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“What do you mean?”
“About adoption. In crime. Those kids are damaged.”
“Oh, that’s ridiculous. There’s no empirical data to support that. Death row is full of men who were raised by their biological parents. Biological parents who beat them or mistreated them, in most cases. Some of the men I’ve met would have been better off if they had been adopted.”
“You think having bum parents is a reason not to execute someone?”
“Yes, in fact, I do. But then, I don’t think there’s anything that supports the state’s right to murder. Killing is wrong or it isn’t. If it’s wrong for an individual to take someone’s life, it’s wrong for the state. The state doesn’t steal from thieves-”
“It seizes money. It exacts fines.”
“That’s not the same thing. The state doesn’t sexually assault rapists. Why is it only with homicide, and only a particular type of homicide, that we insist on this kind of justice?”
“Walter Bowman did some pretty horrible things.”
“Yes, he did. He’d be the first person to tell you that. And he accepts that a lifetime in prison, with no chance for parole, is fair.”
Jared had abandoned the chili and was picking at the corn bread that accompanied it.
“Look, I can’t promise anything,” Barbara said. “But there’s a possibility that Walter will give you an interview. Walter and Elizabeth. But you have to be patient.”
“How do I know you can deliver either one of them? Why should I believe that you even know where Elizabeth Lerner is?”
“I’ll show you after lunch.”
30
“SO WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN up to?” Walter asked Eliza. It was a natural question. So natural it seemed even more u
She found herself tempted to tell him about their perfect Sunday. Of course, she would not. She would not speak of her children to Walter, ever, and, so far, he had the good sense not to inquire about them. Besides, it would have been insensitive to prattle on about her happiness, cruel and taunting. That, of course, was part of the appeal. It would have been a way of saying, indirectly: I am where I am, I have what I have, because I am a good person at heart. You are where you are because you’re bad. Just because I was dragged into your life for almost forty days doesn’t make me bad, too.
But the more pressing need was to have the conversation with someone, anyone. She had tried to engage Peter on the topic, but satisfactory husband that he was, he was a man and not one inclined to wax poetic about a day of cupcakes and movies. Vo
And here was Walter, someone who knew her in a way that almost no one did. With the exception of her parents and Vo
Her full name was Elizabeth Hortense Lerner, after her maternal grandmother. Elizabeth Hortense Babington had lived on Baltimore ’s North Side, walking distance from the Quaker meetinghouse she attended. But then-she walked everywhere and didn’t even own a car, relying on cabs for journeys that could not be made on foot. If she had been someone else’s grandmother, Elizabeth and Vo
So she had amputated “Beth” and never looked back.
“My life is very ordinary,” she told Walter. “It doesn’t produce much drama.”
“Same here,” he said, with a laugh. That was new. She didn’t remember Walter being able to laugh at himself. “But I guess, in your case, that’s a good thing. You’ve put together a very nice life for yourself.”
“That wasn’t what you said in your letter.”
“What do you mean?” Puzzled, on the boundary of hurt.
“You said you expected more of me.”
“No,” Walter countered. “I said it wasn’t what I envisioned for you.”
She couldn’t argue the words; she had shredded the letter. But she could contest the meaning. “But that was the implication. That you expected me to achieve in a career setting.”
“No, I don’t think so,” Walter said. “I mean, no offense”-she braced herself for the insult that inevitably followed those words-“but you didn’t even like kids. You were always pointing out how grubby this one was, or complaining about the ones who cried.”
“I was?” She had been fifteen. She didn’t remember thinking about children one way or another, but neither had she been thinking about a career. Her only goal was to be…grown-up. Which she thought meant being some version of Mado
“No one likes children when they are a child,” she said now.
“Do you remember going to Luray Caverns?”
“Yes.” The answer was actually more complicated. Her time with Walter-it existed in some odd space in her brain, which was neither memory nor not-memory. It was like a story she knew about someone else, a story told in great detail so many times that she could rattle it off. It was The Three Little Pigs, The Boy Who Cried Wolf, Little Red Riding Hood, one of those grim Grimm fairy tales filled with horrible details-collapsing households, devoured animals, Red and Grandmama stepping out of the wolf’s sliced-open belly-made tolerable by their happy endings.