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Authors: Elisabeth Hyde

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BOOK: The Abortionist's Daughter
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“Here’s a list,” said Ernie, handing him a yellow pad. “Start calling.”

Huck sat down. He didn’t want a list; he wanted to hear from Ernie that someone had come forward and confessed. He wanted to hear that they had found an open door, footprints leading to tire tracks leading to an abandoned but identifiable vehicle; or that Piper had looked again and found a bloodless bullet wound for which the anti-abortionists were claiming responsibility. He wanted to hear that Frank had a foolproof alibi.

Most of all, though, he wanted to hear that Megan had a secret twin, a look-alike halfway around the world who was of legal age and who had received millions for what she did. That the pictures he’d seen were not, after all, of Megan Thompson.

He flipped open his wallet, took out a picture of Carolyn, and propped it against his phone.

CHAPTER SIX

——————

THE FUNERAL WAS HELD
that Friday at the largest funeral home they could find. Hundreds attended. Those who knew Diana as a public figure wept; those who knew her personally were too numb to shed tears at this public event. Neither Megan nor Frank got up to speak.

Afterward Megan was heading across the parking lot when she felt a light touch on her shoulder. She turned to see Bill, dressed in a dark green windjacket and baggy black pants. She hadn’t noticed him at the service—in fact, the last time she’d seen him was over Thanksgiving break, when she ran into him at the video store.

“Well
hello,
Megg-Ann,” he’d said, and first off she’d noticed he was growing a beard, although it was a pretty measly beard, just a few blond bristles on his chin. She’d glanced at his stack of movies and remarked that he must be planning a movie marathon that weekend. “Oh yes indeedy,” he said. “Want to join me?”

“No, thanks,” Megan said, “we’ve got plans—”


We,
meaning?”

She was going to tell him she was referring to her parents, but he clucked and moved forward in the line. Later she heard through classmates that he was transferring schools, some private college in the Northwest, and she thought that would be a very good idea. If you told her she’d never see or hear from Bill Branson again, she would have been just fine with the idea.

Now, though, here they were, face to face within a foot of each other in the parking lot of McPherson’s Funeral Home. The beard was gone and his chin was raw with shaved pimples.

“God, I’m so sorry,” he said, opening his arms. “I am so, so sorry.”

Megan accepted a light embrace but pulled away quickly. She wished her father would come so they could leave.

“Such a cool lady,” Bill said. “Such a cool
doctor.
Any leads?”

Megan shook her head.

“I hope they’re looking into the Coalition group. That’s where I’d put my money,” Bill said. “Those are some wacko dudes.”

Megan shrugged. “I heard you were transferring.”

“I was,” he said, “except that things have gotten a little complicated.”

“How’s that?”

A bashful smile crept over his face. “I met someone.”

Megan leaned against the car. “That’s great, Bill,” she said. “Where’s she from?”

“That’s the problem,” Bill said. “She’s up at the college, and so now I have to see if I can re-enroll.”

“And not move to Washington?”

“Right.”

Even in a state of grief Megan found herself tallying the pros and cons of this news. On the one hand, his having a new girlfriend lifted a heavy burden. On the other hand, she’d gotten used to the idea of him being far, far away.

“How long have you known her?” she asked politely.

“All semester,” he said. “But we didn’t hook up until right after Thanksgiving.”

“Well,” she said, “I’m very happy for you, Bill. What’s her name?”

“Amanda.”

Hearing this, Megan felt an unexpected tug, which unsettled her. Why should she feel anything, hearing his new girlfriend’s name? She guessed she had a lot to learn about love, and breaking up, and moving on.

“Well, good for you, Bill,” she said. “I’m sure you’ll be able to re-enroll.”

“How’s the U?”

“Hard,” Megan said. “Pre-med is a bitch.”

“You’ll be a great doctor. As good as your mother ever was—and that’s saying a lot.”

Megan’s eyes welled up.

“You’ll get through,” he said, fingering a strand of hair back from her face.

Megan recoiled. “There’s my father,” she told him. “I have to go. Thanks for coming to the service. That was a nice thing to do. Good luck with Amanda.”

