Three Weeks to Say Goodbye

ONE

IT WAS SATURDAY MORNING, November 3, and the first thing I noticed when I entered my office was that my telephone message light was blinking. Since I’d left the building late the night before, it meant someone had called my extension during the night. Odd.

My name is Jack McGuane. I was thirty-four years old at the time. Melissa, my wife, was the same age. I assume you’ve heard my name, or seen my image on the news, although with everything going on in the world I can understand if you missed me the first time. Our story, in the big scheme of things, is a drop in the river.

I was a Travel Development Specialist for the Denver Metro Convention and Visitors Bureau, the city agency charged with bidding on and hosting conventions and encouraging tourism to Denver. Every city has one. I worked hard, often staying late and, if necessary, coming in on a Saturday. It’s important to me that I work hard, even in a bureaucratic environment where it’s not necessarily encouraged or rewarded. You see, I’m not the smartest guy in the world, or the best educated. My background doesn’t suit me for the job. But my ace in the hole is that I work harder than anyone around me, even when I don’t have to. I am the bane of an office filled with bureaucrats, and I’m proud of it. It’s the only thing I’ve got.

Before doing anything, though, I punched the button to retrieve my voice mail.

“Jack, this is Julie Perala. At the agency…”

I stared at the speaker. Her voice was tight, cautious, not the confident and compassionate Julie Perala from the adoption agency Melissa and I had spent hours with while we went through the long process of adopting Angelina, our nine-month-old. My first thought was that we somehow owed them more money.

“Jack, I hate to call you at work on a Friday. I hope you get this and can call me back right away. I need to talk with you immediately-before Sunday, if possible.”

She left the agency number and her cell-phone number, and I wrote them down.

Then: “Jack, I’m so sorry.”

After a few beats of silence, as if she wanted to say more but wouldn’t or couldn’t, she hung up.

I sat back in my chair, then listened to the message again and checked the time stamp. It had arrived at 8:45 Friday evening.

I tried the agency number first, not surprised that it went straight to voice mail. Then I called her cell.

“Yes?”

“Julie, this is Jack McGuane.”

“Oh.”

“You said to call immediately. You’ve got me scared here with your message. What’s going on?”

“You don’t know?”

“How would I know? Know what?”

There was anger and panic in her voice.

“Martin Dearborn hasn’t called you? He’s your attorney, isn’t he? Our lawyers were supposed to call him. Oh dear.”

My heart sped up, and the receiver became slick in my hand. “Julie, I don’t know anything. Dearborn never called. Please, what is this about?”

“God, I hate to be the one to tell you.”

“Tell me what?”

A beat. “The biological father wants Angelina back.”

I made her repeat it in case I hadn’t heard correctly. She did.

“So what if he wants her back,” I said. “We adopted her. She’s our daughter now. Who cares what he wants?”

“You don’t understand-it’s complicated.”

I pictured Melissa and Angelina at home having a lazy Saturday morning. “Of course we’ll work this out,” I said. “This is all some kind of big misunderstanding. It’ll all be fine.” Despite my words, my mouth tasted like metal.

Said Julie, “The birth father never signed away parental custody, Jack. The mother did, but the father didn’t. It’s a terrible situation. Your lawyer should have explained all of this to you. I don’t want to be the one going over legalities because I’m not qualified. As I said, it’s complicated…”

“This cannot be happening,” I said.

“I’m so sorry.”

“It doesn’t make sense,” I said. “She’s been with us nine months. The birth mother selected us.”

“I know. I was there.”

“Tell me how to make this go away,” I said, sitting up in my chair, leaning over the desk. “Do we pay off the kid, or what?”

Julie was silent for a long time.

“Julie, are you there?”

“I’m here.”

“Meet me at your agency now.”

“I can’t.”

“You can’t or you won’t?”

“I can’t. I shouldn’t even be talking with you. I should never have called. The lawyers and my executives said not to make direct contact, but I felt I had to.”

“Why didn’t you call us at home?”

“I got cold feet,” she said. “You don’t know how much I wished I could erase that message I left for you.”

“I appreciate that,” I said, “but you can’t walk away. I need to understand what you’re saying. You’ve got to work with me to make this kid go away. You owe us that.”

I heard a series of staccato sounds and thought the connection was going bad. Then I realized she was crying.

Finally, she said, “There’s a restaurant near here called Sunrise Sunset. On South Wadsworth. I can meet you there in an hour.”

“I might be a little late. I’ve got to run home and get Melissa. She’ll want to hear this. And on such short notice, we’ll probably have Angelina with us.”

“I was hoping…” Her voice trailed off.

“Hoping what? That I wouldn’t bring them?”

“Yes. It makes it harder… I was hoping maybe you and I could meet alone.”

I slammed the phone down. Stunned, I wrote down the address of the restaurant.

I SENSED LINDA VAN Gear’s arrival before she leaned into my office. She had a presence that preceded her. It could also be called very strong perfume, which she seemed to push ahead in front of her, like a surging trio of small, leashed dogs. Linda was my boss.

She was an imposing, no-nonsense woman, a force of nature. Melissa once referred to Linda as “a caricature of a broad.” Linda was brash, made-up, coiffed with a swept-back helmet of stiff hair like the overlapping armored plates of a prehistoric dinosaur. She looked like she wore suits with shoulder pads, but they were her shoulders. Her lips were red, red, red, and there was usually a lipstick line across the front of her teeth, which she moistened often with darts from a pointed tongue. Linda, like a lot of the people who worked international tourism marketing, had once had dreams of being an actress or at least some kind of indefinable celebrity, someone who judged amateurs on a reality singing show. Linda was not well liked by the women in our office or by many in the tourism industry, but I got along with her. I got a kick out of her because everything about her was out front in spades.

“Hello, darlin’,” she said, sticking her head in the doorway, “I see you found the leads.”

I hadn’t even noticed them, but they were there: a bulging manila envelope filled with business cards that smelled of her perfume, cigarette smoke, and spilled wine.

“They’re right here.”

“Couple of hot ones in there,” she said with mock enthusiasm. “They’ll singe your fingers when you touch them. Let’s meet on them in a half an hour.” She squinted, looking me over, asked, “Are you okay?”

“No I’m not.”

I didn’t really want to get into details, but felt I needed to explain the situation to her in order to postpone the meeting.

She listened with glistening eyes. She loved this kind of thing, I realized. She loved drama, and I was providing it.

“Some boy wants custody of your baby?” she asked.

“Yes, but I’m going to fight it.”

“The baby obsession skipped this broad,” she said. “I guess I never really understood it.” She shook her head. She had no children and had made it clear she never wanted any.

I nodded like I understood. Fragile ground, here.

She said, “Look, you know I’m leaving for Taiwan with the governor Monday. We’ve got to get together before then. Hell, I dragged my jet-lagged ass out of bed just to meet you here this morning. We need to meet.”

“We will,” I said. “Let me call you as soon as I talk to Julie Perala. That’s all I ask.”

“That’s a lot,” she said, clearly angry.

“I’ll call,” I said. “I’ll even come meet you at your house if you want.”

“Plan on it,” she said, turning on her heel and clicking down the hallway, her shoes sounding like manic sticks on the rim of a drum in the empty hallway.

MELISSA WAS ON THE FLOOR with Angelina when I came in the door. Before I could speak, Melissa said, “What’s wrong?”

“Julie Perala called. She says there’s a problem with the adoption.”

Melissa went white, and she looked from me to Angelina and back.

“She said the father wants her back.”

“Back?” Melissa said, her voice rising in volume, “Back? He’s never even seen her!”

I met Melissa when we were both students at Montana State University thirteen years before. She was a lean jade-eyed brunette-attractive, smart, athletic, earthy, self-confident- with high cheekbones and a full, expressive mouth that tended to betray what ever she was thinking. She sparkled. I was drawn to her immediately in a crazy, almost chemical way. I could sense when she entered a crowded room even before I could see her. She was taken at the time, though, involved in a long-term relationship with the star running back. They were a remarkably handsome couple, and I despised him for no reason other than she was his. Still, I pined for her. The thought of her kept me awake at night. When their breakup became news, I told my friend Cody, “I’m going to marry her.” He said, “In your dreams,” and I said, “Yes, in my dreams.” He said, “You’ve got it bad,” and urged me to forget about her and go out and get drunk and get laid. Instead, I asked her out and became Mr. Rebound. She thought I was solid and amusing. I found, to my delight, that I could make her laugh. All I ever wanted to do, all I still want to do all these years later, is make her happy. After we’d been married three years, she said she wanted children. That was the next step, the next easy, logical step. Or so we thought.

The look on her face now crushed me and angered me and made me want to pound someone.

I walked over and picked up Angelina, who squealed. Until this little girl entered our lives, I didn’t know how much I could care. She was beautiful-dark-haired, cherubic. Her eyes were big and wide open-as if she were always in a state of delighted surprise. Hair that stuck straight up in spots when she woke up from a nap. Four pearly teeth, two top, two bottom. She had a wonderful laugh that started deep in her belly, then took over her entire body. Her laugh was infectious, and we’d start laughing, too, which made her laugh even harder, until she was limp. She laughed so hard we actually asked our pediatrician if there was a problem, and he just shook his head at us. Recently, she’d learned to say “Da” and “Ma.” The way she looked at me, like I was the greatest and strongest creature on the planet, made me want to save and protect her from anything and anybody. She was my little girl, and like Melissa, she made me think differently about my place on earth. In her eyes, I was a god who as yet could do no wrong. I was a giant-her giant. I wanted to never disappoint her. And as the bearer of this news, I felt I had.

I THOUGHT I’D MISUNDERSTOOD the address or name of the meeting place as we entered because I couldn’t locate Julie Perala at any of the tables or booths. I was lifting the cell to call her when I saw her wave from a private room in the back used for meetings and parties. I pocketed the phone.

Julie Perala was broad-faced and broad-hipped, with soft eyes and a comforting professional smile. There was something both compassionate and pragmatic about her, and we had liked her instantly when we met with her so many months before for our orientation. She seemed especially sensitive to our situation without being cloying, and was by far more knowledgeable about “placements” than anyone else we had met at other agencies. Nothing made her happier to be alive, she told us, than a placement where all three parties were perfectly served-the birth mother, the adoptive parents, and the child. She was to be trusted, and we trusted her. I also noticed, at times when she let her guard down, a ribald sense of humor. I had the feeling she’d be a hoot with a few drinks in her.

“Coffee?” she asked. “I’ve already had breakfast.”

“No thanks,” I said, pausing.

Melissa held Angelina tight to her and glared at Julie Perala with eyes I hoped would never be aimed at me.

“I know the manager,” she said, answering a question I was about to ask, “and knew I could get this room in the back. Please close the door.”

I did, and sat down as she was pouring coffee from a thermos carafe.

“I’m taking a real chance meeting with you,” she said, not meeting my eyes, concentrating on pouring. “The agency would kill me if they knew. We’ve all been advised to communicate only through the lawyers now.”

“But,” I said, prompting her.

“But I like you and Melissa very much. You’re good, normal people. I know you love Angelina. I felt I owed you a frank discussion.”

“I appreciate that.”

Melissa continued to glare.

Julie said, “If this comes back to bite me, well, I’ll be very disappointed. But I hoped we could talk without lawyers around, at least this once.”

“Go ahead,” I said.

It took her a moment to form her words. “I can’t tell you how bad I feel about this situation,” she said. “This should never happen to a nice couple like you.”

“I agree.”

“We shouldn’t have kept it a secret from you that Judge John Moreland contacted us three months ago,” she said. “Our hope was we could settle it internally, and we offered to do exactly that. Our hope was you would never be troubled about it at all, that you wouldn’t even know.”

“Who is Judge Moreland?” I asked. “The biological father?”

“No, no. The biological father is his son, Garrett. Garrett is a senior at Cherry Creek High School. He’s eighteen years old.”

“Unbelievable,” I said.

She shrugged and showed her palms to me. “I agree. But if we’d been able to resolve it internally, we wouldn’t be here now. There wouldn’t be a problem at all.”

I said, “Ninety-nine percent. Remember when you used that figure when I asked about the birth father signing away his parental rights?”

