Never Ask Me

by Abbott, Jeff

  So, not an option. Also not an option: letting Marland get away with Danielle’s murder. She doesn’t know if he did it. But the police don’t know about him, and here he’d threatened her directly. He had to be a suspect. But the moment she accuses him, even if she does it anonymously, the police will start to search for the connection between Marland and Danielle and Ned, and Marland, who was so oddly obsessed with her being involved, will tie her to all this. And college will be over for her, for Ned. What would the admissions officers make of their entrepreneurial spirit? She starts thinking of the first line of her apologetic essay: I really learned the meaning of friendship when I kept my mouth shut and then interacted with the dealer of my friend’s prescription drug ring.

  She bursts into tears. A shadow falls across her and she looks up. Ned’s dad, standing there.

  “Are you all right?” he says in his low tone.

  “Yes,” she says. “No. But I’m supposed to say yes.”

  Gordon sits down next to her. “None of this is easy.”

  “No. Harder for you and Ned, of course.”

  She can feel the weight of the phone in her boot. If she sits the wrong way, the phone might slide out, and what would she say? Oh hey, sorry. Just stealing this phone of your dead ex-wife. It was concealing evidence. If she did nothing, she broke a law; if she took it to the police, even if she made a deal where she wouldn’t be charged or prosecuted, it would still all come out. She wouldn’t be in jail, but she likely wouldn’t be in college. Could a deal with the cops be kept secret, truly secret, where a college couldn’t find out? They were minors. But it was such a huge risk. Her whole future at stake. It was nice to sit here and listen to Gordon’s deep voice and be caught between two horrendous decisions but not make one yet.

  “How well did you know her?” she asks suddenly.

  Gordon’s eyebrows go up, and although he and Ned are so different, they have those same eyebrows. “Well, I married her.”

  “But not for that long. I mean. Forgive me, but…”

  “No, you’re right. It was a short marriage. But both of us thought it would be forever. We thought we could overcome all the obstacles. The distance. The cultural differences. I quite loved her.”

  “I’m sorry it didn’t work out,” she says.

  The smile widens. “I’m sorry, too, because I think she made a good life for herself and I should have shared in that, helped her build it.”

  Julia nods. “It must have been hard to leave Ned, though.”

  “I didn’t realize how hard it would be.” He clears his throat and looks away. “Sometimes new fathers are not very bright. Danielle convinced me I wouldn’t really miss him. That my work would consume me again, and they’d visit me…and it so rarely happened. Once I was gone, it was like I was dead.” He lets that last word hang in the air. “I had to beg to see Ned. And I couldn’t understand why. Here was a woman who made a career out of connecting children to parents, and yet she stood in the way of me connecting with my son.” He clears his throat again. “Ned doesn’t want to hear that, I suspect, and I don’t want to say it to him. What does it matter now? He and I are responsible for our own relationship.”

  Julia isn’t sure she buys into this poor-pitiful-me routine; he could have chosen a job closer to his son. And if he kept him here, well, then wouldn’t Ned have to deal with Marland? It would be easier for her.

  The words come more quickly than she expects. “He’s your problem now.”

  Gordon looks surprised at her tone. “He’s not a problem. He’s a kid.”

  “I have to go.” She has what she came for and she doesn’t feel the need to be nice. What a curse that is, the niceness that is expected of her. “If he still wants to go to school, I’ll take him.”

  “I know Ned is grateful for your friendship.”

  “I don’t know that,” she says, more angrily than she intends.

  “You seem upset,” he says.

  The question comes to her and she doesn’t hesitate to ask it. “What did your ex have on my family?”

  “What?” He seems genuinely surprised.

  “She had some leverage over my parents. I suspect it had to do with Grant’s adoption, but I don’t know that for sure.”

  “I have no idea. She met your parents after we divorced.”

  “She never mentioned it?”

  “No. Why would she?”

