Three Weeks to Say Goodbye (3 page)

“Why didn’t your lawyers contact our lawyer about these meetings?” I said. “Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work?”

“I thought they had,” she said.

“We’ve heard nothing.”

She shrugged. “I’m not a lawyer.”

“Neither is ours, apparently,” I said, spitting it out.

“You don’t understand,” Melissa said. “We can’t lose our baby.”

Julie started to speak, then bit her lip and looked away.

“We can’t lose our baby,” Melissa said again, but this time her voice was close to a shout.

“Judge Moreland is a powerful man,” Julie said softly. “I get the impression he’s used to getting what he wants.”

“Tell me about him,” I asked. “Tell me what kind of man I’m up against.”

“He’s a wealthy man,” she said. “His wife has the fortune, from what I understand. Judges aren’t paid that much, I guess. He owns lots of real estate. I’m telling you this because you
mentioned something about buying off Garrett. I hate to say it, but I don’t think you could. And the judge comes across as such a nice man. He’s handsome, confident. He’s the kind of man you instantly like, and you hope he likes you because you don’t want to displease him, you know?”

I said, “Julie, when I think of you all having these meetings and talking about us it makes me ill.”

She nodded, then looked away again. “We discussed what his options were. He was very concerned about doing things the right way so as not to hurt you and Melissa.”

“How kind,” Melissa said.

“Tell me, Julie,” I said, “how do you live with yourself?”

She put her face in her hands and cried. I couldn’t help it—I felt terrible for making her cry again. But I didn’t take my words back.

Finally, she grabbed a napkin and wiped the tears from her eyes, smearing eyeliner down her cheek, making it look like a faded scar.

Melissa stood up with Angelina. “I’ve got to change her diaper,” she said, and left the room. “We’ll be back.”

For a moment we just sat there not looking at each other.

“There’s one thing you can help us with,” I said.

“What?”

“If you were Melissa and me, would you fight this in court? Knowing what you know, do we have a prayer?”

She shook her head sadly, said, “The best you could hope for, I think, is some kind of joint custody that a judge would decree. But I don’t think either of you would be happy with that. And if I were you, I’d pray to God your baby is raised by John and Kellie—that Garrett is kept as far away from the baby as possible.”

I felt my skin crawl. “Why do you say that?”

She shook her head. “There’s something wrong with that
boy. He scares me. And it isn’t anything I can quite put my finger on—there’s just something wrong about him.”

“Oh God,” I said.

She pursed her lips and looked down at her hands. “It’s like the temperature in the room goes down ten degrees when he enters. There’s no warmth. He seems bloodless and cunning. I wouldn’t trust him with a child—or anyone.”

I felt myself tingling. I leaned forward. “I understand what you’re saying, but do you have anything I can use? Have you heard anything about Garrett we can investigate to prove what a bad father he’d be?”

She was still, her hands mindlessly caressing her coffee mug on both sides. Thinking.

She said, “I think there’s been some trouble at school,” she said. “Once, when we were meeting with John, he got a call from someone at Garrett’s high school, and he had to cut the meeting short. I don’t know who called or what it was about, but the judge was quite upset.”

“This happened within the last month?” I asked, trying not to show my anger that the Morelands and the agency had been meeting behind our backs in secret.

“Yes.”

“Anything else?”

“One thing, but it’s no more solid than the first. When we were looking over your placement application with them …”

I took in an angry breath, but she continued.

“… the judge pointed out you owned a dog.”

“Harry.”

“The judge said they couldn’t have pets because Garrett couldn’t get along with them. I thought that was an odd choice of words. Not that he was allergic to them, or wouldn’t take care of them or something, but that
he couldn’t get along
with them
. When he said it, I could see he wished he hadn’t.”

“Is that all?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “And it all sounds so baseless when I say it.”

“Thank you,” I said. “At least it gives me something to go on. But it also makes me feel a little sick.”

“Yes,” she said, then she lifted her chin and looked at me. “I think the only answer is somehow to convince Garrett to sign the papers giving up his parental rights,” she said.

She took a deep breath to compose herself, mumbling that she hated to cry in front of others.

“Maybe he needs some
strong
persuading,” she said, letting an angry edge into her voice.

“Meaning?”

“Meaning,” she said, leaning across the table, her eyes flashing, “if Angelina were my daughter, I’d hire a couple of mean-ass bikers or wranglers and have them scare the living shit out of Garrett so he’s only more than happy to sign anything put in front of him. He needs the kind of persuading that makes him think his father’s determination is the least of his concerns.”

I sat back.
That
had come from left field, but obviously it was something she’d been thinking about.

“I’m speaking hypothetically, of course,” she said. “Not as a representative of the agency or a placement professional.”

“Of course,” I said. “Could he be scared?”

She thought for a moment before whispering, “I think so.”

ON THE WAY HOME
, I said to Melissa, “You’re taking this much more calmly than I thought possible.”

“I’m not calm at all,” she said. “I’m dead inside. But this
does explain why we have a phone message from Judge Moreland. He says he’s coming over tomorrow afternoon with his son.”

“Jesus,” I said.

“What should we do?”

“I’m going to go see Martin Dearborn,” I said. “I’m going to his house. Don’t call the judge back. In fact, keep the phone off the hook. I’ll call you on your cell, so keep it with you. The judge may put off coming to our house if he isn’t sure we got the message, and we don’t respond.”

She laughed—a chilling, uncharacteristic laugh I’d never heard before and never wanted to hear again. It was a false laugh filled with horror and defeat. She said, “You know how they say your life passes before your eyes before you die?”

