Look Again (5 page)

Chapter Thirteen

Ellen finally got home and closed the front door behind her. "How is he?" she asked Connie, keeping her voice low.

"Hanging in. I gave him Tylenol at two." Connie checked her watch. "He's been asleep since four."

"Did he eat?" Ellen shed her coat and hung it in the closet as Connie reached for hers, the domestic changing of the guard.

"Chicken soup and crackers. Flat ginger ale. We took it easy today. All he wanted to do was stay in bed." Connie slipped into her coat. "I read to him after lunch until he got sleepy."

"Thanks so much."

"Don't know how much he heard of it, though. He was just lying there." Connie zipped up her coat and picked up her tote bag, which was already packed.

"Poor thing."

"Give him a kiss for me." Connie got her purse, and Ellen opened the door, said her good-byes, then shut the door and locked it, preoccupied. If Will had just gone to sleep, she had a window of time to do something that had been bugging her on the ride home. She kicked off her boots and hurried upstairs.

Half an hour later, she was sitting cross-legged on her bed, bent over her task. A blown-glass lamp cast an ellipse of light on two photos of Timothy Braverman, the age-progressed picture from the white card and the computer printout of his baby photo from ACMAC.com. Next to those were a pile of ten photos of Will, chosen because they showed his features the best. Oreo Figaro sat beside her like the Sphinx, keeping his own counsel.

Ellen arranged Will's photos in two rows of five, in chronological order. The top row was a younger Will, the first year she had him, at age one-and-a-half to two-and-a-half. The bottom row was the second year she'd had him, ages two-and-a-half to present. She looked at them all, examining his face over time, from its thinnest and least healthy to a beaming little boy. It was like watching a sunflower open and thrive, turning to the sun.

She returned to the top row of photos and picked the youngest one that was the most representative of Will's features. It showed him at about one-and-a-half years old, in a flannel shirt and overalls, sitting next to an over-sized pumpkin at Halloween. Suddenly, Susan Sula-man broke through Ellen's consciousness.

It was October, a week before Halloween. Lynnie was going as a fish.

She shook it off, staying the course. She picked up the Halloween photo of Will and held it next to the photo of Timothy, taken at about a year old. He was also sitting, but in his stroller, and when Ellen put the photos side by side, she felt an undeniable jolt.

Their faces looked so much alike as babies that they could have been identical twins. Their blue eyes were the same shape, size, and hue, their noses carbon copies, and their mouths plastered with the same goofy smile, in which the right corner turned down. Both boys were sitting in the exact same way; oddly upright for such young children. No wonder Sarah and her father had mistaken them. She held the photos closer to the lamp, and it spooked her. She shook her head in disbelief, yet couldn't deny what she was seeing.

She set the photos down and went to the second row, of older photos of W. She picked one of the most recent, in which Will was sitting on their front porch on the first day of preschool, wearing a new green T-shirt, green shorts, and green socks. It was an unfortunate choice for a favorite color, unless you were a leprechaun.

She picked up the age-progressed photo of Timothy and held it next to the photo of W. They were almost dead ringers, even though the photo of Timothy was only black-and-white. Their eyes were the same shape, round and wide set. The smiles were similar, though she couldn't see all of Timothy's teeth and she knew Will's were perfect. The only slight difference was their hair, because Timothy's was described as blond, and Will's was dark blond. There was a likeness, too, in the configuration of their features, and again, their very aspect.

Ellen set the photos down, but she had one more thing she wanted to try. She picked up the baby photo of Timothy and held it next to the older photo of Will, starting preschool. She eyeballed them, and it was almost as if Timothy got older and turned into W. Eyes, nose, mouth; all were the same, but bigger, older, more mature. Ellen felt her stomach tense.

Then she got another idea. She set down the photos, then picked up the older photo of Will going to preschool and the baby photo of Timothy in the stroller. She compared them, and before her eyes, Will regressed back into Timothy as a baby. Ellen's mouth went dry.

"Connie!" Will called out from his bedroom.

"Coming, honey!" she called back, leaping from the bed so quickly she almost tripped on the duvet. Oreo Figaro jumped out of the way, objecting with a loud meow.

The photos scattered, unwanted, to the floor.