  Because you had a child together and if something happened to her, she’d want you to know the truth.

  She’s said too much and she realizes it. “All right. I’ll get Ned to school.”

  She has the phone. She has proof of a threat against Danielle. But if she shows it, the explanation will derail Ned’s life and her future and…maybe it’s a card she won’t have to play. Maybe she can get Marland out of her life with a threat.

  She sees Ned standing at the front door, his school backpack on his shoulder, as if life is normal again.

  “Ned, you ready to go to school?” she calls, and her voice is surprisingly calm.

  36

  Grant

  “Are you all right?” Peter asks Grant. He’s waited on the trail for Grant to catch up.

  “The Sender said she was a liar and yes, I think my mom is lying to me.”

  “If she is, it’s for a good reason.”

  “Is it? Is it?” Grant’s voice rises. “I know that we’re supposed to think our parents are useless and lame and know nothing, but I love my mom and dad.” His voice cracks. This is not the kind of stuff he ever dreamed he would say to a senior, even an unpopular one, but he does it and he sees in Peter’s face that this is all right. “I don’t know why they would lie.”

  “Because they love you. What people do for love…” Peter trails off.

  “If we find out who is doing this, then we’ll know why it is happening,” Grant says.

  “I brought a camera to conceal.” Peter holds up a small handheld camera from his bag, along with black masking tape. “Basically, we’re gonna aim this at the tree. There’s a flash drive that it will record to as a backup. It has a motion detector, so it won’t keep filming all the time.”

  “Where did you get all this?”

  “I asked another hacker who’s a hobbyist photographer. It’s his equipment.”

  Grant walks Peter along the trail and points at the tree as they approach it.

  “So that’s the famous tree.” Peter studies the angles. Then he places the camera in the low branches of a nearby tree.

  “Check to see if something was left for you,” Peter suggests as he works. “After all, they sent you another email.”

  Grant kneels by the tree and checks. “No, nothing. Seems dumb now that I ever hid things here.”

  “We all need a place to keep our secrets,” Peter says.

  “Where do you keep yours?”

  “Oh, I don’t bother with secrets. No one truly has a secret in a world where we can be hacked.”

  “You don’t believe that.”

  Peter shrugs, makes a final adjustment to the camera, and camouflages it with a branch. “OK. Let’s go send your email and see if your stalker takes the bait.”

  * * *

  As Peter drives them to the high school, Grant sends the email from his phone: Hey. You keep saying stuff about my parents. I’d like to see some proof.

  And a sudden reply, as if the Sender was reading emails when Grant’s message arrived: Your parents have the proof.

  37

  From Iris Pollitt’s “From Russia with Love” Adoption Journal

  2002

  The next day my shoulders and back and legs ached, delayed soreness from the crash. I took aspirin. Kyle, also aching, with a wrenched arm, didn’t sleep well either but finally drifted off and started snoring. I felt like I should hide out in the hotel room, but I couldn’t. Danielle wasn’t answering her cell phone or her hotel room phone, but I knew she had other orphanages to visit. She was staying in Russia longer than we were. I went downsta
irs and asked the concierge for recommendations on where I might buy infant clothes, diapers, and toys for older kids. The concierge helpfully gave me a list in English, with a map, and offered an interpreter to go with me, but told me the higher-end stores often had a shopping assistant who spoke English.

  I will not be scared off by these criminals, these punks, I told myself. I ate a quick breakfast at the hotel’s buffet and headed out. By myself.

  I went first to a large chain drugstore to buy a huge amount of diapers, lotions, and such and had the store deliver it to the hotel. There. Galina will have to forgive me for grabbing her arm, I thought. Then I went to a store that sold infant clothes, which I bought in a variety of sizes. Also delivered back to the hotel. Then to another store for toys and such. I bought hardboard storybooks and more stuffed animals (these kids needed something to hold) and two computer game consoles for the older kids, along with games the English-speaking sales clerk told me are “good” and “cool.”

