Blood Bound (36 page)

“I don’t know. The sitter said she was their neighbor and she’d agreed to watch Hadley for a few days, while Elle went home to see her parents. Elle said she hadn’t told them about the baby yet, and she wasn’t sure how they’d react.”

“I thought you said Elle’s parents are dead,” Cam said, turning to me.

“They are,” Anne answered for me, picking up the glass again, staring into it as if she could see the past in the melting ice cubes. They’d died in a wreck our freshman year in college, leaving Elle and her older brother no choice but to sell their house and take out loans for school. “And we spent that whole New Year’s weekend with her, and she never told anyone she had a baby.” Anne shrugged. “She never told
me,
anyway. I’m assuming you didn’t know, either.”

“No clue.” I admitted. “How did the sitter know to bring the baby to you?”

“That’s where it gets weird…”

“I think we’re way past weird,” Cam said.

“Evidently Elle gave the sitter my address and told her to bring me the baby if she didn’t come to pick her up on time. And, of course, Elle never showed up. To my knowledge, she never showed up
anywhere
after the party.”

“What about the dad?” Cam poured a shot for himself before passing the whiskey to me. “Did the sitter know the father?”

Anne shook her head, while I debated having a drink. “That was the first thing I asked. The sitter said she’d never seen Elle with a man at all, and Elle never once mentioned the father. A couple of weeks later, the sitter called me and said Noelle was being evicted. So I went to the address she gave me and she watched the baby while I packed up Elle’s things. I went through everything, looking for some sign of where she’d gone, or who Hadley’s father is, but I found nothing. All her correspondence was from us—none of it recent—and all her old pictures were from high school, except for Hadley’s baby pictures. Most of
those
were on her camera or her laptop, and there isn’t a man in a single one of them. Just the baby, and a few shots of Elle with her.”

“She knew something was going to happen,” Cam said silently. And I decided I needed that drink after all. “Elle saw something and knew she wasn’t going to be there to raise the baby, so she arranged for you to take care of her.”

“Then she went back home to see everyone one last time….” I downed my shot, savored the smoothness of a whiskey I could never afford and poured another. “That’s why she told me about you and me when she did—she knew she wasn’t going to get another chance.”

Anne looked puzzled, but respected our privacy enough not to ask for details.

“So, she knew she was going to die, and she made arrangements for Hadley,” I said, eager to redirect the conversation. “But why would she want you to let everyone think the baby was yours?”

“I don’t know,” Anne said. “I don’t know anything, other than what I’ve already told you. All I know for sure is that she gave me Hadley and asked me to keep her safe, and I’ve raised her as my own, and I love her more than I’ve ever loved anyone in my life—including Shen—and now she’s gone, and I’m not protecting her, and the only thing that hurts worse than my head right now is my heart.” Tears filled her eyes and threatened to run over as she pressed one hand to her chest so hard I was sure she was bruising her own ribs. “I’m so scared, and I don’t know how to get her back….”

“We’re going to get her back.” I rubbed Anne’s back absently, while my thoughts shot in a thousand different directions at once, then finally settled on one point. “Your head…” Her head hurt because she was no longer actively protecting Hadley, as Elle had asked her to. It would probably hurt worse and lead to systemic shutdown if she wasn’t already trying to get Hadley back. “Maybe this will help, at least a little.” I dug through my satchel for a bottle of Tylenol while Cam ran cold water into a fresh glass.

“What about the vital statistics?” he said, as Anne swallowed four pills at once. “You said she left you some information about the baby? What was the information?”

“Oh, um…” Anne rubbed her face again, thinking. “Her birthday. February eighth. She was almost eleven months old when I got her, but I had to gradually push her age back by another year to account for the pregnancy I never actually had, before I could get back in contact with anyone I’d known before. Elle also left me her blood type—she’s A positive. Her length and weight at birth. And potential allergies—Elle was allergic to penicillin and peaches, so she thought Hadley might be, too. Turned out to be a yea on the peaches, nay on the penicillin, thank goodness.”

“What about a birth certificate?” I asked, still hoping for a clue about the father’s identity.

“Nope.” Anne shook her head slowly, as if she was narrating a memory. “I had to pay for a fake one, just to get her enrolled in school.”

