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I spent Thursday morning on Carly’s iPhone accessing directions to the Options clinic and researching online what future parents should expect during the adoption process.
Whereas anyone off the street could create a child, adopting one required a much more thorough evaluation of a person’s qualifications. Applicants endured analyses of temperament, financial stability, and living environment before an agency decided on their ability to raise another human being.
Luckily, the process took months. As long as Norma Rae and I didn’t disqualify ourselves too soon, we would have plenty of opportunities to revisit the clinic in search of Carly’s file.
Last night I’d convinced her to meet me at a restaurant in Chinatown at 1:30 p.m., both to review our story during lunch, then to head to the Options clinic to start our investigation. I figured we should drive in together. Our happy-lesbian cover might be blown if anyone at the clinic noticed our arrival in separate vehicles.
I, of course, had to agree to pay for our meals. I only hoped my good gesture encouraged Norma Rae to stay on her best behavior.
I arrived at the restaurant early, securing a table toward the back of the dining area. I was grateful for the low lighting and lack of other patrons. The restaurant owner might not appreciate the number of empty tables, but it would guarantee Norma Rae and me our privacy.
Norma Rae showed up only a few minutes late. If the hostess hadn’t led her to my table, I might not have recognized her. I blinked several times as she approached, unable to believe her transformation from exotic dancer to conservatively dressed businesswoman.
She pirouetted in front of me. “Whaddaya think?”
“You look fantastic,” I said, taking in the pressed black pantsuit, understated makeup, and severe bun of her hair. She could easily pass as an interior design consultant—or a corporate executive for that matter.
I slunk lower in my seat, feeling suddenly inadequate in my own slacks and blouse.
She winked and slid into the opposite booth seat. “Gotta live up to my bitch’s expectations.”
Okay, so she could pass as an executive if I didn’t know her and she never opened her mouth to speak.
The waitress came over. “Would you ladies like something to drink?”
“Water, please,” I told her.
Norma Rae asked for something I couldn’t make out but I was sure would cost me.
As the waitress wandered off, I pushed my money woes to the back of my mind. I needed to concentrate on finalizing the details of our fake relationship if we hoped to deceive the Options staff.
I folded my arms on the table and made sure I had Norma Rae’s attention before getting down to business. “So, I’ve been doing some research. We’ll have to fill out an application. We talked about our history yesterday, but we didn’t get into the details of our living situation.”
“Sure we did. We lesbos livin’ together, doin’ the nasty.” She banged her fists together.
I sighed. “Right, but what is our address? And our phone number? Are we using our real names? We’ll have to provide all this information to the clinic.”
“We can use my address,” Norma Rae said. “My house be in Summerlin.”
I’d learned from several websites that adoptive parents should expect a home inspection. I cringed at the imagined horror of Norma Rae’s living conditions. We would need weeks to wade through whatever mess she’d created before anyone would deem her home suitable for a young child.
But Summerlin was arguably the nicest area of Las Vegas, full of lush golf courses and upscale grocery stores. I couldn’t imagine anyone saying What a dump or something equally insulting about real estate in that area—at least, not about the outside of the house. I’d just have to pray we located Carly’s file before the clinic scheduled an inspection.
I leaned back when the waitress returned with our drinks. Norma Rae’s looked suspiciously like a fancy imported beer. I hoped she limited herself, not only to spare my credit card, but also so she was sober by the time we arrived at Options. Showing up drunk to ask about adoptions would seriously damage our chances of a follow-up visit.
The waitress pulled a pad and pen out of her waist apron. “You ladies ready to order?”
Norma Rae scanned the menu, her finger trailing down the column of prices. A bead of sweat trickled between my shoulder blades. I didn’t doubt she was searching for the most expensive dish, not about to squander an opportunity for someone else to buy it for her.
I performed the same exercise, only on the hunt to locate the cheapest entry.
As soon as the waitress left with our orders, I hunched over the table again. “Are we going with our own names, or aliases?” I asked Norma Rae.
“You do whatcha want, but I be keepin’ Norma Rae Ryerson. The clinic might find fit to snoop into my rental history, and we be needin’ it to check out.”