Her face clouded. “I remember. And it’s true. It really is. I’ve been involved in nearly a thousand placements in my life, and this is the first time this has ever happened. We just didn’t think it could.”

“Didn’t you say you tried to find the birth father?” Melissa asked bitterly. “Didn’t you say he’d agreed to sign the papers?”

She nodded.

“What happened?”

“We tracked him down in the Netherlands, where he was on vacation with his mother. He was staying with his mother’s relatives, I guess. I didn’t talk with him, but a coworker did. She explained the situation to him, and she said he was surprised. He agreed to sign away custody and he gave us a fax number where he could be reached. We sent the papers over.”

“But he never signed them,” I said.

“We dropped the ball,” she said. “The woman who’d made contact left the agency. If any of us had had any inkling at all that he would refuse to sign, we would have kept you abreast of the situation. But as far as we knew, it was his wish not to be a parent. We can’t coerce him, you know. We can’t pressure. It has to be his decision.”

My anger was building to the point that I had to look away from her.

“Legally, we covered our bases,” she said sympathetically, almost apologetically to us. “We placed public notices for him and did everything we’re required to do. Not having the signed papers isn’t that unusual, because the family court judge always-and I mean always-awards full custody to the adoptive parents in a case like this. After all, we can’t let a nonresponsive birth father hold up a placement, can we?”

“Did you contact Garrett’s father?” I asked. “Is that how he got involved?”

“We normally don’t contact the parents of the birth father. That’s considered coercive.”

“But you knew about him? You knew about John Moreland?”

“No.”

“Interesting that his mother didn’t know, since she was with him overseas when your agency contacted him. How could she not know?”

Julie shrugged. “It doesn’t make sense to me, but a lot about this situation makes no sense. Maybe she knew but didn’t want to tell her husband. Why-I don’t know.”

I said, “So this Judge Moreland entered the picture after Garrett told him?”

“As far as I know, yes.”

“And that’s when Moreland’s lawyers contacted the agency?”

She looked down. “Yes. The letter came from them with less than ten days left in the public notice period. If they’d waited just two more weeks, custody would have been granted to you by the family court. It was bad timing for you.”

“It sure was,” I said sarcastically.

“If you and Melissa choose not to fight the Moreland claim, our agency will do everything in our power to make the situation right for you.”

“Meaning what?” Melissa asked.

She took a quick breath and raised her eyes to meet Melissa’s. “I’ve been a party to the meetings we’ve had with our executives and our lawyers. I know we would immediately refund all fees and arrange, free of charge, for a new placement. You would be moved to the top of the priority list for a new baby. And we’d offer a very large settlement to you and Melissa and our apologies. That’s if we can keep this whole thing out of court and out of the news. I think you’d agree with me that the last thing anyone would want to do is discourage children’s chances of future placements with loving families who might be scared out of adoption by this situation.”

“This can’t be happening,” Melissa said, as much to herself as to Julie Perala.

“Why didn’t your lawyers contact our lawyer about these meetings?” I said. “Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work?”

“I thought they had,” she said.

“We’ve heard nothing.”

She shrugged. “I’m not a lawyer.”

“Neither is ours, apparently,” I said, spitting it out.

“You don’t understand,” Melissa said. “We can’t lose our baby.”

Julie started to speak, then bit her lip and looked away.

“We can’t lose our baby,” Melissa said again, but this time her voice was close to a shout.

“Judge Moreland is a powerful man,” Julie said softly. “I get the impression he’s used to getting what he wants.”

“Tell me about him,” I asked. “Tell me what kind of man I’m up against.”

“He’s a wealthy man,” she said. “His wife has the fortune, from what I understand. Judges aren’t paid that much, I guess. He owns lots of real estate. I’m telling you this because you mentioned something about buying off Garrett. I hate to say it, but I don’t think you could. And the judge comes across as such a nice man. He’s handsome, confident. He’s the kind of man you instantly like, and you hope he likes you because you don’t want to displease him, you know?”

I said, “Julie, when I think of you all having these meetings and talking about us it makes me ill.”

She nodded, then looked away again. “We discussed what his options were. He was very concerned about doing things the right way so as not to hurt you and Melissa.”

“How kind,” Melissa said.

“Tell me, Julie,” I said, “how do you live with yourself?”

She put her face in her hands and cried. I couldn’t help it-I felt terrible for making her cry again. But I didn’t take my words back.

Finally, she grabbed a napkin and wiped the tears from her eyes, smearing eyeliner down her cheek, making it look like a faded scar.

Melissa stood up with Angelina. “I’ve got to change her diaper,” she said, and left the room. “We’ll be back.”

For a moment we just sat there not looking at each other.

“There’s one thing you can help us with,” I said.

“What?”

“If you were Melissa and me, would you fight this in court? Knowing what you know, do we have a prayer?”

She shook her head sadly, said, “The best you could hope for, I think, is some kind of joint custody that a judge would decree. But I don’t think either of you would be happy with that. And if I were you, I’d pray to God your baby is raised by John and Kellie-that Garrett is kept as far away from the baby as possible.”

I felt my skin crawl. “Why do you say that?”

She shook her head. “There’s something wrong with that boy. He scares me. And it isn’t anything I can quite put my finger on-there’s just something wrong about him.”

“Oh God,” I said.

She pursed her lips and looked down at her hands. “It’s like the temperature in the room goes down ten degrees when he enters. There’s no warmth. He seems bloodless and cunning. I wouldn’t trust him with a child-or anyone.”

I felt myself tingling. I leaned forward. “I understand what you’re saying, but do you have anything I can use? Have you heard anything about Garrett we can investigate to prove what a bad father he’d be?”

She was still, her hands mindlessly caressing her coffee mug on both sides. Thinking.

She said, “I think there’s been some trouble at school,” she said. “Once, when we were meeting with John, he got a call from someone at Garrett’s high school, and he had to cut the meeting short. I don’t know who called or what it was about, but the judge was quite upset.”

“This happened within the last month?” I asked, trying not to show my anger that the Morelands and the agency had been meeting behind our backs in secret.

“Yes.”

“Anything else?”

“One thing, but it’s no more solid than the first. When we were looking over your placement application with them…”

I took in an angry breath, but she continued.

“… the judge pointed out you owned a dog.”

“Harry.”

“The judge said they couldn’t have pets because Garrett couldn’t get along with them. I thought that was an odd choice of words. Not that he was allergic to them, or wouldn’t take care of them or something, but that he couldn’t get alongwith them. When he said it, I could see he wished he hadn’t.”

“Is that all?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “And it all sounds so baseless when I say it.”

“Thank you,” I said. “At least it gives me something to go on. But it also makes me feel a little sick.”

“Yes,” she said, then she lifted her chin and looked at me. “I think the only answer is somehow to convince Garrett to sign the papers giving up his parental rights,” she said.

She took a deep breath to compose herself, mumbling that she hated to cry in front of others.

“Maybe he needs some strong persuading,” she said, letting an angry edge into her voice.

“Meaning?”

“Meaning,” she said, leaning across the table, her eyes flashing, “if Angelina were my daughter, I’d hire a couple of mean-ass bikers or wranglers and have them scare the living shit out of Garrett so he’s only more than happy to sign anything put in front of him. He needs the kind of persuading that makes him think his father’s determination is the least of his concerns.”

I sat back. That had come from left field, but obviously it was something she’d been thinking about.

“I’m speaking hypothetically, of course,” she said. “Not as a representative of the agency or a placement professional.”

“Of course,” I said. “Could he be scared?”

She thought for a moment before whispering, “I think so.”

ON THE WAY HOME, I said to Melissa, “You’re taking this much more calmly than I thought possible.”

“I’m not calm at all,” she said. “I’m dead inside. But this does explain why we have a phone message from Judge Moreland. He says he’s coming over tomorrow afternoon with his son.”

“Jesus,” I said.

“What should we do?”

“I’m going to go see Martin Dearborn,” I said. “I’m going to his house. Don’t call the judge back. In fact, keep the phone off the hook. I’ll call you on your cell, so keep it with you. The judge may put off coming to our house if he isn’t sure we got the message, and we don’t respond.”

She laughed-a chilling, uncharacteristic laugh I’d never heard before and never wanted to hear again. It was a false laugh filled with horror and defeat. She said, “You know how they say your life passes before your eyes before you die?”

“Yes.”

“That’s happening now.”

MARTIN DEARBORN, OUR ATTORNEY for the adoption, was in his driveway wearing a gold-and-black Colorado Buffaloes sweater and loading seat cushions and blankets into the back of his Mercedes M-Class SUV when I drove up in my ten-year-old Jeep Cherokee. I remembered the CU alumni awards on the wall of his office and noted the CU license-plate frame. Dearborn was plump and sandy-haired and wore thick glasses that made his light brown eyes look bigger than they were. He had a large head and a deep bass voice and ham-sized hands. He squinted when I jammed my Jeep into park because he obviously didn’t recognize the vehicle or the driver-at first.

When I jumped out, I saw something pass over his face that told me he knew why I was there but didn’t want to admit it.

His wife, a too-thin woman with a pinched face, also decked out in Buffs colors, came out of the garage, saw me approaching, and said, “Who is that?”

Martin gestured for her to go back inside. He tried hard to blank his eyes and face as I came up the driveway, but he wasn’t successful. His wife theatrically looked at her wristwatch, and he said, “I know. We’ll make it in time for kickoff.”

She said, “It isn’t kickoff I’m worried about. It’s the preparty.”

He said, “We’ll make it, don’t worry.”

She stomped back into the garage.

“Jack,” he said, “this can wait until office hours on Monday. My wife and I are…”

“You son of a bitch, how long were you going to wait to tell us?”

“Monday. During regular office hours. That’s when we work, Jack.”

“Monday’s too late, and you know it.”

“Look,” he said, lowering his voice into his official lawyer tone, the one he used to impress Melissa and me, “I’ve been in the Springs on a big civil case. I wasn’t able to return the calls to them during the day because we were in court.”

I stepped close enough to him that he flinched. “You didn’t have breaks? You don’t have paralegals who could make the call on your behalf?”

He looked away.

“Damn, you look guilty,” I said. “You’ve got to get us out of this, and I mean now. This guy and his son are coming to our house tomorrow.”

His voice wasn’t as low when he spoke. “I’d advise you to be civil. He’s got the law on his side, I’m afraid.”

I reached out and grabbed a handful of CU sweatshirt, then quickly let it go. I couldn’t help myself. From the garage I heard Dearborn’s wife say, “Honey, do I need to call the police?”

“No,” he said. “It’s okay.”

I said, “So you know all about it, then. I’d advise you to pretend you’re an attorney-our attorney. We need to go to court right now and do something. Isn’t there a restraining order or something? Can’t we prevent this from happening?”

“I’d have to research it,” he said, uncomfortable.

“We don’t have the time.”

He turned to me, his face flushed. “Jack, he’s a sitting federal judge. He’s been appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Don’t you think he knows the law? Hell, he makes it.”

“So that’s it, then,” I said.

“Our firm has cases scheduled before him next month, Jack. Big cases. Million-dollar cases with national implications. I’ve got a real conflict here.”

I shook my head. I wanted to smash him. His wife was still in the garage, and I noticed she had a telephone, ready to call the police. She pointed to it with her other hand, and mouthed “9-1-1.”

“Is he aware I’m your counsel?” Dearborn asked.

“No,” I said, “because you haven’t done a damned thing. How would he know?”

“You need to calm down,” he said. “And I’m afraid you need to get a new attorney. I’m not your man for this case. He’s best friends with the mayor and the governor, for Christ’s sake. And his name has come up for the Tenth Circuit and higher.”

“So what are you saying?”

“That he not only knows the law, he knows how to work the law. This is inside baseball, Jack. You never told me you were going up against Judge Moreland.”

“I didn’t know.”

“I think you should calm down and look at this from his point of view.”

“I think you’re fired,” I said, even though he’d resigned.

“Good.”

“Nine-one-one,” his wife said, holding up the phone like a totem.

I DROVE TO LINDA Van Gear’s town house in an angry fog. I found her wearing sweats with her hair down, shuttling between a fish tank in the living room to the toilet in the bathroom carrying dead fish one at a time. Her town house was a shambles.

