Kiss River (19 page)

“S
o,” Clay said as he walked down the supermarket aisle next to Gina, “what do we need for this Indian feast?” He couldn’t recall ever grocery shopping with Terri, and that struck him as both strange and sad. He was enjoying the sense of domesticity with Gina.

“Probably many things we can’t find here,” Gina said, stopping in front of the spices. She turned her head from side to side, surveying the possibilities, her hair shining in the overhead lights. “I’ll just have to do my best.”

“Well, since you’re the only one of us who’s ever eaten Indian food, you can fake it. We won’t know the difference.”

She reached for a jar of turmeric and put it in the shopping cart, then studied the rows of spices again. “These are so expensive,” she said.

“Don’t worry about that.”

She glanced at him. “I’m not even paying for my share of the utilities, Clay. I win money and I lose it. You and Lacey—”

“You’re cooking dinner for us.” He touched her arm, some
thing he was aware he did often. “You’ve cooked dinner a few times already. More than we’ve cooked for you, that’s for sure. So get what you need and don’t worry about the price, okay?”

She shrugged and reached for another jar. “If you say so,” she said. “Thank you.”

He liked this side of her. Seeing her concentrate on something altogether different than the Fresnel lens was refreshing. For once, she didn’t have the gloomy, desperate, “I need to raise the lens from the bottom of the ocean” look about her. “That girl has a one-track mind,” Henry had said to Clay a couple of days ago on their drive home from Shorty’s, and Clay knew he was right.

“I think this will do it,” she said, putting another jar in the cart. She took a step back from the spices to scan the other products in the aisle. She was wearing a T-shirt he had not seen her in before, a royal-blue V neck that gently hugged her breasts and made it hard for him to tear his eyes away from her. “Now we need some basmati rice and some chicken,” she said.

“Three aisles down for the rice,” he said, unsure if she would be able to find “basmati” rice there or not. He was not certain how it differed from the usual variety.

Clay pushed the cart as they walked toward the end of the aisle.

“Are you diving with Kenny this weekend?” she asked. The question sounded odd and out of the blue, but he supposed she was just making conversation.

“I hope so,” he said. “We want to dive a U-boat that sunk off Nag’s Head during the war.”

“The
U-85,
” Gina said, and he looked at her, amazed.

“How’d you know that?” he asked.

She smiled. “I told you. I’m an old history buff. I’m surprised you haven’t dived it yet.”

“I have. But not in a couple of years.”

For a moment, she didn’t speak. Then she said, “Maybe one of these days you could dive near the lighthouse and see if you could find the lens.”

So much for his assumption that the lens was not on her mind this afternoon. He shrugged. “Maybe,” he said. “Have you ever dived? You could go with me.”

“I don’t know how,” she said.

“I could teach you. The lens can’t be that deep.”

She hesitated. “I think I’d panic, but thanks for the offer.” They turned the corner to walk past the dairy case. “I had a talk with Kenny today,” she said.

He felt a stab of jealousy. “Oh, yeah?”

“He was telling me that you two have a pilot friend who might be able to spot the lens from the air.”

“He probably means Dave Spears.”

“Kenny’s going to ask him if he’d do it and what it would cost.”

Clay turned the cart into the aisle containing rice and pasta and beans. If he talked to Dave himself, the pilot would probably do it for free.

“He might not be able to see anything, you know,” he cautioned her. “It depends on how—”

“On the weather and the clarity of the water, and how big the pieces are, et cetera, et cetera,” she said, reaching for a bag of rice. The store had basmati rice after all. “But one thing is certain.”

“What’s that?” he asked.

“He won’t see it if he doesn’t look for it.”

“And if he finds it, then what?” Clay asked her.

“Then, at least we’ll—”

“Gina?” It was a woman’s voice, coming from behind them, and he and Gina turned around.

The young woman was very tall, with strawberry-blond hair in a bun on the top of her head and a nasty-looking sunburn on her face. She pushed a loaded shopping cart, a toddler in the seat.

“It
is
you,” the woman said. “I thought, God, that woman looks like Gina, but I figured you couldn’t possibly be in North Carolina.”

He felt Gina stiffen at his side, but she smiled. “Hi, Emily,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

“A friend of my cousin’s has a house in Ocean Sands,” she said. “We decided to come out here for a couple of weeks and visit the relatives. And how about you? What are you doing on this side of the country?” She shifted her gaze from Gina to Clay. “And who’s this?” she added.

