Most Wanted (50 page)

Christine felt a twinge. She wanted to believe him, but she didn't. Or she couldn't. Either way, it didn't matter now, and she didn't want to interrupt him, so she let him talk.

“I had seen the other reporters, but they were so tough and hard, and I thought there was something different about you, something nicer. Lauren, too.” Zachary smiled warmly. “When you started to ask more personal questions, I started to think that you probably came to me because you saw me on TV, like Tanya had. You thought I was your donor.”

Christine could see how it could happen. She hadn't known that Tanya was another donor recipient, but if she had, she would've suspected Zachary's admission that he was Donor 3319. Christine had thought that she had gotten to Zachary first, but she had been mistaken. Tanya had, and that made all the difference.

“Christine,” Zachary continued, his voice gentler, “I was in the gen pop then, I went on the computer and looked up Homestead. Tanya had told me the name and the donor number. I read 3319's online bio, I got the details, and I used them when we talked. I'm a salesman, and I sold you. But I'm not proud of it and I'm not bragging, I hope you know that.”

Christine did. She nodded.

“I'm sorry I lied, but I think you can understand it, can't you? You didn't tell me the truth, either. You lied for the same reason that I did, didn't you? You were desperate to know if I was your donor, and you didn't want to ask me, straight up, like Tanya did. I don't know why you didn't, but I don't blame you for that. You had reasons of your own, and I had reasons of my own. I had to get out of here. I saw my
entire life
being taken away. I was in the gen pop then, I saw TV. I was
convicted
by TV.” Zachary's voice took on a new urgency, undergirded by fear. “I was being railroaded. Even after I saved the guard, it didn't make any difference. They say ‘innocent until proven guilty,' but it isn't. As soon as you get arrested, you get treated like you're guilty. Christine, we both used desperate measures, didn't we?”

“Yes,” Christine had to answer, hearing the truth in his words. She had lied to him, too. She had been desperate, too.

“But the thing is, it doesn't mean that I'm not grateful to you. I'm not lying about that. I never thought that my lying to you would endanger you, in any way. I thought you would be there for me, and then, when you signed on to help Griff, I thought that was nice.” Zachary frowned, his expression darkening. “But I never thought you would be jeopardized. I didn't think that you would try to catch a
serial killer
.”

Christine managed a smile. “I didn't mean to, but it turned out that way.”

“Thank God you're safe, and I'm free! Almost.” Zachary smiled, hunching over the counter. “Now, who's going to tell me what happened?”

 

Chapter Fifty-six

Christine, Marcus, Griff, and Tanya strolled together toward their cars, Marcus's Audi and Griff's Honda Fit, which they had parked in front of the prison because the lot was empty at this hour, except for a handful of official vehicles. Night had fallen, but the guard towers remained illuminated, and their ambient light glinted cruelly off the coiled razor-wire around the institution. The rain had stopped, but moisture saturated the air, making hazy clouds under the lights in the parking lot and bringing up the natural earthy scents of the surrounding countryside.

Christine breathed in a deep lungful of air, and though it smelled good, she suddenly missed home, where the mist off the ocean salted every breath. She stood in front of Marcus's car with him, turning to Griff and Tanya. “Well, I guess we should go,” she said, her throat unexpectedly thick. “We'll stay at the hotel tonight but leave in the morning.”

Tanya gave her a quick hug. “Take care, Christine. I'm driving back tonight. It's not that far and I want to see Ranger Rick. It was great meeting you, and you have my information if you want to get back in touch.”

“I agree, it was great meeting you, too,” Christine told her, meaning it. She really liked Tanya's free-and-easy attitude about her baby, and it had been fun to get to know another mom who had used a donor.

“Are you okay with the way it turned out with Zachary?”

“Yes, are you?”

“Totally.” Tanya glanced at Marcus. “To me, it doesn't really matter how a baby comes into the world, only that it does. I just feel lucky in who my baby is. Best of luck with yours.”

“You, too.” Christine heard the wisdom in Tanya's words, though she wondered if Marcus did.

“You did a really great thing today.” Tanya smiled, her grin bright even in the darkness. “You're going to be a great mother, I can tell.”