“This is what happens when you travel for a living and you ask your neighbor to feed your fish and he forgets and goes skiing ‘because the powder was awesome, dude,’ ” she said angrily. “You come back to a tank full of dead objects.”

I told her my situation had grown much worse since I’d seen her last, and I needed to cancel my scheduled trip to World Tourism Bourse in Berlin in a week.

That stopped her cold, and she stood there with a pale and dripping angel fish in a little net.

“So you want to send someone else to WTB, then?”

“Yes.”

“Whom do you suggest?”

Our department consisted of the two of us. I suggested Rita Greene-Bellardo, a new employee who served as executive assistant but seemed to have little to do.

“Pregnant,” Linda said. “I just heard. She’s gonna have her baby and take the maternity leave and quit. I heard her telling a girlfriend that was her plan. We can’t depend on her to follow up.”

I floated the name of Pete Maxfield, who headed the media-relations department. Pete sometimes worked with international journalists and might have some experience he could use at the show. Linda didn’t like Pete, though.

“Honey,” she said, “Pete is a hound dog. He’d spend the whole time drinking German beer and trying to get some deaf, dumb, and blind German girl to come to his room at the hotel, or he’d blow the entertainment bud get on prostitutes. This is our biggest and most important market. We don’t just send people for the sake of sending someone. The only choice we have is me, and you know it.”

I did, but I didn’t want to ask.

“I’ll be in Taiwan,” she said. “I can’t be both places.”

I knew where this was headed.

“You need to have that big meeting with Malcolm Harris,” she said.

Malcolm Harris was the iconic UK owner of a travel company called AmeriCan Adventures-a play on America and Canada-which sent thousands of British tourists to North America on custom-designed package tours. AmeriCan was the number one tour operator to Denver and the Mountain West, and thus a very important client. Our marching orders were to treat him like a god, despite his reputation as being quarrelsome, cantankerous, and smug about his claims that he knew more about America than practically any American he’d ever met. He expected to be fawned over, wined and dined, and he was. Any requests he made were immediately first priority in our office and across destination promotion bureaus throughout the region. Linda was infamous for attaching herself to him like Velcro when she worked the European market, hanging on his every word, laughing at his asides, and beholding him with what was described by one of her detractors as “Nancy Reagan eyes.”

She said, “As you know, he’s thinking of establishing a U.S. reservations office and call center to handle his tours.” “We’re talking hundreds of jobs. He’s looking at three cities-New York, L.A., and Denver. We’re the front-runner because of our location. If we got that office here, the mayor would love us because he could say our tourism efforts not only bring in tourists but jobs. I’m sure he’s meeting with reps from L.A. and New York. If you just don’t show up in Berlin to convince him to choose Denver, we may lose out on this.”

There was an uncomfortable pause. I said, “Does the mayor know about this, then?”

“It was in my report to him last month. His chief of staff sent me an e-mail about it last week, asking if we’d landed AmeriCan yet.”

I let her go on.

“Honey,” she said finally, “do you realize that every time the city gets a bud get hit, and they’re looking for places to cut, someone always suggests international tourism promotion? We’re the easy ones to dump because they think we have these glamorous jobs and jet all around the world. We’re easy to dump, you know? Tab Jones has no love for us, but he sees us as a means for him to travel the world, so he’s not given the department the ax. But every time there’s a budget crunch, I go to the mat and fight for us. I show them facts and figures, and this time when we were on the chopping block I told them about the possibility AmeriCan might open up a company here. Tab and the mayor got all excited about that because tourists are ghosts, but a building and jobs are something he can take credit for. Are you hearing me?”

“Yes,” I said.

“If you don’t go, honey, we can kiss this department and your job goodbye. And I need this job.”

“I do, too.”

I wasn’t kidding. Since Melissa had quit her job to stay home with our daughter, we were literally one paycheck away from not making our mortgage payment. The loan we had was one of those bad ones, one of the worst decisions we’d made. We had no cushion. If I lost my job, Jesus, I didn’t know where we’d be. Especially given the situation we were in, possibly trying to prove in court what great parents we were. My job was everything.

She stepped back, sized me up, said, “So you understand me, then?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’ll be going to Germany and meeting with Malcolm Harris.”

“Good man, Jack,” she said. “I knew you’d come around. Let’s get going on those leads now.”

As I gathered up the work and stuffed it into my briefcase, Linda said, “Aren’t there other babies out there?”

“Not an option,” I said back with heat. “It’s not like trading her in for a new model,” thinking: How can she not understand?

She waved dismissively, “Well, good luck with the baby thing.”

THE BABY THING.

We had tried everything to get pregnant. Melissa studied up on the medical literature, threw herself into reproductive studies with a single-minded will as only she can do, reading everything from the library, on the Internet, becoming as well versed in the subject as any doctor and better than most. Having sex became my second job. Melissa drew pink hearts on our wall calendar to chart our couplings. There were a lot of hearts. We had sex every morning for three weeks straight and every other evening in one magnificent stretch run. Once, when we were able to have lunch together downtown, she showed up with bare legs in a dress and told me over sandwiches that she wasn’t wearing underwear and that she’d rented a dayroom in a hotel next door. I could barely eat. I was equally aroused and alarmed, pointing out to her (tepidly, I admit) that with my job at the CVB it was possible someone might recognize me and assume the tryst was something it was not. She laughed and shook it off, then led me outside by the hand. In the elevator on the way to our floor, she started disrobing. I got hard, and she squeezed me through my pants. She said, “So you’re getting into it, then?”

But it was never about me not getting into it. I was. And I was, and am, wildly attracted to my wife. She’s my ideal. That she seemed to think-deep down-that she no longer did it for me and for some reason that was why we couldn’t conceive was as startling as it was desperate. I told her repeatedly she drove me wild. She said, “Then why can’t we have a baby, Jack?”

THE DOCTOR’S NAME WAS KIMMEL. He was thin, athletic, and fastidious in appearance. When we finally sat down with him at the clinic to review the tests, he confirmed what she had already determined: It was me.

“Let me put it this way,” the doctor said, turning slightly on his stool in my direction but not really facing me. “Imagine, if you will, that you are a machine gunner but not a good one. In fact, a lousy one. The worst one in the entire Corps.”

Kimmel paused to let that sink in.

“So I’m shooting blanks,” I said. “Thank you, Mr. Bedside Manner.”

He nodded, first to me, then to Melissa.

I felt Melissa’s eyes brush across the side of my face.

“There are alternatives, of course,” Kimmel said. “In this day and age, there really isn’t male infertility anymore. We can isolate a single sperm.” He explained procedures, drugs, in vitro fertilization.

We were hopeful. We tried them all, one after the other. For years. Melissa had three miscarriages. Our marriage became tense and our time together frustrating. There were long, silent meals and times we would be in the same room for hours and not look at each other. She secretly blamed me, I secretly blamed her. Her emotions were raw and increasingly close to the surface. Sometimes I caught her looking at me as if she was assessing my manhood and character, and I’d lash back with something sarcastic and cruel that I immediately regretted. I suggested once that maybe if we didn’t try so hard, maybe if we didn’t make our entire life’s mission to conceive a child, we could be happy again. She didn’t speak to me for weeks after that. I thought she might even leave me.

Finally, she said, “Let’s adopt.”

We really didn’t discuss it. I trusted her judgment, and adoption is a good thing. And I had my wife back, and the clouds that had been building for years in our lives broke up and sunlight poured through.

Julie Perala at the agency explained to us that there were three kinds of adoption: international, closed, and open. We chose open. But there were levels of openness as well, from meeting the birth mother (our preference) to agreeing on visitation with the birth mother and her family.

The birth mother was a fifteen-year-old named Brittany. She was pale, freckled, and slightly overweight even before the pregnancy. Every other word from her was “like,” as in, “I’m, like, gaining weight,” or “It’s, like, a drag to get morning sickness.” The reasons she gave the agency for choosing us included the fact that we were fairly young, childless, and we looked “calm” and “outdoorsy.” We overlooked Brittany’s arrogance at times. She knew she had what Melissa wanted. Brittany was fertile, and she assumed Melissa wasn’t, so she took on a superior air. Once, though, when Melissa left the room, I leaned toward Brittany and said, “It isn’t her. It’s me.”

Even though, frankly, with our unexplained infertility it was most likely both of us somehow. But I didn’t tell Brittany that.

Terms regarding adoption are something we’re both sensitive about now, especially Melissa. Often, the wrong thing is said in all innocence, but it can cut deeply. For example, Brittany is the birth mother, not the “real” mother or the “natural” mother or the “biological” mother. Melissa is Angelina’s mother. Period. Brittany didn’t “give her baby up for adoption,” she placed the baby with adoptive parents. People have a natural instinct to pry. I try not to hold that against them when they ask, “Where did she get those dark eyes?” (since mine are blue and Melissa’s are green) or “Her hair is so thick and dark!” when mine is reddish brown and Melissa’s is light brown. We’d learned to answer, vaguely, “It runs in the family.” We weren’t lying. We just weren’t saying whose family.

In retrospect, we could have asked more questions about the birth father. But we were assured by the agency and from Melissa’s discussions with Brittany that the boy was no longer in the picture. Brittany wouldn’t even say his name other than to call him “Sperm Boy” and say he refused to take her calls. She never mentioned that he was out of the country, which led us to believe she hadn’t known where he was. He meant nothing to her, she told Melissa. She’d been drunk and in the backseat of Sperm Boy’s nice car. One thing led to another.

Angelina turned six, seven, and eight months old. She was healthy, cheerful, loving. She began to form the words “Ma” and “Da.” She loved Harry, our old black Lab and my last carryover from bachelorhood, who began to sleep under her crib to protect her. Everything was right with the world.

Then it wasn’t.

THERE IS AN ABSOLUTE irredeemable beauty to pure routine, for if there wasn’t, I’m not sure we could have gotten through that evening when I finally got home.

We ate, I’m sure.

We might have watched television.

I do remember halfheartedly playing with Angelina on the floor. She loved her Fisher-Price barn set. Angelina got all of the other animals as well as the farmer and his wife, and I was the cow and the cow only. Angelina’s menagerie spent all of their time telling the cow what to do. The cow spent all of his (her?) time trying to make Angelina laugh. But my heart wasn’t in it.

I also remember a disjointed, fierce “They’ll never take her away” discussion Melissa and I had. We were in the midst of it when Melissa walked over to the telephone in the kitchen and hung it up on the receiver to check and see if there were any more messages. I watched her eyes widen and her mouth purse, and she pressed the speaker button.

The voice was male, mature, and sympathetic:

“Jack and Melissa, I hate to place this call. This is Judge John Moreland. I know you’re aware of why I’m calling and believe me, this is just about as difficult for me as it is for you. No one ever in his or her life expects to be in a situation like this. For that I am deeply, deeply sorry. But I hope you appreciate the situation my family has found ourselves in as well. Angelina is our first granddaughter, and my son’s child. I assume you are checking messages, even though you aren’t picking up the phone. We will be at your house tomorrow at 11:00 A.M. Don’t worry-we’re coming simply to meet you and to talk. There’s no reason to panic or overreact. It’ll be a conversation among adults who find themselves in a bitterly tough situation through no fault of their own.”

Melissa and I exchanged glances. I could see relief flood into her face, and her shoulders relaxed.

Then he said: “The county sheriff is aware of my visit tomorrow. I’m sorry I had to contact him, but I thought it best for all concerned-especially the baby-that our meeting be under the auspices of the authorities. Don’t worry-he won’t be with us. But he’ll be available if the situation turns sour. Not that I expect it to. I admire and respect you both. And I think a reasonable solution to our dilemma is at hand. I hope you’ll hear me out, and I hope you will welcome our visit.

“God bless and good night, and we’ll see you tomorrow.” Click.

THAT NIGHT, as we lay in bed not sleeping, I slid out of the bed and padded over to the closet. On the top shelf of our closet, hidden by a ball of loose old clothing, was my grandfather’s single-action Colt.45 Peacemaker revolver. The Gun that Won the West. I wish I could say he gave it to me in some kind of intergenerational ceremony loaded with symbolism and meaning, but the fact is I stole it while I helped my father move Grandpa from his house in White Sulfur Springs to a nursing home in Billings. He never knew it was missing and never asked about it at the time. Later, as he slipped deeper into dementia, the nurses said he called out for his weapon, but they had no intention of locating it for him.

