 323.”

  Jon sat back down at the desk and refreshed the UPS website. The status still read In Transit. The package left the Grand Forks distribution center at 2:03. Jon checked his watch. 3:17. He tried to distract himself with sample images of Canadian
passports. He clicked back to the UPS website. Still nothing. How far away could the distribution center possibly be?

  Jon looked at Gail. Her face was tight, and her hands were still in a way that was new and strange. This wasn’t just because he called her stupid or accused her of lying. She was pissed, but that didn’t explain the special brand of silence, thick like gravy, that had filled the car for the last two hours of the drive. He had to get those passports. He had to get them over the border. The border meant a certain measure of safety, but it meant more than that. It was more than a line on a map they’d be crossing. Once they crossed that border, he knew in his gut that they’d never come back.

  He refreshed again. In Transit. He looked again at Gail. The way that she stared at Maya unsettled him further. It was almost as if she were memorizing Maya’s face.

  He refreshed the site again. Delivered to Store!

  “It arrived,” he said.

  Gail finally looked up. He grabbed the key and his license from the desk, and then went to where she sat. He bent to kiss the top of her head. “I love you,” he murmured into her hair. She said nothing and kept her eyes fixed on Maya. It wasn’t until he grabbed the door handle that she spoke.

  “Jon,” Gail said, her voice hoarse. “I love you, too.”

  Carli

  Carli pulled into the truck stop near the interstate, to gather herself and to formulate a plan. She parked in the gravel where the rigs idled, so that she’d be sure to see nobody that she knew. She turned off the car and pulled out her phone. She refreshed her email but still found nothing from Gail. She thought about calling Kelly or Madison or Andrea. She pulled up their Instagram feeds and scrolled through images of boyfriends and tattoos and selfies and beer bongs. She tried to find her way back to a picture that included her, but so many images, so many moments had stacked up since then. She couldn’t find herself, and her friends’ faces had taken on the sterile look of strangers. Her hands shook as she dialed Paige’s number. Paige answered on the first ring.

  “Carli?”

  Paige’s voice came familiar, warm, worried.

  “Can I ask a favor?” Carli said.

  “Anything.”

  Carli swallowed, built the courage to ask, braced for rejection. “Can I stay with you for a little while? A few days. Maybe a week?”

  Paige only hesitated for a split second. “Of course you can,” she said, and a wave of relief washed over Carli. “You can stay for as long as you need. What happened?”

  “I told Marla about the final consent.”

  A longer pause. “I see.”

  Paige gave her the address, and after Carli hung up, she leaned her head against the headrest and closed her eyes. The diesel engine next to her rumbled like her stomach. The hiss of airbrakes sighed. She had a place to stay that night, and she could stay at Paige’s for a week or two, but she couldn’t stay there forever. Her baby was gone, her in-box was empty, and her car was crammed with all her worldly possessions. She had a maxed-out credit card in her purse, three hundred bucks in the bank, and a half tank of gas. Even if Paige said she could stay longer, Carli knew that she wouldn’t, that she would land on somebody’s couch or in the back seat of her car.

  Homeless. That word had always seemed so remote. A word that belonged to other people. Home. She had left home just thirty minutes ago, but that word already seemed less familiar than the first. She sat quietly and tried to concentrate on the rumble of the engine. After several minutes, her breathing finally slowed, and her stomach grew quiet. Carli opened her eyes and forced herself to focus. She was typing Paige’s home address into her phone to get directions, when it vibrated with a call. She didn’t recognize the number. For a moment she thought about letting it roll to voice mail, but it might be Gail, so she answered it.

  “Ms. Brennan?”

  A man’s voice. “Yes?” she said warily.

  “This is Officer Bradford. From the FBI.”

  Hope fluttered. “Did you find them?”

  A pause. “Not exactly. But there have been developments.”

  Developments. “What kind of developments?”

  “A Minnesota state trooper came across a couple with a baby. We believe it may be the Durbins.”

  Carli pressed the phone to her ear. “Where are they?”

  “Unfortunately, he didn’t receive the APB until after his encounter.”

  “Wait. So, they’re—are they gone?”

