Stand Alone (41 page)

“How did you find her?” Frank demanded.

Sheldon shrugged.

“I arrested her. And she gave me a song and dance about her name and an unlikely story about being kidnapped when she was little. She wanted to know if I knew anything about any kidnappings. And then I saw your file
  
…”

“You didn’t even say anything to me!”

“I didn’t know if I’d be able to find her again. She doesn’t have a permanent address. These skater kids come and go, you never know if you’re going to see them again. And if she wasn’t the right girl
  
…”

Justine focused on the new officer.

“What’s your name?” she questioned.

“Frank Sylvan.”

“And you know about when I got kidnapped? You know what happened?”

He nodded slowly.

“You were kidnapped from the hospital. We never knew who did it. Do you know who
  
…
 
?”

Justine shrugged.

“Em, I guess. She lived here, and her little girl died. So she took me
  
…
 
and said that I was Justine, the girl that died
  
…
 
and moved away. Nobody knew, and she had a birth certificate and everything. So nobody ever believed me.”

“You knew you were kidnapped?” Frank questioned in amazement.

“I didn’t remember
  
…
 
but I didn’t like her, didn’t trust her, didn’t believe that she could be my real mother
  
…
 
I made up stories. I told people she kidnapped me. But I didn’t know, not for real. Not for sure.”

“And you came back here
  
…
 
how?”

“Skated and hitched. My birth certificate—Justine’s—said that this is where I was born
  
…
 
so I came here. Justine’s father still lives here
  
…
 
He’s the one that told me that she died. Up until him
  
…
 
nobody ever believed that I wasn’t really Justine.”

“And she took the name Katie,” Sheldon contributed. “That was what made the connection for me. And something about the eyes
  
…”

“The first time I held you in my arms,” Frank said to Justine, “I was amazed by your eyes.”

Justine stared at him, her brows drawn down.

“When did you hold me?” she questioned. “How would you know
  
…
 
you wouldn’t know about me until after I was kidnapped, until I was gone.”

Frank rubbed his chin and didn’t say anything, considering how to answer her.

“You wouldn’t have any memory before that,” he said. “Before the kidnapping. How could you? You were too young.”

Justine shook her head hesitantly. Frank’s eyes roamed around the room, avoiding her intense gaze.

“We got a call from the landlord,” Frank said softly. “He had gone into an apartment because a tenant had not paid the rent and hadn’t been seen in several weeks. And when he went into the apartment
  
…
 
he found you.”

Justine shivered.

“He found me,” she repeated.

“You had been abandoned. Just left there in the apartment, alone, with no adult to look after you. It had been weeks since anyone saw your mother
  
…
 
you shouldn’t have survived.”

“How did I?” Justine questioned.

“You took whatever food you could reach and eat from the fridge. Some of it was too hard to chew or open. It was all rotted and dried up by the time we got there. You drank
  
…” he gulped, swallowing hard. “There was a little cup in the bathroom. You survived by scooping water from the toilet.”

Justine made a face.

“Lovely,” she laughed.

Sheldon interposed.

“I saw your picture on the file,” he said. “You looked
  
…
 
you were starving. You looked like a concentration camp survivor.”

Frank nodded, his expression sad.

“You should have died,” he agreed. “By the time we got to you
  
…
 
you could barely move. I gave you a bottle of water, while we waited for the paramedics to get there. Your eyes were so bright. So intelligent. You weren’t even strong enough to talk
  
…
 
but looking at your eyes, you were just so alive. That may sound like a weird thing to say about a baby who was so close to death, but inside, you were so alive. Your eyes
  
…
 
you were reaching out to me, with your eyes.”

Justine nodded, fascinated. She was enthralled with his narrative.

“So then the paramedics came, and they took me to the hospital. And then Em stole me.”

“There were a few weeks in between,” he said. “I came and saw you at the hospital a few times. Watched you getting better and getting your strength back. Starting to smile, and recognize me from one visit to another. Saying a few words. A few times, you climbed out of your crib, and disappeared. Wandered off to another part of the hospital. Then you disappeared again, and you couldn’t be found anywhere. And it was because you had been kidnapped.”

Justine leaned back, rubbing her eyes. She cupped her hands over her eyes and forehead for a moment, letting the warmth from her hands relax her face.

“So that’s it,” she said with relief, and for the first time, a feeling of peace. “That’s my story. That’s where I came from.”

Frank hesitated, and nodded.

“I’m sure there are other details that you’re going to want
  
…
 
but that’s the bare bones.”

She gazed at him.

“You never forgot,” she said, marveling that he would remember so much, so many years later. That he would remember enough to recognize her when he saw her again, all grown up.

“I reviewed and reworked your file every year. And I had dreams about you
  
…
 
I couldn’t forget. I tried so hard to find you. Aged your photograph and looked for you on the internet. I’m sorry I couldn’t get any leads and find you
  
…
 
thirteen years ago. If I could only have brought you back home way back then
  
…”

“It’s okay,” Justine assured him. “It’s nice
  
…
 
just knowing that someone was trying. I felt so alone. So out of place.”

“And you were,” Frank agreed. “You didn’t belong there. You belonged here
  
…”

Justine frowned, pressing her lips together, a knot of dread forming in her stomach.

“So do I
  
…
 
have another mom? I don’t, right? Because she abandoned me?”

“We eventually tracked her down,” Frank admitted. “She wasn’t competent to be a parent. It’s unfortunate
  
…
 
when a couple wants to adopt a child, they have to go through a big application process, screening, training, follow up
  
…
 
but before a junkie gets pregnant, there’s no screening process. Very few programs to try to provide training and aid.”

“She was a drug addict?” Justine questioned.

