Every Secret Thing

36.

“It’s my baby,” Alice said. “You can’t arrest someone for taking her own baby.”

“Sure you can,” Nancy said. “Only this isn’t your baby. And even if it were, it wouldn’t be legal for you to take her, to hurt her, or put her somewhere she isn’t safe.”

“She’s my baby.” Alice spoke in a monotone, as if the conversation bored her. “It took me a long time to find her, but now that I have, you can’t make me give her back. I never wanted to give her up in the first place.”

“Alice…” Sharon put a cautionary hand on her shoulder, but Alice shook it off. On Alice’s left, Rosario Bustamante rolled her eyes and looked around the interview room, as if hopeful a bar might suddenly materialize. She had arrived on a wave of gin fumes, Nancy couldn’t help noticing, but there was nothing to suggest that the older woman was the least bit impaired. She looked rumpled, but no more so than Sharon, who had been getting ready for bed when summoned here.

“She’s my baby,” Alice said. “I knew it the moment I saw her.”

Alice had been repeating this one assertion over and over, her own Baltimore catechism, refusing to elaborate, indifferent to the evidence the detectives offered to the contrary. Told that the DNA evidence had already established Brittany Little was, in fact, the daughter of Maveen Little, Alice had shrugged and said: “Then you did it wrong. You better double-check.” Asked where the child was, she said she wouldn’t admit to anything until they conceded the girl was hers.

And so they had gone, around and around, until it was going on eleven o’clock.

“Look, this isn’t productive,” Sharon said. “Make us an offer. Maybe a misdemeanor.”

“What misdemeanor?” Nancy’s voice was hoarse from exhaustion, and she sounded a decade older than she had that morning. It was a good effect, actually. She wished she could cultivate it at will. “She’s all but confessed that she took the child. There’s no turning back from that.”

“She’s confused, she’s suggestible. She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”

“I know exactly what I’m saying,” Alice said. “That girl is my baby. They took her away from me so no one would find out what happened to me when I was in Middlebrook. But now everyone is going to know.”

Frustrated by the girl’s stubborn will, Nancy left the interview room. Helen Ma

“What’s this about the baby, Mrs. Ma

“Please-call me Helen. I think of Mrs. Ma

She had made this plea before, more than once, but Nancy continued to ignore it. “Why does Alice think this baby is hers?”

“Oh, she doesn’t really. I mean, she’s very fixated on this issue, but she knows her child was put up for adoption. She thinks because she never named the father that the adoption wasn’t legal. But given Alice’s circumstances, I had the power of attorney. If she hadn’t hidden the pregnancy from me into her third trimester, I would have forced her to get an abortion.”

Nancy wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Alice had concealed her pregnancy for just that reason.

“She got pregnant while in the juvenile facility?”

“Oh, yes. Shocking, isn’t it? We begged Alice to tell us who the father was. Because lord knows, he might still be out there, preying on other girls. But she was quite stubborn. She thinks the man loved her. Which I’m sure is what he told her. Don’t they always? It was a mess, actually, getting the courts to allow the adoption. But Sharon helped.”

“So who adopted the child?”

“Not this Maveen Little woman. This is not Alice’s baby.”

“We know that.” It was hard, concealing her exasperation with Helen Ma

“Oh, no, it was confidential. I wanted Alice to move on, to forget about it.”

“So why is Alice so convinced that Brittany Little is her child?”

Helen Ma

“I haven’t the faintest idea.”

“You know, we’ve been very patient with you, Mrs. Ma

“Helen.”

“We’ve been very patient with you, Mrs. Ma

“Alice doesn’t confide in anyone, even me.” Helen leaned forward and lowered her voice. “She’s always been a little secretive. Self-contained. And she’s not the most, well, normal young woman. This could be all in her head. She may not have anything to do with the kidnapping. She could think the girl is hers because she saw her on television, and it got all mixed up in her head.”

“Why would she even think that?”

Helen sighed, looked away. Now it was a poster on the wall, an admonition to wear seat belts, that demanded her unwavering gaze.

“You have to understand. She had been obsessive on this topic since she came home. Where was her baby? What had happened to it? How could I give it up? Why hadn’t I kept the child and raised it? She wouldn’t leave it alone, and the simple truth-that the child had been put up for adoption and I had no idea where she was-didn’t satisfy her. She kept hounding me for answers. I had to tell her something.”

“And?”

“I made up a little story that would provide a sense of closure. So I said I had seen her little girl in the Catonsville area-they have such pretty houses over there, lovely old Victorians. I knew Alice would like that. I said the baby had wonderful parents and she was beautiful, with café-au-lait skin and amber hair, which fell in ringlets. Oh-and that she had a birthmark on her left shoulder blade, like a little shadow of her heart.”

“And how did you come up with a description of a child who happened to match Rosalind Barnes so closely? Sheer coincidence?”

“Well, yes and no.”

Helen Ma

“You see, I saw the other mother in the grocery store one day, around the time Alice came home.”

“The other mother?”

“You know. Cynthia Barnes. The one whose child Alice…” Helen Ma

“What?”

“Think about it. The Barnes mother had a baby in her forties, four years after the other girl died. Which isn’t to say that what Alice did can be rationalized in any way. But the fact remains. A baby died, and it was my daughter’s fault. I never lost sight of that. But another child lives, a beautiful child, and I’m not sure she would if it weren’t for Alice. My daughter helped to bring that little life into the world. In a sense. I didn’t see the harm in using that child’s description to assuage Alice’s unhappiness.”