The revolver was blunt and heavy, with a six-inch barrel. It was loaded with five ancient cartridges. The firing pin rested on an empty cylinder to prevent accidents. The handgrip was made of ash, polished smooth by years of handling. The cylinder was rubbed clean of blueing from being drawn and put back into a leather holster hundreds of times.

“What are you doing?” Melissa asked.

“Nothing,” I said.

TWO

ON SUNDAY, MELISSA LOOKED both beautiful and scared. She had a smattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks I’d always found girl-like and attractive. Her hair was shoulder length and the cut sophisticated. She’d spent hours wondering what to wear, trying on outfit after outfit to find a combination that would give her confidence and strength. She’d agonized over whether to wear panty hose but decided against it. She’d chosen a simple white sleeveless top, a sweater, and beige skirt. Her legs looked long, firm, and tan. She wanted to look nice, but not too nice. Not so nice that the birth father would hold it against her, she said.

I wore jeans, a dress shirt that showed some wear, and a navy blazer. Nice but not too nice. Melissa had asked me to change from my old cowboy boots to loafers, saying she didn’t want them to think me a redneck. When it comes to such matters, I learned long ago to defer. I think that deferring is one of the secrets to a happy marriage.

Angelina was in a white ruffled dress with red polka dots. She looked like a doll-jet-black hair, creamy skin, chubby cheeks, and those startling dark eyes. I loved it that our new baby loved me, and looked at me without a hint of what was going on around her, about her.

“Those bastards,” I said, “putting us through this.” My voice was harsh, and Angelina balled her fists and took a breath, ready to cry.

“No, it’s okay, honey,” I cooed. “It’s okay.” But it wasn’t. Nevertheless, she relaxed. She believed me as I lied to her, which broke my heart. Melissa took her upstairs for her morning nap. I hoped that when she awoke our lives would be normal again, that she’d never have to learn about what almost happened.

OUTSIDE OUR HOME, a blue late-model Cadillac SUV slowed to a crawl on the street and swung into our driveway. I could see two people inside.

Garrett Moreland, son of the judge and supposed birth father of Angelina, got out first and looked at our house with an expression I can only describe as amused disdain.

GARRETT MORELAND WAS DARK, tall, chiseled, with raven-dark hair and striking eyes like brown glass marbles balanced on a whalebone shelf. Seeing Angelina’s eyes mounted in this man-boy’s face made my heart clench, and I could taste a spurt of something rotten in my mouth. Garrett had an abnormally long neck and prominent Adam’s apple that bobbed up and down as his jaw muscles worked like taut cords while he surveyed the front of our home. His skin was pale white, his mouth a thin-lipped red cut that looked like a razor slash a second before it oozed blood. He was dressed like an eighteen-year-old forced to go to church-chinos, loafers, an open-collar button-down shirt and a slightly too-big blazer that was probably his father’s. As he stood there he bent slightly forward, rocking on the balls of his feet, with his hands held at his sides and the crown of his head bent so he was looking at the house from under his eyebrows and I thought, He looks demonic.

John Moreland was tall as well, and movie-star handsome. In his mid-to-late forties, he had a pleasant boyish face and longish brown hair combed in a long comma over his forehead. He looked like a hip Presbyterian minister, a man who was used to being noticed, a man supremely comfortable in his own skin; he was the deacon, the Rotary president, the former Peace Corps volunteer still remembered and worshipped back in the third-world village. His tan suit draped nicely, and he wore a cream-colored dress shirt. He was lightly tanned and had a mole on his cheek where a model would pencil a beauty mark. There was confidence in his attitude and walk, and a significant exchange of… something… as Moreland and Garrett Moreland glanced at each other before knocking on our door.

I heard Melissa come down the stairs.

“It’s them,” she said. “I saw them from upstairs.”

I nodded.

“They’re good-looking men,” she said. “I can see why she went out with Garrett.”

I looked at her, tried to remember the last time she’d made a comment like that.

“My heart sank when I saw them get out,” she muttered under her breath. “I so wanted to hate them on sight.”

“You don’t?”

She shook her head quickly while she patted down her clothes and put on her game face. “I hate why they’re here,” she said. She took my face in her hands. “Remember what we talked about. Stay cool-control your temper. The last thing we want to do right now is to anger them-especially Garrett. We need him to sign the papers. Don’t give him a reason to withhold his signature one second longer than necessary.”

“Got it,” I said.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

John Moreland smiled broadly when we opened the door. He had a disarming, sloppy smile, but he seemed nervous behind it. He carried a bulging white paper sack in one hand that he seemed to have forgotten he had. It hadn’t occurred to me they would be nervous, too. The fact made me feel better.

We stepped aside and asked them to come in. Boy, we were gracious. Melissa asked if they wanted coffee. Moreland said he would like a cup. Garrett shook his head sullenly. I couldn’t read him at first. He wouldn’t meet my eyes, and his movements and attitude seemed designed to put distance between him and everyone else in the room.

“Please sit down,” I said, gesturing toward the couch with the coffee table in front of it. I had moved two of our big chairs to the other side for Melissa and me. The chairs were slightly taller than the couch, and I wanted a scenario where Moreland and Garrett would need to sit closely together and look up at us. I’d learned this from business meetings. It gave us a psychological advantage.

Unfortunately, Moreland didn’t bite on my seating arrangement, and acted as if he hadn’t seen me point to the couch. He sat in one of the chairs. Garrett shambled over to the couch and sat down heavily with undisguised contempt for his father. Or me. Or something.

Melissa saw the situation the minute she came back from the kitchen. She could either sit in the chair in the dominant position or settle in next to Garrett. Her hesitation was obvious, and I filled it by taking the couch. She had cups on a tray I’d never seen before, which slightly annoyed me. Moreland took his coffee.

“I brought this for you, a little gift,” he said, handing the bag to me. I looked inside and saw sticky pastries of some kind. I handed the bag to Melissa, and she looked inside, said “Thank you” to Moreland, and went back into the kitchen to put them on a plate, which she brought back out.

I broke the awkward silence by turning to Garrett, saying, “It’s nice to meet you. You’re a senior this year, right?” Showing I knew a little about him.

Garrett said, “Yeah, a senior,” with a slight curl of his lip.

In social situations, Melissa always led the way. I turned to her and saw that despite the smile, her face had drained of blood. She was terrified to speak, to get to the matter at hand. I did my best to carry on, to maintain the slight edge I thought I’d gained by addressing Garrett.

There was some small talk about the weather (cooling), the traffic on the way to our subdivision (light since it was the weekend). Moreland had a deep sonorous voice with a homey Southern accent. I tried to place it and guessed either Tennessee or North Carolina. He had a way of looking directly at us when he talked that had the effect of putting me at ease. Garrett said nothing. Melissa either.

“The roads should be fine until the game to night,” I said. “Then it’ll be bumper-to-bumper on I-25 for a while.”

Moreland smiled knowingly and nodded. “We’ve got season tickets. I haven’t missed the Broncos playing the Raiders in fifteen years. As far as I’m concerned, the Broncos can’t beat them by enough.” He looked at me empathetically, “Tell me you’re not a Raiders fan and I’ve just insulted you.”

“I’m not a Raiders fan,” I said, wishing for a moment I was.

“Well,” Moreland said, smiling, “we’ve certainly got that in common. I’ve learned since I came out here to go to school at CU in Boulder how special the Broncos are to those of us who live here. The Broncos are our touchstone, our way of establishing a common bond and interest. Even people who don’t like football follow the Broncos, since a win means everyone will be in a fine mood to start the week and a loss means snarling drivers and grumpy ser vice in the stores.”

With that, control of the situation ebbed away from me and flowed to John Moreland.

I tried to take my cues from Melissa, but she wasn’t helping me. Instead, she observed both Moreland and Garrett closely. Mostly Garrett. No doubt she was seeing similarities in his features to Angelina, or perhaps she was trying to imagine him as father material. I noticed Garrett stealing looks at her as well when he thought she wasn’t paying attention. Long, predatory looks that took her in from her feet in sandals, up her bare legs, quickly over her hands in her lap to her breasts under the sleeveless white top and sweater. I tried hard not to let it bother me.

“I think we should get to it,” I said, probably too abruptly. Enough with the small talk. Enough with the staring at my wife.

“Yes,” Moreland said, almost sadly.

Even though no one really moved, it felt as if everyone’s gears shifted, and the room suddenly became sterile. Melissa sat up straighter, as did Moreland. Only Garrett, who continued to lounge on the couch with his arm thrown over the backrest, continued observing something on the ceiling when he wasn’t examining Melissa.

“We understand,” I said, “you’ve contacted the adoption agency in regard to our daughter Angelina.”

Moreland nodded.

“According to Mrs. Perala at the agency, Garrett doesn’t want to sign the papers giving us full custody of Angelina. This came as an unbelievable shock to us. The agency said this was the first time this has ever happened to them. Of course, you can imagine this is something we never even thought possible, that someone could wait eighteen months, then step forward.”

Garrett wouldn’t meet my eyes. He alternated between studying the ceiling light fixtures and flicking glances at my wife. Moreland was still, but I could tell by a rapid pulsing in his temple he was becoming agitated.

“Mr. Moreland,” I said, “we love Angelina, and she loves us. We are the only parents she’s ever known. The birth mother selected us from several very deserving couples, and we’ve done everything we can to provide a loving house and family. Look around you. Melissa resigned from her job so she could stay home with the baby and provide full-time care. Melissa is Angelina’s mother.” I didn’t say what should have come next, that I was her father. No reason at this point to alienate Garrett when I had the inkling he was on our side.

“We hope now that you and Garrett have met us and seen our home that you will consider signing the papers,” I said.

I liked the way Moreland seemed to listen to me as I spoke, and noted that his eyes swept around the room when I mentioned our home.

I was encouraged when he said, “You have a very nice home, and I don’t doubt your sincerity.”

Then it came.

“But…”

In my peripheral vision, I could see Melissa squirm. Her hands tightened on the arms of her chair.

“… we have a different view.”

Moreland gestured toward Garrett. “My son made a very terrible mistake. I am ashamed of him. His mother, Kellie, is ashamed of him. He is ashamed of himself. This is a black mark on our family, this behavior. He had some bad friends at the time, and they encouraged this kind of thing. They are no longer his friends. That’s why we sent him away for a while. We wanted him to get his head on straight, grow up into a man. But Garrett, and our family, can’t avoid our responsibilities or the consequences of his stupid actions while he was younger. It is a situation we must deal with ourselves, within our family. We want to raise our child in our family.”

I couldn’t find words to speak. Our child.

“Mr. and Mrs. McGuane,” Moreland said, leaning forward in the chair and looking from Melissa to me and back to Melissa, “I’m a federal judge, as I think you know. I’m known as a fair judge, and a tough one. I believe in accountability and being responsible for one’s behavior. If there’s one thing I want to pass along to my son, it’s that there are consequences in life. It’s vitally important that we bear responsibility. Garrett is responsible for the conception and birth of this baby.

“Please don’t misunderstand what I’m saying,” Moreland said in a conciliatory tone. “I have nothing against you or your wife. It is obvious you love the baby, and you’ve provided a wonderful home in a wonderful neighborhood. I am sorry this has to happen. I am truly, truly sorry. We didn’t know about our granddaughter until I found the letters from the adoption agency in Garrett’s room. He hadn’t even opened them,” he said, shooting a withering look at his son, who rolled his eyes. Then back to us: “Surely there are other babies?”

He sounded almost reasonable in his words if not his intent.

Come on, Melissa, I wanted to plead. Say something here.Instead, she studied Moreland with cold but curious intensity.

“Mr. Moreland,” I said as softly as I could, “what you’re asking is not possible. Angelina has been our daughter for nine months, and that doesn’t include the seven months prior to that we were with the birth mother awaiting delivery. We’ve bonded as a family. I don’t need to point out that during all of that time we never even knew Garrett, or you. If you had concerns, we would have reached out to you. To come here now is just unreasonable.”

