Crossing the Line Read online

  “I’m Mary Jr.,” she said, softly, warmly. “And you are…?”

  I took her hand, returned the warmth; it was easy to do that with Mary Jr.

  “Jane Taylor,” I said. “And this is Emma.”

  “Whoa!” Mary Jr. gave a soft laugh, imitating her brothers. “Is that your baby?”

  “Yes.” I smiled back. “This is Emma.”

  “This is Martha,” she said, showing me her own baby, unable to keep the happy pride from her voice, even though it was clear from her eyes she’d done her share of crying that day.

  We cooed at each other’s babies for a minute.

  “Well, all I can say is,” said Mary Jr., “you must have loved Mum an awful lot to come here today.”

  “Oh, I did,” I said, “I really did.”

  “I’m afraid we’ve put this off long enough,” Tolkien said later that same day. He’d come along just as I was returning from the funeral, meaning he caught me in my mourning black.

  “Did someone die, Jane?” he asked, looking concerned.

  “Don’t people always die?” I waved him off. “No,” I said, not wanting to say, “nobody that I know died.” I certainly wasn’t about to tell Tolkien what I’d just been doing. No matter how good I thought my own intentions were, I just couldn’t see him endorsing any plans involving unknown corpses.

  “Then why…?”

  “I dunno, do I,” I said, looking down at my clothes. “Maybe I’m just feeling postpartum-y.”

  I put Emma down for a nap, kissed her on the top of the head and moved to put the kettle on, not wanting to answer any more wardrobe questions.

  “You were saying something before,” I said, “about putting something off long enough?”

  “Right.” He cleared his throat. “We’re going to have to go to the authorities.”

  “Why now?” I asked, alarmed.

  “Because not everyone in your world can be trusted. Who knows which one of them might suddenly develop a wrong-headed sense of conscience, decide to turn you in? It’s better if you do it on your own steam.”

  “What will happen?” I asked.

  He ran his fingers through his hair. “They’ll assign her to a foster home, probably yell their heads off at you first for not coming in sooner.”

  “But I found her. And I want her.”

  “That won’t have any meaning to them. They’ll have to go by the book, they’ll have to consult their lists. Emma will go, at least temporarily, to the next foster home in line.”

  “Isn’t there anything else we can do?”

  “I don’t know.” He thought about it for a moment. “I don’t suppose you happen to know anyone with the technological know-how of a master spy?”

  As I made my way through the offices of Churchill & Stewart with Emma, I felt more self-consciously guilty than I had in all the nine months of my fake pregnancy, what with all the hard stares we were getting from people like Louise. Actually, it was just Louise that was making me feel that way, but she was staring at us so hard that it felt as though a roomful of haters were doing it.

  I knocked on the door that I’d never knocked on willingly before, the door of one of whom I considered to be my most hated enemies.

  “Come in if you have to!” yelled Stan from Accounting.

  Amazing what I’d sunk to, but where I was a tech-not, Stan was a tech-all: if he couldn’t help me, nobody could. And since Tolkien had made a date for us to see Mr. Triplecorn at Social Services right after this, Stan was going to have to help me fast.

  “Jane!” he said, surprised.

  And there he was in all his suspenders-straight, hair-trimmed-every-day, clean-steel-glasses anal glory. What was I thinking?

  “Stan, I need your help.”

  Stan’s office was decorated just as anally, meaning there were no decorations and that everything in it was utilitarian, save for the photo of Stan’s mother, his army of sisters and all their female offspring smiling from their position on Stan’s desk.

  “Why should I help you?” he asked. “And while we’re at it, what’s in it for me?”

  See what I mean?

  “I want to keep Emma.”

  “You’re not exactly what I’d consider mother material, Jane,” he snorted.

  Just then, Emma cooed at me. It was a sound that never failed to melt my formerly hard heart, but I saw Stan visibly steel himself against it.

  “Emma needs me, Stan. If I have to turn her over to the Social, they’ll likely place her in a home where she won’t be properly loved, certainly not the way I can love her.”

  “Oh, I’m sure that’s exactly what she needs, a slightly sociopathic mother with a tendency toward faking pregnancies.”

  Emma cooed again. Stan stiffened again, took a step backwards.

  “Stan, I haven’t got time for that right now! I need your help! In another hour, I’m due at their offices. And if we don’t do something soon, the Social will take her from me.”

  Emma cooed yet again. But this time, Stan took a tiny step towards us. Tentatively, he put a finger under her chin. “She’s a cute little bugger, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, she is,” I said, “and she deserves a chance at something better.”

  “Hah!” He drew back again. “And you think you’re something better?”

  I knew it was useless, but I stood my ground. Emma was at stake.

  “Yes, I am.”

  Just then, Emma cooed once more, only this time, she turned her tiny head into the crook of my shoulder and released a puffy little sigh of air as though she were the most contented little creature in the world, before settling in for a snooze.

  “My God!” Stan whispered in awe. “The little bugger likes you!”

  “She loves me, Stan,” I said simply. “She’s, oh, I don’t know, imprinted on me somehow, like all those ducklings. Believe it or not, I think she believes I’m her mother.”

