Page 40 of The Other Mother

GRAVE AND GLASS

T he cemetery gate squeaks when I push it open. It is early enough that the sprinklers have just shut off and the creosote smells sharp, like someone has sliced the air. I park under a palo verde and carry a single long-stem rose in one hand and a small velvet pouch in the other.

I find the gravestone. The granite is pale and clean. Someone at the grounds crew cares enough to keep dust from settling into the letters. I kneel and trace the name with my finger because I need to feel the cut of it to believe it is real.

Evelyn Grace

Born & Died September 3, 2024

I place the rose where the grass meets granite and wait for the ground to steady under me.

In the pouch is the pacifier with GRACIE etched into the plastic guard.

It feels heavier than it should. A small, ordinary thing that has carried too much.

I lay it at the base of the stone and watch the first ants arrive to investigate.

After a moment I pick it up again and slip it back into the pouch.

I can leave flowers. I do not have to leave the rest.

“I should have been here sooner,” I say. My voice sounds like it belongs to someone older. “They stole the minutes that mattered. That wasn’t your fault. That wasn’t mine.”

The wind crosses the cemetery, lifting dry grass, making the little American flags on other graves flutter.

A bird calls from the mesquite tree and then goes quiet.

I tell my dead daughter what I can tell her.

The story in the papers isn’t entirely true, but it’s not really false.

I promise her that I will write it down for her sister one day and we will always remember her name.

“You’ll always be with me,” I say, and I press my palm to the stone until the cold seeps into my skin.

Eva fusses in the stroller behind me. I pull it a little closer and she revels in the motion.

Her fist is hooked around the corner of the rosebud blanket.

It is clean now, mended at one edge. I used to wonder if touching it was a betrayal.

I don’t anymore. The blanket is a fact. So is the child who likes the feel of the embroidery under her fingers.

There is a letter in my bag on thick paper from a family court judge with a seal that impressed me even after all the federal letterheads.

The temporary guardianship the FBI set up has been converted to a permanent order under victim protections.

The adoption petition is filed. When the file moves to the final drawer, there will be a birth record that tells the truth in the small space they give you to tell anything.

Biological mother : Mara Vasquez.

Legal mother: Claire Matthews.

Father : not listed. It is not tidy. It should not be.

“Your sister will know the truth about her birth mother and her other mother,” I say to the stone.

A golf cart hums at the far end of the row and then turns away. I breathe and do not rush. I have been moving fast for too long. There is a kind of relief in choosing to move slow.

I say one last goodbye and push the stroller toward the gate and then stop and look back. I touch my palm to my chest, then to the stroller canopy, and then I let the gate swing shut behind us.

The county jail is colder than I expect.

Fluorescent light hums and turns everyone the same shade of tired.

The officer at the desk checks my ID and stamps the clipboard without looking at my face.

A plastic sign asks me to remove my jewelry and anything that might become a weapon.

But I have not worn my wedding bands in almost two years.

They take me past doors that open only when another door closes and into a visitation room with two rows of booths.

The glass between us is scuffed with the grease of past palms, past foreheads, past phone receivers pressed too hard.

A young man in a red hoodie is already in one booth, crying into a handset.

In another, a woman keeps one finger lifted like she is making a point in a classroom.

Adam comes in with a guard and sits on the other side of the glass.

He has lost weight and his hair is longer.

And he looks like he has aged fifteen years.

He stares at my hands before he looks at my face, and I can see him inventorying what is missing.

I pick up the receiver because I want to be finished.

“Thank you for coming,” he says. His voice tries for the same calm tone he used to use when clients balked at a bid. I remember the way those men softened after he talked. I remember thinking it was a gift.

I do not answer the thanks. I ask the one question that has lived under my tongue since the coffee shop where Lex slid a file across to me and my life tipped.

“Why did you do this?”

He exhales and looks down. He rubs his thumbnail along the seam of the tabletop as if he can lift the edge of it and climb through. When he looks back up, his eyes are wet and clear. He is good at this.

