“I’m happy for you, Julia. I really am. Do you mind if I take Daniel for a walk down to the park while you finish up?”

“We’re pretty much done, aren’t we, Miss Chandler?”

“I think so.”

“Why don’t we all go?” said Julia. “Daniel could use some fresh air, and so could I.”

“Grand,” I said.

We made an odd group walking down the street toward the park. Isabel and myself in our suits, Julia in jeans and a T-shirt knotted at her side, Daniel holding tightly to her thigh. It seemed evident from the clothing and the group dynamic that Isabel and I were representatives of the state, there to monitor and judge the singular relationship between mother and son. Frankly, I didn’t like the role. Who was in worse shape to judge the mother-son relationship than I? It had taken me years to get up the courage to reestablish a relationship with my own mother, and still, the possibility of her calling in the middle of the night left me gasping. And who was I to judge anyone’s relationship with a child, when all I really knew about children was that they sometimes messed up my suits? But there I was, and it seemed that Julia had finally gotten serious about doing what was required to properly take care of her son. Was I deluding myself to think that maybe my mere presence on the scene, looking out for Daniel’s interests, was having a positive effect? It almost made me feel… What was the word I was going for? I couldn’t grab hold of the exact word, but all of it made me feel… something.

Damn, maybe this pro bono stuff didn’t blow after all.

At the park the three adults sat on a bench and talked about Julia’s plans for her son as Daniel wandered aimlessly around the equipment. At one point he started climbing on the jungle gym, bracing himself with his knees, reaching up to a higher bar with his left hand. And then he stopped and carefully climbed down again.

“I’m going to have a little talk with Daniel,” I said.

He was standing by the seesaw, gripping the handle in front of one of the seats, pushing it up and down.

“How’s it going, Daniel?”

“Okay,” he said without looking at me.

“Are you excited about moving?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t sound excited.”

“I like it here.”

“It will be nice there, too.”

“What if she can’t find us?”

“Who?”

“You know.”

“Tanya?”

“How is she?”

“I don’t know, I haven’t found her yet, but I’m still looking, and I’m getting closer. I’m going to find her. And I’ll know where you’ll be, Daniel. I’ll bring her to you.”

He turned his head and stared at me. “No.”

“What’s wrong?”

“He doesn’t like her.”

“I know. I’ll be careful. But what about you, Daniel? Does he like you?”

“I don’t know.”

He turned away from me again, ambled over to the slide, rubbed his left hand on the shiny metal. I looked over at Isabel and Julia on the bench. Isabel was on her cell phone, her file open on her lap. Julia was staring at Daniel with a troublesome worry on her face. She stood up and started walking toward us. I stepped over to Daniel and situated myself so that the boy was shielded from his mother.

“What happened to your arm?” I said.

He drew his right arm close to his body. “Nothing.”

“Let me see it, Daniel. Please let me.”

“Nothing.”

I stooped down, gently took hold of his wrist, pulled his arm until it was straight out from his body. He winced.

“Did you hurt it playing?”

“No.”

“Did you fall off something?”

“No.”

“I’m going to roll up your sleeve, okay?”

“No.”

“Yes, I am,” I said, and then I did, and in that moment something shifted inside me.

“He burned it on my cigarette,” said Julia, standing now right behind me as I continued to stare at Daniel’s arm.

“I didn’t know you smoked, Julia,” I said, still stooping before Daniel, still holding his wrist, brushing the hair from his forehead so I didn’t have to look anymore at the arm.

“Sometimes I do.”

“I know Randy smokes.”

“It was an accident.”

“I don’t understand you. I’m sorry, I’ve tried to understand, but I just don’t. First you give away Tanya, and now this. It doesn’t even matter that they are your children, I don’t have any of my own, so I won’t even try to figure out how that must feel. But it is enough for me that they are children and they needed someone, and what they had was you. They needed you to protect them, and you turned away.”

“It was an accident, I tell you.”

“There are three burns healed to varying degrees. This last one is an open sore. All three are just the size of a lit cigarette tip. This was not an accident.”

“We’re going home now,” said Julia.

“No,” I said. “No, you’re not.”

“Come on, Daniel,” she said. She reached out for her son.

Daniel looked at me and didn’t move.

“What’s wrong?” said Isabel, coming up to us now, still clutching her file, cell phone open in her other hand.

“Call the police,” I told her. “We need a patrol car and a detective from the Special Victims Unit here right away. And we need to find some safe place for Daniel to stay.”

67

I was late for my date with Carol Kingsly.

What with the police and the paperwork, the arrest warrant sworn out for Randy Fleer. What with returning to Julia’s apartment and packing up Daniel’s clothes in a spare black garbage bag and driving him to Social Services, where Isabel worked the phones to find him a foster home. What with going along with Isabel as she drove Daniel to the house of a nice, smiling couple, parents of two older children, who had volunteered to take a foster child on an emergency basis and had already been interviewed and examined and prequalified. What with all that, I was late, yes, I was late. But I didn’t think it was anything to cry about.

Obviously I was wrong. Because there was Carol Kingsly, at our table in a crowded little restaurant called Rembrandt’s, a place not far from the great blackened hulk of Eastern State Penitentiary, with a half-drained glass of white wine in front of her, and she was crying.

“What’s going on?” I said as I sat. “I’m not that late, am I?”

She just waved away my question and tried to compose herself. She wasn’t doing a whole sobbing-out-loud thing, which would have been really uncomfortable. It was more a soft, contained cry, like her cat had died or something. Except Carol Kingsly didn’t have cats.

“Carol?” I said. “Are you okay?”

She gained control, expertly wiped her eyes with her fingertips, leaving her mascara intact. “No,” she said, shaking her head.

“What happened?”

“I received some really bad news. I’m not okay.”

A bolt of terror slashed through me. She had some sort of disease, I could tell. She had cancer. I was sure of it. I had a vision of Carol Kingsly in her hospital bed, her limbs withered, her head shaved, looking up at me with sunken eyes. Gad. Looking up at me with the expectation that I would care for her. Me. Somehow now she was my responsibility? We had only been going out for a couple of weeks, I didn’t even like her all that much, and still I was on the hook? What were the rules on that? And with whom could I lodge my appeal? I had the almost uncontrollable urge to excuse myself, to stand up, step outside, and run like the wind. When it’s fight or flight, my first impulse is always to gallop the hell out of there. But this time I gripped the edge of the table, pressed myself back into my seat, tried to not show my terror.

“What is it?” I said. “Something serious?”

“Very.”

“Tell me. What?”

“Remember I told you about my yoga instructor, Miranda? Who recommended I start going to Dr. Pfeffer?”

“Your yoga instructor?”

“She’s very concerned about me. She said I looked out of sorts, and after class, she gave me a private reading. What she found was terrible.”