The mileage on my Ford is about two hundred and fourteen thousand, and the transmission has this little three-second hesitation when you shift into third gear that you just learn to live with over the years. I knew that transmission better than I knew most things in my life, down to the burnt-toast smell the transmission fluid makes when the weather turns damp like it did that Tuesday morning in Dayton. I had the box in the back, all sixty-four pounds of solid red oak panels wrapped in corrugated cardboard and clear strapping tape, plus the little brown plush bear with the stitched nose I picked up at the hardware store register because it looked like the kind of thing a kid ought to have sitting on the pillow when he comes home from the maternity ward.
Maya hadn’t answered her phone since Sunday evening, which wasn’t like her, even when she was thirty-four weeks along and so swollen in the feet that she couldn’t get her canvas slip-ons onto her ankles without a long-handled shoehorn. I called twice on Monday from the job site while we were setting joists for a ranch out on the east side, and both times it went straight to that automated carrier voice telling me the subscriber’s mailbox was full. Derek’s phone didn’t ring at all; it just clicked dead like someone had the receiver sitting on the kitchen table or the battery was permanently drained. By Tuesday at ten past nine, I told the crew boss I had to go check on my girl, loaded the crib parts into the bed under a blue tarp, and took Route 35 straight across town with the heater blowing dry air onto my shins.
The neighborhood was one of those postwar developments where every house looks like it was cut out with the same tin snips back in 1954, all yellow aluminum siding and concrete block foundations that have settled three inches toward the driveway over the decades. I pulled my truck right up behind Derek’s gray sedan, which had a quarter-inch layer of pollen and dust caked on the rear window so thick you couldn’t see through the glass. The grass in the front yard was about four inches high, patchier than it used to be, with a couple of empty plastic fertilizer bags snagged against the chain-link fence where the wind must have left them on Sunday night.
The back door of the house was unlatched, swinging open about two inches against the rubber doorstop with a faint squeak that didn’t sound right for a place where a woman was resting up for a heavy delivery.
I didn’t knock because my name is Thomas and I am her father, and when you’ve helped a girl through three rounds of braces and two broken collarbones from the high school gymnastics team, you don’t stand on ceremony with a screen door. I stepped inside with the box of oak slats balanced on my shoulder, expecting the smell of coffee and maybe some oatmeal like Maya usually fixed herself around mid-morning.
Instead, the air in the kitchen smelled like cold grease and damp laundry that had been sitting in the basin too long. The sink was piled three-deep with plastic bowls and cereal spoons with milk dried hard around the rims, gray as concrete. A stack of red-stamped envelopes sat right in the middle of the laminate counter with the yellow return address from the municipal water authority showing past-due notices for four hundred and twelve dollars. I set the crib box down by the refrigerator because it was heavy enough to make my shoulder ache, and the thud of sixty pounds of wood hitting the linoleum made the spoon pile rattle in the sink.
“Maya?” I called out, my voice sounding louder in that small house than I meant it to.
There wasn’t any answer from the front rooms, just the low, steady drone of a television game show coming from the living room around the corner, some fellow talking about a five-thousand-dollar prize like he was reading a shipping manifest. I walked down the narrow hallway past the bathroom where the blue bathmat was balled up in the corner like an old towel, and that was when I heard Derek’s voice cutting through the game show noise. He wasn’t yelling loud enough for the neighbors to hear through the aluminum siding, but he had that sharp, flat edge to his tone that I recognized from thirty years of dealing with quartermasters who didn’t want to sign for short inventory.
“I told you to get the paperwork off the printer before I got back, and you didn’t even touch the tray,” Derek said, his voice dropping an octave right at the end. “Now I look like an idiot in front of people who actually have capital.”
I stopped right by the archway that led into the living room, my hand still resting on the faded wallpaper where the floral print had started peeling away at the seam near the light switch. Maya was down on her knees on the green carpet, her hands flat against the nap near the coffee table, her shoulders curved inward so hard her spine looked like a row of knots under her oversized gray sweatshirt. Her hair was pulled back with a yellow plastic clip that looked like it was missing half its teeth, and she was staring down at a pile of loose printer paper scattered around her shins like autumn leaves.