“Thanks.” Christine smiled, but she still felt shaky, especially when she turned to Griff. “I'm going to miss you, coach.”

“I'm going to miss you, too.” Griff smiled wryly. “Do we have to hug?”

“You know we do.” Christine opened her arms and gave him a final hug, then let him go. “Take care of yourself, okay?”

“I will. You, too.”

“And stay in touch, will you? I want to hear how your bunion operation goes.”

“No problem. I'll email you.” Griff chuckled at his own joke.

Christine smiled. “The laugh is going to be on you, Griff. The future is here.”

“Don't threaten me.” Griff chuckled and looked up at Marcus, extending a hand. “Take care of her, young man. You've got a keeper. I miss my wife every day.”

Christine teared up at the unexpected tenderness in Griff's tone. It was too dark to see his expression in any detail, and she knew how his face would look, right at this moment. Still, she would never forget him, or the lesson he taught the teacher.

Marcus shook Griff's hand. “I will, sir. Stay well, and fight the good fight.”

“Nah. I'd just rather be a lawyer.” Griff laughed in earnest, and they all joined him.

Marcus turned to Christine, his mouth still tight. “Honey, ready to go?”

“Sure,” Christine answered, waving good-bye to Griff and Tanya. “Good-bye now!”

“Drive safe!” Griff called back. “Stay off the damn phone!”

Christine laughed as she walked to the car, turning her back on the prison. It felt good to put the place behind her, maybe even to put Zachary behind her.

After all, she knew what she was leaving behind.

She just didn't know what she was going to.

 

Chapter Fifty-seven

Christine rode in the passenger seat while Marcus drove in silence, wending his way through the country roads that led back to West Chester. She knew him well enough to know that he was mulling over everything that had happened and formulating his thoughts. He would know what he wanted to say by the time they got to the hotel, where they would probably have it out. She hoped that they still had a marriage, by midnight.

“You hungry?” Marcus asked, as they steered around a curve.

“Yes, but I don't really want to eat anything right now. I'm mostly tired.”

“I bet.” Marcus fell silent, and Christine rested her head on the headrest, turning her face to the window, though she couldn't see much. There were no streetlights along the two-lane road, and dark clouds passed in front of the moon. She watched shadowy pastures whizz by and horses grazing in groups, their shadows indistinct. She realized she had seen enough horses for a lifetime. She wanted to see boats, again. And the beach.

“Are you in pain?”

“No,” Christine answered, though the question was ambiguous. Even she didn't know the answer, anyway. She wasn't sure what she knew, anymore. She would know better after they had their fight at the hotel.

“Did they give you Advil or anything like that?”

“No, it's fine.”

“Who held your hair when you threw up this morning?” Marcus's tone softened, and Christine smiled.

“I had to do it all by myself.”

“That sucks. By the way, Lauren says hi. She was worried about you. I called your mom, too. I didn't want her to find out from TV. Luckily they had the game on.”

“Thanks.” Christine felt a guilty twinge.

“She's okay, but she wants us to call her tonight. We can call from the hotel.”

“Thanks for calling her.”

“No problem.” Suddenly Marcus slowed the car, pulled over, and braked by the side of the road, their tires popping on the gravel.

“What are you doing?” Christine turned, puzzled.

“I want to talk to you, and I don't want to wait.”

“Okay.” Christine felt her chest tighten. She looked Marcus in the eye, and she could see that he was upset, the troubled curves of his handsome face illuminated by the bluish-green lights on the dashboard.

“I was wrong, and I'm so sorry about everything that happened, the way it all went down.” Marcus hesitated, clenching his jaw. “I never should've let you come down here yourself. I've been a total jerk about everything, from the very beginning, even from my diagnosis. You were right that night in the backyard, I made it all about me. It was all about me.”

Christine swallowed hard, in surprise.

“But when you left, after I saw what you were willing to do, how far you were willing to go for that baby, our baby”—Marcus's eyes began to glisten, but he blinked them clear—“it made me think. It made me understand. I married you for a reason, because I love you and because I want to go through this life with you. I didn't want you to be alone ever, especially not during the tough times. We're in this together, no matter what, but it took your going away for me to realize that.”