“Good idea.” I tried and failed to remember if I’d told Patrick my name during one of my calls about Carly. Fortunately, I had one of those last names that could double as a first name. “I’ll go by Kelly, without the extra e. Kelly . . . Smith. Will that trip you up?”
She shrugged. “Don’t make no difference to me. At the clinic, you just be my honeybuns.”
I winced. “How about just honey?”
“All right, sugar.”
I didn’t respond, deciding to choose my battles.
Norma Rae pulled a cigarette pack out of her purse and began fishing for a lighter.
My pulse spiked. “You can’t smoke in here,” I hissed. “And at the clinic, you’re a nonsmoker. Got it?”
She shoved the box back into her purse, banged her elbows on the table, and tugged on one of her earrings. “Well, I gotta be havin’ me a cigarette before our appointment.”
“You can smoke in the car, but that’s it until we leave Options.” I thought of Norma Rae filling my little Toyota with toxic fumes, the smell clinging to everything and never quite going away. “And we’re taking your car.”
She glared at me. “Boy, you one mean bitch.”
“We can use my phone number,” I said, ignoring her tantrum. “I made the previous calls from Carly’s cell phone. What else do you think they’ll ask for?”
Norma Rae squished her nose. “What’s our employer name?”
“We’ve been independent consultants for the past year,” I reminded her. “Otherwise it’s too easy for the clinic to find out we don’t really work wherever we tell them we do.”
“Okay. So I be Norma Rae, employed by Norma Rae.” She snorted with laughter, obviously relishing the idea.
The urge to correct her grammar surged through me. “You are Norma Rae. Can you speak properly during the visit?”
She rolled her eyes. “’Course I can speak properly. You ain’t havin’ trouble understandin’ me, are ya?”
“No, but we don’t want your way of speaking to deter our chances of being approved,” I told her.
She fluffed her hair. “Honeybuns, if my way of speakin’ be good enough for my mama, it be good enough for me.”
I gritted my teeth and told myself not to push the issue. Only so much could be done within the next forty minutes.
The waitress returned with our food. Norma Rae’s dish smelled delicious. Her plate overflowed with hearty noodles, colorful vegetables, assorted juicy meats, and the moistest jumbo shrimp I’d ever seen.
My heart sank when the server slid a plate of plain rice and dry broccoli in front of me. Maybe I could improve the paltry offering with a good dousing of soy sauce.
Norma Rae and I ate in silence for the next fifteen minutes. I managed to stuff down most of my food, which tasted better than it looked. She only finished a third of her dish. The waitress boxed up the rest as Norma Rae selected a piece of cheesecake for dessert. A bolt of irritation shot through me when she asked the waitress for another to-go container after indulging in two small bites.
“Why did you even bother ordering the thing if you weren’t going to eat it?” I grumbled, mentally calculating that her two bites cost me four dollars each. Those four dollars would then balloon into fifty or one hundred dollars by the time I finally paid off the added credit card balance in twenty years.
“I ate it,” she protested.
Since her verb conjugation followed English language rules, I dropped the matter. Besides, the damage was already done. Returning the cheesecake for a refund didn’t seem like a viable option.
While she packaged up the remains of her cheesecake, I handled the bill. I attempted to glance at the total only to compute the appropriate tip, but the final tally stubbornly imprinted itself on my brain.
“Carry this for me, would ya, sugar?” Norma Rae said, standing up and handing me her to-go containers.
I glowered at her, but dutifully took them.
We headed outside and climbed into her car, a Nissan considerably newer than my Toyota. I frowned when I caught sight of the clutter taking up the entire back seat. Fortunately, I only needed to relocate a few empty containers and water bottles from the passenger seat before settling inside.
I stuck Norma Rae’s uneaten lunch on the floorboard, trying not to think about the likelihood of it remaining there until next spring.
Norma Rae extracted a cigarette and lit it before she even closed the car door. She inhaled half the thing on her first drag, only then turning her key in the ignition. I rolled down my window and stuck my nose through the opening.