“This is a friend of mine, Clay O’Neill,” Gina said. “Clay, this is Emily Parks. She and I teach at the same school.”

“Ah,” Clay said. “Nice to meet you. Small world, huh?”

“Merissa’s getting huge.” Gina ran her hand over the child’s blond curls. “Hi, sweetie,” she cooed in a voice that he had certainly never heard her use before. “Do you remember me, honey?” The little girl sucked her fingers, staring wordlessly at Gina.

“How’s the adoption going?” Emily said, and for a moment Clay thought he must have misunderstood her.

Gina smiled, but there was ice there, the smile little more than a frozen, upturned line on her face. “Moving along,” she said, then looked at her watch. “And speaking of moving along, I’m the cook tonight, so Clay and I had better get going.”

“I guess I won’t see you in the fall, then,” Emily said, “since you’ll be—”

“I don’t know yet,” Gina interrupted her quickly, almost rudely. “Just taking things one day at a time.” She waved at her friend. “Have a great vacation, Emily,” she called over her shoulder as she stepped in front of Clay to grab the cart.

She started pushing the cart away from Emily Parks at a brisk pace and he followed, perplexed.

“Where’s the chicken?” Gina peered down the aisle toward the deli case. Her hands were shaking on the bar of the cart.

“Adoption?” he asked.

She didn’t even look at him. “I’m sorry, Clay. I don’t mean to be rude, but I just don’t want to talk about it.” There were tears welling up in her dark eyes. He reached toward her to touch her arm again, but this time he felt her muscles stiffen beneath his fingers.

“Would you mind getting the chicken?” she asked. “A whole one, cut up. I’ll get in line at the checkout.”

Dinner that night was both exotic and delicious, and afterward, he and Lacey and Henry were able to persuade Gina to play a little gin rummy with them, but he could tell she was anxious to get to the office and her e-mail. She had been very quiet in the car on the way home from the grocery store, and he hadn’t known what questions to ask or what to say to draw her out. He wished again that he possessed those skills. He studied her face while they played cards at the kitchen table, wondering, what adoption?
Why was she so damn secretive? If she was not hiding in her room by the time he returned from taking Henry home, he was going to do his best to find out.

G
ina had felt Clay staring at her the entire evening. She’d been relieved when Henry had pleaded exhaustion and the card game came to an end, and relieved, too, that Clay was now driving him home and Lacey had gone out and she had the house to herself. She’d wanted to get to her e-mail to read the latest news from the support group. It had become her only source of information about the adoptions in Hyderabad.

At some point, Clay was going to ask her again what Emily had meant about the adoption. She would have to make something up. Her isolation, the result of being honest with no one, was beginning to be unbearable, though. She had never been very good at keeping things to herself, and although she had become a master of it recently, she hated the way it shut her off from other people. Yet she did not see that she had much choice in the matter.

Bumping into Emily Parks in the grocery store had been a shock. Who would have guessed that, three thousand miles from home, she would meet one of her fellow teachers? All the teach
ers knew about the adoption plans, of course, but none of them knew the obstacles she was facing in bringing Rani home. She had wisely managed to keep that quiet. Even the two women she considered her closest friends did not know the magnitude of her problem.

Tonight, she had an e-mail from Denise, another mother who was trying to get her child out of the orphanage where Rani was living. It was a personal e-mail, as Denise’s usually were, sent directly to Gina rather than to the support group as a whole. She and Denise had a bond. Denise had been at the orphanage the same time as Gina, but had stayed behind when the problems arose. She had the financial means to remain in Hyderabad, making sure her child had enough to eat and was receiving decent care until she was able to get her out. In Denise’s e-mail messages, she always wrote “until I get her out.” It was never a question of “if,” but “when.” Gina thought the woman was fooling herself. Things were only getting worse with the adoption fiasco in Hyderabad. But she was glad Denise was not giving up; she was Gina’s one empathetic, English-speaking link to Rani.

Along with her e-mail this evening, Denise had sent a new picture of Rani. Gina stared at the photograph on her monitor. Rani looked even tinier than she’d been when Gina had visited her, more than two months ago. She wasn’t smiling, but she was looking into the camera, every one of her long, dark eyelashes visible, and she was wearing one of the little dresses Gina had taken with her to the orphanage. She was still too tiny for the dress. A little doll of a child. An adorable waif.

Gina needed a print of the picture, something she could carry with her all the time. She checked to make sure there was paper in the printer, then clicked on the print command.

