See Jane Run (8 page)

Riley's heart pattered nervously as Carla heaved herself back into her chair and focused hard on the computer monitor in front of her. “Lemme see that paper again, honey.”

Riley slipped the birth certificate over the counter and clasped her hands behind her back so Carla wouldn't see them trembling. She looked over Carla's head, studying everything on every wall while Carla typed and Riley's heart leapt into her throat. She was about to start pacing when Carla said, “Hmm. Now that's odd.” She picked up the paper and squinted at it, pulled a pair of cheater eyeglasses up her nose, and typed again. She threw herself back in her chair and it squeaked a few inches backward. “Hmm.”

“Is everything OK?”

Carla folded up the birth certificate and handed it back to Riley. “I'm sorry, honey, but there is no record of this birth in our system.”

There was a tightness in Riley's chest that spread slowly, heavily, through her whole body. “What?”

Carla shook her head. “Birth certificate says the baby was born here, but no, I don't have any record of it at all. Kind of like a phantom.”

Riley leaned forward, rolling up on her tiptoes, her fingers gripping Carla's counter so hard they were white. “But what about the parents? Did you look them up?”

Carla clucked and shook her head some more. “Tried 'em all. Even different spellings, you know, 'cuz a lot of times people get nervous just after they get their babies. But nothing.” She shrugged, her big shoulders hugging her ears. “Nada.”

“Well, maybe your records just don't go back far enough.”

“Nope. I've got records of births seven years before this one. I'm sorry, honey, but maybe you weren't born here after all.”

“Well, is there another Granite Cay Hospital? Maybe it happened there and they got the—the addresses mixed up.” Even as Riley said it, she knew how thin and desperate her explanation was. Carla knew too, and she patted Riley's hand again gently.

“I wish I could help you, honey, I really do, but there's nothing here.”

Riley nodded slowly, her whole body feeling numb. The room was enormous but the walls started to creep toward her. She stepped away from Carla's counter and sat down hard on the closest chair she could find. It was grossly stained but she didn't care.

The baby wasn't born here. The parents didn't exist.

If
it
was
a
regular
adoption,
Riley reasoned,
there
would
be
a
paper
trail. Unless her parents didn't want anyone to know…

Her throat constricted. Her parents wouldn't do that. They wouldn't just steal a baby—or adopt one and hide the records. They were rule followers, a by-the-book family. They would have told her if she were adopted.

Riley unfolded the birth certificate again, scrutinizing it, just as she had nearly every hour since she'd found it. If it were true—if her parents
stole
her—would the hospital have no record? Did the hospital destroy her record in an effort to protect itself? Riley felt sick and sweaty, but she didn't want to be in that hospital for one minute longer.

She made a beeline for the automated glass doors and gulped greedily at the lukewarm, non-germ-infested air outside. She edged away from some smokers, and her heart seized when she saw a man peering at her.
I
know
him—I know him—I know him,
Riley thought, trying to shake her brain from its fog.

The train!

The second she remembered where she knew him from, he was gone, zigzagging across the hospital's well-manicured lawn and into the parking lot. He threw a glance over her shoulder and caught Riley's eye, his gaze so icy that she felt it zing through her.

Why
was
he
here?

Riley considered flipping on her heel and asking Carla for a bed in the psych ward when her cell phone rang and nearly gave her a heart attack.

“Are you going to stand there all day or are you coming into the coffee place?”

Riley licked her lips, trying to pull her scattered thoughts back together. “Um, yeah. I mean, no. I'll be right over.”

She crossed the street without looking and thanked God that her stupidity didn't turn her into a hood ornament. She took several deep breaths before yanking open the coffeehouse door. She chanced a glance over her shoulder, expecting the train man to be right behind her, his nose pushed up against the window, but the sidewalk was empty. She turned, scanning the place for JD.

“Hey.”

He was sitting at a corner table, a spiral notebook open in front of him, its pages littered with his precise black scrawl. He pressed a coffee toward Riley and smiled. “It's full fat. Extra whipped cream.”

She took the coffee and tried to mirror JD's smile. By the odd way he looked at her, Riley was pretty certain that her mirrored expression was a fun house one. She leaned over and sipped her coffee.

“Almond Roca?” Riley asked, letting the sweet warmth of the coffee slip through her.

“Shot in the dark,” JD said with a shrug. “So, did you get what you needed at the hospital?”

Riley bit her bottom lip then frowned. “Actually, no.”

“No? They didn't have Jane's medical records? How is that possible?”

Riley took a big swig of coffee, letting it burn her throat and buy her some time. “They had the records but they—they're not at the hospital anymore.”

JD dropped his pen and leaned back in his chair, flexing his arms over his head. Riley looked away as his biceps stretched out the arms of his T-shirt. “You mean they're at the hall of records or something now?”

Hope bloomed in her gut. “Yes, hall of records. Carla—from the front desk—said I should go there now.” Riley looked at JD's open notebook, at his still steaming coffee mug. “Or in a little bit.”

He flipped his book closed. “Why wait?”

“Because I have no idea where to go, for starters.”

JD sauntered over to the front counter and leaned in toward the barista. He gestured Riley over.

The barista drew a crude map on a paper napkin, explaining the busses they should take to get to the hall of records. Once they confirmed that they had it, the barista looked up at JD and then at Riley. “Whaddya'll want at the hall of records? They don't have anything there but ancient stuff.”

“Actually, my friend is looking for fam—”

“Farming records,” Riley interjected. “For a school project.”

JD shot her a strange look but the barista didn't seem to notice. He just shrugged and pushed the napkin into Riley's hand. “Well, good luck.”