Derek was standing over her with his hands jammed into the pockets of his corduroy trousers, leaning back on his heels the way men do when they want you to know they own the room. He had on those expensive leather loafers I helped him move into the closet three years ago when they got married, the ones with the tassel that always looked ridiculous on a kid who worked parts intake at the regional warehouse.
“You’re going to get down there and gather every one of those sheets before the afternoon pickup, or you can figure out how you’re getting to the clinic on your own dime,” Derek said, taking half a step toward her with his toe. “Because my truck isn’t running your errands today.”
I didn’t think about it like a man thinks about a speech; I just moved the way my NCOs taught me to move when a recruit forgot his rifle inspection on a Monday morning in Fort Knox. I reached into my coat pocket where I keep my folding rule and my pocketknife, but I didn’t pull iron; I just pulled three long strides across that old green carpet before Derek even knew the air in the room had shifted weight.
He started to turn when the floorboards creaked under my boots, his mouth half-open to say something about me being early, but I caught him by the soft wool of his collar right under the ear and drove him three feet backward until his shoulder blades hit the pine trim around the front window with a dry crack that made the window glass hum. I didn’t hit him with a fist because a fist leaves a mark that takes paperwork to explain; I just put my forearm across his throat and held him there with my weight balanced on the balls of my feet so he couldn’t drop his chin or swing his arms.
“Thomas?” Derek choked out, his eyes going wide and white around the edges like a startled gelding. “What the hell are you, “
“Quiet,” I said. My voice didn’t shake. It was the same voice I used when a forklift operator tried to back a loaded flatbed into a wet ditch behind the lumber yard. “You aren’t talking right now, Derek. Not one word.”
Maya didn’t scream, and she didn’t jump up. She just stayed on her knees on that greasy carpet, her face turned up toward us with her lips parted just a little bit, her eyes looking at my boots and then up at Derek’s chin where my jacket sleeve was pressing hard against his windpipe.
“Dad,” she whispered, and the sound of it came out thin and dry like paper rubbing against paper. “Dad, don’t.”
I kept my left arm pinned across Derek’s chest, holding him against the window frame while I used my right hand to reach down and scoop up three of the white printer sheets that were scattered around Maya’s knees. My thumb brushed the corner of the top page, and the heading printed in black ink right under the header caught my eye before my brain even had time to translate the legal terms. *Independent Relinquishment & Advance Placement Agreement.* Underneath that, in smaller type, it talked about newborn transfer dates and waiver of parental claim for consideration in the amount of thirty-eight thousand four hundred dollars, payable directly to a holding account in Cincinnati.
Derek tried to twist his neck away from my arm, his face turning that patchy red color men get when they know they’ve been caught with their hand in the company till. “It’s an investment,” he wheezed, his fingers clawing uselessly at my wool sleeve. “It’s standard brokerage. She signed the release back in August. Look at the bottom of page four.”
I looked down at the signature line on the second sheet I picked up. Maya’s name was written there in blue ballpoint, but the *M* was too sharp, and the loop on the *y* went straight back instead of curling under like she’d been taught by Sister Agnes at St. Peter’s back when we lived over on Tenth Street. Maya didn’t sign her name with straight lines; she wrote like she was sewing, every letter looped and slow.
“You didn’t sign this,” I said, looking down at my girl where she was still resting her palms on the carpet.
“I didn’t even see it until this morning,” Maya whispered, her fingers starting to curl into the carpet fibers like she was trying to hold onto the floor itself. “Derek said it was just insurance forms for the hospital admittance. He told me if I didn’t sign the back page, the state would hold the birth certificate until we paid the back taxes on the utility account.”
Derek made a wet, rattling sound in the back of his throat as I tightened my forearm just enough to keep him from talking over her. “She knew about the broker fee,” he spat out, his eyes darting toward the television which was still playing some game show tune about a new kitchen suite. “We were three months behind on the car note and the mortgage was about to go into foreclosure. The agency handles dozens of these placements every month. It’s clean. It’s legal.”
