Page 101 of Girl in the Water

Carmen kept holding Lila. Phil filled out the paperwork. She only signed her name on the bottom of a few sheets and didn’t even put the baby down for that.

Ian and Daniela waited in the hallway, walked out with them. Carmen thanked both of them, and so did Phil.

When the medic said only one of the parents could go in the back of the ambulance with Lila to the hospital, Ian immediately offered a ride. Apparently, Pierre had gone back to See-Love-Aid a short while ago, but he’d left them the truck.

Since Phil hadn’t even held Lila yet, Carmen gave her daughter a million kisses, then handed her over to her father. “You take her. I’ll go with Ian and Daniela.”

Phil kissed her hard, teary-eyed, and got in the back of the ambulance with Lila.

Carmen could barely sit still in the truck as they followed behind them. “It really happened, right? She’s back?”

While Ian drove, Daniela hugged Carmen tightly. “She’s back.”

Lila is back. Thank God, Lila is back.

She caught her reflection in the rearview mirror, all the makeup the girls had put on her. Flinched. She looked like a clown. Not that she cared. But still, she tried to rub some off with the back of her hand.

“Check the glove compartment,” Daniela said.

And when Carmen found an old, wrinkled napkin, Daniela took it from her and wiped off the makeup as the pickup rattled toward the hospital.

“How did you find her?” Carmen asked finally.

At first, all that had mattered was that Lila was alive and safe, but now Carmen wanted to know everything.

“Carol took her.” Ian’s voice was clipped, his expression tight with anger.

His words made no sense. “Why?” Carmen blinked at him. “Carol is about to have her own baby.”

Daniela gave Carmen a squeeze. “Her baby is sick.”

“Sick how?”

“A problem with her heart. Inoperable. She’s not expected to live a day or two beyond delivery. Carol has known for a while now. She actually had a date for inducement in Rio.”

A somber silence fell over the truck’s cab.

“Lila wasn’t stolen to be sold into adoption. Carol was going to have her baby in Rio,” Ian said. “Take the birth certificate, then pretend that Lila was that baby. The difference is big now, but in a year…”

Carmen shook her head, wiped her tears, horrified, relieved, confused, trying to get a grip. “And Lila is such a little thing anyway. Carol could have gotten away with it.”

Thank God, Carol had been stopped, was all she could think.

And good luck to Lila, because she was going to be thirty before her parents ever let her out of their sight again.

* * *

Ian

Midnight passed by the time Lila Heyerdahl was finally released from the hospital to the custody of her incredibly grateful mother and father.

Daniela and Ian stayed with the Heyerdahls until the end and drove them back to See-Love-Aid through a city shrouded in darkness. Since there wasn’t enough room in the pickup’s cab, Phil volunteered to ride in the back.

Of course, at See-Love-Aid, nobody slept. They’d all waited up, and everyone came running, everyone talking and laughing at the same time, everyone wanting to at least pat the baby’s head. Lila ate up her sudden celebrity status and blew bubbles. At the end, they all piled into the cafeteria, the only place large enough to hold the crowd.

“Why?”

“How?”