Moreland nodded in sympathy. He said, “I know this is going to be hard for you. I also know the financial outlay you’ve made.”

I felt myself begin to squirm.

“I’ve done some research, Mr. and Mrs. McGuane. I know that it likely cost you over $25,000 to transact the adoption. I know Mrs. McGuane is no longer working outside the home, which is admirable. And Mr. McGuane, I know that a salary of $57,500 is not very much to maintain a house like this and a family. I’m sympathetic to both of you, but we know how deeply you are in debt, and that is not a pleasant place to be. I’m prepared to cover all of your costs, plus what it would take to adopt another child.”

I felt violated by his knowledge. Our careful staging for the meeting was gone just like that. Poof. I shot a look at Melissa. Her face was an alabaster mask. Her eyes were pinched and hard, a look I’d never seen. A look that emboldened me and terrified me at the same time. I was amazed she had remained silent. I’m amazed I didn’t leap across the table at him.

“It’s not about money,” I said. “It’s much, much too late for that. Maybe if you’d come to us before Angelina was born…”

“I didn’t know,” Moreland said, his voice rising with anger, but not at us. He looked at his son with pure contempt. “Garrett was out of the country with his mother for several months. He never told us anything about it. If he had, we wouldn’t be here now.”

Melissa said to Garrett, “Where were you?” Her voice was leaden.

Garrett didn’t seem to realize she was talking to him.

“He was in the Netherlands and England visiting relatives,” Moreland answered for him. “Kellie’s extended family and just being tourists. We learned of this,” he gestured to us, “only two months ago.”

In my peripheral vision, I saw Garrett roll his eyes.

“Did you know she was pregnant?” Melissa asked Garrett.

Garrett looked at Melissa with a half smile and shrugged in a way that said, “What ever.”

I leaned forward in my chair until I had Moreland’s attention, and said, “This is not about you. It’s not about your son. It’s not about us. This is about Angelina and what’s best for her.” Trying to drive a wedge between father and son.

Moreland paused a long time before saying, “It is about the baby, I agree. But the baby is part of my family, our family, despite my son’s behavior. The baby is our blood and our responsibility, not yours. We must right this wrong.”

It was later when I realized Moreland, the entire time he was in our home, never once said “Angelina.” Always the baby.

I looked at Garrett. He was ignoring us, his eyes fixed on Melissa, who had caught him this time and stared back. The intensity of their gaze seemed to sizzle through the air. I couldn’t stand it another second.

“Garrett,” I said.

Nothing.

“Garrett.”

Slowly, he turned his head toward me. Contemptuous.

“I have to ask you a question.”

He raised his eyebrows.

“Do you really want to be a father? Do you really want to change your life right now? Do you realize how much work it is to be a father, to care for and support a baby?”

Moreland spoke for him once again. “Kellie and I will raise the baby. She will be our granddaughter and our daughter. Garrett will go to college to become a lawyer or a doctor, and when he’s married and has a home, he will take the child in with him.”

“I asked Garrett,” I said.

“He has nothing to say about it,” Moreland said, heat in his voice. “We have discussed this in our family, and that is the way it will be.”

Garrett watched me as his father spoke to read my reaction.

“So where is your wife in this?” Melissa asked Judge Moreland. “Why didn’t she come with you?”

“She was too uncomfortable,” Moreland said, tight-lipped.

“She doesn’t want to meet us?” Melissa asked, bitterness in her voice.

Moreland flushed and looked at his shoes. “She’s embarrassed.”

It sounded like a lie.

He changed the subject, saying, “I’d like to see the baby.”

Melissa said, “She’s asleep.”

“I won’t wake her.”

Melissa looked to me with horrified desperation.

“Maybe it would be best not to see her now,” I said.

“I want to see her. I want to see what she looks like,” he said firmly.

Standoff. And no one spoke for a full minute. My insides churned, and I realized the palms of my hands were icy cold and dry. The confidence I’d had when the meeting began was gone. It seemed as though the room we sat in had tilted slightly and become unfamiliar.

Melissa sighed. “I’ll take you up there.”

“Are you sure?” I asked. Were we conceding anything? I wasn’t sure. Maybe Melissa thought if Moreland saw Angelina asleep in her crib, in her room, in our house, he would soften to our position. After all, the discussion so far had been abstract. Seeing the baby might help us.

“Sure,” she said.

I turned to Garrett. “Do you want to go?”

Garrett shook his head. “That’s okay,” he said. “I’d like a Coke or something, though. Do you have a Coke?”

He didn’t want to see her. That buoyed me. While Melissa led Moreland up the stairs, I went into the kitchen for the drink. Melissa kept a stash of Diet Coke in the back of the refrigerator. I filled an empty glass with ice from the icemaker and took the can and glass back into the living room. Garrett was standing at the mantel, looking at photos of our wedding, my parents on the ranch, Melissa’s family at their reunion last summer at the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs, Angelina as an infant in Melissa’s arms.

Over the baby monitor, I could hear the door to Angelina’s room open.

I handed the can and the glass to Garrett. He took the can without a word. That he’d stayed downstairs gave me an opening.

“You don’t really want to be a father, do you?”

“Not really.”

“So it’s your father?”

“He has ideas of his own.”

“Can you talk him out of it?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Will you try?”

Garrett looked at me blankly. Something in his eyes disturbed me. It was as if he saw me as someone who couldn’t possibly understand him, and I was not worth an explanation.

“Just sign the papers,” I said. “There’s nothing your parents can do if you sign them.”

He smiled that half smile.

“I’ll do what I can for you if you sign them,” I said, having no idea what I could possibly do for him.

“My father is very rich,” he said. “I don’t need you.”

“You might if you sign the papers,” I said, trying to engage him man-to-man again. “Look, we’ve all made mistakes. None of us is perfect. Being a father changes your life, believe me. It’s a good thing, but you need to be ready for it. There’s a lot you need to give up. Your life is no longer your own. You lose your freedom. Plus, it’s the right thing to do, and I think you know that.”

He nodded while I spoke, and his eyes glistened. He was hearing me, and it seemed like he wanted to hear more. I got the strange feeling, though, that he wasn’t offering me encouragement as much as egging me on.

Over the monitor, I heard Melissa say, “Don’t touch her.” Her tone startled me.

“I just want to turn her over and look at her face,” Moreland said.

“I’ll do it,” Melissa said.

I could hear Angelina’s covers rustle, and heard a murmur.

“There,” Melissa said.

I realized both Garrett and I were staring at the monitor, straining to hear every word, every sound.

“Ah,” Moreland said. “She’s beautiful. She looks like her father and me.”

Silence from Melissa.

“See that little birthmark on her calf? I have that birthmark. It’s a sign of being a Moreland.”

“No!” Melissa said.

What was he doing?

He said, “I want to pick her up.”

“I said no.”

“Okay, okay,” Moreland said. “I’ll let her sleep. Can I take a photo of her at least? To show Kellie?”

“Please, I’d rather you didn’t,” Melissa said, sighing.

“Just a photo? Just one?”

Her silence was taken as acquiesence by both Moreland and me. I heard the click of a digital camera.

“I want to look at her for a few more moments.”

Melissa said, “Just look. That’s all.”

I put the glass of ice on the coffee table and prepared to go upstairs. My hands were trembling and knotted into fists, and I felt myself on the verge of losing control. If he said anything more, took more photos, touched her…

“Please, Mrs. McGuane…” the judge said. “Don’t make this harder than it already is.”

Melissa said, “She’s my baby, and you want to take her away from me.”

“I understand how you must feel,” he said gently.

I took a deep breath, tried to calm myself. It had been a long time since I’d been as angry. I wondered what I would have done up there. I thought again of the Colt.45. And I knew that Melissa and I had entered a whole new place, where everything was different.

I noticed Garrett watching me, a smirk on his face.

“What were you going to do?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I said.

“I bet nothing.”

“You don’t want to see the baby, do you?” I asked.

“No,” he said, with that lazy curl of his lip.

“Sign the papers,” I said.

“You have a nice wife,” Garrett said. “I like her.”

His demeanor changed from the smirk back to stoic as Melissa and Moreland came down the stairs. His eyes were on Melissa, not his father.

“Maybe I’ll come over and watch the Bronco game with you,” Garrett said.

“What?” I was stunned once again.

“I should probably get to know you better,” he said, his eyes still on Melissa. “We should hang out.”

I didn’t know how to react to that. I could tell by their faces that both Melissa and Moreland had missed the exchange.

Moreland stopped on the landing and shook Melissa’s hand.

“Thank you,” he said. “She’s beautiful.”

“She is,” Melissa said, letting a tiny smile escape despite herself. “And she’s ours,” she added.

“Ah, we need to resolve this.”

“No,” Melissa said. “There’s nothing to resolve.”

Damn, I admired her for her toughness. Simply no.

Moreland turned to me. In response, I nodded toward Melissa as if to say, It’s out of my hands. The answer is no.

“Come along, Garrett,” Moreland said. And to us, “Thank you for the coffee. It was nice to meet you.”

Garrett drained his Coke and handed the empty can to me, letting Moreland walk by until he was out of earshot. He had an incredulous look on his face, as if he couldn’t believe his sudden good fortune.

“What?” I asked.

The corners of his mouth tugged upwards and his pupils dilated and I could almost hear him say to himself, I own you people now, don’t I? You don’t dare do anything or say anything that will make me mad, or I won’t sign the papers.

Then he smiled outright, and something danced behind his eyes. I felt a chill roll down my back.

“Son?” Moreland opened the front door and Garrett ambled out, shooting a look at me as he went by. “Later,” he said.

Moreland said to Melissa, “I need to do some thinking. You are very impressive people. But…”

There it was again, that but.

“The circumstances of this issue are black-and-white. I’ve reviewed the case law, and met with lawyer friends well versed in family law. The birth mother signed away her parental rights, but the father-Garrett-didn’t. Garrett should be the custodian of the baby, simple as that. No court would disagree. Regardless,” he said, waving the legal argument aside though he’d made his point, “I still feel we can work together. You obviously have feelings for the baby, and you’ve acted in good faith. There may be some wiggle room we’d agree to. Maybe you could visit her occasionally and be a positive part of her life, like an aunt and uncle. But the fact is the baby is our blood, and she legally belongs to us. One can’t diminish that fact. Blood is blood, the law is the law. Any judge can see we have the means to take excellent care of her and a wonderful home environment.”

“What does that mean?” Melissa asked. “That we don’t?”

“Of course you’ve done your best,” Moreland said, not without sympathy.

“We love Angelina,” Melissa said, a note of panic showing.

John Moreland nodded and pursed his lips.

“Think about having Garrett sign the papers,” I said. “You say we can adopt another baby and Garrett needs to accept responsibility. Maybe he can visit her on occasion. Maybe Garrett can be the uncle.”

I felt Melissa’s eyes bore into me. She wanted nothing to do with either of them.

“Ah, compromise,” Moreland said, toasting me without a glass as his way of acknowledging what I’d said. “That’s not going to happen. I just hope we can resolve this among ourselves, without a protracted legal struggle you’d eventually lose. That would make it tougher and more emotionally draining on you and the baby. In fact, it could be cruel to her, since the outcome is certain, and your ability to pay lawyers is finite.

“Look,” he said gently, “I know this is tough on you right now, and your head is probably spinning. But my offer still stands. There are other babies to adopt, and I can help make that happen. There are thousands of babies out there who could be nurtured and loved in a home like yours. My offer still stands to make things right for you.

“Let’s talk about timing. While we have every right to demand the baby right here and now, that wouldn’t be compassionate. And we want to avoid any scene of sheriff’s cars rolling up to your house with lights on and having them forcibly return the child. So we’ll give you three weeks to say goodbye-until the end of the month. That’s a Sunday. That should give you enough time to get new adoption proceedings under way-with my help-and to say goodbye to the child. I’ve already notified the sheriff of the date, and he and his team are available. He won’t come unless he has to, so please don’t make him have to. That’s the best we can do, I’m sorry. Three weeks.”

Garrett stood there, his face stoic, giving no signal of what he was thinking.

“Well,” Moreland said, “we had best be going. Go Broncos, I guess,” he said. “At least we can agree on that, right?”