“You were in pain,” he says. “You were terrified. You asked me not to let you make a decision you would regret. You said if anything went wrong to do what was best. I did that. ”

“You did not answer me.”

“It was standard consent. You were under sedation. We had your advance directive and the temporary authorization. You asked me to protect you.”

He says the word protect like he can build a shelter out of it and open the door for me. The memory he is selling has enough true in it to sting.

“You paid someone to end a woman’s life,” I say, and my voice stays level. “They are calling it solicitation and conspiracy. You do not need to admit it. I am telling you what the world knows.”

His mouth opens and closes and opens again, and for a moment he looks less like this weaker version of himself and more like the boy I met at a fundraiser on a roof in Santa Monica who knew how to make a room say yes.

He wants me to remember that boy. It is his last leverage.

I put the receiver closer to the glass and let him hear my breath, even, not hurried.

“You chose money,” I say. “You chose control. You chose yourself over our life together. We could have been happy. We were for a while.”

He lifts his hand like he might touch the glass.

I leave my hand on my lap. He blinks and a single tear traces the edge of his nose.

He will call it love in his head because love is a story he understands.

I put the receiver back in its cradle and stand.

The guard touches his elbow. Adam says my name and it sounds like a request and a promise and a warning all at once. But I just walk out.

Outside, the day is hot and white. Two women smoke under the no smoking sign and talk in the soft voices people use near churches and courthouses.

I sit in my car and hold the steering wheel because I do not trust my hands to be empty.

When I can breathe like a person again, I drive to the federal building across town where Agent Holt has asked me to sign one last stack of paperwork.

She meets me at the door with her hair pulled back and a folder that looks like a brick. The lobby smells like concrete dust and old coffee. We stand by a ficus that has suffered in this light and pretend that this is where people do ordinary things.

“We closed Pierce,” she says, and her voice is quiet enough that I have to lean in. “Not a suicide. The coroner put it in writing. Rodriguez took a deal. He is giving us three names we did not have.”

“And the hospitals?”

“Two administrators pled. A nurse flipped. The board chair is fighting and will lose. We will keep climbing.”

“And Maria?” The name still lands like a bruise. She was not what I thought. She was not the worst thing either. She was what a broken system made possible.

“Her daughter’s case is moving through the Swiss court,” Holt says.

“It will take a long time. The parents didn’t know and they raised that baby for a while now.

It’s an international case and it will take a long time, but it is moving.

” She studies my face. “You did what you said you’d do. Thank you.”

I sign where she points. My hand does not shake. Afterward, we give each other a brief hug. In another life, we could have been friends. But with this case between us, I know that it would never work.

Back at home, I change into a comfy pair of sweats and sit down on the couch.

The lemon smell from the morning dishes has faded.

The sun coming through the slider is the color of school buses.

I take the velvet pouch from my bag and thread the pacifier through a small brass ring I bought at a hardware store.

I clip the ring to the inside of the diaper bag. It’s a keepsake I’ll keep forever.

I feel a tug at my jeans and look down. Eva is standing with one fist curled into the fabric, pulling me to follow her as she walks.

The doorbell rings and my heart jumps before my brain catches up. It is a delivery driver dropping off copies of my new book. I unbox it and stare at the shiny cover of Borrowed Time.

A diagonal band at the top says Advance Author Copy in black block letters. The name underneath is not mine. It is a name I chose with my editor and a lawyer in a small office where the blinds were permanently half-closed.

ROWAN HALE

I run my thumb over the raised letters as if I can feel the decision in them.

The girl I used to be who wrote late at night on a couch that always had crumbs in it would have wanted my name on the cover.

The woman I am prefers a name that lets me walk my daughter to a swing set without a stranger stopping me for a photo.

As Eva settles on the couch in front of an episode of Bluey , I sit down next to her and open to the first page. The line I added in blue pencil two weeks ago is there in clean black ink now.

Let me tell you about the blanket.