A Blossom of Bright Light (4 page)

Luna heard the three men's voices from the waiting area. She picked out her father's soft tenor, which rose and fell in fits and starts of English peppered with Spanish. She pictured him spilling out the contents of his envelope, the history of his thirteen years of life in the United States written on faded pay stubs and copies of money orders and handwritten receipts.

Señor Gonzalez and Mr. Katz would have had to look more closely to see the real price her father had paid to work in this country. When Luna was six, a meat slicer took off the tip of his middle left finger at a food processing plant where he worked in New York City. He'd had to hail a cab and get himself to the emergency room after his boss told him to just “put a Band-Aid on it” and then docked him two days' pay for his “carelessness.” To Luna, at least, her father's scars were stronger proof of how hard he'd worked to make it here than any piece of paper.

She wandered the waiting area while Dulce and Mateo played some sort of game where the black leather couch was a school bus. Along one wall were head shots of all the firm's lawyers. One of them she recognized from ads on TV: Steve Schulman. He was running for Congress. Her father was right: these
were
important men. She hoped they could help him.

“This must be very hard for you.”

Luna turned to find Señor Gonzalez standing behind her, holding out a glass of water. She hadn't heard him enter the room.

She took the water to be polite and mumbled her thanks. She didn't want to say anything that could get her father into more trouble.

Señor Gonzalez swept a hand toward the window. “Quite a view, yes?”

“It's very nice,” said Luna. Actually, she preferred Lake Holly, with its wooded hills and green lawns. All she could see here were flat concrete boulevards and a jagged collection of steel and glass buildings.

“You're—in high school?”

“Yes. I'm in the tenth grade.”

“The tenth grade. I see. So you are only fifteen?”

Luna didn't know what to make of the word “only,” so she stuck with the facts. “I turned fifteen in July.”

“And did you have a quinceañera?”

She shook her head, no. How could she think of asking Papi for a big fancy party in the middle of all they were going through?

“I had a cake. My family put up streamers and sang ‘Las Mañanitas.' ” Papi loved to wake them up on their birthdays singing the traditional Mexican birthday song.

“How nice,” said Señor Gonzalez. “I'll bet you're a smart girl. You look very smart. Very—mature.” He put a palm on Luna's back and directed her closer to the window. She could feel the sweaty heat of his touch right through her dress—right along her bra strap.

“Here,” he said. “If you look out from this angle, you can see the Hudson River.”

The señor's touch felt greasy and unclean—even through her dress—though Luna couldn't say why. She pretended to be annoyed by something Mateo and Dulce were doing and used it as an excuse to break away.
How much longer is my father going to be?

Papi emerged from the office a few minutes later, shaking Mr. Katz's hand. He looked pleased, if a little unsure.

“What do you think, Adam?” Señor Gonzalez asked the lawyer.

Mr. Katz took off his gold wire-rimmed glasses and massaged the bridge of his nose. He seesawed his head back and forth.

“Look, even a continuance at this point would help. It would buy Mr. Serrano some time at least.” The lawyer smiled at Papi and gave him a thumbs-up like he was a kid at a baseball game praying for a homer. “Hey, if my partner Steve Schulman gets elected in November, who knows?”

Afterward, Papi bought two slices of pizza at a pizzeria down the street and cut each in half for the four of them to share. He looked happier than he had in many weeks.

“The señor, he complimented all of you,” said Papi. “He told me I had a nice family. Especially you, Luna. He said you were a lovely girl.”

Luna fingered the spot along the back of her bra strap where Señor Gonzalez had placed his sweaty palm. She would scrub the spot as soon as she got home. But for now, she forced a smile.

“How nice.”

Chapter 5

J
immy Vega pressed his hands against the display window at the Lake Holly Hospital nursery. He counted nine babies: two preemies in special incubators and seven others swaddled on their sides in open bassinets. Most were napping: fists curled, eyes shut, their little mouths sucking furiously. They all looked so—animated. Like little surprise packages of stored energy and talent just waiting to explode on the world. Vega thought of Baby Mercy, the package that would never get to be opened. His heart felt like someone was scraping sandpaper across it.

“Sir? Can I help you?” asked a nurse in Winnie the Pooh scrubs. “Visiting hours aren't until after two on Sundays.”

“Oh. Sorry. Is Marc Feldman around? They said he was on call today.” Vega pulled out his badge. He'd forgotten the hospital had recently beefed up its maternity ward security.

“I'm afraid Dr. Feldman just went into the OR. An emergency C-section. It's likely to be a while.”

“How about Joy Vega? Is she in?”

“His intern? I think she may have left already.” The nurse read his badge. “Vega—are you related?”

“She's my daughter.”

“Why don't you have a seat in the visitor's lounge,” said the nurse. “I'll check if she's still here.”