“Legal,” I said. The word tasted like tin in my mouth.
I let go of his collar all at once, and he staggered forward two steps before catching himself against the corner of the small oak desk where the laptop was sitting open with the screen saver of a fishing boat glowing in the dark. I didn’t wait for him to straighten up; I reached down, grabbed the gray plastic laptop by the hinge, and closed it hard enough to snap the latch. Then I picked up his cell phone off the blotter where it was face down with three text message notifications flashing in green on the glass.
“Get your jacket,” I told him.
“You can’t come into my house and start ordering, “
“It’s not your house,” I said, and I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out the property tax receipt from the county courthouse that was still in my billfold from when I paid their back interest three months back to keep the sheriff from tacking a yellow notice to the porch pillar. “The deed is in my name, Derek. Your name is on the utility bill because I let you pay the utilities out of the grocery money I gave Maya every Friday. And judging by those four red envelopes in the kitchen, you haven’t paid the water since August.”
Maya was still down on the floor, so I knelt down on one knee, ignoring the old ache in my left knee joint that always let me know when rain was coming in from the river. I reached out and took her hand. Her skin felt dry and cool, like she hadn’t had a proper glass of water since sometime yesterday afternoon.
“Can you stand up for me, honey?” I asked, keeping my voice down low the way I used to when she was little and had the croup. “We’re going to take a little ride down to the hospital. Your doctor’s been trying to reach you since Saturday.”
“The phone didn’t ring,” she said, looking up at me with those big gray eyes that looked too dark in her pale face. “Derek said the line was dead because of the storm on Friday.”
“The line wasn’t dead,” I said. I pulled Derek’s phone out of my pocket and tapped the screen with my thumb. The call log showed six missed calls from a number with a downtown area code, followed by a text message sent at 8:14 this morning from a name listed as *Apex Placement Services*: *Client documents incomplete. Need notarized medical clearance and signature verification before funds clear wire.*
Derek was standing by the window now with his arms crossed over his chest, trying to look smaller than he was, his shoulder twitching where I’d pinned him against the trim. “You’re making a big deal out of nothing,” he mumbled, looking down at his tassel loafers. “The kid’s got a heart murmur anyway. The doctors told us at the twenty-week scan there was a fifty-percent chance of developmental issues. We couldn’t afford the specialist bills on what I make at the warehouse. This way the agency covers all the medical expenses and we get a clean start.”
I stood up so fast my boots scraped against the green carpet. I didn’t say anything for about five seconds. I just looked at him, really looked at him, the way I used to look at the young fellows who thought they could fudge the lumber tallies on a Friday afternoon before payday.
“The baby’s healthy,” I said. “Dr. Vance told me himself when I ran into him at the hardware store two weeks ago. He said Maya was carrying big and strong, and the only thing wrong with that boy was that his mother looked like she hadn’t eaten a square meal since the Fourth of July.”
Derek didn’t answer. He just reached down and picked up his leather jacket from the back of the swivel chair, his jaw working back and forth like he was chewing on something sour. “You’re crazy, Thomas. Both of you. You’re living in the fifties.”
“Get out,” I said.
“What?”
“I said get out of the house. You take one bag, one bag, Derek, with your clothes and your shaving kit, and you wait on the front porch until my truck moves. If you touch anything else in this room, or if I find one more piece of paper missing from that desk when I come back with the sheriff’s deputy from the substation down on Third Street, I won’t just take the car back. I’ll make sure every man at the warehouse sees the copy of that broker agreement before you clock in tomorrow morning.”
He looked at my face, and he must have seen something in my eyes that told him I wasn’t bluffing about the warehouse, because he didn’t argue any more. He grabbed a blue nylon gym bag from the bottom of the closet, shoved three shirts and a pair of trousers into it without folding them, and walked out the back door without looking at Maya once. The screen door slammed behind him with a sharp, hollow bang that echoed off the aluminum siding of the neighbor’s house.