Chapter Fourteen

"It's Mommy, honey." Ellen went over to Will's bed, and his sobs intensified, cranky wails in the dark room.

"I'm hot."

"I know, baby." Ellen scooped him up and hugged him close, and he flopped onto her, resting his head sideways on her shoulder and clinging to her like a baby koala. His face was damp against her neck, and she rocked him as she stood. "My poor baby."

"Why am I hot?"

"Let's get you out of these clothes, okay?" Ellen lowered him back into the bed, and he was too listless to squirm. He had fallen asleep in his turtleneck and overalls. "I'm gonna turn the light on, so be ready. Cover your eyes. Ready?"

Will slapped two small hands over his eyes.

"Good boy." Ellen leaned over to the night table and switched on the Babar lamp. "Okay, move your hands away from your eyes, nice and slow, so they can get used to the light."

Will moved his hands away, then came up blinking. "I'm getting used."

"Right, good." Ellen retrieved the board books that had gotten wedged inside the bed frame and set them on the night table. She unhooked the fasteners at the top of his straps, then shimmied him out of his overalls. "You had a big, long nap."

"Mommy." Will smiled shakily at her. "You're home."

"I sure am," Ellen said, with a twinge. "I'm so glad you got such a good rest. That's going to help you feel better. Reach for the moon, partner." She pulled off his damp shirt as Will raised his arms, and she could barely see the thin white line that divided his little-boy chest down the center, though he felt embarrassed enough to wear a T-shirt when he swam. Once it had been a knotted zipper of flesh, in days she would never forget. "You hungry?"

"No."

"How about soup?" Ellen placed her palm on his forehead. She couldn't remember the last time she'd used a thermometer, as if it proved her motherhood bona fides.

"No soup, Mommy."

"Well, then, how about bugs and worms?"

"No! "Will giggled.

"Why, did you have that for lunch? Are you sick of bugs and worms?"

"No!" Will giggled again. Oreo Figaro appeared in the threshold and sat silhouetted in the hall light, a fat cat with a back hump like Quasimodo.

"I know, how about you eat some cat food? I bet Oreo Figaro would share with you." Ellen turned to the cat. "Oreo Figaro, would you share your dinner?" Then she turned back to W. "Oreo Figaro said, "No, get your own food."

Gales of laughter, making Mommy feel like a comic genius. "He has to share."

"Oreo Figaro, you have to share. Will says so." Ellen turned to W. "Oreo Figaro says, "I make my own rules. I'm a cat, and that's how cats roll.""

"Oreo Figaro, you're gonna get a time-out."

"Right." Ellen got the liquid Tylenol from the night table, unscrewed the lid of the small bottle, and sucked some into the dropper. "Here's medicine. Open up, please, baby bird."

"Where's Oreo Figaro?" Will opened his mouth, then clamped down on the dropper.

"In the doorway. Did you swallow?"

"Yes. Get him, Mommy."

"Okay, hold on." Ellen put the sticky dropper back in the bottle, closed the cap, and went over and picked up the cat, who permitted himself to be carried to the bed and placed at its foot, curling his tail into a shepherd's crook.

"Oreo Figaro, you gotta share!" Will wagged a finger at him, and Ellen rooted around on the night table for a bottle of water.

"Drink this for me, please, sweetie." She helped him up to sip from the bottle, then laid him back down. A slight, pale figure in his white undies, he took up barely the top half of the bed, and she covered him lightly.

"No books, Mommy."

"Okay, how about we cuddle up, instead? Scoot over, please." Ellen turned off the light, eased herself over the side of the guardrail, and gentled Will up and onto her chest, where she wrapped her arms around him. "How's that feel, baby?"

"Scratchy."

Ellen smiled. "It's my sweater. Now, tell me how you are. Does your throat hurt?"

"A little."

Ellen wasn't overly worried, she hadn't smelled strep on his breath. You didn't have to be a good mother to smell strep. Even a drunk could smell strep. "How about your head? Does it hurt?"

"A little."

"Tummy?"

"A little."

Ellen hugged him. "Did you have fun with Connie today?"

"Tell me a story, Mommy."

"Okay. An old or a new one?"

"An old one."