  No one noticed me or paid attention to me.

  I had the toy purchases sent to the hotel. I tried Danielle on her phone. No answer, no text. I felt a worry creep up my spine. No text from Kyle either. Was he still asleep? I texted him, told him I’d gone shopping. I could head back to the hotel, but I knew I couldn’t sleep, and Saint Petersburg is supposed to be a lovely and interesting city.

  I will not be bullied. Or scared.

  Snow started falling. Normally I would find this charming, but it was so cold, so penetratingly cold, I wondered how any civilization arose here. I am going to take Sasha—Grant—away from all this and to the bright Texas warmth.

  I walked down to a café that wasn’t too crowded and looked spotlessly clean. I sat alone at a table in a corner, consulted the Russian-language app on my phone, figured out how to order, butchered the request but still managed to get a cup of hot tea with honey stirred in for sweetness and a slice of cake, called muraveynik, which means “anthill.” It tasted like crumbled cookies covered in milk caramel, joined with sour cream, shaped and baked into its unappetizing namesake. But the muraveynik is delicious—sweet and dense—and the tea warmed me up. I decided having high blood sugar was a plus, so I toyed with having another cup of tea and sampling the honey cake, another Russian staple. I wondered if Grant would crave cakes such as these—surely they got a sweet now and then at the orphanage; where would I find genuine Russian recipes for them?—when the warning woman from the airport slid into the seat across from me.

  I didn’t scream. I didn’t panic. I stared at her and she stared at me. Then she smiled.

  “The anthill is not considered a fancy cake at all. Every family has their recipe. My mother puts chocolate chips in hers.” Her English was excellent, her accent light.

  “If I’d taken your advice and gone home, I never would have gotten to try it,” I said. My voice shook and I swallowed some tea, hoping she wouldn’t notice. “So what do you have to say to me now? Why do you care what my husband and I do? Did you know we were run off the road yesterday?”

  For a moment she frowned. Then she said: “How much have you spent on getting this baby?”

  “A lot and it’s none of your business.”

  “And your daughter was very sick. Also very expensive. You must be wealthy.”

  “My husband has a good job.”

  “Does he, now?”

  I didn’t like where this was going. “What do you want?”

  “I want you to pick another child at that orphanage. It’s not too late. There are so many other children there who need love.”

  “Why? Why not Sasha?”

  “If you pick another child, you decline Sasha, you will be amply rewarded. A quarter million dollars in an account for you, offshore. Tax free.”

  I just stared at her. “Who the hell are you?”

  “This offer is good for today. You can call and tell the orphanage that you did not bond with Sasha, that you’d like to try another child. There are so many. So. Many.”

  I started to speak, and she held up a gloved hand, like an impatient teacher cutting off a student’s meandering reply. “I will answer no questions. This is the deal. Just think of all the money you’ve spent on your daughter, and this adoption, and you’ll be able to put at least one of them through private college if you just do as I ask. It will be the easiest money you’ve ever made.”

  “Why?”

  “I said, no questions.”

  “I could say no to adopting Sasha and then you will not pay me.”

  “The moment you say no,” the warning woman said, “I will call you with an account number in a Cayman’s bank, and you can verify the amount. I won’t cheat you.”

  “Why do you want my baby?” I hated the tears in my voice.

  “He’s not your baby. Not yet. He won’t even remember that you played with him yesterday. You just say no. Your husband and your adoption consultant may be surprised, but they won’t talk you out of it. You’re a strong personality, Iris. I admire that about you.”

  She slid a cell phone to me. “It’s a burner phone. There’s one number programmed in it. You call that number, day or night, and I’ll answer. I understand you have to think about it. I understand you have to sell this to Kyle. Or simply tell him you don’t want the child. He seems like he would defer to you. But it really is for the best.” She stood up.

