Lisa Scottoline - Look Again

Ellen eyed the cars stacked ahead, their red taillights a glowing line, their exhaust trailing white plumes. The day was overcast and cold, and freezing rain had left an icy sleeve on the tree branches and a black veneer on the roads. The traffic stayed bad on the two-lane roads to Stoatesville, and in time, she found Corinth Street among the warren of rowhouses in a working-class neighborhood around an abandoned steel mill. She traveled down the street, reading the house numbers. Suddenly her cell phone started ringing in her purse, and she fumbled for it. The display showed a number she didn't recognize, and she hit Ignore when she realized that the house coming up was number 393.

Amy Martin's house.

A woman was standing in its driveway, scraping ice off the windshield of an old black Cherokee. Her back was turned, and she wore an Eagles knit cap, a thick black parka, jeans, and black rubber boots.

Amy?

Ellen pulled up in front of the house, grabbed her bag and file, got out, walked up the driveway. "Excuse me, Ms. Martin?" she asked, her heart thumping like crazy.

She turned, startled, and Ellen saw instantly that the woman was too old to be Amy Martin. She looked to be in her late sixties, and her hooded eyes widened under the Eagles hat. She said, "Jeez, you scared me!"

"Sorry." Ellen introduced herself. "I'm looking for Amy Martin."

"Amy's my daughter, and she don't live here anymore. I'm Gerry."

Ellen tried to keep her bearings. Gerry Martin had been one of the witnesses on the consent form. She was looking into the eyes of Will's grandmother, the first blood relative of his she had ever seen. "She gave this address as hers, two years ago."

"She always does, but she don't live here. I get all her mail, all those damn bills, I throw 'em all away."

"Where does Amy live?"

"Hell if I know." Gerry returned to scraping the windshield, shaving fragile curls of ice, making a krrp krrp sound. She pursed her lips with the effort, sending deep wrinkles radiating from her mouth. Her black glove was over-sized, dwarfing the red plastic scraper.

"You don't know where she is?"

"No." Krrp krrp. "Amy's over eighteen. It ain't my business no more."

"How about where she works?"

"Who said she works?"

"I'm just trying to find her."

"I can't help you."

For some reason, Ellen hadn't imagined there'd be an estrangement. "When was the last time you saw her?"

"Awhile."

"A year or two?"

"Try five."

Ellen knew it couldn't be true. Gerry had signed the consent form two years ago. Why was she lying? "Are you sure?"

Gerry looked over, eyes narrowed under the fuzzy hat, scraper stalled on the windshield. "She owes you money, right? You're a bill collector or a lawyer or somethin"?"

"No." Ellen paused. If she wanted the truth, she'd have to tell the truth. "Actually, I'm the woman who adopted her baby."

Gerry burst into laughter, showing yellowed teeth and bracing herself against the Jeep, scraper in hand.

"Why is that funny?" Ellen asked, and after Gerry stopped laughing, she wiped her eyes with the back of her big glove.

"You better come in, honey." "Why?"

"We got some talkin' to do," Gerry answered, placing her gloved hand on Ellen's shoulder.

Gerry went into the kitchen to make coffee, leaving Ellen in the living room, which was barely illuminated by two retro floor lamps, their low-wattage bulbs in ball-shaped fixtures on a stalk. Beige curtains covered the windows, and the air was thick with stale cigarette smoke. Flowered metal trays served as end tables flanking a worn couch of blue velveteen, and three mismatched chairs clustered around a large-screen TV.

Ellen crossed the room, drawn to photographs that ran the length of the wall. There were over-sized school pictures of boys and girls in front of screensaver blue skies, photo montages cut to fit the various circles and squares, and a wedding photo of a young man and a woman in an elaborate bridal headdress. She shook her head in wonderment. They were Will's blood, but complete strangers, and she was his mother, known and loved by him, but having none of his blood. She went from one photo to the next, trying to put together the puzzle that was her son.

Which girl is Amy?

The photos showed girls and boys at all different ages, and Ellen tried to follow each child as he or she grew up, picking blue eyes from brown and matching young smiles to older smiles, age-progressing all of them in her mind's eye, searching for Amy. One of the girls had blondish hair and blue eyes, plus Will's fair skin, with just the hint of freckles dotting a small, pert nose.

"Here we go." Gerry came into the room with a skinny brown cigarette and two heavy glass mugs of murky coffee, one of which she handed to Ellen.

"Thanks."

"Siddown, will ya?" Gerry gestured at the couch, her cigarette trailing an acrid snake of smoke, but Ellen stayed with the photos.

"Can I ask, is this one Amy, with the blue eyes and freckles?"

"No, that's Cheryl, her sister. The girl with her is my oldest. I had three girls, one boy."

Ellen remembered the name Cheryl Martin as the other signature on the consent form.

"This one's Amy, the baby of the family in more ways than one." Gerry tapped a smaller photo in the corner, and Ellen walked over, feeling a frisson of discovery.

"So this is Amy, huh?" She leaned close to the photo of a young girl, maybe thirteen years old, leaning on a red Firebird. Her dark blond hair was in cornrows, and her blue eyes were sly. She had a crooked grin that telegraphed too-cool-for-school, and Ellen scrutinized her features. Amy and Will had the same coloring, but their features weren't alike. Still, one picture wasn't a fair sample. "Which of the other photos are Amy?"

"Uh, lemme see." Gerry eyed the photos with a short laugh. "None! I tell you, by the time you get to your fourth, you're a little sick of it, you know what I mean?"

Arg. "I only have the one."

"Oh, after the first, you stop springing for the forty-five-dollar pictures, the refrigerator magnet, the keychain, all that happy horseshit." Gerry motioned to the couch again. "Come on, sit."

"Thanks." Ellen walked over, sank into the couch, and sipped the coffee, which was surprisingly good. "Wow."

"I put in real cream. That's my secret." Gerry sat down heavily, catty-corner to the couch, pulling an ancient beanbag ashtray onto the chair arm. Her expression looked softer, her hard lines smoothed by the low light. Her hair was a tinted brown with gray roots, the ends frayed, and she wore it tucked behind her ears. Her nose was stubby on a wide face, but she had a motherly smile.

"Why did you laugh outside?" Ellen asked, her fingers tight around her glass mug.

"First, tell me about Amy and this baby." Gerry took a drag on the brown cigarette.

"He was sick, in the hospital. I did a story on it, a series." Ellen reached into her purse, pulled out the clipping from her file, and showed it to Gerry, who barely glanced at it, so she put it back. "You may have seen them in the paper."

"We don't get the paper."

"Okay. Will, the baby I adopted, was in cardiac intensive care when I met him. He had a heart defect."

"And you think he was Amy's baby?"

"I know so."

"How?" Gerry sucked on her cigarette, then blew out a cone of smoke from the side of her mouth, meaning to be polite. "I mean, where'd you get your information?"

"From a lawyer, who died. My lawyer, mine and Amy's. It was a private adoption, and she brokered the deal between us."

"Amy brokered it?"

"No, the lawyer did. Karen Batz."

"It's a lady lawyer?"

"Yes. Does the name mean anything to you?"

Gerry shook her head. "You sure it's Amy? My Amy?"