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“Sharon Kerpelman rides again. She must be very proud of herself.”
Nancy allowed herself a wisp of a smile. “She might be, if she hadn’t sold her soul to Rosario Bustamante. I just saw her at the courthouse this morning. She’s working her ass off, representing real scum now.”
“Are you saying Alice Ma
“She is to you. In the big picture, she’s an amateur. I’ve been in interview rooms with some truly scary characters. Alice Ma
“What about Helen Ma
“She goes on because she doesn’t see it that way, because she truly believes she was always well intentioned. Helen Ma
“Aren’t most of us?”
“Not to that extent.”
Cynthia noticed that Nancy had placed one hand on her belly, round and full beneath her straight navy blue skirt, a summery polished cotton that was wrong for the season.
“Are you-?” she asked.
Nancy followed Cynthia’s gaze. “Oh. No, just indigestion from the pizza I ate for lunch. I’m not pregnant.” She smiled. “Not yet.”
“Trying?”
“Sort of. No longer not trying at any rate.”
“Isn’t it hard?”
Nancy laughed. “Actually, I like my husband, so I’m enjoying it.”
“No, I mean-won’t it be difficult to be a homicide detective with a child?”
“Impossible, probably.”
“Even if you could work out the day care and the hours-well, I think it would drive you crazy, knowing the things you know about people, then bringing a child into this world. I don’t know how you could do it.”
“How did you do it,” Nancy asked, “knowing what you knew?”
Cynthia wanted to assume that Nancy was alluding to Olivia’s death, the precarious state of happiness, the folly of bringing another child into this world after losing the first. But the detective could just as well have been referring to what Cynthia knew about herself.
“Look, I have a dentist’s appointment. Was there something specific you wanted from me?”
“Just to touch base,” Nancy said. “I mean, in a weird way I am grateful to you. Given Alice’s past, she might have hurt that child once she realized it wasn’t hers. I’m glad we found her when we did. It’s just too bad that Ro
“Am I supposed to feel guilty?”
Nancy thought about this. “No. Actually-no.”
And Cynthia realized that Nancy Porter was one of those odd people who said precisely what she meant most of the time. She had not come here to taunt her, or to punish her, or even to transfer to Cynthia any guilt she might feel over Ro
The girl left, walking on chunky, out-of-style heels with the over-careful tread people used in cemeteries. Once she got pregnant, she was going to be one of those women who just lost it, whose bodies gave in and never found their way back from the world of elastic waistbands. But she wouldn’t mind, Cynthia had a feeling. She’d be so happy, she wouldn’t mind the extra pounds.
Alone at last, Cynthia said good-bye to her daughter properly, then spent a few minutes talking to God. She started out obedient and humble, but she soon found she was giving him all sorts of instructions, ru
Later that day, driving home from the dentist, she went by way of Nottingham, another habit she couldn’t seem to break. She couldn’t help keeping an eye out for Alice Ma
Yes, there she was, coming down the street with a knapsack on her back, a blue plastic grocery bag in her hand, swinging it the way a child might swing her lunch box. The girl was fatter than ever and she had dyed her blond hair red, presumably so she wouldn’t be recognized at the community college she attended. Yet she had also given an interview to that reporter, Mira Jenkins, just this week, and posed for a big photograph. So anyone who cared knew her hair was red now. Mira had called Cynthia and asked if she had any comment she wanted to make. “I don’t talk to reporters,” Cynthia reminded the girl, who was too full of her own good fortune to get the sly joke. She was working downtown, she told Cynthia. She was covering juvenile justice, a beat created just for her.
“Juvenile justice.” Cynthia had longed to ask Mira, Is that a smaller form of justice, the way a Whopper Jr. is just a smaller version of the Whopper? But she had held her tongue.
At least Alice had the good sense not to smile in the photograph, to look somber and grave, her hands folded on the back of a chair that camouflaged her bulk. She was sorry, she told Mira and her readers. Sorry for everything. But she had always been so easily persuaded by others. First by Ro
“Who that?” Rosalind had asked, coming upon Cynthia as she stared numbly at the paper that autumn morning, poking at Alice Ma
Heads together, mother and daughter studied the photograph. Words occurred to Cynthia, factual but inadequate. To speak the girl’s name, to tell the story, would give her the power she had always craved, to buy into the very happily-ever-after fairy tale that Helen Ma
“Some girl,” Cynthia told Rosalind, turning the page. “Just some girl.”