Page 72 of The Other Mother
Six months later, I step up to the witness stand, raise my right hand, and begin to tell the truth that will topple an international trafficking network and reunite dozens of families, including the one I'd built with a child who would always be both Mara's daughter and my own.
34
GRAVE AND GLASS
The cemetery gate squeaks when I push it open. It is early enough that the sprinklers have just shut off and the creosote smells sharp, like someone has sliced the air. I park under a palo verde and carry a single long-stem rose in one hand and a small velvet pouch in the other.
I find the gravestone. The granite is pale and clean. Someone at the grounds crew cares enough to keep dust from settling into the letters. I kneel and trace the name with my finger because I need to feel the cut of it to believe it is real.
Evelyn Grace
Born & Died September 3, 2024
I place the rose where the grass meets granite and wait for the ground to steady under me. In the pouch is the pacifier with GRACIE etched into the plastic guard. It feels heavier than it should. A small, ordinary thingthat has carried too much. I lay it at the base of the stone and watch the first ants arrive to investigate. After a moment I pick it up again and slip it back into the pouch. I can leave flowers. I do not have to leave the rest.
“I should have been here sooner,” I say. My voice sounds like it belongs to someone older. “They stole the minutes that mattered. That wasn’t your fault. That wasn’t mine.”
The wind crosses the cemetery,lifting dry grass, making the little American flags on other graves flutter. A bird calls from the mesquite tree and then goes quiet. I tell my dead daughter what I can tell her. The story in the papers isn’t entirely true, but it’s not really false. I promise her that I will write it down for her sister one day and we will always remember her name.
“You’ll always be with me,” I say, and I press my palm to the stone until the cold seeps into my skin.
Eva fusses in the stroller behind me. I pull it a little closer and she revels in the motion. Her fist is hooked around the corner of the rosebud blanket. It is clean now, mended at one edge. I used to wonder if touching it was a betrayal. I don’t anymore. The blanket is a fact. So is the child who likes the feel of the embroidery under her fingers.
There is a letter in my bag on thick paper from a family court judge with a seal that impressed me even after all the federal letterheads. The temporaryguardianship the FBI set up has been converted to a permanent order under victim protections. The adoption petition is filed. When the file moves to the final drawer, there will be a birth record that tells the truth in the small space they give you to tell anything.
Biological mother: Mara Vasquez.
Legal mother:Claire Matthews.
Father: not listed. It is not tidy. It should not be.
“Your sister will know the truth about her birth mother and her other mother,” I say to the stone.
A golf cart hums at the far end of the row and then turns away. I breathe and do not rush. I have been moving fast for too long. There is a kind of relief in choosing to move slow.
I say one last goodbye and push the stroller toward the gate and then stop and look back. I touch my palm to my chest, then to the stroller canopy, and then I let the gate swing shut behind us.
The county jailis colder than I expect. Fluorescent light hums and turns everyone the same shade of tired. The officer at the desk checks my ID and stamps the clipboard without looking at my face. A plastic sign asks me to remove my jewelry and anything that might become a weapon. But I have not worn my wedding bands in almost two years.
They take me past doors that open only whenanother door closes and into a visitation room with two rows of booths. The glass between us is scuffed with the grease of past palms, past foreheads, past phone receivers pressed too hard. A young man in a red hoodie is already in one booth, crying into a handset. In another, a woman keeps one finger lifted like she is making a point in a classroom.
Adam comes in with a guard and sits on the other side of the glass. He has lost weight and his hair is longer. And he looks like he has aged fifteen years. He stares at my hands before he looks at my face, and I can see him inventorying what is missing. I pick up the receiver because I want to be finished.
“Thank you for coming,” he says. His voice tries for the same calm tone he used to use when clients balked at a bid. I remember the way those men softened after he talked. I remember thinking it was a gift.
I do not answer the thanks. I ask the one question that has lived under my tongue since the coffee shop where Lex slid a file across to me and my life tipped.
“Why did you do this?”
He exhales and looks down. He rubs his thumbnail along the seam of the tabletop as if he can lift the edge of it and climb through. When he looks back up, his eyes are wet and clear. He is good at this.
“You were in pain,” he says. “You were terrified. You asked me not to let you make a decision you would regret. You said if anything went wrong to do what was best. I did that.”
“You did not answer me.”
“It was standard consent. You were under sedation. We had your advance directive and the temporary authorization. You asked me to protect you.”
He saysthe word protect like he can build a shelter out of it and open the door for me. The memory he is selling has enough true in it to sting.
