Look Again Part 17

"The second question is what are your parental rights, if any? And what are the Bravermans' parental rights, if any? That's the question that's worrying you, isn't it?" Ron paused. "If you're right, who gets Will?"

Ellen felt her eyes well up, but kept it together.

"You raise an interesting question under Pennsylvania law, and one not well understood by laymen. It involves the difference between adoption cases and custody cases."

Ellen couldn't take the suspense. "Just tell me, would I get to keep Will or would I have to give him back to the Bravermans?"

"You'd have to give him back to the Bravermans. No question."

Ellen felt stricken. She struggled to maintain control, teetering on the fine line between crying and screaming. But Will was in the next room, lost in a world somewhere over the rainbow.

"The Bravermans, as the child's birth parents, have an undisputed legal right to their child. They're alive, and they didn't give him up for adoption. If he was kidnapped, your adoption is simply invalid. Therefore, as a legal matter, the court would return Will to them."

"And he would go live in Florida?"

"That's where they live, so yes."

"Would I have the right to visit him?"

"No." Ron shook his head. "You would have no rights at all. The Bravermans may permit you to, perhaps to wean him from you, so to speak. But no court would order them to permit you to visit."

"But I adopted him lawfully," Ellen almost wailed.

"True, but in the hypothetical, no one gave him up for adoption." Ron c.o.c.ked his head, tenting his fingers again. "As you remember from when you adopted him, you presented the court with signed waivers, consents to adoption from his mother and his father. That's a prerequisite to any adoption. If the consents were false, forged, or otherwise fraudulent, the adoption is invalid, whether you knew it or not."

Ellen forced herself to think back to her online research, done last night in antic.i.p.ation of this meeting. "I read online about the Kimberley Mays case, in Florida, do you remember that? She was the baby who was switched at birth in the hospital, with another baby. In that case, the court let her stay with her psychological parent instead of her biological parent."

"I know the case. It got national attention."

"Doesn't that help me here? Can't we do it that way?"

"No, it doesn't help you at all." Ron opened his hands, palms up. "That's what I started to tell you. There's a fundamental difference between adoption and custody. The Florida court in the Mays case was applying a custody a.n.a.lysis, which involves an inquiry into the best interests of the child. The court decided that it was in the child's best interests for her to stay with her psychological father." Ron made a chopping motion with his hand. "But we have an adoption case here. It has nothing to do with what's in Will's best interests. It's simply a matter of power. Your case is like those in which the father's consent to the adoption was forged by the mother."

"What happens in those cases?"

"The child goes to the biological father. It's his child, and he didn't validly waive his right to him."

Ellen tried a different argument. "What if Will were ten or older, you think he'd get sent back?"

"Yes. As a legal matter, time won't cure the fact that he was kidnapped, even though you were unwitting."

"So it doesn't matter that I'm the only mother he's ever known?" Ellen found it impossible to accept. "My house is the only house he's ever known. The school, the cla.s.smates, the neighborhood, the babysitter. We're his world, and they're strangers."

"They happen to be his natural parents. It's a very interesting dilemma."

"No, it's not," Ellen shot back, miserably.

"Aw, wait." Ron's voice softened, transitioning from professor to friend. "We were speaking hypothetically. Come back to reality with me for a minute. I was there, when you were considering adopting him. Remember when we met, back then?"

"Yes."

"There was, and there still is, no reason in the world to think there was anything wrong with his adoption."

"But what about the mom with the twisted ovary? The lawyer's suicide?"

"People who can't get pregnant get pregnant, every day. My daughter-in-law, for one. And sadly, lawyers commit suicide. Life happens. So does death."

"I'm not crazy, Ron."

"I didn't say you're crazy. I don't think you're crazy. I think you got a bee in your bonnet, like my mother used to say. It's what makes you a good reporter. By the way, it's what made you adopt Will in the first place." Ron wagged a finger. "You couldn't get him out of your head, you told me."

"I remember." Ellen nodded sadly. Her gaze found a heavy crystal award, its beveled facets capturing a ray of sun, like an ill.u.s.tration of refraction in a physics book.

"You want my advice?"

"Yes."

"Good. Then listen to me."

Ellen felt as if it were a moment of truth. She hardly breathed.

"Take these papers and put them away, at the bottom of the drawer." Ron slid the file, the photographs, and the composite drawing across his messy desk. "Your adoption was valid. Will is your child. Enjoy him, and invite Louisa and me to his wedding."

Ellen packed up her papers, wis.h.i.+ng she could take his advice. "I can't do that. I want to know what's true."

"I told you what's true. You've elevated suspicion to fact."

"But it doesn't feel right." Ellen fought her emotions to think clearly, and it was clarifying to talk about it out loud. "You know what I really feel? I feel that my kid is sick, but the doctors keep telling me he's fine. Not just you, my father, too."

Ron fell silent.

"But I'm I'm his mother. I'm Dr. Mom." Ellen heard a new conviction in her voice, which surprised even her. "Call it a mother's instinct, or intuition, but I have it inside, and I know better." his mother. I'm Dr. Mom." Ellen heard a new conviction in her voice, which surprised even her. "Call it a mother's instinct, or intuition, but I have it inside, and I know better."

