The Lost Daughter (39 page)

“Mr. Zukowsky,” this fellow said. What was his name? Farris, Framingham, Frazier, Farmer. Frazier, that was it. “I am so sorry for what’s happened to your daughter.”

Ziadek cranked one eye open. He was supposed to thank this man, now. For finding Luisa, restoring her. “Luisa is very shy,” he said.

“I can tell that, yes.”

“She does not talk easily. But you are knowing for the hospital to call us. She tells you?”

“No, actually. She was too upset to talk much. They got the number from information.”

“But you know my name? How?”

“Oh—yes. Well.” Mr. Frazier reddened and picked at the cuticle of a nail. “I was at your house on Saturday, Mr. Zukowsky. And I saw Luisa’s picture. Her photograph. So I recognized her.”

Ziadek frowned. Saturday he had been to Dr. Sanford. He had come home to learn Luisa had fled. “You are doing what at my house, Mr. Frazier?”

Onto Frazier’s face crept a boyish grin that Ziadek imagined could be charming in another circumstance. Right now it only deepened his suspicion. He glanced down the hall. The cop had stepped away, toward the window, where he was talking into his cell phone. The cop had said nothing about this man’s knowing his family. “I didn’t think it would be helpful to you,” Frazier said, keeping his voice soft, “to tell the police. But I came by with Brooke. She wanted me to meet Luisa’s daughter, Najda. I take it you’ve spoken with Brooke.”

Ziadek sat up. His eyes widened.
This
was where he had seen the young man’s features before. Not on him; he had never met him before. But on Najda. That grin, the top lip pulled flat across the gum. The broad set of the shoulders and the tapering jawline. He felt a click in his head, like a latch opening. Najda had not gotten those features from Brooke. She had gotten them from this man. From her father. The man Brooke had been speaking with when she left their house that first day.
You’re right, Alex. We do have to talk.

“I have spoken with her, yes,” Ziadek said. “She will help us with your…with our…with Najda.” He stumbled over the words, confused. “You have seen Najda,” he said.

“I have, yes,” said Frazier. His grin faded. “And I want you to know, Mr. Zukowsky—”

“Josef. Call me Josef. Please.”

“I want you to know”—he looked directly at Ziadek, and in Frazier’s one open blue eye Ziadek saw a thin veil of certainty stretched over a chasm of troubled thought—“I have no intention of interfering with your family. I hope you don’t mind my saying. But it’s clear that Brooke’s interference is what set Luisa off. I am glad I found her, but—”

“Alex. It is Alex, yes?” The boy nodded. Ziadek thought of him as a boy, now—so sincere, so full of concern. “Alex, we know where
Najda comes from. We know this. Luisa, she knows this. It was a bad thing to do, what you did.”

“Mr. Zukowsky—”

“Josef.”

“Josef, I know Brooke feels guilty about something we—we did. A very long time ago. And yes, yes, I feel guilty also. You can’t imagine to what extent. But the child we might have had—the child we had—that’s not Najda. I know it isn’t.”

Now it was Ziadek’s turn to smile. “You cannot know such a thing, Alex. This is my grandchild. I change her diapers. Every day I see her face. Now I see you, and I see her”—he pointed to his own eyes, his jaw, his flat cheekbones—“in you.”

“You can’t.” That same jaw, Najda’s stubborn jaw, set itself.

“Behind the motel. A wood crate. My Luisa, she shows me. I see in your eyes, Alex. You know this already.”

He was shaking his head. “Young people make things up. A girl might say she’d found a child, because—”

“It was not from Luisa, this child!”

“No! No, I’m not saying that. But it’s not the child we…we…” The boy pressed his lips together, as if he were holding something in; and then, as if they had found another exit, a clutch of tears leaked from his eyes. “I
killed
it,” he whispered at last, through gritted teeth. “I—I squeezed its head.” He held his hands out on his knees, and slowly brought the palms together. “And then it stopped moving. And then, yes, I got rid of the body. I’m much worse than what you thought, Mr. Zukowsky. I’m not some careless guy who left an infant in the rain. I am a murderer.”

“It stopped moving,” Ziadek repeated.

“Yes.” The boy swallowed. All trace of grin was gone. His voice was barely audible. “Its eyes—his eyes,” he went on, “snapped open, and stared. That’s how I knew he was dead.”

“It stopped breathing?”