He closed the door behind him. Melissa joined me at the window. There didn’t seem to be much oxygen in the room. We watched Garrett climb into the passenger seat, close the door, stare straight ahead. Moreland paused before reaching for the door handle to gaze at our house, as if making a decision that pained him. He looked remorseful, but at the same time he had a determined set to his face. My heart sank. I knew then he would never change his mind.

But he couldn’t leave yet. My friend Cody had chosen that moment to pull up to our house in his police department Crown Victoria and unwittingly block the judge’s car in the driveway. The judge stood there with his hands on his hips, glaring at him. Cody was oblivious. He swung out of his car and opened the trunk, his always-present cigarette dancing in his mouth. I could hear the loud twang of country music from the Crown Vic’s radio. Cody grabbed the power drill he had borrowed months before and finally remembered to return as well as a twelve-pack of cheap beer and turned toward the house. That was when he saw the judge, and the judge saw him.

I couldn’t hear their exchange of words, but it was obvious Cody was apologizing all over himself and backing up. He threw the drill and beer into the trunk and quickly backed up to let the judge and Garrett out.

Melissa saw none of it because her face was buried in my chest.

“This can’t be happening,” she cried.

“I know.”

She looked at me fiercely. I’ve never seen such absolute manic conviction. “Swear to me, Jack, that you’ll do everything you can to save our baby from them.”

I nodded, squeezed her tighter.

“Swear it to me!”

“I swear,” I said. “I promise.” My stomach churned.

Cody let himself in the front door. His sandy-colored hair was uncombed, and he wore stained sweats. “Jesus Christ, I hope that judge didn’t recognize me out there. I’m not supposed to use the car when I’m off duty to run errands. What was he doing here, anyway? Hey, what’s wrong with you two? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

From the other room, we heard Angelina stir over the baby monitor. We listened as the baby yawned, gurgled, sighed. We heard the crib squeak as she tried to pull herself up. She said, “Ma…”

THREE

TWO MINUTES INTO THE first quarter of the Broncos game that evening, I heard the bass burbling of a car motor outside in my driveway. Melissa was upstairs bathing Angelina.

The doorbell rang.

There were three of them: Garrett, a young Hispanic covered in tattoos who looked like a gangster, and an emaciated red-haired Caucasian who was dressed in the same hip-hop style as the Hispanic. Garrett’s bright yellow H3 Hummer was parked in the driveway, looking like the muscle-bound older uncle of my Jeep Cherokee.

Garrett said hey in an overly familiar way. Then: “I hope you don’t mind that I brought my friends Luis and Stevie.” They’d come, Garrett said, to hang out.

I said nothing.

“Problem?” he asked, wide-eyed and mocking. Stevie smirked.

Luis said, “Hey, amigo,” and nodded at me with a deadeye stare.

Garrett and Luis sat on the same couch Garrett had occupied earlier in the day. Stevie sat on the arm. Stevie’s body language suggested he was subservient to them. The three boys watched the game in utter silence, not commenting on anything. I can’t say they looked bored, because they were alert and didn’t miss a thing. They both watched Melissa come downstairs and go into the kitchen and close the door. And I caught the “See? What did I tell you?” look Garrett gave Luis after she was gone.

Luis was shorter and darker than Garrett, with a blunt pug face that looked like it had been hammered in. He wore an oversized white T-shirt with an even larger open long-sleeved plaid shirt over it and massive cargo pants. He had close-cropped black hair and dull black eyes, and a tattoo on his neck below his jaw reading “Sur-13.” Unlaced and oversized heavy boots with Vibram soles were splayed out in front of him. Stevie wore the same oversized clothing as well as a red bandana on his head. But his haircut, perfect teeth, and expensive new sneakers gave him away as a rich kid pretending to be a gangster. I could see Stevie as Garrett’s friend. But Luis was the real deal and didn’t seem to fit.

During a commercial for curing erectile dysfunction, I asked, “Garrett, is there anything you want to talk with me about?”

He looked at me sincerely, said, “Yes, there is.”

I nodded, urging him on.

“I’d like a cold drink. Another one of those Cokes would be just fine. I’d bet my friends could use a cold drink, too.”

“I’d like a beer, man,” Luis said, grinning, showing gold teeth.

“Me too,” Stevie said with a slight-and false-Mexican accent intonation.

I shook my head. Unbelievable.

“Maybe some snacks,” Garrett said. “Chips and dip? Nachos? Don’t you have snacks during a game?”

“We always have snacks,” Luis said. “We like snacks during a game.” Mocking me.

I cursed under my breath and went out to get soft drinks. No beer for Luis or Stevie, though, and no damned snacks. Back in the living room, I could hear them chuckling. I had to close my eyes and take deep breaths to keep a handle on my anger.

DURING THE THIRD QUARTER, I asked Garrett if he’d thought about signing the papers.

“I haven’t thought about it,” Garrett said dismissively. “You need to talk to my father about that.”

I detected an intransigent smirk on Luis’s face when Garrett spoke.

“Does he always speak for you?”

“On this he does.”

“Why?”

He locked eyes with me, and I felt a chill that made the hair on my arms rise.

“We have an agreement,” he said.

Before I could ask what it was, Melissa came out of the kitchen to go upstairs to go to bed and Garrett’s eyes and attention went with her.

Harry, our old Labrador, padded in from the kitchen. Garrett recoiled and sat back in the couch.

“He’s harmless,” I said, smiling. “Harry loves everybody.”

“Can you please get him away?” Garrett asked me, his voice leaden.

“Sure,” I said, puzzled. I am always surprised when someone doesn’t like dogs. I put Harry out into the backyard. When I returned, the boys hadn’t moved, although Garrett had a lingering look of what I can only describe as disgust on his face.

“Somebody allergic?” I asked.

“No,” Garrett said in a way that signaled he no longer wanted to discuss the matter.

“He don’t like dogs,” Luis said. “Me, I got four. Fighting dogs, man. Nobody gives my dogs any shit.”

“Do you mind if I use your bathroom?” Garrett asked.

“It’s upstairs and to the left,” I said, wondering if his plan was to sneak a peek at Melissa in Angelina’s bedroom. But he was in and out quickly. As he came down the stairs, Luis said, “I’m next, man.”

With Luis upstairs, I turned to Garrett. I ignored Stevie. “What do you want from us?” I asked. “Why did you bring your friends here?” I knew I was gripping the arms of the chair too hard.

“What, you don’t like Mexicans?” Garrett asked innocently. “Does Luis make you nervous?”

“It’s not that.”

“Seemed like it to me. What do you think, Stevie?”

Stevie said, “Seemed like it to me, too.”

Garrett smiled to me, “You remind me of my stepmom. She doesn’t like Luis either.”

“Your stepmom?”

“Yeah. My real mother died. Kellie’s my stepmom.”

“She’s fine, too,” Stevie said.

“We both know you gotta be nice to me,” Garrett said, “or there’s no way I sign the papers. You gotta be real nice. I know it’s killing you, but hey.”

“What kind of game are you playing?” I asked.

“No game,” he said.

“Do you have any intention of signing?”

He shrugged. “I’m still thinking about it. It depends how nice you are to me and my friends. If you insult me or them, well, you won’t get what you want.”

I wanted to throw myself across the room and slam my fist into his mouth, but instead I gripped the arms of the chair tighter.

He looked up as Luis finally came down the stairs, his face oddly flushed.

“All through?” Garrett asked him.

“Yeah,” he said. Then, to me, “There’s something wrong with your toilet, man. You need to get that fixed.”

“There’s nothing wrong with…”

“We need to go,” Garrett said, smiling at me. “I’ve got school tomorrow, you know?” To his friend, he said, “Ready, Luis?”

“Catch you later,” Garrett said to me under his breath. They let themselves out. I heard the Hummer fire up. The three of them sat there for a few minutes in the dark with the motor running and a tricked-out muffler pounding out a deep beat. I shut the lights off inside to signal to them to leave and so I could watch them. I couldn’t see them well, but it appeared by the way their heads bobbed that they were talking and laughing, which enraged me. Finally, the car backed out of the driveway and slowly, slowly, went down the street.

As their car rumbled away, Melissa cried out from upstairs, “Jack!”

Stained brown water pulsed out of the toilet bowl, flooding the carpet. The smell was horrific. A floating mass of feces bobbed in the water, breaking apart, pieces of it cascading over the rim.

“I’ll call a plumber,” I said.

“Call Cody,” Melissa said, gagging. “Call Brian, too.”

FOUR

I GREW UP ON a series of ranches in Montana. I remember each one clearly. What I mean is I remember the layout of each place, where the buildings were, the corrals, the hiding places. The ranches were near Ekalaka in eastern Montana, Billings, Great Falls, Townsend, Helena. My father was a ranch foreman, and he moved us around with his jobs. I wish I could say he moved up, but he didn’t. Some ranches were better than others, but all seemed to have owners my dad couldn’t get along with. He had his own ideas about cows, horses, and range management, and if the owner didn’t completely agree with everything he wanted to do, my father would tell my mother that he and the owner “didn’t see eye to eye” and my mother would sigh and they’d start asking around until he found another job. Once the new job was in the bag, he would angrily quit the old one, pack all of our possessions in the pickup and stock trailer, and we’d go off to the next ranch. My only constant was my parents, and as I grew older I became ashamed of them.

I’ve since reconsidered in part, and I feel guilty for being ashamed. They were simple people from another era and mind-set. They were the Joads. They worked hard and didn’t even look up as the world passed them by. They rarely read books, and their conversation was about land, food, and weather. My dad didn’t buy a color television set until he no longer had a choice. But in many ways they gave me gifts I just didn’t recognize or appreciate at the time. They gave me perspective. I am the only person I know who grew up outside. I know hard work and suffering because that’s what my family specialized in. When my coworkers complain about long hours or the amount of paper on their desks, I contrast it with calving time during a spring blizzard where if you don’t get the newborn to the barn within minutes, it will freeze to death in midbawl.

I simply wasn’t hardwired for ranch work. I fixed fence, branded, docked, vaccinated, fed hay out of wagons and pickups to starving cattle in the winter. But it just didn’t take. I was never surly or disrespectful toward my dad and his occupation, just disinterested. He gave up on me early on as a future ranch foreman or competent hand. My mother withheld affection except for unexpected and oddly inappropriate moments. I remember once when I was walking down the dirt road to the school bus stop, and I realized she was running after me. I stopped and ducked, covering my head with my arms, expecting a beating and wondering what I’d done wrong. Instead, she smothered me in her arms, kissed the top of my head, said with tears in her eyes, Oh, you’re my world, you’re my everything my wonderful, wonderful boy. She was still kissing and hugging me when the bus pulled up filled with hooting rural kids hanging out of the windows. When I got home that night I asked her what had come over her, and she went pale and looked back at me with wide-eyed horror for bringing it up in front of my father. Only now do I understand the depth of parental love she revealed to me. I feel it myself when I look at Angelina and know that no matter what happens, I’ll love her.

I used to take refuge in the theory that my mother secretly cheered for me to get away. Now that I have, I’m not so sure I was right about her secret wishes. Instead, I think she saw me as her surrogate for rebellion against her husband and her life in general. Not to say she was mean-she wasn’t. But she was born with a dark cloud over her head that got darker as she aged. I’ve reconciled myself to that.

The only place we lasted more than two years was on the HS Bar between Townsend and Helena. The owner, whom I only met once, was a millionaire investor who lived in Connecticut. He was blustery, fast-talking, and abrasive. He showed up on the ranch in cowboy clothes that were inspired by Bonanza and looked more like a costume than real clothing. I didn’t like him-he called me “Jake” instead of Jack-but due to his poor health, a bitter divorce, and problems with the SEC, we didn’t see or hear much from him. Therefore, my dad said he was the best owner he’d ever worked for, and he got along with him. They saw “eye to eye,” my dad said, meaning the owner never spoke to him. During those years, I took the bus into Helena High. I was a Bengal. On the way to town we picked up Cody Hoyt in East Helena, which was on the wrong side of the tracks. Cody and I became great friends. Later, we met Brian Eastman and the three of us clicked, probably because none of us really belonged to any other established group. Brian’s father was a Presbyterian minister in Helena.

