Lisa Scottoline - Look Again

Ellen thought her heart would break, and in the next minute, her eyes brimmed with tears, and she found herself crying like a baby in her father's arms.

"I'm so sorry, honey," he whispered as Ellen sobbed and breathed in his expensive aftershave, and she drew real comfort from his embrace in a way she never had before. The deepest pain in her heart eased just a little, and she let herself feel how very powerful is something so simple, yet so profound, as a father's love.

And she thanked God he was alive.

It wasn't until they had gone and Ellen was rinsing their coffee mugs that the phone rang in the kitchen. She turned off the faucet, crossed the room, and checked caller ID, which showed the newspaper's main number. She picked up. "Hello?"

"Ellen?" Marcelo asked, worried. "Are you okay? I've been calling your cell."

"I think I left it in your car. I was going to call you, but my father and my new stepmother just left."

"How are you?"

"Good, okay." Ellen glanced over and saw that the Coffmans still weren't home, their house dark. "You probably want me to look at that story, huh?

"Only if you feel up to it." I'm not sure.

"Then let it go. I loved what you wrote for the homicide piece."

"Good, thanks." Ellen felt a warmth she couldn't deny.

"I'll be done here around nine. Happily, there's news besides you."

"You'd never know it from the crowd outside."

"Would you like company tonight? I don't think you should be alone."

"I'd like that."

"I'll be there." Marcelo's voice softened. "Take care of yourself, "til then."

"See you." Ellen hung up and left the kitchen by the other exit, feeling an odd sensation when she reached the upstairs landing. It was exactly the spot where Carol had set Will down, before she'd made her final stand.

Ellen felt a tightness in her chest, then forced herself to step over the spot and climb the stairs. She caught a glimpse of the scene outside on the sidewalk, and the reporters were still there, smoking cigarettes and holding cups of take-out coffee against the cold. The afternoon sky spent its last hour before twilight descended, dropping purple and rose streaks behind the cedar shakes and satellite dishes, a suburban night in winter.

Ellen's clogs clattered on the wooden stair, echoing in the silent house, and she wondered how long she'd go on noticing every noise that she'd never noticed before. She lived in a house of echoes now. She'd have to exchange her clogs for slippers if she wanted to keep her sanity.

She reached the top of the stair, which ended in front of Will's room, and faced his door, which was closed. Not that it helped. Butterfly stickers, scribbled drawings, and a Will's ROOM license plate covered the door, and Ellen reached almost reflexively for the doorknob, then wondered if she should go in.

"Mrrp?" Oreo Figaro chirped, rubbing against her jeans, his tail curled around her leg.

"Don't ask," she told him, twisting the doorknob. She opened the door, and the Cheerios-and-Play-Doh smell caught her by the throat. She willed herself not to cry, and her gaze traveled around the room, dark except for the white rectangle of the window shade, bright from the snow and the TV klieg lights outside. She didn't know how long she stood there, but it was long enough for the daylight to leak away, so stuffed animals dematerialized into shadowy blobs and the spines of books thinned to straight black lines. Stars glowed faintly from the ceiling, and the WILL constellation took her back in time, to the countless nights she'd held him before bed, reading to him, talking or just listening to his adorable up-and-down cadence, the music of his stories from school or swimming, told in his little-boy register, like the sweetest of piccolos.

She watched almost numbly as Oreo Figaro leapt noiselessly to the foot of Will's bed, where he always slept, curled next to a floppy stuffed bunny whose ears were silhouetted in the light from the window shade. Will had gotten that bunny at a party that Courtney had thrown for her at work, when she adopted him. Sarah Liu had given it to him.

Anger flickered in Ellen's chest. Sarah, who was supposed to be her colleague. Sarah, who would later sell both of them out, for money. Sarah, who stole from her the choice about when or whether to give Will up. He could be here right now, home where he belonged, cuddled up with his cat, instead of in a strange hotel room, lost and confused, in all kinds of pain, going home to a house without a mother.

"You bitch!" Ellen heard herself shout. In one movement, she lunged into the room, grabbed the stuffed bunny, and hurled it into the bookshelves, where it hit a toy car. Oreo Figaro leapt from the bed, startled.

Anger flamed in Ellen's chest, and she hurried from the room.

On fire.

Ellen stood on the snowy brick doorstep and knocked on the front door of the gorgeous Dutch Colonial. The ride to Radnor hadn't dissipated her anger, even with news vans trailing her, and she knocked again on the door, drenched in the calcium white light of the klieg lights. Reporters recorded her every movement, but she didn't care. They were doing their job, and she was doing hers.

"Hello?" Sarah opened the front door, and her dark eyes flared in alarm. She shielded her eyes from the klieg lights with a raised hand. "What are you doing here?"

"Let me in. We're on TV, girlfriend."

"You have no right to come here!" Sarah tried to shut the front door, but Ellen straight-armed it open.

"Thanks, don't mind if I do." She powered over the threshold into a warm, well-appointed living room, furnished with gray suede sectionals and a thick pile matching rug, where two young boys were sitting on the floor, playing a noisy video game on a widescreen TV.

"Wait! My kids are here."

"I can see that." Ellen masked her emotions to wave to them. "Hey, guys, how you doing?"

"Fine," one answered without looking up, but Sarah shut the door and motioned to them.

"Boys, go to your room," she said, staccato, and they set down the game controllers and rose instantly, astounding Ellen. She couldn't get that kind of obedience from her hair, much less her son. They left the room, and Sarah picked up the controller, hit the red button for off, and set it down on top of the TV, which had gone black.

"Sarah, how could you do it?" Ellen kept her temper in check. "Not just to me, but to Will? How could you do that to Will?"

"I didn't do anything to him, nothing wrong anyway." Sarah edged backwards, tugging at the corner of her skinny black sweater.

"You cannot believe that."

"I do, and it's true. Your son is where he belongs, with his real parents." Sarah didn't look regretful in the least, her mouth still tight. "I did the right thing."

"You didn't do it because it was the right thing. You did it for the money." Ellen took a step closer, fighting the impulse to hit Sarah in the face. "You couldn't wait to quit your job, now that you're rich."

"It doesn't matter why I did it, what matters is that he wasn't legally yours. He was Timothy Braverman."

"I might have told them, but you took it out of my hands."

"No, you wouldn't have. No mother would."

"Maybe you wouldn't, but I might have, and because of you, Will was taken in the worst possible way." Ellen's anger bubbled to the surface. "No explanation, no phasing in, just taken. It's the kind of thing that can mess him up for life."

"All I did was tell the truth."

"Don't pretend you have the moral high ground, because you don't. Was it moral to spy on me? To search my computer? You even tricked my son into telling you where I was!"

"He wasn't your son. He was their son."

"He was my son."