  Stan stared at us for one more minute, then he looked at me for the very first time in our acquaintanceship as if I might actually be a human being. More, he looked at me as though he might be one, too.

  “What do you need me to do?” he asked.

  I quickly explained to him the situation with Emma and Stephen Triplecorn at Social Services, and Tolkien’s cryptic suggestion that someone with superior technological know-how could somehow help me out. I’d honestly had no idea what Tolkien specifically meant, but apparently Stan did.

  “You need me to hack into the system at Social Services,” he said.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “You need me to somehow get you on the list they have of potential foster homes that are waiting for a child.”

  “Okay.” I shrugged. “If you say so.”

  He moved to his desk, quicker than I’d ever seen him move before. He started tapping at the keys.

  “You’re going to do it?”

  “Just don’t ever tell anybody that I did something nice for you or I’ll turn you in myself.”

  “You can do it?” I asked.

  He looked up briefly, glint of fluorescent lights off steel.

  “Are you kidding?” he asked. “I could hack into God’s system if I wanted to. It’s just that nobody’s ever asked before. Now, go on. By the time you get there, you’ll be all set.”

  “Thanks, Stan.” I hesitated, then, awkwardly, I crossed the room and kissed him on that anally straight hair.

  He blushed.

  “Go!” he ordered again, returning to the screen.

  Nobody had to tell me and my baby more than twice.

  Emma and I went.

  Mr. Triplecorn—Mr. Stephen Triplecorn, to be exact—was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen in my life.

  You expect a woman to be running your local branch office of the Social, you really do, an overworked, frenzied middle-aged lady with her glasses on a chain around her neck. What you don’t expect is black hair, seriously blue eyes, a gym-hardened body and a bulge in his pants as he rose from his desk�
�the bulge presumably “in a state of rest,” yet clearly discernible, packaged as it was in his tight jeans, with which he wore a striped shirt and tie.

  He was so perfect, I was certain he must be gay, until Tolkien introduced himself, leaned forward to shake hands, and immediately the level of competing as opposed to complementary testosterone present in the room ratcheted itself up about a thousand notches.

  “You!” Stephen Triplecorn said.

  Stephen Triplecorn was also the grumpiest man I’d ever met in my life.

  Wanting to look anywhere but at those angry blue eyes, I glanced around the office. God! What a dump! No wonder he was so crabby; if I had to work in such a mean little sterile place, I’d hate the world too.

  “You!” he said again to Tolkien. “I’ve been waiting to hear from you for over a week now! First, you leave that message on the machine saying you’ve found a baby. And then, when I try to ring you back, some toff at the Yard tells me you’re—” and here he did a mincing-face thing “‘—working undercover, can’t be reached.’”

  “I couldn’t,” Tolkien said evenly.

  “Apparently,” Stephen Triplecorn snorted. Then, he did a chin nod at Emma in my arms. “That the baby?”

  “Yes,” I said, straightening.

  “Right,” he said, coming round the desk. He moved to take her from me.

  “You can’t take her!” I said.

  “Well, you can’t keep her! And, by the way, who the hell are you?”

  “This is Jane Taylor,” Tolkien said. “She found Emma.”

  “Named her already, did you? No guaranteeing that’ll stick. I don’t suppose she came with a birth certificate?”

  “No,” I said, and I proceeded to tell him how I’d found Emma, having seen a figure abandon her on the church steps. I neglected to mention the part about me being in the last month of my own fake pregnancy at the time.

  “And you think you can just keep her,” he said when I’d finished, “like you would if you’d found a stray cat without a collar or something?”

  “No,” I said, getting confused, “I’m not saying it’s the same thing as that—”

  “Look,” Tolkien interrupted me, “we know you’ll need to try to locate the birth mother—”

  “We do?” I half shrieked.

  “—but in the meantime, can’t Ms. Taylor take care of the baby? You know, you may never find the mother.”

  Stephen Triplecorn gaped at Tolkien as if he were bonkers.

  “No. No, we can’t just let Ms. Taylor take care of the baby. Are you insane? There are procedures to be followed. Don’t you Yard boys ever follow procedures, or is the work you do too important for due process?”

  “Name-calling probably won’t help here,” said Tolkien.

  “Name…? Look,” said Stephen Triplecorn in more restrained tones, “surely, even you two must realize that the proper channels must be followed. Do you have any idea how many babies this office is responsible for placing over the course of the year? The Queen may be getting twelve billion, but who do you think is doing all the work?”

  And, oh God, it hit me right then, because of course it hadn’t made any sense before: after all, why would this brilliantly beautiful man be working in such a job in such a place? It was because he was A. Man. With. A. Mission.

  “The proper channels…” he was droning on again.

  Oh, fuck! He wasn’t just A Man With A Mission; he was Inspector fucking Javert!

  “Okay,” said Tolkien, holding up his hand, “I get it. But Jane is part of the proper channels.”

  “She is?”

  “I am?”

  “Yes,” he looked at me meaningfully. “You’re on the list of foster homes waiting for children.”