  Once, after my dad abandoned us, some girls cornered me on the playground and teased me about having a deadbeat father who had taken off. I wasn’t a kid who got into fights. But they were pushing me and shoving me between them, like I was nothing, like they had the right, and I don’t even remember it, but I bloodied two of their noses and gave the other a black eye. And I went crying to the teacher, ashamed of what I’d done, so many tears, until they sent me home, and on the drive home, Mama telling me how embarrassed she was, didn’t I have manners, didn’t I know better. A smile cracked my face, and those mean little bitches never bothered me again or even looked at me sideways or said a word to me that they didn’t pick carefully.

  I wondered in that moment if I could deck her, knock her silly with a playground punch, make her tell me why. But she looked back at me with an unflinching gaze.

  I took the phone. “What happens if I say no to your offer?” I said.

  “Say no,” she answered, “and find out.” Then she turned and walked away.

  I slipped the burner phone into my purse. I walked back to the hotel. I never did try the honey cake. Kyle had woken up and I slid into the bed next to him and lied about what I’d done, who I’d seen. I kissed him to stop his questions.

  I can write stuff like that now because after today this journal isn’t for you anymore. It’s for me.

  I didn’t tell Kyle about the warning woman or the phone in my purse or the money in the offshore account. I just told him I loved him and listened to him talking about teaching Sasha to play football and baseball and that he’d get him a telescope so they could look at the craters on the moon together, the giant red spot on Jupiter, and then we called Julia and talked to her on the phone so she could hear our voices, and we listened to her giggle and I thought of that woman and that money and the choice she told me I had to make.

  I didn’t tell Danielle, but I called Pavel at his apartment and asked him for a favor while Kyle was in the shower. I asked him to call Maria and ask how many children total are at Volkov. He called back and told me one hundred fifty-seven.

  I’m sure they all deserve love. A chance. A shot at happiness. A hundred and fifty-six candidates. Maybe the child that is truly perfect for us is one of them.

  Or maybe we’ve already found the one who is.

  38

  Kyle

  Kyle has gotten dressed for work in a nice suit but is lying atop the made bed in the master bedroom. He just lay down for a second and he has no energy to rise. As if the world is pressing down on him.

  He closes his eyes to think. He is surprised that Julia is going to school, given what happe
ned on Sunday, but she missed Monday and now it seems she’s going. Ned, too, but maybe it will help Ned to have his friends around him. Kyle is pretty sure no schoolwork will get done this day.

  Iris is in Grant’s bedroom. A mother is in a teenage boy’s room for this long for only one reason, and that is to search it. He wonders if Grant found the bloodied library bag he hid in the tree and that is what Iris has found. She has been in there for a long time, and he just hopes she doesn’t come out with a bag of weed (very un-Grant-like).

  He goes to her desk in the mudroom. On the shelf above her computer is a series of notebooks, her lyric books that turned into songs for NSYNC and Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, and once, improbably, for Chris Isaak. She doesn’t write anymore, and when he pulls three of them down, he can see the edge of a dark-blue journal. He pulls it out, glancing up to make sure he’s alone.

  He pages through the memories, the drama, of their time in Russia. He hasn’t looked at it in years.

  Then he sees it. At the bottom of a page, toward the end. He sees it and he knows what Iris has done.

  The doorbell rings. He hopes it’s not the press again.

  He closes the journal, steadies his breathing, and replaces it behind the lyric books. He brushes the light layer of dust from his shaking hands. He answers the door as Iris comes downstairs. He can’t look at Iris right now. It’s the Lakehaven detective, Carmen Ames, and the Travis County detective, Jamika Ponder.

  “Good morning,” he says.

  “May we come inside, sir?” Detective Ponder asks. No “good morning.”

  He nods and lets them in.

  “Did you get in a fight, Mr. Pollitt?” Ponder gestures toward his face.

  “I fell in the greenbelt while running the other day.”

  “Yes, sir, when did that happen?”