Cody McFadyen - Abandoned

“Jesus.”

“I’m giving you this in fair disclosure, but keep in mind, seventy-five percent of all babies born with Down syndrome are to mothers under the age of thirty-five. We’ll also, if you like, do a blood test that will look for markers associated with having a Down syndrome child.”

“When would we do that?”

“It will depend entirely on you. The test is most accurate between the sixteenth and the eighteenth weeks, but there’s no need to wait that long. First-trimester screens, when done properly, are ninety-five percent accurate.”

“So I’d have plenty of time to decide, if it did have Down syndrome, whether I wanted to keep it.” I sigh. “Great.”

She reaches out to briefly touch my arm. “Smoky. There’s no reason for you to think your baby is going to be anything other than healthy. I’ve delivered quite a few healthy children to women over forty years of age.”

“And a few that weren’t, right?”

“Yes. But those few women had all been tested and knew that they were going to be giving birth to a Down syndrome child. It was their choice, and they were no less happy about their babies than anyone else.”

“Really?”

“Think about …” She hesitates. “Think about your daughter. Would you have regretted bringing her into the world, even if she’d had a birth defect like Down syndrome?”

It shouldn’t be a startling question, but it certainly hits me that way. I think about it, about Alexa, my sweet girl. Would she still have been her, if she’d been born with a handicap? I close my eyes for a moment and her face comes to me, as I saw it on that last morning. I see her smile, I hear her giggle; most of all, I see the essence of her shining in her eyes.

Yes, I think. Alexa would always have been Alexa, in whatever form. I open my eyes. “No, I wouldn’t have regretted it. She would have been my baby, and I wouldn’t have loved her any differently.”

“Well, there you go.”

This is a woman who chose her profession not because it would make her the most money, not to avoid the pressures of other medical disciplines, but because it was her calling. She loves what she does and has no choice about doing it; it’s her fate to help bring new life into the world.

I think about Douglas Hollister strangling his own son. A parent killing his own child has never seemed more alien to me than right here, right now, in this woman’s office. I touch my belly, and search for understanding, but it’s unfathomable. How could I ever kill this baby?

“It won’t matter.” I say it as I know it, and I feel a surge of relief. “We’ll do the test, but it won’t matter. I want this baby, Doctor.”

I’m mortified to find that I’m crying. I thought I’d put all these tears behind me. I’d settled into a new life, a new love, a new marriage. I’d recovered my ability to be flip and to let fly, to laugh on a dime and damn the torpedoes. The river of sorrow that had haunted me for so long had turned into a stream and then had dried to a puddle.

Apparently, some things can still bring the rain.

I thought I’d never have this chance again, and now I do, and I’ve just understood how much I want it, how deep that need, how great the ache.

“Sorry,” I choke, unable to keep the tears from coming.

“Don’t be silly.”

I let the tears come.

I think about my search for the soul on the drive home. Everyone has their own answer. Father Yates, the priest at Callie’s wedding, has his. The Buddhists have theirs. When I was a girl, I had mine. I had it with a certainty and innocence too powerful and too pure for me to consign to mere naïveté. Is there something we know when we’re young that we forget when we’re older, or is it all just a process of looking behind the curtain, finding that what the young call cynical the old call reality?

The question I’ve been asking myself most is: Why do I care?

I rub my belly, trying to sense the life growing there, to commune with it.

I care because of you.

I care because of the truth I saw in Dr. Rand’s office, that Alexa would be Alexa whatever her form. Is that proof of the soul?

Nothing answers me, but I am content that I’m getting closer.

I consider going by the office but decide against it. Alan will call me if Dali contacts them again. James and Callie will call me if anything else develops.

“Screw it,” I say out loud, and laugh. I’m a little giddy. Once again, my hand finds that spot on my tummy. “I’m going to be a mom again, baby. Young again at forty-plus. Can you believe that?”

We need milk, and I pull into the supermarket parking lot, humming “Blackbird” by the Beatles. Mom always loved that song. She could sing it too, high and sweet. I stare out through the windshield, remembering her sitting at Dad’s feet, smiling and singing as he played the guitar. It makes me smile too.

It would have been nice if she could have known her grandchildren.

I’m not sure what it is right now that makes me think of her instead of Dad. Maybe it’s because Mom always seemed to find it just a little bit harder to be happy, and when she did find it, she found it in her family.

I continue to whistle as I close the car door.

Something hard touches my lower back, and a voice whispers in my ear:

“Make a wrong move, Special Agent Barrett, and I’ll shoot you right here and walk away. You’ll die, I’ll live. You know who I am, so you know that I’ll do what I say.”

I freeze in place. My heart starts to hammer so hard I think it’s going to punch its way out of my chest. I feel slightly nauseated.

“Dali?” I croak.

How did my throat get so dry so fast?

“We’re going to walk to my car. You’re going to get in the trunk. Fight me and I will not only shoot you, I’ll go to your home and I will kill your adopted daughter and your boyfriend. Do you understand?”

A million thoughts whirl through my head, things to say, bargains to make. The gun nudges me, pushing all that aside. “Yes,” I whisper.

He reaches under my jacket and takes my weapon. He unclips my cell phone from my belt.

“Walk forward.”

We walk no more than ten feet, arriving at a blue Toyota Camry. The trunk is already unlocked. How’d he know I’d be here? He didn’t. He was following me. Why? “Open it,” he orders. I comply.

“How long have you been following me?” It’s a useless question, but as I peer into the darkness of the trunk, I think about Heather Hollister, living for eight years in the dark, and I am overwhelmed by terror, atavistic and instantaneous.

“Get in or you die and your family dies with you.”

His voice is flat, emotionless, almost bored. It’s the boredom that convinces me more than anything else. I scan the parking lot briefly. A man is walking to his own car, bag of groceries in hand. He’s talking on his cell phone and pays us no mind.

I crawl into the trunk and whip around to catch a glimpse of Dali. His face is swathed in gauze. He pauses for a moment, looking down at me.

“People look away from a burn victim,” he says, and then slams the trunk shut.

I hear nothing, and then I hear a muffled voice, followed by two spits that I recognize as silenced gunfire. More nothing, then some scuffling sounds and the car door slams. The engine starts. We’re in motion.

It had to be the cell-phone man. He must have seen a guy with his head covered in bandages stuffing a woman into the trunk of his car. He said something and Dali shot him without hesitation. I have little doubt he’s dead. Dali is a creature of precision and pragmatism, and it’s only practical to become good with a gun.

I pray that someone’s noticed all this, that a patrol car was driving by and saw it go down, something, anything. I put my hand on my belly and I pray to the God I don’t believe in.