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By Root 475 0

as newborns. I’d loved being in the hospital: the nurses fussing around me, bringing me meals that I didn’t have to prepare, on dishes I wouldn’t have to wash; having someone make my bed and mop the floor and clean the bathroom every day. I didn’t even mind being woken up every three hours to have my temperature and blood pressure taken. It had been so long since I’d been the center of attention that way, since people were taking care of me instead of the other way around. When Spencer had arrived, after a brief but grueling labor, and they’d handed him to me after his bath, I’d seriously considered asking the nurses to keep him for an hour or two so I could grab a nap and eat my lunch. It had horrified me then, but it comforted me now. Maybe I’d feel nothing but relief at the chance to pass a new baby into the eager arms of another woman . . . but would it really be that easy? Would I let go without a second thought, or would I hold the baby close, turning my face away, thinking, or even saying, No! Mine! Mine!

Spencer was staring at me. “Pants,” he prompted. I fastened a fresh diaper around his waist, pulled up his khakis, and swung him down to the floor. He took off at a run, pudgy legs pumping, calling for his brother. I watched him go, telling myself that it would be easy, wondering whether it was true.

BETTINA

Kate Klein had told me not to expect to hear from her for two weeks, but I guess she was in the underpromise and overdeliver school, because a week after my visit to her office, she called and said she had some news.

“I could come on my lunch hour.”

I heard her hesitate before she answered, “This might take a little longer than an hour.”

I asked for a half day’s worth of personal time for the next afternoon. “A doctor’s appointment,” I told my boss, and she let me go without even asking me what was wrong, or when I’d be finished writing up estimates for the department’s latest set of acquisitions, a pair of brass vases from the Yuan Dynasty which would probably sell for a price as spectacular as they were ugly. At two o’clock the next afternoon, after a mostly sleepless night and an unproductive morning, I hurried through a steamy June afternoon to the midtown office and hit the elevator button that would carry me up to Kate’s floor.

The detective met me in the waiting room wearing a black cotton skirt (slightly wrinkled, and with an elastic waistband, but a definite step above the pajama pants), black sandals, and a white cotton T-shirt.

“This way.” Kate led me past her office into a conference room, where a manila folder sat at the center of a table. India’s name was typed on its tab. Looking at the folder, I tasted old pennies in my mouth, and felt a strange mixture of excitement and regret ... except regret wasn’t exactly the right word. Pregret was more like it—the sadness you could feel over something that hasn’t happened yet.

There were six chairs around the table. Five of them were empty. The sixth was occupied by a guy about my age, wearing khakis and a button-down shirt and heavy-framed horn-rimmed glasses that looked like he’d swiped them off his grandpa’s bedside table. I distrusted him immediately. I think glasses should be glasses, worn to improve your vision, not as a statement, or a piece of installation art on the bridge of your nose.

“This is Darren Zucker, one of our associates,” Kate said.

I held out my hand. Darren got to his feet, lazily, like he had all the time in the world, and gave my hand a single limp pump. Then he sat down and flipped open the folder to display a photograph of a much younger India, with an unfortunately pouffy perm. It took me a second to realize that I was looking at a mug shot. My father’s new wife had been arrested in Los Angeles in 1991 . . . and I’d bet my trust fund that my dad didn’t have a clue.

I took a seat and pulled the folder toward me. “Is her name really India?”

Kate gave me a look I couldn’t decipher. Darren just appeared smug, with the light glinting off his ridiculous glasses.

“It’s not,” he said. “But there’s a lot you’ll want