We stayed in that living room for about ten minutes after he left. I helped Maya up off the floor, getting my arm around her waist and lifting her slow so she wouldn’t get a dizzy spell from the drop in blood pressure. I brought her into the kitchen, wiped off one of the plastic chairs with a damp paper towel from the roll on the stove, and poured her a glass of water straight from the tap, letting it run until it turned cold.
“Drink that down,” I told her, setting the glass on the table where the red envelopes were piled.
She drank half of it right away, her throat moving under her collar, and then she looked down at the table where Derek’s laptop sat closed. “Is he really going to sell the baby, Dad?”
“He’s not selling anything, honey,” I said, pulling out the chair across from her and sitting down so my knees hit the edge of the laminate. “The police are going to have something to say about forgery and wire fraud before the sun goes down today. And that broker outfit in Cincinnati is going to get a visit from a detective who knows how to read small print better than Derek does.”
We didn’t talk about Derek the rest of the way to the hospital. I loaded Maya into the passenger side of my Ford, putting an old wool hunting jacket behind her lower back so she wouldn’t feel the bumps in the road as much, and we drove the four miles over to the medical center on Riverside Drive.
The emergency intake nurse was a woman named Brenda who used to go to church with my late wife, and she took one look at Maya’s pale face and the way her fingers were shaking around the handle of her plastic purse and had her back in a triage room with an IV line in her arm before I even finished parking the truck in the visitors’ lot.
“She’s dehydrated and her blood sugar’s down to seventy,” Brenda told me out in the hallway while they were running the fetal monitor. “Who’s been looking after her these last two months, Thomas? She looks like she’s been living on crackers and tap water.”
“She’s been living with the wrong man,” I said.
The detective from the county sheriff’s office, a young fellow with a flat-top haircut and a notebook in his back pocket named Miller, showed up about an hour later while Maya was resting with the monitor ticking away in the background, making that steady *whoosh-whoosh* sound that told us the boy was still moving around in there like he had plenty of business left to do. I handed Miller the laptop, the printed broker agreement with the forged signature, and the four past-due utility notices from the kitchen counter.
“He signed her name?” Detective Miller asked, holding the paper up to the fluorescent light over the nurse’s station.
“He signed her name,” I said. “And he’s currently sitting at the bus station on Third Street waiting for a ride to his brother’s place in Springfield, unless he decided to walk.”
Miller didn’t smile, but he tapped the corner of the paper against his palm twice. “Well, forgery of an adoption release with intent to commit financial fraud carries a few years down at London correctional facility, Mr. Miller. Your son-in-law picked the wrong family to try and clear his racing debts with.”
It took three days for the paperwork to clear through probate court, and another week before Derek’s name was officially removed from the lease and the utility accounts. He didn’t contest the restraining order; his court-appointed attorney must have told him that fighting a forgery charge with a signed contract and three months of bank records showing deposits from a private adoption broker was like trying to bail out a flat-bottom boat with a kitchen sieve.
By the following Tuesday, the weather had cleared up, and the sun was hitting the west-facing windows of my spare bedroom in the house down on Elm Street just right. I had the solid oak crib set up against the wall where the green wallpaper with the little sailboats used to be before we stripped it down and painted it a clean, flat white.
I was tightening the last brass bolt on the mattress frame with my socket wrench when Maya walked into the room carrying a laundry basket with baby blankets folded inside. She looked different than she had down on that green carpet in Dayton; her color was back, and she was moving with that easy, natural swing she used to have before she ever met Derek at the warehouse Christmas party two winters back.
She set the basket down on the floor by the closet, walked over to the crib, and ran her hand along the top rail where the wood was smooth and polished from my sandpaper. Then she reached into her apron pocket and pulled out the little brown plush bear I’d bought at the hardware store, setting it right in the center of the white cotton mattress sheet.
“He likes the sound of your truck,” she said, resting her left hand on the curve of her stomach where the boy was giving her a little kick against her ribs.
“Every kid ought to know what a Ford sounds like before he learns how to walk,” I said, giving the bolt one last half-turn with the wrench to make sure it wouldn’t rattle when the wind picked up outside.