“Did Shen know she wasn’t yours?”

Anne shook her head again. “No one knew, except my parents, and I swore them to secrecy. I had to kind of back away from everyone I’d known for a while, to avoid questions I couldn’t answer, so for a long time, it was just me and Hadley.”

I couldn’t imagine how alone she must have felt.

Well, yes, I could. I knew all about being alone. But I couldn’t imagine being alone with a baby. Especially a baby that came with no warning and no explanation. And no instructions. Maybe that was why Elle hadn’t left her child to me.

Why she hadn’t left her with Kori was obvious.

“Okay…” Cam sank onto the chair opposite me, looking more hopeless and frustrated than I’d ever seen him. “So, just to sum up, we need to find and free a missing child, but we have no idea where she is, no blood sample and only her first name to work with. Is that accurate?”

Anne and I glanced at each other, and finally she nodded. “Based on what I know…yes.”

“Based on what you know…” Cam mulled that over for a second, then looked up again. “But what do you really know? What do any of us really know? I mean, is Hadley even really her name?”

“Yes. It has to be.” Anne’s confidence in her statement never wavered.

“Why? Because you’ve been calling her that all her life? Because Elle told you in a note? What if Elle was lying? She lied to us all, that whole weekend, just by never mentioning the fact that she had a kid.” Cam leaned back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest, and the bitter resignation in his eyes scared me. “Maybe she doesn’t. Or didn’t. We don’t know for sure that Hadley’s hers, do we? All we have is the written word of a dead woman.”

“Hadley
is
Noelle’s daughter,” Anne insisted, and I recognized the fiery determination sparking behind her calm facade. I recognized it, and I welcomed it. “She had pictures of Hadley dating back to the day she was born. Why would she spend so much time, energy and money on someone else’s kid?”

Cam shrugged. “
You
did.”

“Yeah, and I’m not done doing it. Because she was Elle’s daughter, and now she’s my daughter, and her name
is
Hadley.”

“You can’t be sure of that….” I said softly, when I couldn’t find a flaw in Cameron’s logic, harsh though it sounded. “Not one hundred percent.”

Anne turned on me, and I could practically feel the heat of her anger. “Yes, I can. I am absolutely sure of that because I know how Elle must have felt when she sent her baby to me. She knew she was going to die, and her child was the most precious thing in the world to her, and I’ve been walking in those exact footprints for the past two days. Tower’s men will kill me to get to Hadley—they’ve already killed Shen—so I’ve been struggling with the same mental preparation for her future that Elle had to face. And if I know anything at all, it’s that no mother would prepare to give her daughter a new life—a life of lies meant to protect her—without leaving her with at least one truth. Hadley doesn’t know who her mother really was. She doesn’t know who her father is. She doesn’t know what Skill she’ll inherit, or if she’ll ever see her home again. The only truth she has is her real name—one quarter of it, anyway. The name her real mother gave her, and the only thing that can never be taken from her. And Elle would never lie about that.”

Cam and I stared at Anne, stunned by the power of her words and her absolute conviction. And finally Cam nodded. “Okay. We have one name to work with. I guess that’s better than no name.”
But not much.

He didn’t say the last part, but I heard it anyway.

“Okay, here’s what I suggest.” I stood and started opening kitchen drawers in search of paper and a pen. “You two sit and think of every possible name Elle could have given her daughter. Ithat nooncentrate mostly on middle names, since we have no idea who the father is, and she probably has his surname.” A child’s surname was entirely up to the mother to give—it could be hers, the father’s or any other random name she chose, though the rest of the world would almost always know the child by his or her father’s last name.

“I don’t know…” Anne said, as I plucked a black ballpoint pen from a disturbingly neat—and sparsely populated—junk drawer. “She has no pictures of the father, and there wasn’t a single mention of him in any of her personal correspondence or official paperwork. I don’t think she wants anything to do with him. And if that’s the case, why give the baby his name?”

Cam shrugged, and I continued my search for paper. “I think we’re skimming right over the most obvious possibility—Hadley’s father could be dead.”

I shook my head without looking up from the last drawer in the kitchen. “If he were dead, why would she hide his identity? Wouldn’t she want her daughter to grow up at least knowing her late father’s name?”