Ellen knew the one he wanted to hear. She would tell it and try not to think about the photos in her bedroom. "Once upon a time there was a little boy who was very, very sick. He was in a hospital, all by himself. And one day, a mommy went to the hospital and saw him."

"What did she say?" Will asked, though he knew. This wasn't a bedtime story, it was a bedtime prayer.

"She said, "My goodness, this is the cutest little boy I have ever seen. I'm a mommy who needs a baby, and he's a baby who needs a mommy. I wish that little boy could be mine."

"Oreo Figaro's biting my foot."

"Oreo Figaro, no, stop it." Ellen gave the cat a nudge, and he went after her foot instead. "Now he's got me. Ouch."

"He's sharing, Mommy."

Ellen laughed. "That's right." She moved her foot away, and the cat gave up. "Anyway, back to the story. So the mommy asked the nurse, and she said, "Yes, you can take that little boy home if you really, really love him a lot." So the mommy said to the nurse, "Well, that's funny, I just happen to love this baby a whole lot."

"Tell it right, Mommy."

Ellen got back on track. She'd been distracted, thinking about Timothy Braverman. "So the mommy said to the nurse, "I really love this baby a whole lot and I want to take him home," and they said okay, and the mommy adopted the little boy, and they lived happily ever after." Ellen hugged him close. "And I do. I love you very much."

"I love you, too."

"That makes it perfect. And oh, yeah, they got a cat."

"Oreo Figaro's head is on my foot."

"He's telling you he loves you. Also that he's sorry about before."

"He's a good cat."

"A very good cat," Ellen said, giving Will another squeeze. He fell silent, and in time she could feel his skin cool and his limbs relax.

She remained in the dark bedroom, listening to the occasional hiss of the radiator and looking at a ceiling covered with phosphorescent stars that glowed W. Her gaze fell to shelves full of toys and games, and a window with the white plastic shade pulled down. On the walls, cartoon elephants lumbered along in a line, knockoff Babars holding onto each other's tails and balancing one-legged on bandbox stands. She had put the wallpaper up herself, with the radio blasting hip-hop. It was the child's room she'd always dreamed of, ready just in time to bring Will home from the hospital.

Her gaze returned to the WILL constellation, and she tried to count her blessings, but failed. Until that damn white card had come in the mail, she'd been happier than she'd imagined she ever could be. She hugged Will gently, but her thoughts wandered back down the hall. Then she got another idea, one that wouldn't wait.

She eased Will from her chest and shifted out of bed, clumsily because of the stupid guardrail. She got up, covered him with his thermal blanket, and padded out of the room on fleece socks.

Oreo Figaro raised his head and watched her sneak off.

Chapter Fifteen

Ellen went into her home office, flicked on the overhead light, and sat down at her fake-wood workstation, a floor sample from Staples that held an old Gateway computer and monitor. The room was tiny enough that the Realtor had called it a "sewing room," and it barely accommodated the workstation, an underused stationary bicycle, and mismatched file cabinets containing household files, research, appliance manuals, and old clippings Ellen kept in case she had to get a new job.

I'll have to cut one more by the end of the month.

Ellen sat down, opened her email, and wrote Courtney an email telling her she loved her, then logged on to Google and typed in Timothy Braverman. The search yielded 129 results. She raised an eyebrow; it was more than she'd expected. She clicked on the first relevant link, and it was a newspaper story from last year. The headline read, CORAL BRIDGE MOM KEEPS HOPE ALIVE, and Ellen skimmed the lead:

Carol Braverman is waiting for a miracle, her son Timothy to come home. Timothy, who would now be two-and-a-half years old, was kidnapped during a carjacking and is still missing.

"I know I'll see my son again," she told this reporter. "I just feel it inside."

It sounded like what Susan Sulaman had said. Ellen read on, and another paragraph caught her eye.

Asked to describe Timothy in one word, Carol's eyes misted over, then she said that her son was "strong." "He could get through anything, even as a baby. He was smaller than most one-year-olds, but he never acted it. At his first birthday party, all of the other babies were bigger, but nobody got the best of him."

She printed the interview, then went back to the Google search and read the line of links, scanning each piece on the Braverman kidnapping. There was a lot of press, and she contrasted it with Susan Sulaman, who had to go begging to keep the police interested. She learned from the articles that Timothy's father, Bill Braverman, was an investment manager, and his mother had been a teacher until her marriage, when she stopped to devote herself to being a mother and doing good works, including fund-raising for the American Heart Association.

