Chapter 35
Back at the coffee shop, Ronnie took out her earbuds and smiled. Her delight at seeing me felt like lightning and it hadn’t lessened over time.
“Mackenzie.”
“Ronnie,” I said.
“I can see it in your face, you found something. Are you upset?”
I ordered a coffee and took the chair next to her.
I shook my head. “I’m not upset. More like, deeply confounded.”
“Want to talk about it?” she said.
“Yes. But not yet.”
“Why the wait?”
“I want to present the facts to you, like you’re a judge, when I have them all. But I don’t yet,” I said.
She wrinkled her nose and nodded. “If you were another man, that would make me irate. But because it’s you, I’ll wait. Because you’re cute.”
I drank the coffee black, a sign of distress.
The next day, Sunday, she suggested another two hours without clothes in bed, reading and being in love, languid and leisurely, no Manny or Kix or Noelle or Stackhouse or Timothy walking around the house.
We did. And it was better than advertised.
On the drive home, Ronnie working on her laptop and listening to music through her earbuds, I replayed the conversation with Cindy.
Who is Margaret?
Margaret Cardot. The biological daughter of Theo and Piper. Born only a few weeks before Sophia.
I’ve never heard of Margaret, I said.
Cindy had nodded and then winced like the head bob reminded her of an old wound.
Margaret died of SIDS. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.
Oh, I said. Oh no.
Something inside of me had clenched, imagining the worst case scenario with my own son. Cindy had noticed.
You have children?
A son.
It’s hard not to make it about us, she said.
I’m trying.
Me too. But we can’t help putting ourselves in their shoes.
Theo and Piper were still grieving when Social Services called, I’m sure.
Piper told me all about it when I met them later, when Piper and Theo first came to the house across the street.
Sophia can’t take Margaret’s place. But I’m sure she helped.
The same way baby Sophia helped my Mary grow up, I think she helped Piper and Theo grieve their loss.
I hadn’t run across the deceased child in my research of Piper and Theo. That wasn’t a total shock—baby Margaret hadn’t had time to leave a digital footprint in the world. Not like she’d been given a credit score or a phone number or Facebook account, those things inspectors encountered first.
I tapped Ronnie and she took out her earbuds. I said, “I need to talk to an attorney who deals with juvenile and family matters.”
“That’s me.”
“When Kix was born, he was assigned a birth certificate and a social security number. All babies are. Right?” I said.
“Essentially. All known babies. You could deliver one at home and not tell.”
“What happens if Kix died and I didn’t inform anyone?” I said.
“Yuck, Mackenzie. You just made my whole body tense.”
“I know, it hurts, right? How would the government know?” I said.
“If Kix died? The government would know through vital statistics reporting. A doctor or funeral director or you would file it at the state’s vital records office. You know all this.”
“And if a doctor didn’t know, and if there was no funeral, and if the parent, me, never reported it?” I said.
“A neighbor might, or one of his teachers. They would alert the police, who would investigate it. But, if your question is—would the government know he was dead if nobody reported it? No, the government wouldn’t know.
It happens, especially in poorer rural communities.
Or people living off the grid, or illegal immigrants trying to avoid notice,” she said.
“There’s no automated community, state, or federal mechanism monitoring Kix’s social security number? His well-being? If I never brought him to school, Social Services wouldn’t come asking questions?”
“Not necessarily. There’s no branch of our government assigned to making sure social security numbers get their vaccines and attend kindergarten and so forth.
There are too many citizens, too many undocumented people, too many bodies, and too few federal resources.
Parents are expected to be responsible. The courts I work in are continually surprised to learn so-and-so moved, or so-and-so died, and nobody bothered reporting it,” she said.
“People can disappear and no one realizes it,” I said.
“It happens a lot. Every year, by the tens of thousands. Does this have anything to do with Emile’s murder?”
“I’m not sure yet,” I said.
“I hired you. I’m your boss. You have to tell me.”
“You only put down a deposit. I outworked that long ago.”
“Does this weekend not count? I spent hours with you with my clothes off,” she said.
“Doesn’t count.”
“Why not?”
“Because you enjoyed it as much as me,” I said.
She grinned and put her earbuds back in. “Maybe even more so.”
We found our family asleep when we arrived home late.
Sunday Night Football played softly on the television, the Eagles losing big to Dallas in the fourth quarter.
Manny slept on the couch wearing athletic shorts and a t-shirt with the arms missing, his dark tattoos and scars visible.
Noelle slept on the same couch at the other end.
Both were stretched out, their feet towards the middle, too long, so his legs were slid behind hers, a blanket covering them jointly.
Like they were spooning but in opposite directions.
Kix slept on Manny’s chest, his little hand draped off the side and lying on a cushion, his little mouth slightly open.
So picturesque that Ronnie and I could’ve melted.
Manny heard us first and raised his head, and then Kix stirred too. Both of them kinda sat up, Kix blinking and bleary. He spotted us through his sleep and held out his hands.
For Ronnie.
Although a fearsome litigator, a knock-you-over sun goddess, a fitness maniac, a tough-as-nails business woman, she cried easily over Kix. She scooped him from Manny’s stomach and kissed him a lot, and her tears rolled.
“He’s so beautiful I could die,” she said, sniffing, and she took him upstairs to his crib.
I patted Manny. “You’re cute too.”
“I know.”