Keeping Faith Read online

  She hesitates; I can hear it in her voice. "What, Ma?"

  "Nothing."

  "It's something," I press. "What?"

  "Nothing. It's just that Colin came, too."

  "Oh," I answer, in a very small voice. "Did Faith wake up?"

  "No. She didn't even know he was here."

  I'm sure my mother says this to make me feel better, but it doesn't. I hang up the phone, realizing moments later that I never said good-bye.

  Ian has walked the streets of New Canaan for the past three hours. The town is tiny and dark, and every store is closed, with the exception of the Donut King, and he can't go back inside there yet again without looking like a jerk. The problem is, there's nowhere else to go.

  He sits on the curb. He doesn't want to head back to the Winnebago and face the people who work for him, people sure to be confounded by his testimony today. He doesn't want to go anywhere near the hospital, where he's certain to be accosted by the press.

  He does want to be with Mariah, but she won't let him.

  Ian doesn't know when, exactly, he went from thinking that Mariah was some kind of "Mommie Dearest" putting her kid up to this kind of attention, to thinking that Mariah was the victim in this whole mess. Most likely it was in Kansas City. He'd done such a thorough job of pretending to want to help Mariah that at some point it became an honest emotion.

  But, just maybe, Mariah wasn't the one who needed help. Maybe that distinction belongs to Ian himself.

  He's never really asked himself why he's an atheist, but the answer's there for the taking. Knocked down as a child by fate, he couldn't buy into the concept of a loving God. After all the people close to him were taken away, he couldn't buy into the concept of love, period, so he re-created himself into someone who wouldn't have to. And, like the Wizard of Oz, he's learned if you hide long enough behind a curtain of bluff and principle, people stop trying to find out who you are in the first place.

  Maybe there is more to a person than a body and a mind. Maybe something else figures into the mix--not a soul, exactly, but a spirit that hints you might one day be greater, stronger than you are now. A promise; a potential.

  Mariah has fallen apart and pulled herself back together. She may weave in the wind, but she stands there, scars and all. And, unlike Ian, she's stood up to the same bolt of lightning that knocked her down before, willing to risk it again. For all intents and purposes, she, too, should shy away from love. But she doesn't--and no one knows that better than Ian himself.

  Mariah might have tried to kill herself once; she may be the one whose credibility and mental stability are being debated in a court of law; but in Ian's eyes, she is one of the strongest people he's ever met.

  Ian stands, dusts off his bottom, and starts walking down the street.

  The last person I expect to find when I open the door is Colin. "Can I...?" He gestures inside. I nod, step back, so that he can enter the house he used to own.

  I close the door behind him and hold my hand to my throat, needing to physically keep all the horrible things I want to say from springing to my lips. "You shouldn't be here. Neither of our attorneys would allow it."

  "I don't really give a flying fuck what Metz thinks right now." Colin crosses to the stairs and sits down, burying his face in his hands. "I just saw Faith."

  "I know. My mother said you were there."

  Colin glances up. "She's--God, Rye. She's so, so sick."

  After the initial shock of fear that runs through my system, I force myself to relax. After all, Colin was not around the first time her hands bled. He wouldn't know what to expect.

  "They say that her heart's going to be all right..."

  "Her heart?" I say, my voice dry as ash. "What about her heart?"

  Colin seems honestly surprised that I do not know. "It stopped. This afternoon."

  "It stopped? She went into cardiac arrest and nobody told me? I'm going there."

  Colin is on his feet in one smooth motion, grabbing my arm. "You can't. You can't, and I'm so sorry about that."

  I stare down at his hand on my arm, his skin on my skin, and then suddenly he is holding me and I am crying against his chest. "Colin, tell me."

  "She's been intubated, to help her breathe. And they used defibrillator paddles--you know, those things--to get her heartbeat steady again. Her hands started bleeding again after she had a seizure." I hear the tears in his throat, and stroke his back. "Did we do this to her?"

  I look at him, wondering if he is accusing me. But he seems too upset for that; I think he is truly just shaken. "I don't know."

  Suddenly I remember the night that Faith was born. It was only a month after I'd left Greenhaven, and still buffeted by the drugs I'd been given, I found that there was very little that seemed real. Not Colin, not my home, not my life. It wasn't until the pain of a contraction sliced down my middle that I realized I'd come back.

  I remember the lights that were set up at the foot of the birthing bed, like some Hollywood production. I remember the plastic mask the doctor wore, and the smell of latex when she snapped on her gloves. I remember the sound of Colin's head striking the edge of the nightstand when he fainted, and the fuss that was made over him while I splayed my hands over my belly and waited my turn. I remember thinking of my heart, balanced just above the baby's feet, like the ball on a trained seal's nose. And then there was the remarkable drive that came when I realized the only way to stop the pain was to get it out of me, to push and push until I was certain I'd turn myself inside out, even as I felt her head widening and changing me and the small knob of her nose and chin and shoulders as they slipped in succession, streaming between my legs in a shuddering rush of breath and blood and beauty.

  But what I remember the most was the nurse who held Faith up before her umbilical cord had been cut. "What a beautiful daughter!" She brought her closer, so that I could see the swollen face, the pumping legs. And the baby, purely by chance, kicked the umbilical cord. I felt it all the way up inside me, an odd tug and a trembling that continued straight along to the belly of my daughter, so that Faith's eyes startled open, too. And I thought for the first time, We are connected.

  Colin buries a sob against my hair. "It's all right," I say, although it isn't, not by a long shot. I turn in his arms and realize I am glad he is here; I am glad we can do this for each other. "Sssh," I soothe, as I might have soothed Faith if I'd been by her side.

  December 4, 1999

  First thing Saturday morning Joan gets a cup of very strong, very black coffee at the Donut King and enough jelly rolls to last through an extended day, and then continues fifty yards down the street to her law office. She starts to set the key in the door and finds it already unlocked. Thinking of vandals, robbers, and, actually, Malcolm Metz, she pushes the door so that it swings open.

  Ian Fletcher is hunched over her secretary's computer. He looks over his shoulder. "It's about time. I've printed out everything I could find on the Web about Munchausen by Proxy. I think your best bet's going to be pointing out the specificity of the disorder. There were only two hundred cases nationwide last year. What's the chance of Mariah being one of them? Plus, she doesn't have the background for it. She wasn't abused as a child, and if Millie's on the stand--"

  "Wait. What are you doing here?"

  Ian shrugs. "What does it look like I'm doing? I'm your legal assistant."

  "The hell you are! Mariah doesn't want you within state limits anymore, much less helping out on the case. For all I know, you might be playing double agent again, trying to bring us down before we even get to present our side."

  "Please," Ian says seriously. "This is what I do for a living. I dig things up. I unearth. I disprove. If Mariah won't let me help her, at least let me help you."

  Realistically, Joan has a marginal shot at finding out enough to bring down Dr. Birch--that is, if she's working alone. She doesn't have the time or the resources Metz does at his high-end law office; plus, she doesn't even know where to start.