Vega sat down on an orange vinyl couch and thumbed the magazines spread across the coffee table. No
Sports Il-lustrated
s here. Only
American Baby
and
Babytalk
and
Pregnancy & Newborn.
Everywhere Vega looked, he saw babies. Even on his iPhone, Mercy was there, staring back at him like some darling new family addition. There was no escaping the ghost of what he'd done.

He tried to remember what Joy was like as a newborn, but the images were fuzzy, bathed in the sleepless stupor and panic of being a brand-new cop, husband, and father all at once. He was barely twenty-four at the time. Too young, he realized now. Too immature on every front. It took him about three years to get the hang of being a cop. Wendy would argue that he'd never gotten the hang of being a husband. As for the father part, well—he'd done a hell of a lot better than his old man. At the very least, he'd stuck around.

And now Joy was all grown up. A college freshman. Vega had seen her exactly four times since she'd started classes seven weeks ago—which wouldn't have been so bad except it was a commuter college and she was still living at home here in Lake Holly with Wendy and her second husband. The investment banker. He got to see more of Joy than Vega did.

The door to the maternity ward opened, and Joy stepped out. She had a distinctive walk—that little bounce to her stiletto boot heels, those bangles she always wore that jingled like sleigh bells. There was still the kid about her—the way she experimented with too much eyeliner. That little tug she gave to her ponytail after she removed her hospital ID from around her neck.

She was always underdressed by one season, so it was not surprising she was wearing a lightweight shirt jacket belted over knit pants. The jacket was a leopard print that shimmered slightly under the fluorescent lights. Even in the overheated hospital, Joy looked cold. Vega had the urge to take off his own insulated jacket and drape it around her shoulders, but he knew he would embarrass her.

“Hey, Dad. What's up?” She looked happy to see him at least. She even let him kiss her hello. She felt the side of his face as he bent over. “You're scratchy.”

She used to say that as a kid, right before the two of them would line up in front of the bathroom mirror—him with his razor, her on a princess stool with a Popsicle stick in hand, both of them with a face full of shaving cream. It seemed like yesterday.

“Sorry. I didn't have time to shave this morning.” Vega nodded to her jacket. “Where are you off to already?”

“I've got a seventh-grader on the other side of town waiting for me to teach him the wonders of quadratic equations.” Joy's side job. She was a natural at math. It beat waiting tables.

“Better him than me.” Vega grinned.

Joy's face clouded over. “Were we—uh—supposed to have lunch or something?”

“Nah.” She looked relieved. He felt deflated. “I'm here to talk to Dr. Feldman about a case I'm working on. But can I at least walk you to your car?” Joy's car was Wendy's hand-me-down white Volvo. A “mommy car,” was how Joy described it. She'd wanted Vega to buy her a shiny red MINI Cooper, but between helping her with tuition and installing a new transmission on his truck, he was strapped for cash. Besides, the Volvo seemed like a safer choice.

“My car's in the shop getting new tires for the winter,” said Joy.

“Ah. Good idea,” said Vega. “You can't be too careful now that you're commuting to school.”

“If I was any more careful, I'd be driving a snowplow.”

Vega walked her to the elevator and pressed the down button. “You want me to drop you at this kid's house?”

“Um”—she pulled out her iPhone and checked her messages—“I'm getting a ride.”

“Friend picking you up?”

“No”—she kept her eyes on the screen—“Alan.”

“Oh.” The investment banker. The father of the twin cannonballs that forever sank his marriage.

When he and Wendy divorced, they'd both agreed not to snipe at each other through their daughter. It was a point of pride to Vega that he'd been able to make good on this pledge—no easy feat given that Wendy had been two-timing him with Alan while they were still married. And she had the souvenirs to prove it:
Ben and Sam. Sam and Ben.
Wall Street may have screwed over the rest of the country. Alan just did it with Vega's wife.

Joy knew the raw facts of her parents' breakup. She could do the math well enough to recognize what had transpired—if not back when she was twelve, then certainly now. But like all children, she was the star in her own universe. Her parents' dramas were background noise. She loved her mother from a child's perspective, and hard as that might be for Vega to swallow, he had to. And so he did. For Joy. Because for all the terrible wrongs he felt Wendy had done to him, she'd done something truly wonderful when she'd given him his daughter.

The elevator dinged and the doors opened. They stepped in. “Since I'm already here,” said Vega, “why don't I drive you instead?”

“Alan's on his way.”

That was debatable. Alan was late to everything. More than once, Vega had driven up to their sprawling Georgian colonial for a scheduled visit with his daughter only to find that Alan hadn't gotten around to bringing her back from some family outing yet.

When they got to the lobby—surprise, surprise—Alan's black Mercedes wasn't parked in the circle out front. Joy flopped down in one of the lobby chairs and tapped out a message on her iPhone, presumably to Mr. Reliable. Vega took a seat across from her and drummed his fingers on the armrests. He wasn't going anywhere until that jerk showed up. He wasn't about to leave Joy without a way to get to her tutoring gig.

