it was worth a try. Back at her hotel, she dialed and, to her immense relief, a secretary picked up almost immediately.
“Riley, Schwartz, and Henderson,” the woman said.
“Hello,” Mrs. Richardson began. “I’m calling regarding a case Mr. Riley was working on quite some time ago.” She paused, thinking quickly. “I have some information that my client thinks may be relevant. But before I pass along any information, I wanted to be sure Mr. Riley is still representing the Ryans. As you can imagine, this information is rather sensitive.”
The secretary paused. “Which case did you say you were involved with?”
“The Ryans. The information I have regards a Mia Wright.”
There was the sound of a drawer opening and a rustling of files. Mrs. Richardson held her breath. “Here we are. Joseph and Madeline Ryan. Yes, Mr. Riley is still on retainer for them, though”—she paused—“this file hasn’t been active in quite some time. But Mr. Riley is in the office currently and I’d be happy to put you through to him. What did you say your name was?”
Mrs. Richardson hung up. Her heart was pounding. Then, after several minutes of careful thought, she flipped open her address book and dialed her friend Michael, who worked at the New York Times. They’d met in college, working on the Denisonian, and though Michael had jumped from there to the Stamford Advocate and then quickly to the news desk at the Times, while she had returned home and gone local, they had stayed in touch. He had once, she was quite sure, been in love with her, though he’d never said anything about it, and they’d both been married for years now. Recently he’d been nominated for a Pulitzer, though he’d lost out to someone from the AP reporting on the killings in Rwanda.
“Michael,” she said. “Can you do me a favor?”
A week later, Michael would call back and confirm what she had already suspected: through journalistic sleight of hand known only to himself, he had managed to find hospital bills for a Mia Wright in 1981, at St. Elizabeth’s in midtown Manhattan. They had been paid for by a Joseph Ryan, and they had stopped in February 1982, when Mia would have been six months pregnant, and if Mrs. Richardson had had any doubts about where Pearl had come from, they would vanish. She would have to think about what—if anything—to do with this information. The poor Ryans: wanting a baby so badly that they’d take such steps to get one. Yes, she knew something about that, she thought, thinking of Linda and Mark McCullough. But she felt a twinge of sympathy for Mia, too, one she hadn’t felt before and had never expected to feel: how excruciating it must have been to think about giving her child away.
What would she have done if she’d been in that situation? Mrs. Richardson would ask herself this question over and over, before Michael’s call and for weeks—and months—after. Each time, faced with this impossible choice, she came to the same conclusion. I would never have let myself get into that situation, she told herself. I would have made better choices along the way.
For now, Mrs. Richardson stacked her notes in her folder, which she had discreetly labeled M.W. Tomorrow she would drive back home.
On the way out of the clinic, Lexie was having trouble processing what was happening to her, what had just happened to her. Her legs and her body trotted confidently ahead while her head drifted along behind like a dawdling balloon. She had been pregnant and now she was not. There had been something alive inside her and now there was not. Deep in her belly she felt a vague cramping and a warm damp trickle into the thick sanitary pad the nurse had given her. The rest of the package was in her bag, along with a bottle of Advil. “You’ll want this later on, when the anesthetic wears off,” the nurse had told her.
Pearl took her arm. “You okay?”
Lexie nodded and the parking lot spun around and landed on its side. Pearl caught her as she began to tip. “Okay. Come on. Almost there.”
The original plan had been to drive Lexie home. Her mother wasn’t due back until tomorrow afternoon, and by then, Lexie had assumed, she would be back to normal, ready to pretend nothing had happened. But it was clear to Pearl, as she guided Lexie into the front seat of the Explorer, that Lexie was in no condition