She already had her hand on the door handle when Bill said, “So how come Mister Michael Malone didn’t show up?”

Megan turned around and stared.

“Weren’t you two kind of, you know?”

“Excuse me?”

“Actually I heard he was being forced to resign,” Bill said. “I heard he was sleeping with a student. I didn’t say
you,
” he added innocently. “Why do you look at me?
Was
it you?”

She jabbed her key in the lock.

“Was he good?” he asked loudly. “Was he better than me?”

She wrenched open the driver’s door.

“Did you swallow?” he called.

She didn’t look to see who might have heard; instead she slid into the seat and slammed the door shut and started the engine. Her father, hearing her rev the motor, broke from a group of people and came over. Megan saw him shake hands with Bill, give a curt nod, shake his head. Then he opened the passenger door and settled himself into the seat.

“That was nice of Bill to come,” he remarked, buckling his seatbelt.

—————

They headed back to the Goldfarbs’, friends of the family who had persuaded them to come stay at their house the day after Diana’s death. The Goldfarbs had a large multilevel house in the same neighborhood, with lots of spare bedrooms, and Megan had welcomed the chance to stay in a place that was neither home nor dorm.

All afternoon people stopped by. Megan stood by the fire in the living room most of the time, making small talk with her parents’ friends. Everyone seemed to need to touch her, like she possessed some kind of religious shroud. She was aware that she was still in shock; the fact of her mother’s death kept slipping in and out of reality, and at times she found herself acting quite normal—unemotional, even, as though she were in an audience, watching a play about a girl whose mother had died.

In a quiet moment she held her palms out to the fire and let her thoughts skitter about. She wondered if her father would have thought it was so nice of Bill to come to the funeral if he knew about the e-mails they’d exchanged earlier that fall.
Can’t we try again?
he’d written.
It’s over, Bill,
she wrote back;
You need to accept it and move on. Don’t give up,
he typed;
You know you really love me. Please do not e-mail me anymore,
she wrote back, to which he retorted:
GIRL YOU HAVE TAKEN A
SLEDGE HAMMER
TO MY HEART AND SOUL!!!

Megan turned her back to the fire and faced the roomful of people again. It seemed as though the entire town had passed through this house in the last several hours; there’d been city councilmembers and state representatives, and even their U.S. congressman had stopped by, bearing a basket of fruit. People were drinking beer, wine, scotch, soda, water; they were eating cake and pie and lasagna and fruit salad and chicken wings and chips and salsa. It might have been a New Year’s Eve party, for all you saw on the tables.

Her back began to sting from the heat of the fire. During a burst of laughter in the background, she found her coat and slipped unnoticed out the back door. It was dark but the moon was out, its sharp clear light illuminating the blanket of snow that remained from Tuesday’s storm. She walked up one street and then down another, then asked herself who she was kidding and beelined it to her own house.

Still such a shock, all that yellow tape! There were police cars, and news trucks, and people going in and out of the front door like partygoers. She scanned the faces, and there on the front walkway was the detective with the blue eyes, writing in a notebook. Someone in the house shouted something, and he looked up and spotted her. She gave a little wave with her fingers. Tucking his notebook into the kangaroo pocket of his sweatshirt, he walked over to her.

“Ms. Thompson,” he said.

“Oh please,” Megan sighed, “don’t call me that.”

The detective smiled. “I didn’t really expect to see you over here right now.”

“It looks like a movie set.”

Huck glanced around. “I guess you could say that. By the way, I was at the service this afternoon,” he said. “Your mother certainly had a lot of friends.”

Megan felt herself in the theater again, watching the girl on stage act out her grief. “She had a lot of enemies too,” she remarked.

“She did at that.”

“Which you’re looking into?”

“We are.”

“Pretty closed-lipped, aren’t you?”

Huck smiled wanly.

“Sorry,” said Megan. “I’m in a pretty shitty state these days. Can I go inside and get some clothes?”

The detective shook his head. “Nope. We’re still collecting evidence.”

“Like what? Fingerprints? I’m sure mine are all over the place,” she said. “Does that mean you’re going to think I did it?”

