As the sheriff left the house, I said to Sandy, “I’m putting my gun down.” I reached under my jacket, extracted my Glock with two fingers, and put it on the floor.
Toni Burgess scooped up my weapon and walked across the open room, chains clanking. She put my gun in the garbage can under the sink and closed the cabinet doors.
Sandy dropped her gun into her coveralls pocket, then hugged the baby with both arms.
I let out a breath I’d been holding for far too long and looked around. I saw baby bottles on the counter, baby toys on a sheepskin rug on the floor. Pictures of the baby were stuck all over the fridge.
Sandy jounced the bab
y against her shoulder and patted his back, but he kept crying.
“My name is Sandra Wilson,” she said. “And this is my son, Tyler Burgess Wilson. I’m his mother now. I answered Avis Richardson’s ad in Prattslist, and I paid her twenty-five thousand dollars as reimbursement for her expenses in carrying and bearing the baby. And she signed the papers. It’s all legal. You make sure to tell Avis that it’s too late to change her mind.”
“Avis ran the ad?”
“She sure did. I can show it to you. After Avis said she wanted us to have the baby, we wired the money into her bank account. Now, listen to me. We love Tyler and we’re not giving him up. This little boy is ours.”
Chapter 80
CLAIRE SAID, “I’m a doctor, honey. And I have a baby not much older than Tyler. Could I just take a quick look at him? Please?” She reached out her arms toward the baby in Sandy Wilson’s arms.
“I can’t get him to eat,” Sandy said in a voice that suddenly cracked with emotion.
Claire hugged the girl and said, “It’s okay. It’s okay.” Then she tugged the baby out of Sandy’s arms and took him to the kitchen table. “Got some baby wipes and a clean diaper?” she asked, her voice as calm as if we weren’t under the gun.
I was at Claire’s side as she unwrapped the baby, and I could see that he was brown-eyed and pink all over and that he had all his parts, plus a little port-wine stain on the back of his hand. I reached out and touched his little palm. He kicked his legs and let out a fresh new wail.
While Claire cleaned and inspected the baby, Toni Burgess disappeared. She returned a minute later with the ad from Prattslist and a sheet of paper in her shaking hands.
“Sergeant, I want you to see this so you can leave us in peace and tell Buck to go home.”
“You go ahead and read it. I’m listening,” I said.
“I, Avis Richardson, being of lawful age and sound mind, do give my unnamed son to Sandra Wilson and Antoinette Burgess, who have paid me $25,000 for my expenses in bearing this child.”
The ad was as Sandy described it. And the note was signed, dated, and witnessed by Antoinette Burgess and Sandra Wilson.
I sighed, and then I had to say it.
“Toni, the problem is, Avis Richardson is only fifteen years old.”
“She’s eighteen. She showed us her ID.”
“She’s a liar,” I said. “And that’s just the beginning.”
“This is just wrong,” Sandy said, collapsing into a kitchen chair and sobbing into her hands.
She was crying so hard, it was difficult to make out everything she said, but this much I got loud and clear: “We planned for him. We delivered him. We’re giving him a loving home. Avis didn’t want him. She had no love for him at all.”
I went to Sandy and took her gun out of her coveralls pocket and ejected out the magazine.
She looked up at me, pleading. “Help us. What do we have to do to keep him?”
“You can’t keep him, Sandy,” I said, knowing that my words were like taking a hatchet to her heart. “This baby already has a family who wants him. I’m very sorry for your pain.”
Chapter 81
OUR DEPARTURE from Clark Lane was excruciating; slow and tearful.