“Well, she must have. He, I mean. Must have. The color of the skin wasn’t right either.” Alex sat back in his chair. For a moment he shut both his eyes. When he opened the uninjured one, he looked drained. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” he said. “Not with you. I was just trying to tell you, I feel bad for your daughter, I feel bad for your family, and I won’t make it any worse. I came back, don’t you see? Just to turn myself in. To be honest about what I did. It has poisoned my life. No point in its poisoning anyone else’s.”

“But you are not being honest.” Ziadek could not help himself. He reached out and put a hand on the boy’s arm, as if to stop him from running off. “Honest is ‘I am not doctor.’ Honest is ‘I do not know.’ Honest is ‘Tell to me, Josef, about this baby, what it is wrapped in.’ Do you want I should tell to you what it is wrapped in?”

Alex pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. “No,” he said, a little louder.

“Alex.” He kept his hand on the arm. He pressed it a little. “Is occasion of joy, no? My English not very good. But I think it is so. My child who I have thought lost is found. My child who I thought dead is alive. Right now”—he inclined his head toward the room where Luisa lay bruised and battered—“we are upset. We are angry. We grieve. But of Najda…”

He had run out of breath. He sat back in the chair. Alex pulled his arm away and splayed open his hand. “But I am the
cause
of it, don’t you see that? How would you like to look at that girl and think to yourself, ‘I did that’?”

For a moment, Ziadek simply breathed. When his pulse had quieted, he said firmly, “My Marika. My wife. She look at Luisa every day. She say, ‘I did that.’ Then she love her. What she is.”

“But I can’t do that.” That got Ziadek’s attention. Sitting up, he
met Alex’s eyes. Anguish, there. “I am a person,” Alex said, “of bad faith.”

“But you save my girl,” Ziadek said. “You did
that
.” He glanced at the white bandages swaddling the boy’s head. He frowned. “They suspect you,” he said.

“No, no.” Alex waved off the question. “They took a swab, sure. Inside my cheek.”

“For DNA,” Ziadek said. He had heard about DNA and crime on the television. All the cop shows brought it up, one way or another.

“Right. Procedure, they said.”

“I get another swab. Najda swab.” He reached inside his own mouth with his finger; drew it out, glistening. “Then we know. You want to know?”

Behind him, the door opened. The Jamaican nurse came out. “You can go back in, Mr. Zukowsky,” she said. “Would you like a wheelchair?”

“No, thank you,” he said with as much dignity as he could manage. He used the wall to help push himself up, then turned back to Alex. “Thank you,” he said. He nicked his chin toward the room where Luisa lay. “Thank you for my daughter.”

A
s the sky paled on Monday morning, Brooke was on the road. Tweedledee and Tweedledum cooed and complained from their cage on the backseat. Still no word from Alex, nor had she tried to contact him. Some day, she thought, they would have another glass of wine. They would talk about Alex’s father, about her grandfather, about a past that stretched beyond their own little lives. Right now she had an appointment in Philadelphia, with Sean’s cousin, Dominick O’Connor. No way could she go back to Windermere, back to that trailer park, back to Najda’s family bearing only her love, her remorse, her yearning. She had to produce some solid piece of atonement; she had to help.

Brooke’s mother had promised to find out about Luisa. She knew people in the social service agencies, down toward Scranton and west toward Erie. Even with cash, a provincial woman with Down syndrome could not go far. And Stacey Willcox was resourceful, Brooke gave her that. It was Stacey who had come up with Dom O’Connor’s name. Wasn’t there that cousin? she had asked, At your wedding?
Doesn’t he practice in Philly? I’ve seen him listed, now and then, on commissions having to do with the schools. Can you go to him? she had asked Brooke, with a look that meant,
Can you tell him what you did?
And Brooke had nodded, yes. Alone among the O’Connor clan, Dominick was the one to whom she could open her heart.

On her way out of Windermere Brooke had bought the
Times-Tribune
and scanned the local headlines for any news of a missing person, or an accidental death. Nothing. She had Jake’s card with her, if she wanted to call for news of Luisa from the police. But she had to leave that to her mother. When Luisa was found—then, their work would begin.

He’d be glad to see her, Dominick had said on the phone. He could cancel his lunch and take her to a little hole in the wall he liked. He had said nothing about Sean. From Windermere to Philadelphia was three and a half hours—no farther than from Hartford, where Dom would assume she had started driving.

