Nicola Griffith - Stay

“Yes! And her… Mr. Karp?”

“He’s in a persistent vegetative state, the kind of coma from which you never wake. He’ll get weaker and weaker and then die.”

“She told the truth about that, then.”

I opened the folder, spread out Luz’s birth and adoption certificates, her passport and medical reports. “The only people on this earth now responsible for Luz are you and your husband. And me.”

She frowned. “Where did you get those?”

“From George Karp’s apartment.”

She reached out and touched the birth certificate with a fingertip. “In New York. Miz Goulay said he was beaten half to death, but she didn’t say who by.”

“George Karp was not a good man.”

She nodded, but I wasn’t sure if she was agreeing or simply acknowledging what I’d said. “You weren’t here on vacation, were you?” she said.

“No.”

“And it wasn’t just chance that you came by when we ran out of gas.” She was breathing fast, but this time it wasn’t asthma. “You told a pack of lies to get into my house.”

“I had good reason.”

“You lied, just like that Goulay woman. You even lied about having cancer.”

“I never said I had cancer.”

“Don’t you get clever with me! You know what you meant for me to think.”

“Listen to—”

“No, Miz Aud Thomas or whoever the heck you are, I’ve had my fill today of being bullied and lied to. You’re sitting in my kitchen. I don’t have to listen to one word you say.” She folded her arms and leaned back in her chair. Adeline discovers strength through righteous anger. Shame she hadn’t been able to break free of the Kind Christian Lady persona a little earlier.

The stew simmered peacefully for a while. The dishes on display were a willow pattern; one had a carefully mended crack. Under the table, my knee was swelling.

Eventually she couldn’t stand it. “Just what is it you want with us?”

“A bargain. You don’t want Luz to go, and Luz doesn’t want to go, but you can’t afford to keep her. I can help.”

“Why would you want to do that? What’s Luz to you?”

“My motives have no bearing on the matter.”

“They do for me.”

If I sat here another hour, I wouldn’t be able to drive. “Did you know that the legal age for marriage is fourteen in Georgia, and just twelve in Delaware?” She kept her arms folded, but now she looked uncomfortable. “Wasn’t too hard to put two and two together, was it? Don’t get righteous with me. You have no moral leg to stand on.”

Another pause. “What do you mean, help?”

“Luz stays here. I pay you and untangle the immigration situation. When she’s eighteen she gets to choose her own life.”

She half unfolded her arms, bewildered now. “But why?”

I ignored that. “We’ll come to an agreement, write a contract, a covenant. For the money I send I’ll expect certain things.”

“Why should I trust you? I don’t know you. I don’t even like you.” Heady stuff, freedom. But her timing was inconvenient.

“You don’t have to like me. I don’t have to like you. We simply have to abide by an agreement. For example, one of my conditions would be that she goes to school. A good school.”

A long, cautious pause. “She’s got to attend church.”

“Fine. On the condition that when I set up health and other insurance, you take her in for regular checkups—physical, dental, optical—to medical professionals we agree on beforehand.” She did not say yes or no to that. “If you break the terms of the agreement, I come and take Luz away. If I break them, I give you the documents.” It would be easy enough to take them back again. “All we have to do is make the agreement, and all communication between us will thereafter be through my lawyer, who will hold the documents until Luz is eighteen. Agreed?”

“If you tell me who you are, and why you’re doing this.”

“No.”

“Then we’re done talking.”

“You don’t need my name.”

“I might not be Miss College Mouth Audrey Thomas or whoever the hell you are, but I know a woman who’s hiding something pretty big when I see her. Checks and insurance and doctors. We aren’t talking pin money here. So I want to know who you are and what Luz is to you.”

The key to negotiation lies in ensuring the other party needs to reach an agreement more than you do , my mother told me once when I was twelve. If you’re willing to walk away, you will win . When I asked her what to do if it was something you really, really wanted, she said, If you have a personal stake, get someone else to negotiate on your behalf . That only works if you have someone else.

If you’re willing to walk away… But, Choose, Julia had said, and she had loved me. “I won’t tell you my name.”

“Then—”

“But I will tell you this. I used to be something like that man, like Geordie Karp, but I’ve changed. I’ve—I’ve seen the error of my ways.” I remembered the sampler. “Now I want to do unto others as I would be done by. I want to atone for the past. Helping Luz, helping you all—Luz and you and your husband, and Button—is the only way I know to make it even partway right.”

Long silence. “I met that man but once,” Adeline said meditatively, “and I didn’t like him. Not one bit. He wasn’t the kind to give anyone anything—especially not something like this.” She leaned forward and tapped Luz’s documents. “So I reckon you took them, or maybe made him give you them. So I’m thinking that maybe it’s not a coincidence that he’s in the hospital mostly dead and you’re sitting here talking to me about his daughter. No, close your mouth, I haven’t finished. You had something to do with his hurt. It might be that you hired some roughnecks to settle his hash. It might be that you had good reason. But I don’t much care. He was a bad man. A very bad man. You say you used to be like him. Now, you don’t seem that way to me, except for all your lying, but how can I tell for sure? The way it looks to me, Miss Walk-in-Here-with-a-Big-Checkbook, is that I could be getting myself into just the same mess I got myself into before. There’s a lot I don’t understand and don’t know, and that means maybe one day someone, maybe you, could show up at my door and take Luz, take my child away. And she is mine. She may not have come from my loins in blood and sweat and tears like Button did, but she’s in here.” She thumped her breastbone. “And I need something—some kind of guarantee that’s more than a lawyer’s paper—and I reckon that’s your name.”

I was sipping air carefully, trying to protect my ribs. “What will you give me in return?”

“The time of day.” She folded her arms again.

I stared past her for almost a minute, then reached into my pocket for my wallet. Moving, even my right arm, was getting harder. I pulled out my license and stared at it. The face in the picture seemed naked and defenseless.

“I’ll show you this license on two conditions. One, that you never write my name down anywhere, ever. Two, that you tell no one what it is, not even Jud.” And that you treat her like a daughter. That you love her, because she’s only nine years old.

She considered, nodded, and held out her hand. I gave her the license.

“Aud Torvingen. What kind of name is that?”

“Norwegian.”

She nodded again, mouthed the name to herself a couple of times, and handed it back.

Now she had my name. And a woman in New York had seen my face. One chance phone call could put them together.

“Aud? Miz Torvingen?”

I wrenched my attention back to the table. “Yes.”

“Your color isn’t so good.” Kind Christian Lady returns, magnanimous in victory.