“What did you want to see Dr. Feldman about?” asked Joy.

“He's still running that study, right? The one that looks at the effects of dietary education on low-income pregnant women?”

“Of course, Dad. I've been helping him with it for two years.” It was a good first step if Joy wanted to get into medical school. Vega assumed that was still her long-term goal.

“Do you deal at all with the study participants?”

“Every week.”

“Have any of them ever seemed—I don't know—overwhelmed? Maybe depressed to the point that they would abandon their babies?”

That stopped her in mid-text. She put down her phone. “
What?
Why would you ask that?”

“I'm trying to locate the mother of a newborn the Lake Holly police found earlier today.”

“
Found?
As in ‘found alive?' Or ‘found dead'?”

“That information hasn't been released yet.”

Joy rolled her eyes. “Really, Dad. Sometimes, you're such a cop.”

“I've been called worse. And I'm still asking here: can you think of a patient of Dr. Feldman's who might be capable of abandoning her newborn?”

Joy picked at her manicure. Her nails were aqua today with white polka dots. They ran the whole gamut of shades and designs. Vega wondered how much Joy paid for such nonsense. Or was it Wendy and Alan who were paying? Were they bribing Joy with the things he wouldn't or couldn't buy for her?

Joy noticed her father scrutinizing her and tucked her fingers under her thighs. She muttered something. It sounded like “Sunday” in Spanish.

“Did you say
Domingo?
” It was Vega's fault entirely that his daughter spoke only a smattering of high school Spanish. It would have been so easy to speak it to her when she was little. Now, it was too late.

Joy hesitated. “I'd be breaking patient confidentiality.”

“C'mon, Joy.” Vega pulled a face. “Cops ask these sorts of questions all the time. I need a lead here. You're not going on a witness stand.”

She let out a slow exhale. “I don't even know if she's had her baby yet. She hasn't shown up in a while.”

“Give me a name. Dominga—?”

“Flores. Dominga Flores. She's a live-in nanny here in town. At least she was when I saw her. The family she was working for said she couldn't stay with them once the baby was born, so I don't know whether she's moved on. She was definitely very distraught over the situation.”

“Who's the family?”

“Their name is Reilly, I believe.” Joy looked down at her phone. “Alan just texted me that he's caught in traffic. He'll be here in five minutes.”

“
Traffic?
On a
Sunday?
What? Three soccer moms in minivans?”

“Daaad.” Joy put a hand on his knee. “He's coming, okay?”

Vega sank back in his chair. “If I were late, you wouldn't be so forgiving.”

“You wouldn't
be
late. You'd be early—and then complain when I . . . Oh, forget it.”

They were both silent for a moment. Vega tapped the armrest of the chair to a beat only he could hear. He tried to return to the topic at hand. “This Dominga, how old is she? What's she like?”

“Midtwenties, I guess. Quiet. She's very sweet. Just really—stressed. She's from Honduras, and the baby's father—he's Guatemalan, I believe. I think he's married back in his country. He doesn't want to have anything to do with the baby.”

“Did
she
say she didn't want the baby?”

“No. She just acted—I don't know—scared. I guess she's afraid of how she's going to support herself and her child.” Joy frowned. “If the baby turns out to be Dominga's, she won't go to prison for abandoning it, will she?”

“A judge and jury make those decisions, Joy. Not me.”

“But she may not have had that many options.”

“The Safe Haven Law gives her options. If she ignored them, she has to face the consequences.”

“Come on, Dad. It's not always that simple. Sometimes every choice a person has is bound to cause someone pain.”

“I disagree.”

“Just look at Adele's situation. What's the painless choice there?”

“Adele?” Vega leaned forward in his chair. He felt a kernel of something frozen and black settle in his stomach. “What's Adele got to do with this?”

“You know,” Joy stumbled. “That job. In D.C. The one Steve Schulman offered her if he gets elected.”

“Job?” Vega felt like he was staring at the headlights of an oncoming train. He couldn't move. All he could do was stand frozen in their glare. “Schulman didn't offer her any job.”

“I tutor Charlie Gonzalez's son in math. He's one of Schulman's chief campaign advisers and a neighbor of ours. I heard him talking about it like it was a done deal.”

“Adele would have told me.”

“I guess.” Joy stared at her hands. “You should probably ask Adele.”

A sleek black Mercedes whipped around the hospital's front circle. The driver beeped his horn. It was Alan, impatient as ever. Joy rose from her seat, seemingly grateful for the reprieve.

“Listen, Dad—maybe I'm wrong.”

Joy wasn't wrong. Vega knew that already. All he had to do was replay the last few weeks in his head. The silences. The unanswered text messages. The disappointment in Adele's eyes last night and this morning.

“I'm sorry, Dad. I've gotta go. I'll talk to you soon, okay?” She kissed him on the cheek. “See you.”

“Yeah. See you.”