Nicola Griffith - Stay

“Any suggestions?”

“She needs to be adopted by someone else. Then have the adoptive parents and child live together for two years, after which you can apply for permanent residency—the green card—and social security number.”

“How do I do that if she’s an illegal alien?”

“That will take some thinking about.”

Tammy got up and headed for the shower.

“What about citizenship?” I asked him.

“Once the child has permanent residency, the adoptive adult can apply for naturalization.”

“So what you’re saying is we really have to find a way to get her adopted.”

“Essentially, yes.”

I had the original adoption certificate. A template. I knew some creative people. “And how carefully is such documentation scrutinized?”

A pause. A long pause. “It’s not so much the physical documentation as the electronic trail.” A diplomatic way of saying that forging the certificate won’t do you much good unless you can hack State Department computers.

Perhaps the problem could be tackled from the other end. “Suppose the adoptive parent had applied for the green card for the child before he died. What would happen to the application then?”

“There’s no reason for it not to go through if all other conditions have been met. Especially if the adoptive parent had also left a will specifying legal guardianship for the child in the interim.”

“Mr. Poorway, will you take me as a client?”

Another of those long pauses. “I’m assuming we’re now speaking to the issue of client-attorney privilege?”

“Yes.”

“Give me your number, please, and I’ll call you back in a few minutes.” I agreed, gave him the number, and folded the phone. It wasn’t hard to guess who he’d be calling now.

Tammy wandered through wrapped in a towel, drying her hair. “Done already?”

“Waiting for him to call back.”

“How about waiting somewhere else?” She gestured at her near-nakedness.

I hauled myself up the two steps to my bed. I’d lost count of the times I’d seen Tammy naked, both live and on tape. I wasn’t the only one pretending the last few days had never happened.

The phone rang. “Yes, I’ll take you as a client,” Solomon Poorway said. Bette Fleishman must have persuaded him I wasn’t a mass murderer. I smiled bleakly. “Ms. Torvingen?”

“Aud,” I said.

“Very well, Aud.” No offer to be called Chuck. “Our conversation is now privileged. However, I would prefer that you not test my ethics too severely.”

“Thank you for your candor. Here’s another hypothetical question. If the INS should receive a packet dated before the adoptive father died, a signed and dated application for permanent residence, and if there was an addendum to his will giving, say, me guardianship, then I would be her legal guardian until she became a legal resident, yes? Then once she got her green card, I could get her a social security number, and apply for citizenship on her behalf?”

“Yes.” He didn’t sound happy about it.

“And it wouldn’t be necessary for the child to live with the legal guardian.” I would send checks. I didn’t particularly want to meet her, but I could at least make sure she had warm clothes, enough to eat, and someone to look after the basics.

“No.”

I wanted to ask what kind of wording would be necessary on the addendum about guardianship, but no doubt that would be pushing his ethics too far, so I thanked him and hung up. Tammy was now dressed. I limped back down to the table and reopened the folder.

“You want breakfast?” Tammy asked.

“Um.”

“Well, don’t jump up and down with gratitude or anything.”

I looked up. Not pretending quite everything away, then. “Jumping up and down would be a bit tricky at the moment.”

“Is that a joke, Aud Torvingen?”

The old Tammy had not been pleasant, but this new one was unfathomable. I turned back to the folder and riffled through its contents, thinking. I spread out the information on the Carpenters, including the black-and-white photograph of a house, surrounded by farmland; it looked fairly isolated. I picked up the fact sheet again, read it more carefully. Church of Christ. New Testament literalists. Not technophobic, exactly, but disapproving of frivolity; a phone would be fine, and a car, but definitely no music—apart from the human voice in praise to His glory; modern medicine would be acceptable, as long as it was absolutely necessary—no antidepressants, no Valium, no sleeping pills. Nothing about dancing, one way or the other. Jud Carpenter was a deacon of the Plaume City Church of Christ congregation. I found an atlas, and paper and pencil, and took notes.

Tammy made toast and eggs and tea. I ate the eggs, crunched my way through the half-burnt bread, sipped at the overbrewed tea, still thinking. It might work, but I’d have to check a few details. No carelessness this time. I touched my neck.

“Hurt?”

“Um? No.”

“Good. So, you decided how to handle it?”

I had never talked to anyone about my methods before. Julia had never had the chance to see me work.

“They live in an isolated house in the middle of Nowhere, Arkansas,” I said. “Which is good, in the sense that I should be able to snoop about unseen because there’ll be hardly anyone around. But it’s bad because if there is anyone about, I’ll stick out like a sore thumb. But the best thing is, they’re big-time churchgoers.”

“Sunday,” she said, nodding. “The whole family.” Smarter than she looked. “All day. All that preaching and singing. Hours and hours to get into their house and take a look around.” She grinned at me, then remembered and turned away.

I turned on my laptop and while it warmed up Tammy pulled on a sweatshirt and went outside. I hooked up my cell phone, got online and started searching the web. After a few minutes, I heard the chunk-and-scatter of wood being chopped into kindling. For the next hour, I clicked my way through web pages, and Tammy got a real rhythm going with the hatchet; she had peeled down to her T-shirt and the wood was piling up. We didn’t need it. I watched for a while, then picked up the phone book and turned to electronics suppliers.

Tammy came back in just as I finished organizing my notes. The exercise had done her good; she looked bigger, stronger, more relaxed.

“Tea?”

“Thank you,” she said, and smiled tentatively. “It’s great out there, real fresh and clean-smelling.” I smiled back, then got up to fill the kettle. Tammy looked at my neat pile of notes. “You look all set.”

“I’ve worked out a beginning. But there’s nothing I can do for a while.” In New York both knees had been whole, and I’d still had my throat slit by a scarecrow with a razor.

A house is more likely to be inhabitable in the long term if you approach it as a spaceship. Think of the walls and roof and windows as hull integrity; electrical, heating, and sewage systems as life support; floors and interior walls as decorated bulkheads. I had walls and a roof but would need to get the windows glazed before there was perfect hull integrity. I’d dug and installed the septic system months ago, but still needed to install toilet, bath, sinks, and shower. The electrical system could wait. Heating couldn’t. I needed glass, I needed a wood-burning stove, and I needed to check and repoint the chimney and flue. We would have to go to town for the glass and the stove, which for now left the chimney and flue.

The cabin smelled of cold stone and raw wood, and my breath steamed. I stood in the middle of the unfinished floor and studied the massive fieldstone fireplace.

“How are you with heights?” I asked Tammy.

“Depends,” she said warily. “What did you have in mind?”