The Prisoner - Carlos J. Cortes [78]
“She helped me with the house,” Jenny piped up. “Laurel was very tidy; she would keep her room spotless and all her things in order. I know this sounds strange in this day and age, but she also helped in the kitchen and loved to help with the cooking. Baking was her favorite: cookies and cakes and gingerbread and cupcakes … and she would offer to help around the garden. She liked flowers. There were always freshly cut blooms in a vase by the entrance.”
Nikola nodded once after listening with undivided attention to a showcase of classic lying. Long-winded explanations with many digressions, generalized by making frequent use of words like always, ever, and nobody, increased the psychological distance between people and the event they described. Of course, there were many more telling nuances in the couple’s tale. Liars often resorted to disclaimers. Jenny had used I know this sounds strange and eventually she would have reached for You won’t believe this, but or Let me assure you—disclaimers designed to acknowledge any suspicion. There had also been pauses between their words and sentences; pauses filled with ums and ers.
He composed his next question with care now that he knew its answer. Never ask a question without knowing the reply was the golden rule for a lawyer cross-examining a witness, and the same could be said of an interrogator. “Was Laurel a good baby?”
Another silence, longer this time. Nikola nodded again, his eyes still closed, savoring the soft rustle of nervous slippered feet.
“Er …” Sean started.
“She gave us no trouble,” Jenny replied. “A very good baby.”
The pitch of someone’s voice was a good indicator of their emotional state, because when people got upset, their voices rose, and Jenny’s voice had hiked noticeably.
Nikola turned toward Jenny and opened his eyes. “Did you breast-feed her?”
Jenny drew a hand to her chest and swallowed as Sean blustered, “What does that have to do with anything?”
“I—”
“Please, Jenny,” Nikola raised a hand and moved to stand up. “Don’t lie. I will forget what you’ve said, because giving false information to a government officer is a punishable offense and I don’t want to cause you any harm. You’ve suffered enough already. But I need to know everything about Laurel to help her, and if you lie to me”—Nikola let the sentence hang in midair like a guillotine—”I won’t be able to return your daughter.” There, he’d done it again. Naturally, I mean to return Laurel to a position several inches below the surface in a hibernation tank. Center.
“She’s not our daughter,” Sean blurted.
“Of course she is!” Jenny sprang to her feet, looking very much like a flustered sparrow.
“I mean she’s our adopted daughter. We adopted her when she was five.”
Jenny glared at her husband, then her face seemed to pull inward as she flopped back in her seat, her chest heaving as she broke into sobs.
Sean walked over to his wife and ran a large hand over her hair, lowering his head to whisper cooing sounds.
Nikola closed his eyes again and bunched his toes to control his rising anger. He had figured out the explanation behind the missing baby photographs on the display, but having it confirmed didn’t give him a measure of pleasure; rather, he felt disgust. Adopted. Outside, a reddish light announced dusk, and Nikola felt in his bones that he would have the missing link to the daring breakout—or, at least, a finger pointing in the right direction—before dark.
When Sean returned to his seat, he began a lengthy monologue, delivered with the lackluster tone of a penitent. After several years of trying, a visit to a gynecologist, and a battery of tests, they had discovered an unpalatable fact: Jenny was barren. A gauntlet of interviews followed, along with form-filling and more interviews to adopt a child—an almost impossible feat in a society suffering a chronic shortage of children. Then the miracle happened.
“Ms. Cunningham from the Social Services Department called. There was a girl