“Yes. I guess she tried to go straight when she had you, but it didn’t last. So then she just ditched, ran away from her problems. When we eventually tracked her down, she was charged with abandoning you. But she never made it to court. She overdosed. I’m sorry.”

Justine nodded.

“I never thought much about having another mother who would take care of me. I wanted to get away from Em, but I never really had a plan that involved other parents.”

“I’ll need to get all of the information you can give me about Em. We’ll arrange for an arrest to be made.”

Justine gazed at him, wondering how she felt about this. She should be sad. She should be upset that the woman who had been her mother for so many years was going to be put in prison. The woman that they had told her for years and years that she should love was going to jail, because of Justine. Because she had chosen to be a mother to Justine, unlike the birth mother who had abandoned her. How would her life have been different if Em hadn’t taken her? She would still have been raised by someone else, someone who wasn’t her mother. Would she still have been as distrustful and treated her like she had treated Em? Or was that because of the kidnapping? Had the kidnapping been traumatic for Justine? She didn’t have nightmares about being kidnapped. She dreamed about being alone in that empty apartment, starving to death. Maybe she wouldn’t have trusted any new caregiver.

“Okay,” she said tentatively, nodding. She gave him Em’s name and address and phone number, and where she worked.

“How are we going to verify her identity?” Sheldon questioned, nodding at Justine.

Frank looked at Justine with momentary confusion.
He
knew without a doubt that she was Katie Kelly. But how were he and Justine going to prove it to anyone else?

“We can match the image of the fake nurse at the hospital with Em,” he mused. “The cameras never got her face, but you can see her body, the way she moves. If Em lost her own baby, we can prove that Katie is not her, and it will be up to Em’s lawyer to come up with a reasonable explanation for where she came from. There’s plenty of circumstantial evidence. But to prove that Katie is Katie?” he shook his head. “There must have been blood samples taken at the hospital, hair samples, fingerprints, something. There are pictures, the computer aging. Babies don’t just show up out of nowhere. There’s a history, a trail.”

“And Em’s ex-husband,” Justine said. “Cliff Bywater. I found him on Facebook, and went and saw him. He can fill in some details too.”

Frank wrote it down in his notepad. He put his hand over Justine’s and gazed at her, sighing. An expression of contentment shone on his face.

“Where are you going to go?” he questioned. “Do you have a place to live? Do you need a place?”

Justine shrugged.

“I get along. I don’t want a foster family or something.”

“I want to be able to keep in touch with you. Do you have a phone number?”

Justine considered what her future was going to look like, and how she was going to keep track of this handsome policeman who had once held her in his arms and given her life-giving water. She had ditched her old phone when she left Em, worried that they would track her down. But maybe she could get a new one now. She couldn’t tell Frank where she was living, but she could find a way to keep in touch with the only other person who knew her past. The only person who had looked for her, and continued to look for her, all of these long years. She always liked policemen. Even when she was in trouble for something, they made her feel safe and secure.

C
HAPTER
18

T
HERE
WAS
A
LOUD
knock at the door, and Em went to get it. There was another knock right before she opened it, and she scowled in irritation at the impatience of the visitor. She saw it was a couple of big policemen, and that there were several police cars parked by the curb, lights flashing. She immediately got scared.

“Is it Justine?” she said, as soon as she opened the door.

Had they found her? Was she hurt? Why were there so many of them?

“No,” the policeman in front told her. “It’s Katie Kelly. You’re under arrest for kidnapping. Please put your hands behind your head
  
…”

They pushed her into position and frisked her before Em had a chance to properly process what was happening.

“What’s going on?” she demanded. “Is Justine okay? I don’t understand!”

“Justine, as you call her, is fine,” one of them told her flatly. “Despite your best efforts.”

“What? I always kept Justine safe. I always did the best that I could for her. It was those policemen who put her in danger, dumping her outside the city limits.”

“Ma’am,” the bigger of the policemen said, turning her around and staring her in the eye, holding her firmly by the shoulders. “Do you understand that you are under arrest? You shouldn’t say anything until you get a lawyer.”

“Under arrest for what?” Em demanded. “For taking care of my own daughter? Do you know how many times that girl has reported me for abuse, or neglect, or kidnapping, or whatever? She’s attention-seeking. You can’t believe her lies. Talk to her therapist—”

“Your daughter, Justine, died thirteen years ago. The girl who was living with you since then was Katie Kelly.”

Em gasped.

“Someone finally believes her,” the cop said. “You’ve snowed everyone else pretty good the past thirteen years. But now, you’re caught.”

Em was limp as they handcuffed her and took her out to one of the waiting police cars.

“I was a good mother,” she insisted. “I did everything to take care of my baby.”

Dr. Morton spread the paper out in front of him in awe, and to start with, just looked at the headline and the picture of Justine. Then he started to read the story, and the sidebars, very slowly and thoughtfully. He checked the next few pages for any related stories, and then just sat staring at the paper.

“So,” he said slowly, to the air. He turned his swivel chair and stared out the window at the pigeons. “So I was right all along. It was Attachment Disorder. Abandoned by her birth mother, she was too traumatized to ever attach to Em.” The pigeons flew up, and circled, and landed again. “The dreams were actual memories. She was drawn to abandoned houses to relive the abandonment experience over and over again, trying to understand what had happened to her
  
…” He rubbed his chin. “That was why she could never attach to Em, never bonded no matter what we did. I was right all along.”

He stared down at her face in the paper.

It had been easier than Frank had expected to track down the doctor who had been in charge of the treatment of the real Justine Bywater. He was still working at the same hospital, and he remembered the case well. They talked for a while, and Frank got the feeling that Dr. Wilson wanted to tell him something, but didn’t know how to bring it up. Frank’s questions weren’t leading anywhere, and he fell silent, just letting the doctor think about it and figure out his approach.