Christine couldn't believe what she was hearing. Marcus had never spoken this way before, or with so much emotion. She felt herself soften, letting her guard down.

“And that's when I realized that that's what being a parent really is. Being a parent, being a
father
, is putting somebody else first, but I never was a father before, and truly, I never put anybody first before, not even you.” Marcus's eyes brimmed with tears. “But that's going to change, it already has, and that's why I left this morning, even before Gary called. I was coming down here to bring my wife and my baby home, where they belong.”

Christine felt all of her love for him come rushing back, warming her from the inside and out, flowing through her veins like lifeblood, but she didn't interrupt him because she could see he wasn't finished.

“I want to be a better father than my father was, not let my pride and ego get in the way of everything in my life, ruin it all, and hurt the people I love most, like you. Honey, it took me awhile, and I'm slow on the uptake, but I finally figured out
exactly
who the father of that baby is. It's
me
.
I'm
the father.”

“Oh, babe,” Christine said, reaching for him, and Marcus reached for her at the same moment, and they clung to each other, husband and wife, bruised and battered, alone in the darkness, in the middle of the countryside. But for the first time, their embrace made a shelter for their baby.

And it was time to go home.

 

Epilogue

It was a typical January in Connecticut, and the third winter storm of the season blew outside, hard enough to rattle the windows in the house. Snow buried main roads, covered rooftops and cars, and burdened tree branches and power lines, but Christine felt safe and warm, cocooned inside their bedroom. Marcus had insisted that they buy a generator, not wanting to take any chances with a power outage since the arrival of one Brian Paul Nilsson, currently nine pounds, two ounces, born two weeks ago with a smile on his face.

And everyone else's, too.

Christine's labor had gone as well as could be expected for the most excruciating pain any woman would ever have, but Marcus had cheered her on, telling her when to push and when not to and cutting the umbilical cord after baby Brian had made his entrance, so quietly that they both worried something had gone wrong. Brian had burst into lusty crying soon enough, and Christine got to be in the other scene she'd always dreamed about, the one with the new mom lying exhausted and sweaty after labor, holding an adorably weighty package of person, who had blue eyes, cute little lips, and enough brown hair on his head to qualify as a fright wig.

The memory lingered happily as she lay in bed, in the middle of the night, the bedroom dark except for the TV, where a bundled-up meteorologist stuck a yardstick into a massive snowdrift. She kept the TV tuned to the Weather Channel these days, sitting out the endless cycle of bad news on CNN and the like. She had seen enough violence for an entire lifetime, and she still couldn't get the images out of her mind, popping into her consciousness when she least expected it, like a mental ambush. She took comfort in knowing that the authorities had more than ample proof that Dom Gagliardi had murdered Gail Robinbrecht, Susan Allen-Bogen, and Lynn McLeane; there had been horrifyingly incriminating photos in his computer, and they'd found so-called “trophies” he kept from all three nurses, which the police did not reveal to her, and she didn't need to know more. Zachary had been set free, returning to his job at Brigham and saving for medical school with renewed determination.

Christine thought of him from time to time, even now, and though the entire episode had been awful, it had been a blessing in disguise. Marcus had been right that they weren't back at square one, because without what happened with Zachary in Pennsylvania, she and Marcus never would have gotten their marriage back on track, and Marcus would never have embraced the baby the way he had, from the moment Brian was born. A new father was born that very day, too, and the truth came out in the open, never to be denied again, even to Brian himself, when the time came.

Christine counted her blessings, lying there in the darkness, knowing even as she was living it that this was another scene from a movie she'd always wanted to be in, where the father was taking a nighttime feeding with the baby, using her pumped breast milk. He was trying to give her a break to sleep, but she couldn't and didn't even want to, savoring the sweetness of the moment. Through the baby monitor, she could hear Marcus humming his little Swedish folksong as he rocked the baby in the nursery. The very sound brought tears to her eyes, and Christine didn't know how she got so lucky, or so blessed.