“Farming records?” JD asked, his brow creased.

“I have my reasons. Look! That's the number 27 bus.”

It took nearly twenty minutes of lurching stops and nondescript townscape before they reached the hall of records, which was also, ominously, the end of the line.

“Everyone off,” the bus driver said.

“Everyone” was Riley and JD, and they did as they were told, blinking into the heavy sunshine as it glared off the enormous white-washed walls of the Granite Cay Hall of Records.

JD grabbed the door and swung it open for Riley. “Farming records await,” he said, ushering her inside.

The nervous flutter was back, shooting through Riley's belly. She felt the coffee churn and prayed she wouldn't throw up. The hospital was a dead end.
But
this
will
be
it,
she told herself.
This
is
where
all
the
records
are.

Riley stepped in and waited for JD, who let the door go behind her. “Hey.” She caught the door before it closed and poked her head out. “Aren't you coming in?”

“I thought it was boring family stuff for Jane. You know, like at the hospital.”

“Oh, yeah. Right.”

Riley's heart thundered in time with the butterfly wings batting in her gut.

I'm not into JD—not at all,
she told herself.
It
was
nice
to
have
him
on
the
train
and
nicer
still
that
he
came
out
to
make
sure
I
didn't end up taking a train to hell or the end of the
world,
but suddenly she felt a little naked, a little alone—and a little uncomfortable.

“I was just asking.”

JD held her eye for a beat then flipped open his notebook and sat on the heavy cement wall outside. “I'll be here when you're done.”

Riley stepped into the hall of records, and the glass door snapped shut behind her.
Like
a
mausoleum
door.
The thought was fleeting, and she convinced herself it was due to the white marble floors in front of her and the ornate stucco décor on the walls rather than the sudden feeling of breathlessness. Her chest was tight and her blood ran hot and heavy through her limbs.

Riley followed the signs to the help desk, her heels clacking on the marble, the sound reverberating through the halls in vague echoes. Her lips were pressed together, and she realized she was holding her breath. She shook herself and put on her warmest smile.

“Hello,” Riley said to the woman behind the help desk. “I'm looking for some records regarding a baby that was born in this town? It was eighteen years ago and—”

The woman didn't look up from her magazine. “Mmm hmmm.”

“I checked Granite Cay Hospital—where the girl was born—and they said to come here. This is her birth certificate.” Riley unfolded the paper, smoothing it against the desk, and pushed it to the woman. The woman looked up, her dark eyes scanning Riley, then the page.

“Is this you?”

“No, but—”

“She family?”

Riley had seen enough television to know that family were generally the only people privy to this kind of information so she nodded, trying her best to look totally nonchalant. “Yep. Jane is my sister.”

The woman scanned the birth certificate one more time, and then scanned Riley as if there was any connection to be made between the two. “What exactly are you looking for?”

“Just some record—where she lived, where she moved. That kind of thing.”

The woman arched an eyebrow and Riley rushed on. “We—um—were adopted. Split up. My mother did drugs and we have different fathers and hers wasn't around so…” She forced a quaver in her voice and tried to remember the speech she had heard on some Lifetime movie about boxcar children or orphans or something. “I just want to find her so we can put our family back together.”

Riley blinked back tears and saw the desk woman soften. “Oh, that's so sad. Well, where she lived could be public record in the census. You don't know who adopted her?”

“Well, no, not exactly. But I figured since I had her birth certificate, maybe there would be another copy here and that would tell me more.”

Desk woman nodded. “It could.” She pointed. “Go right back there. If it's only—what, eighteen years ago—it should be on the computers. If not, you can try the stacks. Otherwise, there's the microfiche, but she seems much too young to be there.”

Riley licked her lips. “What about newspaper articles? I—I, uh, think I remember someone saying something about a big crime spree about the time she was born. Bank robbery or something.” Riley was almost nervous about how easy it was becoming to fabricate a backstory for Jane.

“The stacks. If you need to photocopy anything, it's twenty-five cents a page, or ten cents a page to print anything out. Good luck.”

Riley refolded the birth certificate and held herself back from running toward the computers and stacks.

Twenty minutes later, she had located every other baby born at Granite Cay Memorial Hospital on June 14, 1995, but no Jane Elizabeth. She had never registered for school, and her parents never owned a home or signed up for the census. It was like Jane and her family never existed at all.

Riley's finger hovered over the
Granite
Cay
Gazette.
The idea of Jane—of Riley herself as Jane—was weighing heavily on her now. Jane and her family didn't exist. But the birth certificate proved she did once. And it was hidden—locked away in
Riley's
baby book. Her stomach soured and she chewed the inside of her cheek. Could her parents—? She looked back at the computer screen.

If Jane had been kidnapped, there would be an article about it. If something horrible had happened to the family—murdered, killed in a car crash—it would be in the
Gazette.

She blew out a long sigh and typed in Granite Cay—Major Crime—1995–1998. Her stomach burned, and it seemed like the ancient hall of records computers were deliberately taking hours, ratcheting up her own tension. Finally a slew of articles populated the screen, each one stabbing at Riley.

If she was Jane—if her parents stole her—what did that mean for her? For them?

She clicked on the first article, the tightness in her heart becoming unbearable—until she read the headline: “Major Crimes Division Breaks Car Thief Ring.” She clicked to the next: “Drugs Found in High School Student's Locker.” She rested her chin in her hands, clicking article after article on small-time crimes that the city of Granite Cay considered major. There wasn't a single kidnapping mentioned, the only death an eighty-nine-year-old woman in a house fire. Somewhere, a band of graffitiing teenagers ran amok.