Detour

NINE

They were back in the hotel room.

Galina had left for the day. Joelle was asleep in her crib. Slats of amber light were slanting in through the window.

He’d remember this exact moment for a long time. Just about forever. He’d remember the way it looked—how the rays of light crisscrossed the bedspread and seemed to cleave Joanna’s naked leg in two. He’d take a photo of this moment and paste it into the album of very bad things.

Joanna was lying half in and half out of the bedsheets, staring straight up at the ceiling. She looked kind of morose.

Once upon a time Paul had resisted asking Joanna why she looked unhappy, because he always knew what the answer would be, and it always involved him. He was hoping things were different now—that the two of them were positively suffused with happiness—so he went ahead and asked.

“What’s wrong?”

“You’re going to think I’m crazy,” she said.

“No, I’m not.”

“Yes, you are. You don’t know what I’m thinking. It’s ridiculous.”

“Yes, I do. You’re thinking I’m going to think you’re crazy.”

“Besides that.”

“What, Joanna?”

“It’s nuts.”

“Okay, it’s nuts. Tell me.”

“She smells different.”

“What? Who? ”

“Joelle. She smells different.”

“Different than what?”

“Different than . . . before.”

Paul didn’t know quite how to answer that.

“So?”

“So?”

“So she smells different. I’m not—”

“Don’t you understand what I’m saying?”

“No.”

Joanna rolled onto her side and faced him. “I don’t think it’s her. ”

“What?”

“I don’t think it’s her,” clearly enunciating each word this time so he’d know exactly what it was she was saying. Which was clearly and patently, well . . . nuts.

“Joanna—of course it’s her. We took her to the doctor today. You were with her the whole day. Are you . . . ?”

“Crazy?”

“I wasn’t going to say that,” Paul said. Of course, that’s exactly what he was going to say. “I just . . . I mean, it’s just so . . . She’s Joelle.”

“How do you know?”

“What do you mean how do I know?”

“It’s a simple question. How do you know it’s Joelle?”

“Because I’ve been with her two days. Because . . . it looks like her.”

“She’s one month old. How many other babies have you seen here that look exactly like her?”

“None.”

“Fine. Well, I have.”

“Joanna, because she smells different? Don’t you think it’s kind of . . . paranoid?”

“You mean like when we thought Galina kidnapped her?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe we weren’t being paranoid. Maybe Galina did kidnap her.”

“Do you hear what you’re saying? Do you? It’s ridiculous.”

“You didn’t think it was ridiculous yesterday.”

“Yes, I didn’t think it was ridiculous yesterday. That was before Galina came back with her. She had a fever, so Galina went to get her a thermometer. Remember?”

“Joelle didn’t have a fever when we went for a walk, did she?”

“How do we know that?”

“Because I’m her mother. I held her before we left. She was fine.”

“Babies get fevers, honey.”

Joanna sat up. She took Paul’s hands in hers—her palms felt cold and clammy.

“Look. Joelle had a beauty mark on her left leg. Right here.” She reached over and touched his leg, just below the knee. It nearly made him jump. “I saw it. I felt it. When you fell asleep the first night, I went to her crib and just . . . well, looked at her. I couldn’t believe we had her. I woke up and thought I was dreaming maybe. I had to see her again. To know she was real. You understand?”

Paul nodded.

“Okay. When the doctor examined her today, I didn’t see it. I told myself maybe you’re wrong, maybe you didn’t really see a beauty mark before. It was dark in the room. Maybe it was a speck of dirt, a smudge. Only . . . all day today I was thinking that she smelled different than she did before.”

“Honey . . .”

“Listen to me. Please.” She squeezed his hands, as if she were trying to physically press her belief into him, as if it were something that could be caught, like a disease. Only he didn’t want her disease. He wanted her to stop this, to go back to being the ecstatic new mother who woke up in the middle of the night just so she could gaze at her daughter. “Joelle had this . . . I don’t know, musky smell. She had it when we picked her up at the orphanage, and she had it here. She stopped having it when Galina brought her back.”

“Okay. Why didn’t you say anything then?”

“Because I knew you’d think I was crazy. Just like you’re thinking now. I told myself I was crazy. But I didn’t see the beauty mark today. So maybe I’m not.”

“Why would she switch babies, Joanna? Why? For what earthly reason?” Paul was trying to make her see how silly this all was. Belief was immune to logic; it operated by its own laws. And this scared him, if only because there was a tiny part of him that was, well . . . starting to listen to her. The fact was, Joelle had smelled a little musky. Now that Joanna had mentioned it, okay, yes, she had.

“I don’t know why she’d switch babies, Paul. Maybe because of our fight.”

“What fight? You mean about putting her to sleep?”

Joanna nodded.

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Okay, it’s ridiculous. I’m ridiculous. I just think that two days from now we’re going to be leaving this country with the wrong baby. Then it’ll be too late.”

“What do you want me to do, Joanna? Even if I believed you. What would I tell the police? What? That I know we apologized to them for insisting our daughter had been kidnapped, but guess what, now we think she was switched ?”

“We can go back to Santa Regina,” Joanna said. “We can have them check her out for us.”

“And what do you think María would say about that? How stable would she think we are? How much would she want us to have one of her babies? Nothing’s final yet, Joanna. They can still take Joelle back.”

“This baby’s not Joelle.”

“I happen to disagree with you. Okay? I happen to think she is. Because the alternative makes no sense. None. Listen to yourself. You’re basing this on a smell, for chrissakes. On something you think you saw in the middle of the night.”

“Let me ask you something, okay?” Joanna said.

No, he wanted to say—it’s not okay.

“Let’s say there’s a one percent chance I’m right.”

“What?”

“That’s fair, isn’t it? One percent?”

“Look, I—”

“I’m asking you a simple question. You want to attack me with logic, fine, I understand. So I’m asking you a logical question. You love percentages, don’t you? You’re an actuary—pretend it’s one of your insurance charts. Is there a one percent chance I’m right?”

“You want me to put a percentage on something I think is totally ridiculous?”

“Yes, I want you to put a percentage on something you think is totally ridiculous.”

“Okay, fine—there’s a one percent chance she’s not Joelle. And a ninety-nine percent chance she is.”

“Okay. Are you willing to leave the country with even the chance she’s not ours?”

For a moment he was going to say Joelle wasn’t theirs anyway—because in the usual God-given sense, she wasn’t. But he couldn’t say it. It wasn’t true anymore. From the second he’d clasped her to his chest, she’d become theirs.

She was their daughter.

So now what?