“Well, I’ll be. Can you beat that? I never would have thought it of him. And such a distinguished man, too.”
“Yeah. But if his wife didn’t know about it, he must have done his best to be good to her. Poor fellow just got caught.”
Jane Wilkerson adjusted a blond curl beneath her crisp white cap and walked off, more certain than ever that being single and staying that way made good sense.
Justine walked aimlessly out of the building as a white Cougar pulled up, and the Washington, D.C. license plate on another white car flashed through her mind. Eleven months earlier, she’d just left her therapy session when a man walked out of the hospital carrying a newborn baby, and the woman beside him had seemed to drag her steps. They got into a white Mercedes, and the man held the tiny form wrapped in a little pink blanket as the woman drove them away. She hadn’t associated them with her child, but the scene had made her curious about it, and she had run back inside and asked the social worker’s secretary if they’d found an adoptive family for her baby.
“Yes,” the woman had beamed, “they just left. Now you can relax and get on with your life.”
Not one emotion had made its presence felt. She hadn’t tried to understand her unusual behavior, her lack of concern that her child had a new mother. She and Kenneth had planned to have three children—one every two years—but he wasn’t there and he’d lived a lie. Every time he’d held her and made passionate love to her, telling her that he loved her, that she was his world; he’d lied. He’d made a mockery of her love. She shivered, wondering if he had laughed with his mistress about his unresponsive wife, frantic to climax with him only to have it elude her every time. If only he were alive so she could despise him!
She shook off the unpleasant memories and gathered her wits. She’d get her child back, no matter what anybody said or did. They shouldn’t have let her sign those papers, knowing she had an illness fairly common among women who had just given birth. She couldn’t undo the past, but she was back to her old self now, and getting her child would be her number one priority. Her child would be hers again. She’d find her and nobody was going to stop her from getting her back. She remembered the license plate number now—dredging it up from the bowels of her subconscious mind. At the time, she’d thought that only someone rich and famous would have the number GDB 1800. She wrote it down and headed for Indiana Avenue and the municipal building in northwest Washington.
Hours passed while first one official and then another treated her to a dose of government bureaucracy, bouncing her from office to office. Anxious and frustrated, she called one of Kenneth’s fraternity brothers in the mayor’s office and, an hour later, had the information that she wanted. That car belonged to G. Duncan Banks, an investigative reporter for The Maryland Journal, a paper in Baltimore.
She searched in the Library Of Congress, the internet, and records of the Society of Professional Journalist, learning all she could about the man whom she believed called himself the father of her child. The information she treasured most concerned his character and his address. He lived in affluent Tacoma Park, at the edge of the Maryland/District line. Now, what could she do with that information? She couldn’t drive up to his house and demand her child, because he had a legal right to the child, but he’d hear from her. And soon.
Duncan Banks stretched his long frame out on the floor beside Tonya’s crib, his mind idling while his eleven-month-old adopted daughter’s chubby brown fingers examined his right thumb. She had wedged herself so deeply into his heart that he hated being away from her. He couldn’t understand how Marie, his ex-wife, could have agreed to their adopting a child if she hadn’t wanted one. He understood her disinclination to interrupt her career as a rising criminal lawyer in order to have a baby, but it hadn’t occurred to him that she hadn’t wanted to be a mother. And she’d quickly tired of it.
“I just can’t spend the rest of my youth taking care of somebody else’s kid,” she had announced. “I’m sorry.”
Every time he thought about that night when she’d asked out, pain seared his heart. “What about the indescribable, boundless love you feel for me? Your words. What about that?”
She looked him straight in the eye—insolent as usual when caught out. “Love doesn’t conquer all, Duncan. You’re old enough to know that.”
“No, but money does. Doesn’t it? Now that I’ve paid for your law degree and your career is humming and you can support yourself in the manner to which I have accustomed you, it’s bye, bye birdie, eh?”
She had the grace to be flustered. “Don’t be crude.”
“And don’t you be so high-handed.”
She was right; love didn’t conquer all. He wouldn’t let himself think about how he’d loved her or that his heart threatened to explode in his chest And when she lowered her lashes in that way she did when she wanted to control him with her body, make him forget whatever she’d done and make love to her, he’d clenched his fist.
Her lashes swept down over her large brown eyes—eyes that made a man stare at her beautiful brown face—and then came up slowly. “I’m not planning to ask for much of a settlement.”
“Smart girl. Collect your clothes. If you ask for more, I’ll take back that mink. Trust me.” He looked away to hide from her the pain he knew his face reflected. He’d loved her—really loved her with every atom of his being. “If you’re going, Marie, don’t draw it out.”
Three hours later, the door had closed on his dreams. But what the hell! The day before yesterday, he’d shot a perfect game of pool. From now on, nothing would surprise him.
For months, he had sensed a widening rift between them, a drifting away from each other, though he’d done everything he could think of to turn their relationship around. Nothing he did had touched her. He had thought that a baby would bring them closer. He wanted a family, and if she didn’t want the burden of bearing their own he’d take what he could get. Many babies needed parents he’d told her and she had agreed to their adopting Tonya. He’d been satisfied so long as he had a child to love and to raise. But he couldn’t take care of an eleven-month-old baby girl.
Duncan pulled his mind back to the present, got off the floor, and leaned over Tonya’s crib. “I’ll advertise for a wife,” he told his laughing daughter. “If the woman’s intelligent, loves children, and promises to spend the rest of her life being sweet to you, that’s as much as I want; I’ve had it with love—biggest hoax ever foisted on a man.” She raised her little arms to him, and he lifted her into his embrace.
“Daaaaddy,” she sang, clapping her little hands together. He sat with her in the rocker beside her crib and rocked her while he sang Brahms Lullaby, her favorite song. When she fell asleep, he put her into the crib and rolled it into his office so that he could work and keep an eye on her.
He had no luck advertising among his friends. Dee Dee Sharp, the feature editor of The Maryland Journal, told him she could get him someone to keep the baby, that she only had to drop a hint and even society women might show up if they knew he was single. He shook his head and went on to Wayne Roundtree’s office. Wayne owned the paper.
“Get a wife,” Wayne advised. “Tell her you want a marriage of convenience. You’ll take care of her and she’ll take care of your child. No emotional involvement.”
Duncan’s look of incredulity brought a wicked grin from Wayne. “Who’d fall for that?” Duncan asked him. “She’d have to be ninety and have all the beauty of a wet field mouse.”
Wayne leaned back in his high-back swivel chair. “Wake up, man. A lot of women would like a soft life, especially if they’re childless, out of work, down