The printer had just started to produce the colored photograph when she heard footsteps in the hallway outside the office.
Damn.
Clay was back from taking Henry home already. Poor timing. The printer was so slow.

Clay knocked on the open door, and she answered without turning around to look at him.

“That was a fast trip,” she said, keeping her voice light.

Sasha trotted into the room and rested his heavy, dark head on her knee.

“Henry just wanted to go in and go to bed,” Clay said. “He didn’t need me to hang around.”

She glanced over her shoulder at him. His gaze was on the monitor and the picture of Rani. She said nothing as the printer spit a duplicate of the photograph onto the desk.

Clay moved the chair from the drafting table and set it down next to her desk chair.

“Talk to me, Gina,” he said, sitting down. “Who is this little girl?”

Gina touched the monitor lightly with her fingertips, but she hesitated only a minute. “This is Rani,” she said. “She’s my daughter. She’s the child I’m in the process of adopting.”

For a moment, Clay didn’t speak. “You’re adopting as a single parent?” he asked finally.

She nodded. “I wanted a child,” she said. “I want
this
child.”

“Where is she now?” he asked.

Gina leaned back in her chair but kept her eyes on the screen. It was easier to talk about this if she didn’t have to look at him. She did not want to start crying again, as she had in the grocery store.

“She’s in an orphanage in India,” she said. “I went with one of my girlfriends to an orientation on foreign adoptions. She and her husband were planning to adopt, and he couldn’t go that night, so I went with her.” The meeting had been held in a church, and she remembered the photographs on the bulletin board, as well as the videos from the various orphanages. There had been no video of the orphanage Rani was in. Just one small picture, but that had been enough.

“There were several other single women there who were seriously considering adoption, and it started me thinking, ‘I could do this.’” Gina nodded, remembering that epiphany. “And there were pictures of children.” She felt herself smile. “There was a picture of the most beautiful baby I’d ever seen. All eyes. She was only two months old in the photograph. I fell instantly in love.” She glanced at him. He was studying her intently, but she doubted he could possibly understand the depth of her feelings for the child in the picture.

“I asked about her,” she continued. “Most of the other chil
dren were older, and I wondered why this beautiful baby hadn’t been spoken for. It turns out she was sick. She was born with a heart deformity. She wasn’t expected to live two years if she didn’t have prompt surgery and treatment. So, of course, no one wanted her. But I did.”

“You felt some kind of connection to her?” he asked.

She nodded. “On a lot of levels.” She turned to him, and felt touched by how attentively he was looking at her. “I was born with heart problems myself,” she said. “I had surgery when I was an infant and have never had a problem since. And…my mother had just died, right before I saw Rani’s picture. Just a couple of weeks before. And I had no other family. But the real sign to me was that the baby’s name was Rani, R-A-N-I, and my mother’s name was Ronnie, R-O-N-N-I-E. Spelled differently, but pronounced the same. It seemed like it was meant to be.”

Clay nodded. “I can understand that,” he said. “So—” he looked back at the monitor again “—how old is she now? When do you get her?”

Gina wasn’t sure how much to tell him, and she was surprised that what she had told him so far had been the truth. “It’s a long process to adopt a child from India,” she said. “First of all, only certain children can be released for foreign adoptions. They’re the ones who have special medical needs, for the most part. Rani fit that bill without any problem, but she still needed to be formally evaluated. Then I had to go through a home study, which terrified me, because I’m single and I rent a town house. I don’t own any property. But I passed. Then they had to check my finances, which was also scary. My divorce didn’t leave me in the best of shape financially. But I guess they figured a teacher has job security these days. So, my dossier was okayed, and a couple of months ago, Rani was cleared by the agency for me to adopt her.”

“Will you go to India to get her?” Clay asked.

“I already did, actually.” She smiled weakly at him. “This is the hard part,” she said. “I went to India in April to pick her up. There was one more step to go through, and that was to get a court order to release her to me. That shouldn’t have been any problem at all. But while I was waiting for the hearing, the In
dian government suddenly cracked down on all the orphanages in the area, because there were reports of black-market selling of children.”

“Was that really happening?”

She nodded. “Yes. In some less scrupulous agencies, babies were being bought from poor parents or because they were girls, who were seen as more of a liability than an asset. I heard of cases where the Indian parents were paid about twenty dollars for their baby girl, while the adoptive family paid forty thousand. I’m not certain that the orphanage Rani is in is one of the good ones, frankly. I’d been told they were licensed, but who knows? And even if it was licensed, it didn’t matter. All the orphanages had to go through a new licensing procedure before any of the children could be released.”

