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“Adoption isn’t like that. There’s no abuela around to tell stories about the biological mother.”
“I didn’t mean an actual living person. I meant more like the essence of the birth mother.”
“That doesn’t seem to bother the millions of other couples who adopt.”
“I don’t think other people are as in touch with that sort of thing as I am.”
“What sort of thing?”
“Feeling someone’s… presence.”
Jack knew that she was talking about her father, and he feared that Jessie’s death had triggered something. “Is that why you’re awake? Were you having that dream about your father again?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Come on, I didn’t want to make this conversation about that. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. This was a traumatic event for both of us. If you want to talk to me or someone else or even a counselor, it’s okay.”
She fell silent, then looked at him and said, “Actually, there’s something I’ve been wanting to show you.”
“What?”
“Wait right here.”
She rose and followed the dark hall to the spare bedroom that she’d turned into her temporary home office. In a minute she returned to the table and laid a ten-by-twelve photograph before him and said, “I shot a few rolls of film a couple weeks ago. Just a run-of-the-mill outdoor portrait of a little girl and her dog.”
Jack studied the photograph, shrugged, and said, “It’s a nice picture.”
“Look at the lower right-hand corner. See anything?”
He zeroed in. “Like what?”
“Does that not look like a shadow to you? As if someone might have been standing behind me?”
He looked again and said, “I don’t see any shadow.”
“You don’t see that?”
“The entire corner is a little darker than the rest of the photograph, but it doesn’t look like a person to me. Was someone there with you?”
“No. That’s the whole point. It was just me, the girl, and the dog. Yet I had a weird sensation that someone else was there during the shoot.”
“Cindy, please,” he said with concern.
“No, it’s true. Then I went back and took a really good look at the proofs, and I saw this.”
“Saw what?”
“This silhouette.”
“It’s just a dark spot.”
“It’s a person.”
“Cindy-”
“Just listen to me. I’m not losing my mind. I thought I was, to be honest. Between my creepy dreams and this shadow in the photograph, I was starting to think-well, I didn’t know what to think. But ever since this thing happened with Jessie, it’s begi
“What’s making sense?”
She paused, as if to underscore her words. “Maybe someone’s following me.”
“What?”
“Jessie told you that some thugs were behind that viatical investment. She said they were going to kill her, didn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“What if those same thugs think her lawyer helped her pull off the scam? They could be out to get you, too. They could be out to get us.”
“No one’s going to get us.”
“Then why is this shadow in my picture?”
“I honestly don’t see it.”
Her eyes seemed to cloud over. She looked at the photograph, then at Jack. “You really don’t see anything?”
He shook his head. “If you want, we can hire another photographer to examine it. See if their professional judgment squares with yours.”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“Yes. You’re right. It’s not there.”
Jack recoiled, confused by her sudden reversal. “It’s not?”
She shook her head. “The first time I examined this proof, I was sure I saw a human shadow. Then I looked at it again tonight and I wasn’t so sure. You just confirmed it for me. I’m seeing things that aren’t even there.” She chuckled mirthlessly and said, “I really must be freaking out.”
“What happened to us is enough to push anyone to the edge.”
She moved closer, as if telling him to hold her. He took her in his arms and said, “Everything’s going to be okay.”
“You promise?”
“Everyone has fears. The imagination can run away with you.”
“Tell me about it.”
“It’ll pass. Believe me. We’ll be fine.”
“I know. Tonight’s just been especially tough. The whole day, really.”
“What happened?”
“It’s just that…”
“What?”
“After this horrible thing happened in our own house, I’d managed to convince myself that God had something really good in store for us. That’s why it hit me pretty hard today when I found out I wasn’t pregnant.”
“Good things are in store for us. There are so many options we haven’t even talked about yet. Fertility drugs, even artificial insemination, if you want.”
She smiled weakly.
“What?” he asked.
“An absurd image just flashed into my head. You sitting all by yourself in the back room of some doctor’s office, flipping through the pages of a dirty magazine…”
“It’s not like that at all.”
“Oh, really, stud? How do you think they collect their specimen?”
“I du
“Perv,” she said as she pushed him away playfully.
He pulled her back into his arms. “Come here, you.”
She settled into his embrace, put her head against his shoulder, and said, “A baby. What a thought.”
“Our baby. Even more amazing.”
“You ready for this?”
“Heck, no. You?”
“Of course not.”
“Perfect,” he said. “Why should we be different from everyone else?”
She flashed a wan smile, her voice seeming to trail off in the distance. “If only we were just a little bit more like everyone else.”
Jack wasn’t sure how to answer that, so he kept holding her. After a minute or two, she started to rock gently in his arms. It was barely audible, but she was humming the lullaby, “Hush, Little Baby.” In his head Jack was following along and enjoying the melody, until she stopped suddenly in midverse. It was a cold and abrupt ending, like hopes and dreams interrupted. He waited for her to continue, but she didn’t.
They stayed wrapped in each other’s arms, saying not another word, neither of them wanting to be the first to let go.
17
•
In the morning Jack went jogging. He pushed it farther than his normal run, following the tree-lined path along Old Cutler Road all the way to Coco Plum, an exclusive waterfront community. The leafy canopy of century-old banyans extended from one side of the road to the other, a tu
Jack was approaching the four-mile mark of his run and feeling the pull of a restless night. He and Cindy had gone back to bed around three A.M. Their talk had put his worries about Jessie and his letter to the state attorney on the back burner, but Jack’s thoughts of his mother were percolating to the surface.
The only thing he knew for certain about his mother was that he’d never known her. Everything else had come secondhand from his father and, much later in his life, Abuela. Jack’s mother was born Ana Maria Fuentes in Havana and grew up in Bejucal, a nearby town. She left Cuba as a teenager in 1961, under a program called Pedro Pan (Spanish for “Peter Pan”), a humanitarian effort that was started by an Irish Catholic priest and that enabled thousands of anxious Cuban parents to spirit away their children to America after Castro took over. Ana Maria was eventually linked up with an uncle in Tampa, and Abuela had every intention of joining them just as soon as she had the chance. Unfortunately, that chance didn’t come for almost forty years, when Abuela was finally able to get a visa to visit her dying brother. For Ana Maria, that meant making a new life for herself without her mother. She worked menial jobs to learn English, and moved to Miami, where she met Harry Swyteck, a handsome young college student who happened to be home on summer break. From the old photographs Jack had seen, it was obvious the boy was totally smitten. Jack was born eleven months after they were married. His mother died while he was in the nursery. Doctors weren’t as quick to diagnose pre-eclampsia in the 1960s as they are today, or at least they weren’t as accountable for their screwups.