  “We’re not sure where they are. The good news is that we were able to get a sketch of what they look like now.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Haircuts. Hair dye. That sort of thing. Anyway, we’re focusing our efforts on Grand Forks based upon that notebook you shared with us. They told the state trooper that they were headed there, too. We’re still not sure why Grand Forks, but we’ve given the sketch to the police up there, and we’ve asked them to send it to all the hotels. To be honest, it’s still a long shot, but I thought you should know.”

  Another long shot. “There’s something that you should know, too.”

  “What’s that?”

  Carli took a deep breath and let it out. “I signed it.” Telling Bradford made it real to Carli in a way that she hadn’t expected.

  “Signed what?”

  “The final consent.”

  For a moment Bradford said nothing, and that tiny bit of silence felt like an accusation. “So that means—”

  “—the baby belongs to them now.” Carli couldn’t let him say it. “I emailed it to Gail a few hours ago.”

  More silence. “Well. That adds a wrinkle. To say the least. Why now?”

  Why now? Because she could feel her baby slip farther north every moment. Because with every hour that passed it became less likely that she’d ever see Maya again. Because she didn’t have a choice.

  “I want them to be able to come back,” Carli said. Tears spilled down her cheeks and her breath snagged. “So that I can see my baby again.”

  “Have you heard from them?”

  Carli swallowed the sob building in her throat. She gripped the phone tightly, worked to steady her voice. She managed to force the next words out in a rush. “I’m not sure she’s still checking that email account.”

  Another long pause, and Carli squeezed her eyes shut against the tears, against the silence. “Well,” Bradford said quietly. “In that case, I guess we better keep after them.”

  Jon

  Jon stepped out of the UPS Store and glanced at the label on the envelope to see where it shipped from. Ottawa. He tore off the seal and fished out one of the passports. He flipped it open to the main page, and Gail’s unsmiling face stared back at him. He studied the fonts and the maple leaf watermark. He counted the digits in the passport number. He tilted the page, and the hologram glinted in the sunlight. The paper felt thick. Everything looked legit. His trembling hands began to settle. The reviews on Tochka were right—whoever took his eight thousand dollars was likely an insider. He quickly thumbed through the other two passports, and they were just as good. He didn’t bother with the birth certificates and the driver’s licenses at the bottom of the envelope. All that mattered right now was getting across that border.

  Jon shoved everything back into the envelope and tucked it under his arm. He walked quickly back toward the hotel, although he wanted to run. Adrenaline pulsed through his system, and for the first time in days, his mind leaped to the next step and the step after that. It felt like they had been slogging through mud, but suddenly everything was moving quickly again. Seeing the passports, holding them, helped him feel the force of the current that would sweep them across the border, to Winnipeg, to their new life.

  Jon smiled at the desk clerk when he walked past, but the man just looked down at his computer. Jon held the elevator door for two maintenance workers carrying tool bags, and he smiled at them. He couldn’t help but smile. The momentum had shifted, and he thought that even Gail might feel it. Maybe, when she saw their new pass
ports with their new names and their new pictures, she might feel the tug of that current, too. In an hour they’d cross into Canada. The arguments that had wrinkled the last several days would fall away. They would seem like just that, wrinkles, part of their former life. By the time they reached Winnipeg, those arguments would be forgotten.

  Jon forced himself not to run down the hall. He found 323, licked his lips, and swiped himself into the room. And then he froze. Gail’s chair—empty. The door to the bathroom—open. The bathroom light—off. The silence—total. Jon let the door close behind him. He drifted to the center of the room. He resisted the urge to peer under the beds. A buzzing sound grew loud in his ears and drowned out the silence as he took inventory. The diaper bag—gone. The car keys—he’d left them on the desk next to the computer—gone. Gail and Maya—gone.

  And then she knocked. Jon let out a breath that he hadn’t known he was holding. Relief washed across him, and his smile returned as he opened the door.

  Jon was on the floor before the pain registered, fists battering him. He covered himself the best he could, curling into the fetal position. Before he could cry out, tape covered his mouth. The punches stopped, and Jon was forced roughly onto his back. A man sat on Jon’s chest and pinned Jon’s shoulders with his knees. Jon tried to knee him in the back, but someone else dropped onto his legs. Jon heard the screech of the duct tape as it wrapped his ankles. He finally took a good look at the man on top of him, but all he saw was a black ski mask and a grin gleaming through the mouth hole.