“Stop saying it was William’s idea,” I snapped, losing my patience for a second. “It was both of your ideas. You agreed to it. You let them steal my daughter and throw her away like a stray dog. You enjoyed watching your son live in opulence, calling me Mom, while you poisoned him against me. Or are you going to tell me you didn’t know Ethan despises me?”
She raised her head, and this time the resentment showed clearly in her eyes.
“And why shouldn’t he despise you? You never loved him. You were always so cold, distant. William told me. Ethan needed affection, and I gave it to him in secret. I’m his mother.”
“Yes, you are,” I conceded.
And she flinched.
“You are his mother, and you should have taken care of him, not pawned him off on another woman with a criminal lie. You didn’t want to be a mother. You wanted to be William’s kept woman. You wanted the reward without the effort.”
“That’s not true! I love him!”
She was screaming now, crying with rage.
“I love him more than anything. That’s why I agreed. Because he deserved more than this.”
She made a desperate gesture, encompassing the tiny apartment.
“He deserved your house, your school, your future, not this. This misery.”
“And my daughter?” I said, my voice dropping to a sharp whisper. “What did Valerie deserve? Misery?”
Jessica fell silent, staring into space.
“She was a weak baby. William said she wouldn’t survive. That it was better this way.”
“Better for whom, Jessica? For her or for your conscience?”
As I stepped closer, she shrank back.
“Tell me. Tell me how it worked. The food. The nurse. Was that your idea?”
She shook her head frantically.
“No. No. The food was William. He had access. I… I just told him I was scared. That we couldn’t support a baby. That something had to happen.”
She swallowed hard.
“The nurse, Monica, was a friend’s cousin. William gave her money. Not a lot. She just had to switch the bracelets in the confusion after the night shift when no one was around. It was easy, she said.”
Each word confirmed the horror.
“And then you left the hospital with your discharge papers. And my daughter?”
She closed her eyes.
“William took her out in a blanket. He said he would leave her in a safe place. A convent, he said. I… I didn’t want to know anymore. I had my boy. Our boy. He was all that mattered.”
“And never in eight years did you think about what happened to her? You never had nightmares? You never wondered if she was alive, if she was being mistreated, if she was hungry?”
Her silence was the answer. She hadn’t thought about it. Or, if she had, she had suppressed it.
Finally, she shook her head.
“What do you want me to say? That I’m sorry? Fine. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for the girl, but not for Ethan. For Ethan, I’d do it all over again. He has the life he’s supposed to have.”
The monumental selfishness of her statement left me breathless. There was no real remorse, only self-pity and justification for her crime.
“Fine,” I said, putting my phone away. “Thank you for your semi-sincerity. Now listen to me carefully, Jessica. William has signed his confession. He’s giving up everything. He’s out of my life. Ethan legally is still my son for now.”
She jumped to her feet.
“No. You can’t keep him. He’s mine.”
“He is yours,” I agreed. “And you can have him when I say so. And on my terms.”
“What terms?” she whispered, terrified.
“For now, Ethan stays with me. You will not try to see him or contact him. If you do, this entire story with your name and photos will go to the press and the D.A.’s office for child abduction, identity substitution, and God knows what else. You would go to jail, Jessica, and Ethan would be left as the son of a felon in the child-protective system. Is that what you want?”
She shook her head, crying silently now, defeated.
“No. Please.”
“William will probably move in with you, I assume, to this little apartment to try to find a job. You’ll have to manage. And Ethan—when I decide he has learned his lesson, when he has paid even a minimal part of his arrogance—he can choose to stay with me without an inheritance, without luxuries, just like any other child, or to go with you to start from scratch. That will be his choice. But it won’t be easy for any of you.”
“That’s so cruel,” she whimpered.
“I learned from the best,” I said, heading for the door.
I paused with my hand on the knob.
“One more thing, Jessica. My daughter Valerie—if you go near her, if you even look at her, you won’t just go to jail. I will personally make sure you don’t see the light of day again. Do you understand?”
She nodded without looking up from the floor.
I left the apartment. In the elevator, the smell of fried food turned my stomach. It wasn’t disgust with the place. It was disgust with the human misery I had just witnessed.
When I got out onto the street, I took a deep breath. I had all the pieces. William’s confession. Jessica’s corroboration. The documents. It was time to change strategy. The defense was over. It was time for the offense. And the offense would start where it should: with Valerie. But first, I had to deal with the immediate problem at home, with Ethan.
When I returned, the new housekeeper, Pilar, was waiting anxiously in the foyer.
“Mrs. Hayes, Ethan hasn’t eaten. He won’t come out of his room, and he’s been calling his father on the landline. I think he was talking very quietly, but he was crying.”
“Leave him, Pilar. He’ll come down when he’s really hungry.”