  I’d gotten so caught up in the anxiety Stephen Triplecorn was causing to stir in me, I’d forgotten about that.

  On the way over, I’d filled Tolkien in on what Stan was up to. But being here before this person who was the embodiment of everything standing between me and my happily ever after, I’d grown so rattled that I’d forgotten that technology had come down for once on my side.

  “Yes,” I said, chin going up, “yes, I am.”

  “You’re…” he sputtered. “No, you’re not. I’d remember if you were.”

  “Overworked, underpaid,” sympathized Tolkien. “You can’t be expected to be hands-on with everything yourself. You’re only human.”

  “Look, I’ll show you,” Stephen Triplecorn said. Seating himself at his desk once again, he pulled up a page on the computer screen that said in bold letters at the top: Waiting Homes—Approved. He ran his finger down the list. “See?” he asked, although we couldn’t from where we were standing. “No Jane Taylor on my list.”

  I rushed around the desk, Emma in my arms, Tolkien right there with me.

  “It has to be there!” I said, looking at the screen.

  But it wasn’t.

  Oh, fucking Stan! He’d promised! This is what I got for putting my future with Emma in the hands of an accountant. Fucking Stan!

  “It must be a mistake!” I said.

  Stephen Triplecorn swiveled in his chair to face me. “It’s no mistake,” he said. “I told you before that your name wasn’t familiar to me.”

  “Well,” I said, stalling for time, although why, I didn’t know, “you can’t be expected to know every single name of every single person in the city of London.”

  “Perhaps not,” he said. “But I know my list. And since your name simply isn’t there and since merely finding the baby gives you no priority whatsoever—”

  The screen behind him flashed, just the briefest of brightenings and there it was.

  “Look!” I pointed, jumping up and down, Emma in my arms. “There it is!”

  “What the—”

  I swiveled him around in his chair so he was facing the screen.

  “See!” I exulted. “Jane Taylor! Knightsbridge! That’s me!” I’d been able to afford Knightsbridge when I lived with Trevor, who made a lot of money. Then, after he left me, I’d been offered a big advance for The Cloth Baby, making it possible for me to stay.

  He was clearly flustered. “But…but…that wasn’t there a second ago!”

  “Eyestrain too.” Tolkien tut-tutted. “Don’t they ever let you people go on holiday? It’s a disgrace to push such hard workers so hard.”

  “But that wasn’t there before!” he still protested.

  “Well, it is now,” said Tolkien, “so why don’t Ms. Taylor and I just—”

  “Wait!” Stephen Triplecorn’s bellow stopped us mid-tiptoe to the door.

  “Wait for what?” we asked at the same time.

  “Just because her name’s suddenly on the list, it changes nothing. All it means is that she’s in line for a baby. But she’s not first in line, so she has no right to this baby.”

  Oh, God. It was like all the air went out of the room. Why hadn’t I thought of that? Why hadn’t I thought to have Stan put me first?

  I looked down at Emma. I couldn’t believe we’d made it this far, only to lose her.

  I suppose I could have made a dash for it, taken our chances living life on the run, but I wanted what was best for her. And while I was certain that “best for her” involved being with me somewhere in the equation, I didn’t think it could be achieved by leapfrogging to Turkey for safety.

  She was so beautiful. I’d only known her for a couple of weeks, and already I loved her so much.

  Then I heard Tolkien talk.

  “You’ve got the chance to do something really wonderful here, Mr. Triplecorn. You’ve got a chance to do what your job is supposed to be about—finding a loving home for a baby who desperately needs one. Look at them. Look at how happy Emma is with Jane. Do you really think it’s in Emma’s best interests to take her from the only mother she’s known so far, a good mother, and put her with someone else who might not love her quite so much?”

  “But the list…”

  “So what? Are
you really going to let Jane’s placement on the list interfere with doing what’s right?”

  “I—”

  “Tell you what,” Tolkien’s voice silkened, sweetening the pot, “isn’t there anything we can do to make your life easier?”

  Stephen Triplecorn reddened, then he yanked open the drawer of his desk and pulled out a massive sheaf of small papers, each one a separate parking ticket.

  “Can you do anything about this?” He waved them at Tolkien.

  Tolkien smiled, then snatched them from his hand. “Done,” he said.

  This time we were at the door, we were really going to make it this time, when I heard Stephen Triplecorn level one last warning at us.

  “Just remember,” he said. “We’ll be looking for the birth mother and we’ll be keeping an eye on you. However you think this is going to turn out, you’re probably wrong.”

  Bam! Bam! Bam! I pounded on David and Christopher’s door, having left Emma downstairs for the moment with Tolkien.

  The door opened and they both stood there, cautiously expectant expressions on their faces.

  “How did it go?” David finally dared to ask.

  “I need your help,” I said, all seriousness.

  “Anything, Jane,” said David.

  “I need for you to go to W.H. Smith and pick me up a copy of What to Expect the First Year.”

  It was like the sun bursting through the clouds, which may be trite, but there was no other phrase for it.

  “Really?” David smiled.

  “Yes.” I smiled back. “Really.” Then I hurled myself into my best friend’s arms. “We’ve got a baby to raise!”