“Yes.”

“That’s happening now.”

MARTIN DEARBORN
, OUR ATTORNEY for the adoption, was in his driveway wearing a gold-and-black Colorado Buffaloes sweater and loading seat cushions and blankets into the back of his Mercedes M-Class SUV when I drove up in my ten-year-old Jeep Cherokee. I remembered the CU alumni awards on the wall of his office and noted the CU license-plate frame. Dearborn was plump and sandy-haired and wore thick glasses that made his light brown eyes look bigger than they were. He had a large head and a deep bass voice and ham-sized hands. He squinted when I jammed my Jeep into park because he obviously didn’t recognize the vehicle or the driver—at first.

When I jumped out, I saw something pass over his face that told me he knew why I was there but didn’t want to admit it.

His wife, a too-thin woman with a pinched face, also decked out in Buffs colors, came out of the garage, saw me approaching, and said, “Who is
that?
”

Martin gestured for her to go back inside. He tried hard to blank his eyes and face as I came up the driveway, but he wasn’t successful. His wife theatrically looked at her wristwatch, and he said, “I know. We’ll make it in time for kickoff.”

She said, “It isn’t kickoff I’m worried about. It’s the preparty.”

He said, “We’ll make it, don’t worry.”

She stomped back into the garage.

“Jack,” he said, “this can wait until office hours on Monday. My wife and I are …”

“You son of a bitch, how long were you going to wait to tell us?”

“Monday. During regular office hours. That’s when we
work,
Jack.”

“Monday’s too late, and you know it.”

“Look,” he said, lowering his voice into his official lawyer tone, the one he used to impress Melissa and me, “I’ve been in the Springs on a big civil case. I wasn’t able to return the calls to them during the day because we were in court.”

I stepped close enough to him that he flinched. “You didn’t have breaks? You don’t have paralegals who could make the call on your behalf?”

He looked away.

“Damn, you look guilty,” I said. “You’ve got to get us out of this, and I mean now. This guy and his son are coming to our house tomorrow.”

His voice wasn’t as low when he spoke. “I’d advise you to be civil. He’s got the law on his side, I’m afraid.”

I reached out and grabbed a handful of CU sweatshirt, then
quickly let it go. I couldn’t help myself. From the garage I heard Dearborn’s wife say, “Honey, do I need to call the police?”

“No,” he said. “It’s okay.”

I said, “So you know all about it, then. I’d advise
you
to pretend you’re an attorney—our attorney. We need to go to court right now and do something. Isn’t there a restraining order or something? Can’t we prevent this from happening?”

“I’d have to research it,” he said, uncomfortable.

“We don’t have the time.”

He turned to me, his face flushed. “Jack, he’s a sitting federal judge. He’s been appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Don’t you think he knows the law? Hell, he makes it.”

“So that’s it, then,” I said.

“Our firm has cases scheduled before him next month, Jack. Big cases. Million-dollar cases with national implications. I’ve got a real conflict here.”

I shook my head. I wanted to smash him. His wife was still in the garage, and I noticed she had a telephone, ready to call the police. She pointed to it with her other hand, and mouthed “9-1-1.”

“Is he aware I’m your counsel?” Dearborn asked.

“No,” I said, “because you haven’t done a damned thing. How would he know?”

“You need to calm down,” he said. “And I’m afraid you need to get a new attorney. I’m not your man for this case. He’s best friends with the mayor and the governor, for Christ’s sake. And his name has come up for the Tenth Circuit and higher.”

“So what are you saying?”

“That he not only knows the law, he knows how to work the law. This is inside baseball, Jack. You never told me you were going up against Judge Moreland.”

“I didn’t know.”

“I think you should calm down and look at this from his point of view.”

“I think you’re fired,” I said, even though he’d resigned.

“Good.”

“Nine-one-one,” his wife said, holding up the phone like a totem.

I DROVE TO LINDA
Van Gear’s town house in an angry fog. I found her wearing sweats with her hair down, shuttling between a fish tank in the living room to the toilet in the bathroom carrying dead fish one at a time. Her town house was a shambles.

“This is what happens when you travel for a living and you ask your neighbor to feed your fish and he forgets and goes skiing ‘
because the powder was awesome, dude,
’ ” she said angrily. “You come back to a tank full of dead objects.”

I told her my situation had grown much worse since I’d seen her last, and I needed to cancel my scheduled trip to World Tourism Bourse in Berlin in a week.

That stopped her cold, and she stood there with a pale and dripping angel fish in a little net.

“So you want to send someone else to WTB, then?”

“Yes.”

“Whom do you suggest?”

Our department consisted of the two of us. I suggested Rita Greene-Bellardo, a new employee who served as executive assistant but seemed to have little to do.

“Pregnant,” Linda said. “I just heard. She’s gonna have her baby and take the maternity leave and quit. I heard her telling a girlfriend that was her plan. We can’t depend on her to follow up.”

I floated the name of Pete Maxfield, who headed the media-relations department. Pete sometimes worked with international journalists and might have some experience he could use at the show. Linda didn’t like Pete, though.

“Honey,” she said, “Pete is a hound dog. He’d spend the whole time drinking German beer and trying to get some deaf, dumb, and blind German girl to come to his room at the hotel, or he’d blow the entertainment bud get on prostitutes. This is our biggest and most important market. We don’t just send people for the sake of sending someone. The only choice we have is me, and you know it.”

I did, but I didn’t want to ask.

“I’ll be in Taiwan,” she said. “I can’t be both places.”

I knew where this was headed.

“You
need
to have that big meeting with Malcolm Harris,” she said.