The Heart Association?

Ellen saved the articles, logged on to Google Images, searched under Carol and Bill Braverman, then clicked the first link. A picture appeared on the screen, showing three couples in elegant formal wear, and her eye went immediately to the woman in the middle of the photo.

My God.

Ellen checked the caption. The woman was Carol Braverman. Carol looked so much like Will, she could easily have been his mother. The photo was dark and the focus imperfect, but Carol had blue eyes the shape and color of Will's. Her hair was wavy and dark blond, almost his color, and she wore it long, curling to her tanned shoulders in a slinky black dress. Ellen scanned Bill Braverman's face, and he was conventionally handsome, with brown eyes and a nose that was straight and on the small side, a lot like Will's. His smile was broad, easy, and confident, the grin of a successful man.

Her stomach clenched. She closed the photo, went back to Google, and clicked the second link, which retrieved another group picture in shorts and T-shirts at a poolside party. The photo was dark, too, taken at night, but Carol's hair had been cut around her ears in a boyish style that made her look even more like W. And Bill's body looked lean but cut, with muscular arms and legs that showed the same wiry build that Will had.

"This is crazy," Ellen said aloud. She shoved the computer mouse away, got up from her chair, and went to the first file cabinet. She slid open the top drawer, moved the green Pendaflex files aside, skipping folders hand-labeled Bank Statements, Car Payments, Deed, until she found the Will file. She slid the file out, took it back to her chair, and opened it on her lap.

On top were folded clippings of the series she'd done on the CICU nurses, then the one she did on adopting W. She leafed through them, pausing at an early photo of Will in his crib. The paper had run it on the first page, and Will looked nothing like himself then, so thin and sick. She moved it aside, shooing away the memories. Finally she found Will's adoption papers and slid out the packet.

At the top of the final adoption decree, it read, "The Court of Common Pleas of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, Orphans' Court Division," and the order was in bold: "The Court hereby orders and decrees that the request for adoption is hereby approved and that the above-captioned adoptee is hereby adopted by Ellen Gleeson."

She felt satisfied, in an official sort of way. Will's adoption was all sewn up, legal, certified, and irrevocable. The court proceedings had been routine, and she had appeared on the second floor of the courthouse in Norristown, for the first time in public with W. The judge had pounded the gavel, then issued the decree from the bench with a broad smile. She would never forget his words:

I have the only happy courtroom in the entire courthouse.

It gladdened her to remember that day, holding baby Will in her arms, her first day as a mother. She read the decree again. "The needs and welfare of ADOPTEE will be promoted by approval of this adoption and all requirements of the Adoption Act have been met." So her adoption was a done deal, and it was closed, meaning that she didn't know the identity of the birth mother and father. They had consented to relinquish their parental rights, and their written consent forms had been submitted to the court by Ellen's lawyer, as part of the adoption papers. The lawyer's name and address were at the bottom of the page:

Karen Batz, Esq.

Ellen remembered Karen well. Her office was in Ardmore, fifteen minutes away,

and she had been a smart, competent family lawyer who had guided her through the adoption process without overcharging her, the thirty-thousand-dollar fee in line with a standard private adoption. Karen had told her that the birth mother was thrilled to find someone with the desire and the means to care for such a sick child, and that taking a sick baby would be her best chance to adopt as a single mother. Even the judge had commented on the unusual facts of the case:

It was a stroke of luck, for all concerned.

The paperwork had been completed without a hitch, and Ellen became responsible for Will's medical expenses to the tune of $28,000 and change, but the hospital permitted her to pay in installments. She had just paid off the last penny, and in the end, she got Will, safe and sound, and they became a family.

She sighed happily, closed the file, and put it away behind the others. She shut the file drawer, but stood there, lost in thought for a minute. On the wall over the cabinets hung a Gauguin poster she'd had framed, and she found herself staring at it, the tropical blues and greens blurring her thoughts. The house was quiet. The wind whistled outside. The radiator knocked faintly. The cat was probably purring. Everything was fine.

Still, she was thinking about her lawyer.