Whenever she thought ill of Sean’s family, Brooke made an exception for Dominick. He had a kind word for almost everyone except the pope and the Republicans in Pennsylvania. Just three years older than Sean, he encouraged him like an uncle. He was tone-deaf himself, but at family occasions he asked about Sean’s choral group, and every Christmas he sent a new opera CD. What a politician, Sean’s brothers would say when they heard. But Dom’s family, according to Sean, had been poorer than Sean’s, with Dom’s father dead before he was ten and his autistic brother sent off to an institution where the boy withered slowly and died mostly of neglect. Dominick was fired up about social justice, about what government could do to make people’s lives better. If he got obnoxious about it—challenging the priest, Brooke remembered, at little Derek’s christening—he did so out of hope that a good argument could sometimes change a stubborn mind.

The restaurant was small indeed, but with votive candles and white tablecloths. In her jeans and unwashed hair, Brooke felt like a vagabond. Dominick tried ordering wine, but she shook her head. He was in his element. He squeezed the maitre d’s shoulder and settled his weight in the red leather booth, his cuff links glinting from the sleeves of his tailored suit. Quickly Brooke moved past the automatic questions: Sean was fine, Meghan excited about school, Mum just the same, her own job on a little hiatus. Dom ordered food for both of them, sipped his own red wine, and focused his small, bright eyes on her.

Brooke drew courage from her mission itself, and also from the surprise of her mother’s reaction. Don’t underestimate the people who love you, Stacey had said as Brooke got into her car. Quickly Brooke had exited the driveway, to hide her tears. It was true, what she had said to Alex: She had hoarded her own guilt like a miser, not trusting her brittle but loyal mother to lift even an ounce of the load.

“I have a disabled daughter,” she told Dominick now, “from my life before Sean. She is very bright. Her adoptive family is very poor. And my understanding is that the school system has served her badly.”

If Dominick was shocked, he hid it well. He kept his eyes, two deep-set chips of blue, trained on Brooke while he lifted the wine again. “How old?” he asked.

“Fifteen.”

Curtly he nodded. “You don’t need to tell me. They have her in with the nonverbal kids, the kids in restraints, the Down’s kids, the whole caboodle.”

He drew a small spiral pad from his pocket. On it he took Josef Zukowsky’s name and phone number; Brooke’s best guess as to who had guardianship of Najda; the name of the school district; the
school that Najda hoped to attend. He asked no questions beyond the practical ones. “Crosby,” he repeated. “Excellent choice. My partner got funding there for the son of a client out in Allentown. Cerebral palsy, it was. Kid’s at Cornell now.”

Dominick explained the process. After they had obtained the medical history, they would set Najda up for a battery of tests, which they would then present to the school commissioner while drumming up an expert witness or two. If the school demurred, they would bring legal pressure to bear. These things, Dom assured Brooke, almost never went to court. If he cleared his docket, he could get the process moving within a month.

He signaled the waiter for a second glass of Cabernet. “I don’t want this as a family favor,” Brooke said as they finished the meal.

“You won’t get it that way. I’ll send you a bill.”

“No, I mean really. My mother’s offered to help pay legal fees. And I think—I’m not sure—but I think Najda’s father will help as well. Her biological father I mean.”

“I figured you meant that.” Dom winked. He called for the check. Only then did a drop of his curiosity leak out. “Sean know about this?” he asked. “Because I am lousy at secrets.”

“In four hours,” Brooke said, “he’ll know.” She smiled at her cousin-in-law. He had made what she knew to be a difficult task sound like a stroll. “Anyone can know, if they want,” she said. “My past may not be pretty, but I’m done with keeping it a secret.”

“Attagirl,” said Dominick.

T
he dogs were milling around the front door, whining. Sean went to let them out. For a moment he stood in the doorway, watching the first yellow leaves of fall drift onto the front yard. His knee ached, where he’d fallen on it yesterday. He couldn’t see Meghan, but he could hear the shrieks of the girls in Taisha’s backyard. Two nights ago, Meghan had wet her bed. Last night, Sunday night, he’d let her climb into bed with him, where he hummed lullabies to her until she fell asleep, her thumb plugged into her mouth.

He was in no mood tonight to sing. Packing up his desk at Central Printing, he’d lifted the phone to call Geoffrey and beg off from choral rehearsal. Brooke had said she’d be back in Hartford by now and she wasn’t—there, he had his excuse. But he knew what he’d do if he stayed home contemplating the shreds of his life. He would slip out to the package store. And so, his stomach clenched, he’d picked up Meghan, fed her an early dinner of bright orange macaroni, and taken her across the street, her knapsack packed with pajamas, toothbrush, and teddy bear, to Brenda, Taisha’s mom, who’d agreed
to keep Meghan overnight since rehearsal ran until ten. Don’t you worry about a single thing, Brenda had said in her Virginia drawl. You just go ahead and sing your heart out.