We hunted, fished, hiked, and chased girls together. Even early on, it was obvious Brian was destined for great things. All of the girls loved Brian. He was their best friend and confidant. Cody and I met girls through Brian because none of them ever seemed good enough for him. At least, that’s what we thought at the time.

After high school, Brian and I went off to college. Brian to the University of Denver on a scholarship. I went to Montana State in Bozeman on financial aid and student loans that would hang over my head for ten years. When I took my twenty-year-old pickup to Bozeman, I knew I would never return to the HS Bar or what ever ranch my parents were managing. Cody stayed around Helena and worked both construction and on ranches, pulling a six-month stint on the HS Bar working for my dad. He told me later that working for my dad convinced him to enroll in the police academy so he’d never have to work for such a mean old son of a bitch for the rest of his life.

I waited until Melissa and I were engaged before introducing her to my parents so as not to scare her off. My dad took a long look at her, turned to my mom, said, “She’s too good for him.” Melissa’s parents, who lived in Billings at the time and were not yet divorced, felt the same way. With those hot winds of confidence filling our sails, we drove to Las Vegas with Brian and Cody in Brian’s car, littering the highways with empty beer cans all the way to Nevada. While nursing screaming hangovers, my friends served as best men and witness to the wedding that took place at Chapel of the Dunes in Glitter Gulch.

I got my degree in journalism, which turned out to be practically worthless, and started as a reporter at the Billings Gazette. Mainly, I worked as an assistant in graphics making a dollar over minimum wage. We lived in a trailer out by MetraPark, within sight and smell of the livestock they brought in for auctions, sharing the place with two dogs who just showed up and stayed. Melissa landed better than I did, and went from assistant in reservations at a local hotel to assistant general manager to general manager within two years. When an opening came up at the Billings Convention and Visitor’s Bureau, she convinced me to apply and used her connections to talk me up. Her reputation was so good the CVB board assumed her husband might be worthwhile, so they hired me. After a few years, I did stints in Bozeman and Casper, Wyoming, learning the travel industry. I started to feel like my father, moving about from place to place.

Brian stayed in Denver after graduation and was a highly successful real-estate developer who had quickly become prominent and high-profile within the community. He was also on the board of the Denver CVB, and suggested to Linda Van Gear, Vice President of Tourism, to hire me.

So we moved to the big city.

Cody bounced around in law enforcement from place to place as well, from small town to small town in Wyoming and Montana, then to Loveland, Colorado. His name began to pop up in the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News in newspaper articles in connection with several high-profile crimes, including the kidnapping, rape, and murder of a college coed by an illegal Mexican immigrant. The article in the News referred to him as a “relentless investigator.” He married and divorced twice. He eventually signed on with the Denver Police Department, and had recently been promoted to detective first class in the Criminal Investigations Division. Cody was the lead investigator who had arrested Aubrey Coates, the man known in the newspapers as the “Monster of Desolation Canyon.”

We chose Denver like so many others. I meet very few people in Denver who are from Denver, or from Colorado. There is little sense of shared history or culture. Relationships and connections are as deep as the piddling South Platte River that trickles through the city.

“YOU COULD PROBABLY SWEAR out some kind of vandalism complaint and I’m sure they know it,” Cody Hoyt said later that night. “It isn’t whether you’ve got reason to press charges, it’s whether you’ve got the guts to take them on and piss them off.”

Cody came right over, as did Brian. Larry of LARRY’S 24/7 EMERGENCY PLUMBING was still upstairs.

Cody still wore the same sweats he’d had on earlier that day, and he hadn’t shaved. He smelled of beer, cigarette smoke, and sweat, and he said he’d spent the evening watching the game at a cop bar near police headquarters on Cherokee Street after dropping off the drill earlier. As he grew older, Cody was looking more and more like his father, a notorious drinker and Vietnam War vet with a bulbous nose and kettle-sized potbelly who did odd jobs throughout the county from a ramshackle panel van. The semiautomatic pistol he had clipped to the waistband of his sweatpants gave me pause and created an air of seriousness and purpose our living room had been lacking, I thought.

Brian, on the other hand, wore chinos, tasseled loafers with no socks, and an untucked pale blue dress shirt. His hair was receding and had been reduced to a tight swoosh high on his forehead. He had penetrating hazel eyes. He’d lost even more weight from when I’d seen him last and was beginning to resemble a hanger for his fine clothes.

Melissa had asked if they wanted anything before settling down in a chair. Cody asked for a beer. Brian wanted ice water with “a little slice of lemon.”

“I’m sure it was Luis,” I said. “He was in the bathroom a long time. I’m not sure Garrett didn’t put him up to it, though.”

“Disgusting,” Brian said. “Animals.”

“The ‘Sur-13’ tattoo you described,” Cody said, “that’s for Sureños 13-the local chapter of a nationwide gang. You see the gang graffiti all over the south side and downtown. We know all about them-they deal most of the meth in Colorado. I’ll check out this Luis dude with the gang task force, see if they know him.”

“Why would Luis be with Garrett,” I asked, “and vice versa? Stevie is a white kid, too.”

Cody said, “We’re seeing it more and more. Rich white kids slumming with the Mexican gangsters. They want some of that power and cool to rub off on them. It’s just like white rappers, trying to be something they’re not. The Mexican gangs are the kings of Denver, just like every other city in the West and Southwest.”

I asked, “What’s in it for the gangsters?”

“Connections,” Cody said. “Access to schools and neighborhoods where there are plenty of kids with disposable income. Plus, Luis is probably smart. He knows Garrett’s dad is a federal judge. That connection could help him and his buddies somewhere down the road.”

“Something else,” I said. “The remote control for the television is missing. They must have taken it when I got them the drinks.”

“That was nice of you,” Cody said sarcastically.

“We were nice to them because we didn’t want to start out as adversaries,” Melissa said. “We hoped they’d see reason once they met us and saw the home we’ve established for Angelina…”

Brian and Cody nodded sympathetically.

Cody glanced down at his notes, said, “So did Garrett say anything you could consider threatening?”

“No.”

“But he indicated you better be nice to him or he wouldn’t sign the papers?”

“Yes.”

“Melissa, did you hear that exchange?” Cody asked.

“No.”

He turned back to me. “So it’s your word against his.”

I shook my head. “It wasn’t just what they said, it was how they acted. Like they were sharing a big joke being here. They kept looking at each other like they’d burst out laughing anytime.”

“It was really uncomfortable,” Melissa said. “Garrett stares at me like I’m a piece of meat.”

That agitated Brian, who leaned forward and gripped his knees with his hands. He was protective of Melissa and had been since our marriage. We were, he said, his surrogate family since he’d never have one of his own. He and Melissa talked on the telephone every few days. Long, aimless conversations punctuated by her laughter and her mock-outraged cries of “Brian!” when he said something catty or off-color. He had been there for her after the miscarriages, and he had a rapport with her I sometimes envied. She was still amazed that in all of those years growing up I hadn’t realized he was gay, since she’d known the first time she met him. He was, Melissa said, her best friend. Brian’s partner was an architect named Barry. They’d been together for several years and lived in a hip loft apartment in the heart of the city. Barry was hard to get to know, I thought. I found him stiff and standoffish, but he hit it off with Melissa right away. I didn’t see Barry much.

Melissa once told me she always suspected Cody was conflicted in his feelings toward his old friend since Brian had become so successful-and more flamboyant in his personal life. I shrugged it off and attributed Cody’s attitude to the cynicism so many cops held toward businessmen. Cody had grown up reciting the Honoré de Balzac line (even though he didn’t know it was Honoré de Balzac), “Behind every great fortune there is a crime.” I think he believed it. And he probably attributed it to both John Moreland and Brian.

Brian looked at me with anger. “Why did you just let them in?”

“I thought maybe Garrett wanted to talk,” I said. “I hoped he’d offer to sign away custody. But he never even mentioned it until I brought it up.”

“You can’t prove they took the remote, though,” Cody said.

“I know I had it when the game started,” I said. “I went to the kitchen while they were here, and that’s when I assume they took it.”

“Why would they want a remote control they can’t use?” Cody asked.

“A trophy,” Brian said. “It’s symbolic. It’s like they are taking control away from you. Is anything else missing?”

Melissa and I looked around the living room. It was possible something else was gone, but I couldn’t be sure. I still had the lingering feeling from our meeting earlier in the day that our house was unfamiliar to me.

Melissa’s eyes paused on the mantel, and I saw the blood drain from her face. She quickly got up and went to the fireplace.

“The photo of Angelina and me in the hospital,” she said.

“Garrett was looking at that earlier today,” I said. “I saw him.”

“Maybe he wanted a photo of his daughter,” Brian said.

“His birth daughter,” I corrected. Melissa was sensitive to terms.

“Or maybe,” Cody said, “he wanted a photo of Melissa.”

The thought made me clench my fists.

Larry the plumber cleared his throat while he came down the stairs. He was shaking his head and smiling. “All fixed,” he said. “Happens all the time when you’ve got toddlers.”

Melissa and I exchanged puzzled looks.

“I should start a museum collection of the things I’ve found in toilets,” Larry said, standing on the landing and finishing up his invoice on a clipboard. “Barbie dolls, socks, shoes. One kid tried to flush a whole apple because he didn’t want his mom to know he didn’t eat it. Problem is, the only people interested in what we find in toilets is other plumbers.”

“We don’t have a toddler,” Melissa said.

“You don’t?” Larry said, looking up. “That’s strange.”

Then he saw Harry and he laughed. “Next to toddlers, it’s the Labradors who drop things in toilets.”

“What was it?” I asked.

“Your remote control,” Larry said. “It was wedged down in there and it’s ruined, I’m afraid. Unless you want me to clean it off and try to get it working again.”

“That’s okay,” I said.

“It’s still a mess up there,” Larry said, handing me the bill. I tried not to gasp when I saw the amount-nearly $400.

“You pay dearly for twenty-four/seven emergency calls,” Larry said, trying to sound breezy, “especially on game night after I’ve had a few cold Coors and gone to bed early.”

As Larry left the house and climbed into his panel van in the driveway, Brian said, “The symbolism continues. He took your control and he and his buddy flushed it down the toilet and crapped on it. Exactly what kind of kid are you dealing with?”

CODY SAID, “LET’S COME up with a plan.”

We were up until two in the morning. It took an hour for the four of us to strip the rugs and hose them down outside and to clean the bathroom floor. Brian wore a bandana over his nose and mouth, but we could hear him saying, over and over, “Animals.” Before we started cleaning, Brian took photos of the mess with his digital camera and put the camera in his pocket.

Brian thought we needed a new attorney since I’d fired Dearborn. We needed a bulldog, Brian said, someone who would “go after the Morelands and drop a nuclear bomb on them.”

“We can’t afford someone like that,” I said. “We’re strapped as it is with the house, the adoption. We don’t have Melissa’s income anymore.”

“I was wondering if that would come up,” she said more heatedly than I could have anticipated.

Before I could explain myself, she said, “We can sell the house. I can go back to work. I’ve gotten calls from Marriott and Radisson…”

“I’ll help you out,” offered Brian. “Don’t worry about money. In fact, let me be your advocate in this whole mess.”

He leaned forward, his voice dropped an octave. His business voice. “Since I’ve been in Denver I’ve met a hell of a lot of people, and a bunch of them owe me favors. It’s a big city, yes, and it’s growing like crazy, but that’s at the margins. At its core it’s still a small town run by a cabal of old-timers, developers, and politicians. There are levers of power, and I know how to work them. I’ve been doing it for years. I know city councilmen and media people, and you know I’m familiar with the mayor’s inner circle. If word gets out I’m fronting for you, this changes your problem into an issue. That’s the last thing the powers that be want.”

“Thank you, Brian,” Melissa said, her eyes glistening with tears.

I didn’t know what to say. No one in my life had ever said the words Don’t worry about money.

“No,” Cody said. “I don’t think it’s the best plan. Even with a loan and a new attorney…”

“I never said ‘loan,’ ” Brian said sharply to Cody.