"I hear you. You believe what you believe."

"Yes."

"n.o.body can tell you different."

"Right!"

"You feel certainty. You are certain."

"Bingo!" Ellen said, but a slow smile eased across Ron's face, spreading his beard almost like a stage curtain.

"But you have to have a valid proof to support your certainty, and you have none. Do you understand?"

"Yes," Ellen answered, and she did. She gathered up the photographs and papers, and rose with them. "If proof is what I need, then proof is what I'll get. Thanks so much for your help."

"You're very welcome." Ron rose, too, his expression darkening. "But be careful what you wish. If you find proof that Will is Timothy Braverman, you'll feel a lot worse than you do already. You'll have to make a choice I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy."

Ellen had thought of nothing else, when she was trying to sleep last night. "What would you do, if it were your kid?"

"Wild horses couldn't make me give him back."

"No doubt?"

"Not a one."

"Then let me ask you this, counselor. How do you keep something that doesn't belong to you?" Ellen heard herself say it out loud, though she hadn't thought of it that way until this moment.

"Och. My." Ron cringed. "Excellent question."

"And how do I explain that to Will, when he grows up? What if he found out? What do I say? That I loved you, so I kept you, even though I knew the truth? Is that love, or just selfishness?" Ellen heard the questions pouring out, her heart speaking of its own accord. "This is the thing, Ron. When I adopted him, I felt like he belonged to me because another mother gave him up. But if she didn't, if she had had him taken from her by force, then he doesn't belong to me. Not truly."

Ron looked away, hitching up his jeans by his thumbs.

"So what do you say to that?" Ellen felt her eyes well up, then blinked them clear. "What would you do then?"

Ron sighed. "Fair points, all, but I have an easy out. In that case, saner minds would prevail. Louisa would kill me."

"Well, I don't have a Louisa. There's no saner head around. It's the me show. I just can't forget about it. Put it back in the bottle."

"Did you try?" Ron smiled, weakly.

"I've been trying since the minute I saw the card."

"Give it time, then. You might feel differently, next month, or next year."

Ellen shook her head. She hadn't gotten this far in life without knowing herself. It was other people she had trouble with. "I'm not built that way. When I see a thread hanging from someone's clothes, I have to pull it. If I see trash on the floor, I pick it up. I can't step over it. I can't pretend it's not there."

Ron laughed.

"This is almost like that, only ten times more. A million times more. It'll be in the back of my mind for the rest of my life, if I don't resolve it."

"Then I feel for you," Ron said softly, meeting her eye.

"Thanks." Ellen managed a smile, picked up her papers and coat, and moved to the door, where the Wizard of Oz Wizard of Oz soundtrack grew louder. "I'd better go. Will hates the flying monkeys." soundtrack grew louder. "I'd better go. Will hates the flying monkeys."

"Everybody hates the flying monkeys," Ron said, with a final smile.

Chapter Forty-one.

Ellen spent the afternoon in Quality Time Frenzy with Will, building a multicolored castle from Legos, stamping Play-Doh with cookie cutters, and making Boca burgers for dinner together. Will set the table, running back and forth with a squeeze bottle of ketchup and sliced tomatoes, and Ellen felt as if the kitchen were their domestic coc.o.o.n, with its soft lighting, warm stove, and chubby housecat curled up on the floor, in his tuxedo.

"I have a surprise dessert for you," Ellen said, but Will flashed her his picky-eater frown, as dubious a look as a three-year-old can muster.

"What is it?"

"I can't tell you, or it wouldn't be a surprise."

"Don't we have ice cream?"

"It's better than ice cream. Wait right here." Ellen got up, collected the dinner plates, and took them into the kitchen, where she set them in the sink. She fetched the dessert from the refrigerator, carried it to the dining room, and placed it on the table.

"Eeew, Mommy!" Will scrunched up his nose, the only reasonable response to what looked like a bowl of green plastic.

"Give it a chance. It's Jell-O, in your favorite color." Ellen had spent last night rereading the Braverman website and had seen the detail that Timothy loved lime Jell-O. Will had never eaten it before, as far as she knew, and she wanted to see if he liked it. Her test wasn't scientific, but that would come later.

Will wrinkled his nose. "Is it spinach?"

"No, it's lime."

"What's lime?"

"Like lemon, but better."

"What's lemon?"

"You know lemon. It's yellow, like the water ice we get at the pool. Or like lemon sticks." Ellen let it go. "Did you ever have lime Jell-O before?"

Will shook his head, eyeing the bowl warily. "I had red. That was good."

"Red is cherry."

"Do we have red?"

"No. I made green."

"Can't you make red?" Will looked at her with plaintive baby blues, and Ellen managed a smile.

"Not this time. Today, let's try green Jell-O."

Will scrambled to a kneeling position in his chair and leaned farther over the table on his elbows, sniffing the bowl. "Why doesn't it smell?"

"Give it a try and tell me if you like the taste."

"Do you like it?"

"I don't know, I never had it either." Ellen hated lime Jell-O, but didn't want to prejudice him. "I like to try new foods." She couldn't resist propagandizing, but Will ignored her.

"Why is it all flat on top?"