Huck frowned. “It’s not just fingerprints. We’re looking for a lot of other things.”

Megan watched a man walk out carrying a large box. He seemed to be struggling with the weight. “Oh darn, they found my gun collection. Just kidding,” she added quickly, when Huck looked alarmed.

“Not the best time to kid,” Huck advised. “Look, do you want some coffee? We can go sit in my car.”

She didn’t want any coffee, but she did want to sit in his car. She wanted to tell him about the girl in the play, how by pretending she was in the audience, she was able to keep herself from falling apart. She wanted him to know that she wasn’t some kind of monster for being able to joke around with him (gun collections!) when she’d just lost the most important person in her life. None of this would she actually say, of course, but she found it comforting, just being with him.

He led her to where he’d parked his car and opened the door for her. It didn’t look like a cop car. “Where are all the bells and whistles?”

“I’m a detective,” he said, “not a patrol officer.”

“So this lets you sneak around undetected?”

“Correct.”

The undetected detective, she thought. “So,” she said after a moment. “Aren’t you going to ask me questions about my mother?”

“If you want.”

“Then ask.”

Huck turned down the blower. He glanced at her, then sniffed and cleared his throat and looked out the front window of the car. “Okay. Your mother was an outspoken woman, and she got a lot of threats.”

“I know that,” said Megan, “but how do you know that?”

“She had a contact at the department, someone to call in case of emergency. We do the same for any public figure who’s at risk. So if there’s a bomb threat or a phone call, we can check it out ASAP. But my point is, we found some things we didn’t know about in the house.”

“Like what?”

“Like videos, under the VCR,” he said. “Right-to-life material. Pretty graphic stuff.” He paused for a moment. “Did you know about these?”

“Sure. She got them all the time.”

“Why’d she keep them?”

“Just a pack rat, I guess. Actually I have no idea. Maybe she was going to write a book someday.”

“Did they ever arrive with any letters?”

“There were always letters. Threats. Little notes. Smiling pictures of others who died.”

“Other what? Abortionists?”

“Abortion
providers,
” she corrected him. “Don’t use that word.”

Huck took out his notebook and made some notes. “Did she keep any of the letters?”

“I don’t know.”

“When was the last time she got a package?”

“No idea,” said Megan. “I don’t live at home anymore.”

Huck made another note.

“I know this must be very hard for you,” he said, “but when was the last time you saw her?”

Megan felt something catch in her throat.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “We can talk about this later.”

“No. It’s fine. The last time I saw her was Tuesday morning.”

“The day she was killed?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“At the clinic.”

“What were you doing there?”

Megan cleared her throat. “We had breakfast together.”

Huck nodded.

“But I didn’t stay long,” she added. “My mother had a busy day ahead of her. As if every day of hers wasn’t some kind of marathon.”

Huck, who’d been writing, glanced up then, and she immediately looked away. Even in the dim light of the police car she could see how blue his eyes were—blue as the lapis stone in the necklace Bill had given her one Christmas. She was going to mention it but quickly realized that commenting on the color of someone’s eyes was an inappropriate thing to say to a cop.

“Well, I should get back,” she told him. “No one knows I’m gone. My father will freak out.”

“Yes, he does seem the type,” Huck said, which jolted her a little; what did he base that observation on?

“But one more thing, if I may,” he said. “Can you think of anyone else who might have been upset with your mother? Even over something that had nothing to do with the abortion issue?”

Megan had to think. Mrs. Beekman next door didn’t like either of her parents because they let dandelions go to seed in their yard. Diana’s friend Libby was mad at her because Diana had been too busy while Libby was going through her divorce. Then there was that thing with Piper six, seven years ago. But Piper and Diana weren’t mad at each other anymore, and besides, Piper had come over that night. Why would she do that, if she’d killed Diana just a few hours before?

Megan didn’t think any of this was his business. She told him she would think about it.

“Here’s my card,” he said, reaching into his breast pocket. “In case anything comes up.”

Megan inspected the card. All it said was Huck Berlin, Detective.

“I have a friend named Suzannah Berlin,” she said. “Any relation?”

BOOK: The Abortionist's Daughter
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