“But your…Rani…needed urgent medical care,” Clay insisted, and she loved the indignation in his voice.

She nodded. “You’re thinking far too logically,” she said with a rueful smile. “It’s just not working that way. All adoptions were frozen, regardless of the needs of the child. And I honestly understand that they had to do that to protect the majority of the children. But you’re right that Rani was a special case. She needed surgery. I needed to get her home to Washington and onto my insurance policy so I could have that done for her. Even though the older Rani gets, the more risk there is that…” Gina shook her head, not wanting to finish the sentence. She looked at him. “She’s sixteen months old and she only weighs thirteen pounds.”

“Sixteen months!” Clay looked at the picture. “I don’t know much about babies, but I would have said she was a lot younger than that.”

Gina felt the tears she’d been fighting burn her eyes. “She’s severely malnourished. When I was there, I brought food with me, because there just isn’t enough for all those children, and her body doesn’t seem to use it properly. I wanted to stay there with her until I could get her out, but I was out of money and had to get back to my job. I would go there now just to be with her and make sure she’s all right, but I can’t afford it. And they won’t let her go. There’s nothing I can do but wait and pray she holds on until she’s released to me.”

“Is the agency trying to get licensed?” Clay asked.

Gina sighed. It was such a complicated issue, so hard to explain. “Yes, but I’m not sure it will succeed. And that’s not the only problem now,” she said. She lifted the picture from the desk and stared at the little girl. “Since the whole adoption situation came to light in India, there’s been a huge backlash against foreigners adopting Indian babies,” she said. Then she looked at him. “For example, they’re holding up the adoptions of the children who were going to couples who haven’t been married long enough, in the opinion of one judge or another,” she said. “So you can imagine how anxious they are to place a child with a single woman.”

“Have you hired a lawyer?” he asked.

“Several. But it’s useless.” And she had no more money to pay a lawyer.

“What will you do now?”

“Wait and worry,” she said. “That’s all I can do.” She had to look away from him then. She couldn’t lie right to his face. “It’s looking grim, though. Terrible things are happening.”

“Like what?”

“I’m part of an Internet group of parents waiting for children from India. One couple has been told their child is gone. Just disappeared. They don’t know if she died or was sold or moved or what. There’s no record of her anywhere. Another couple went to stay in India until their daughter was released, and they found another child was in her place. They’d met their daughter before, so they knew what she looked like and acted like. This little girl was older, scrawnier and lighter-skinned. But the orphanage kept insisting it was the same child.”

“Was there anything they could do?”

She shook her head. “They went to other orphanages searching for her, but they couldn’t find her. You know…” She tipped her head back, looking blankly at the ceiling. “I think it’s hard for people who haven’t gone through this to understand how attached you can get to these children you don’t really know. But I think it’s like being pregnant. You start dreaming about that child, getting ready for her.”

“And you’ve
met
Rani,” Clay said. “Of course you’re attached to her.”

“I was even before I met her,” she said. “But yes, once I held her in my arms…she came right to me. Maybe she goes to everyone, I don’t know. But she just climbed right into my arms like she knew she belonged there.”

“I’m sorry, Gina.”

“The woman who took this picture of Rani has been in India for the past couple of months, so she can keep an eye on her little girl and bring food for her and play with her and make sure she’s getting cared for while waiting for her to be released. But it could be months. It could be years. It could be never. That’s the real fear we all have. Here’s the e-mail I just got from her.”

Gina used the mouse to click back to Denise’s e-mail. “‘I know you want the truth about how Rani is doing, dear Gina,’” she read from the screen in front of her. “‘It’s hard to tell you, but I would also want to know if I were in your position. She seems more isolated than when you were here. I always try to include her when I play with Sunil and the other children, but Rani has trouble keeping up with them because of her shortness of breath. I’ve advocated on your behalf to get her medical treatment, but you know how it is here. She is one of so many special-needs children. They can’t possibly get as much help as they need.’”

Gina let out a sob. She lowered her head to her hands, and felt Clay’s palm resting against her back, while Sasha prodded her temple with his nose. “I’d do anything to get her out of there,” she said, lifting her head again. “Anything! I’d sell my soul. I’d sleep with the devil if it would make a difference. I’d…” Her voice trailed off, and Clay pulled a tissue from the box on the desk and pressed it into her hand.

“You know what amazes me?” he asked.

She shook her head, wiping the tears from her cheeks with the tissue.