“…you’re still up against Judge John Moreland,” Cody continued, dismissing Brian just as curtly. “Moreland is a judge, and he’s connected in more ways than you can know. He can hire teams of lawyers to tie you up and drain you for years. Plus, any judge would determine he could provide real well for the baby while you two get deeper and deeper in debt.”

“It’s just not right,” Brian said through clenched teeth.

“No, it ain’t,” Cody said, not without sympathy. “But the fact is Garrett didn’t sign away custody, right? He may be a thieving, humping little scumbag, but he has the law on his side. And lots of luck finding a good lawyer who wants to take on a sitting judge. Particularly this sitting judge.”

Melissa sighed, sat back. Her eyes were rimmed with red. There was a set to her mouth that indicated she was fighting back tears. “It’s so unfair. We don’t deserve this. We did everything right. I’ll fight them to my last breath,” she said, almost spitting the words out. “I’ll do anything, say anything, to keep my daughter. If I need to act like I’m flirting with Garrett-I will.”

I winced.

“Somehow,” she said, “we’ve got to convince him to sign the papers. I can’t believe he has any interest at all in Angelina. He doesn’t want to be a father although I can’t figure out what his game is. Maybe he’s just using this situation to intimidate us.”

“Sounds like he likes you,” Brian said to her.

“We can’t confront him,” she said. “We’ve got to find a way to convince him to come around.”

“This is headed the same direction Julie Perala suggested,” I said.

She turned to me. “You can continue to be nice to him, can’t you? At least pretend you don’t hate him until we can figure out how to persuade him?”

“After what he did to night?” I asked, gesturing upstairs. “He’s not just calculating. He’s evil. I looked into his eyes and got chills.”

“That’ll play well in court,” Cody said, rolling his eyes. “Don’t you know there is no such thing as evil in this day and age? In our politically correct city? Man, you’ve got to get out more.”

Brian said to Cody, “Some of us call it tolerance and diversity, Cody. It’s thought of as progress.”

Cody blew out a stream of breath, said, “Progress, my ass.”

“Please,” Brian said, “let’s deal with the issue at hand, okay?”

“It’s not Garrett,” Melissa said, ignoring them. “It’s his father. If we could separate them, and I could just talk with Garrett…”

“No,” I said. “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

She said, “Maybe if I talked with him or showed him how much care is required for an infant, it would scare him off. Maybe he needs to see some dirty diapers or throw-up on a bib and he’d realize he’s in way over his head even if his parents are actually raising her.”

“But he didn’t want to see her,” I said. “There’s a reason for that. You’re assuming he’s reasonable. I didn’t see any of that.”

“You think he’s evil,” Cody sneered.

“Garrett doesn’t want to confront the situation in real life,” she said. “He wants to avoid her. Maybe if he actually saw her…”

“I don’t know,” Brian said, shaking his head.

I agreed.

Melissa took a moment to look at each of us in turn. “Guys,” she said, “we need to think of Angelina’s best interests most of all here. If the worst possibly happens, she might end up with them. I’m not saying that should happen, but we can’t just dismiss the possibility out of hand. John Moreland seemed pretty determined to me. And if the worst comes about, I don’t want to poison Angelina’s relationship with them.”

There were several beats of silence. I was conflicted.

“You’re amazing,” Brian said to Melissa in a whisper.

She was. I was astonished she was mine.

But a cold fear worked its way through my insides. If the worst-possible scenario came true, if the Morelands somehow got Angelina, I knew it would destroy Melissa. And after all we’d gone through, it would destroy us.

“I won’t let it happen,” I said.

She looked at me and smiled sadly.

“I won’t,” I said.

“Jesus,” Cody said, standing, “I need another beer.”

“WHAT MORE DO WE KNOW about John Moreland?” Melissa asked rhetorically. “He’s the key.”

Cody shifted on the couch as if clearing the space around him before he spoke. Brian cut in.

“I’ve met him a few times. At society functions and charity events. I hate to say it, but he seems like an incredibly normal, nice guy. He’s best buddies with the mayor, and he’s really well connected to both U.S. senators, the attorney general, and even the president. What I’ve heard is he’s on a fast-track to something bigger. U.S. circuit, maybe higher. He just exudes competence and confidence, you know?”

Melissa shook her head. “We know.”

“He’s married to Kellie,” I said. “Garrett referred to Kellie as his stepmom. He said his real mother was dead.”

Brian sat back, screwed up his face. “I’ve seen Kellie. She’s a blond bombshell.”

“I wonder where the Sureños 13 connection comes in?” Cody said.

“Anyway,” Brian said, “I can start asking around in my circles. It’s amazing what you can find out about people at a higher level, you know? At cocktail parties and charity events. Get these people a few drinks in them, and all sorts of deep dark secrets start coming out. It’s no different than Helena, you guys-just bigger. Maybe I can find out that he’s not so perfect after all, and we’ll have a little ammunition to go after him.”

Melissa and I nodded, knowing Brian was an excellent gossip who could dish with anyone on earth. Attractive married women-like Melissa, come to think of it-seemed compelled to spill secrets to him because his delight in hearing them was reward in itself.

“Be careful you don’t ask the wrong people and have it come back on Jack and Melissa,” Cody said, “or me. I work for the city, and occassionally I have to testify in Judge Moreland’s court. I got to know him when he was a U.S. Attorney and I was working joint task forces.”

Cody had complained to me over the years that he was frequently assigned to multi-agency task forces involving the feds, state investigators, and the Denver Police Department. He had a problem with the bureaucracy, procedure, and territoriality of the FBI, and clashed with them. But because Cody was good at his job and didn’t care about making friends, he personally broke cases and let the feds take the credit as long as they left him alone. Cody had never played well with others.

“What’s he like in court?” I asked Cody. “He described himself as tough and fair. And obviously he has a thing about accountability if he’d put his family and ours through this.”

Cody nodded. “All judges describe themselves that way, so don’t put too much stock in it. But I’d say Judge Moreland loves being a judge, maybe too much. He’s a great judge to have if you’ve got a defendant he hates right out of the box because he’ll throw the book at him. We kind of know which way the decision is going to go right off the bat by the procedural moves Moreland makes to get to the outcome he wants to get to. If he thinks the defendant is a scumbag, he’ll make sure there’s federal prison time. If for some reason he thinks we’ve got the wrong guy, there’s nothing we can do to convince him otherwise.

“Judges are supposed to hear the arguments,” Cody continued, “research the law, and make a judgment based on the facts presented. Moreland does that, but he prejudges the case, and most of us think he holds himself above the law. That’s great if he agrees with us, but it sucks when he doesn’t. But most of the time he’s procop, and that’s all we care about.”

Cody said, “I’m testifying in his court tomorrow on the Coates case. You know, the Monster of Desolation Canyon. Maybe you ought to come to the courtroom and see the guy in action. Court’s in session at one.”

“Will I learn anything?” I asked.

“You’ll learn what you’re up against,” Cody said in a way that gave me no confidence.

There were a few uncomfortable beats of silence. Brian broke it, saying, “Garrett is the one, Melissa. Garrett’s got to have some kind of history if he comes off the way you two describe him. I mean, you say he exudes evil, and he shows up to night with a gangbanger. Maybe if we found out more about Garrett, we could convince a court he’s absolutely not father material, despite what Judge Daddy says.”

Cody nodded. “Might be tough, though. If he’s got a juvie record, it could be sealed.”

“To a detective?” Brian asked, smiling wickedly. “To the star maverick detective who got fed up with working with the feds and finally arrested the Monster? I bet that detective has ways to take a look at the file.”

I cautiously checked Cody out. I didn’t want to pressure him.

“I’ll make some discreet calls,” he said. “But I’ve absolutely got to stay away from any kind of investigation of the judge himself. I’ve got to stay completely clean. Can you imagine what would happen to me and the department if word got out I was investigating a sitting judge on my own? Shit, I’d get sent back to Montana or worse.”

Brian shuddered. The last place he ever wanted to go was home.

“Okay then,” Brian said, a gleam in his eye, slapping his knees. “We have a plan and less than a month to implement it. I’ll find out what I can about the judge, Cody will check on the kid. Jack and Melissa, you keep doing what you’re doing. Hire a good lawyer and fight the bastards as long as you can. In the meanwhile, I think you should swear out a complaint against Garrett and Luis for that stunt they pulled here to night.”

Cody held up his hand. “If you do that, you can’t implicate me in any way. And I think it’s a stupid idea.”

“Why?” Brian said, hurt.

Melissa jumped in. “We don’t want to antagonize Garrett. Not yet. We want to try and win him over first.”

Brian looked at me with a what-can-you-do? look.

WHEN BRIAN AND MELISSA went upstairs to look in on Angelina, Cody came out of the kitchen with another beer.

“You sure you want that?” I asked. “You’ve got to testify tomorrow, right?”

Cody shrugged and popped the top. “We’re going to nail that Coates son of a bitch. We’ve got the Monster of Desolation Canyon dead to rights. I’m not worried, even though the feds are mad at me for breaking it. But I do hope the judge didn’t recognize me in front of your house. If he knows we’re friends…”

“What?”

He shrugged. “I’m not sure.”

Cody took a long pull off the beer, and we sat in silence for a few moments. Then he leaned forward and spoke softly to me. “I know Brian means well, but… well, I can see him running his mouth to all his society friends. They’ll eat this up. And if Judge Moreland hears about a concerted effort to dig up dirt on him or his son, he might really lower the boom on you two-and maybe me.”

“Meaning what?” I asked, a little angry.

“Maybe he takes back his offer to get you another baby. That’s a pretty generous offer, Jack.”

“Melissa would never consider it, Cody,” I said. “Neither would I.”

“Sometimes you’ve got to get the best deal you can, is all I’m saying. You know I’ve got a son of my own, right?”

“What?”

Cody wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “Yeah-the result of a little drunken tryst up in Fort Collins when I was working undercover. A barmaid name of Rae Ann. She’s married now to her second husband, but I send her money for little Justin every month. On my salary it’s a hit, but what ever.”

“You never told us,” I said.

He shrugged. “It happens. But that’s not my point. My point is Justin and I are getting close now that he’s turned six. Those first five years he was just a baby. He could have been any baby, to be honest. Now he’s a real person, you know? He likes baseball and rocks. But for those first five years, he was just kind of a little fat… thing. Babies aren’t people until they grow up, is what I’ve learned.”

I shook my head. “I don’t follow.”

He killed the beer. “I guess I’m saying for a man, babies are babies. You could get another one, and she’d grow up to be a person. Hell, maybe you’d love her more than you love Angelina now. You just don’t know. If you have the chance to get another baby, you and Melissa will raise a winner, is what I’m saying.”

I saw a flash of red in front of my eyes. “Cody, I think it’s late, and you’re drunk. So shut up. Now.”

He raised his hand, “I’m just saying…”

“I know what you’re saying. Stop it. It’s not an option.”

“You might want to give it some thought, Jack.”

“It’s not an option.”

He started to argue more when Melissa and Brian appeared on the stairs.

“Enough,” I cautioned Cody.

“Okay,” he said. “So, will I see you tomorrow?”

At that moment I didn’t care if I ever saw Cody again.

“Call me,” Brian said to Melissa as he hugged her goodbye.

“I will,” she said. She was as exhausted as me, and showing it. Tears welled again in her eyes.

“Too bad we can’t just call Uncle Jeter to take care of things.” Cody laughed. “He’d love to drive down here and kick some ass.”

I smiled at the thought. Jeter Hoyt was a legend when we were growing up in Helena. One of the reasons no one ever touched Cody, Brian, or me was because Jeter Hoyt was Cody’s uncle, and stories about him were the kind told only in furtive whispers after the storyteller had glanced over his shoulder to see who was in the room.

When they were gone, Melissa said, “You have some good friends.”

I said, “We have some good friends.” I didn’t tell her what Cody had said.

WE’D BEEN IN BED AN HOUR. Melissa had tucked the covers around Angelina and whispered something to her that didn’t come over the monitor. Our daughter’s sleeping breath provided the sound track in our room. I was sleeping fitfully.

AT 4:00 A.M. I heard the burbling sound of a motor cruising by on the street. I recognized it as Garrett’s car.

I imagined him out there with Luis, looking at our house as they crawled by, the photo between them on the seat.