“Maybe she was trying to keep Hadley from his family?” Anne suggested. “In the absence of a will, orphaned children go to the next of kin. So maybe she didn’t like his family and didn’t want them to know about the baby.”

“That doesn’t fit the timeline,” Cam insisted, rounding the peninsula toward the fridge, where he plucked a magnet notepad from the front and handed it to me with a brief grin. “She named the baby eleven months before she died.”

I set the notebook and pen in front of Anne on the table. “So maybe she knew, even then. We have no idea how long she knew she was going to die.” And that was the root of the problem—we didn’t know what Elle had seen, or how long ago she’d seen it.

“Here.” I tapped the notebook for emphasis. “Write down every possible name combination you can think of, and Cam can try them one at a time. Cross them off once you’ve tried it, otherwise, you’ll just repeat your efforts.” And I knew from personal experience how frustrating that could be. “Use Elle’s family names—her own, her mom’s, et cetera—and her friends’ names. Try everything you can think of.”

“What are you going to do?” Cam called, as I made my way toward the bedroom.

“I’m going to try Kori again.” Maybe if she knew what we’d just found out…

That was wishful thinking, and I knew it. We all knew it. But I dialed anyway. And just as I’d expected, I got her anonymous voice-mail message.

“Hey, Kori, it’s Liv,” I said, sinking onto the king-size bed I’d never slept in. “To be honest, I’m kind of banking on the assumption that you were following orders when you took Hadley, and that if you could have found a way around following that particular order, you would have. If that’s not the case, then…well, I guess more has changed over the last few years than I thought. But in case I’m right, there’s something you should know.” I inhaled deeply…and the machine cut my message off. The dial tone buzzed in my ear.

Damn. So much for a heartfelt message—short and sweet it is.

I called back, and again I got her voice mail. “Okay, I’m gonna keep this short.” Because I had no choice. “Hadley isn’t really Anne’s daughter. She’s Elle’s. She’s Noelle’s
baby,
Korinne. Elle knew she was going to die, so she left her baby with Anne and made her promise to keep it a secret. If any of us have ever meant anything to you—hell, if
Elle
ever meant anything to you—find a way to bring her back. Please, Kori. I’m leaving the bathroom dark for you. Will you please bring her back?”

That time when the machine cut me off, I was ready. I’d said what I had to say, including a direct request for her help, and beneath the mountain of my cynicism, there was a tiny blossom of hope, dying from lack of light, but deeply rooted. Within our four-sided friendship, Elle and Kori had always been best friends, like Anne and I were. Closer friendships within the whole. Even if Kori wasn’t willing to risk her job—not to mention her life—for me or Anne, or even for Hadley, she might be willing to do it for Elle.

For Elle’s memory.

Assuming she heard the message. But if she were listening to her messages, she would already have brought Hadley back, compelled by Anne’s request.

Anne looked up from the notepad when I sank into the chair next to her at the table. “Well?” she said, and the naked longing in her voice nearly killed me. Her hope was raw and obvious. It was her first line of defense, not merely a backup parachute cord, like the one I clung to privately. And when I shook my head in reply, her heartbreak and disappointment were just as raw and obvious.

“I left a message and told her about Elle,” I said, glancing at the first page of potential names, crossed off, ripped from the pad and dismissed once they’d been eliminated.

Anne looked up, still clutching the pen. “Try texting her. She’ll probably have the text read before it occurs to her that she shouldn’t finish it. You can compel her before she even realizes what she’s read.”

“Anne, that’s brilliant!” I said, pulling my phone from my pocket.

She shrugged. “That’s how Elle got me in the first place. In writing.” She held up the notepad full of names for emphasis.

I was halfway through a short, to-the-point text when Cam suddenly snatched my cell from my hand. “Wait!”

“What?”

“Don’t compel her in a text.” He backspaced over everything I’d typed. “That’ll only compete with her orders from Tower and make her self-destruct.”

Anne frowned. “You said her binding to us would supersede her marks from Tower.”

“I was wrong.” He handed my phone back. “I can’t believe I didn’t see this before, and I can’t elaborate, but her binding to him is just as strong as her binding to you two. That’s why she’s not listening to her messages. It has to be.”