As I directed her to Options, I grew increasingly nervous. What if the clinic surprised us by performing an on-the-spot adoption interview? I didn’t know the first thing about raising a child. How should I respond if questioned about how I would discipline a misbehaving brat, or handle reports of bullying, or address confusion over having two mommies?
And our whole ploy relied on our ability to portray believable adoptive parents. What if the act came to a screeching halt the second I uttered a word?
“What if Patrick recognizes my voice?” I asked out loud.
“Then we tell him he be mistaken,” Norma Rae said, turning the steering wheel with one hand while holding her cigarette to her lips with the other.
“He be mistaken,” I repeated, trying to disguise my voice by affecting Norma Rae’s accent.
“You still sound like you, just phonier.”
“He be mistaken,” I tried again.
Norma Rae shook her head, her lip curled up. “Look, muffin, why don’t I do most of the talkin’, and you do most of the lookin’ around?”
“That works for me.” I aimed a finger out the windshield. “Turn right here.”
She pulled into a large shopping complex anchored by a grocery store and started circling the parking lot while I hunted for the clinic.
“There!” I pointed to a nondescript storefront. The door lacked a neon sign hanging above it like all the other shops, but Options was painted in white on the front window.
Norma Rae maneuvered into a parking slot. While she finished off her cigarette, I examined the Options storefront. I couldn’t spot anyone through the glass, but that didn’t stop my anxiety from mounting. I crossed and uncrossed my legs, trying not to focus on how my internal organs no longer felt anchored to my body.
“Ready, honeybuns?” Norma Rae said.
I swallowed hard before nodding.
We opened the car doors, both of us hooking our purse straps over our shoulders. Norma Rae tossed her cigarette butt onto the pavement and stomped on it before we headed into the clinic.
I held my breath as I surveyed the lobby, which contained a few simple chairs and a bare coffee table. An empty reception desk spanned the back of the room. Its spartan contents included a phone and single notepad. None of the typical waiting room props, like a potted plant or out-of-date magazines, occupied the area. I didn’t even spot a stray pen. If the front door hadn’t been unlocked, I’d have guessed the place went out of business shortly after my phone conversation with Patrick.
“Looks like today be a slow one,” Norma Rae commented. Then she elbowed me in the ribs and angled her chin toward the reception desk.
My pulse accelerated when I saw what had caught her attention. Two large, two-drawer file cabinets sat behind the desk. Carly’s file could be in one of those drawers.
“Go check it out,” she whispered.
I froze. “Now?” In the numerous fantasies I’d entertained during the past sixteen hours, not one of them had the unsupervised files spread out before me as I stepped into the clinic. I had planned to spend the first hour—the entire first visit, really—scoping out the building’s floor plan, studying which doors locked, and noting the spacing between each piece of furniture.
But Norma Rae had the right idea. I couldn’t let this opportunity pass without so much as a tug on the drawers.
I made my way toward the file cabinets, my heart slamming against my rib cage. I peeked toward the bare ceiling in search of security cameras before letting my gaze roam across the rest of the room. I half expected to see someone crouching in one corner, waiting to catch me in the act of attempting to violate doctor-patient confidentiality.
Norma Rae followed right behind me. When I veered toward the file cabinets on the left, she planted herself by the edge of the lone hallway leading to the back of the building.
I stopped near the closest file cabinet, hoping I didn’t collapse from nerves. I wiped my sweaty palms on my slacks then reached for the top drawer.
“Hi there, sugar,” Norma Rae bellowed.
I halted in my tracks, my stomach lurching.
“My girlfriend and me wanna adopt a baby and heard you be handlin’ such things here.”
I scurried over to Norma Rae. As casually as I could manage, I leaned against the wall just in case I succumbed to the building urge to faint.
From over Norma Rae’s shoulder, I saw a forty-something man in a lab coat standing in a doorway. “We’re always looking for potential adoptive parents, but normally we schedule those interviews in advance and conduct them elsewhere.”
The sound of his voice chilled my blood. There was no mistaking this man for anyone other than Patrick. Although a note of warmth had crept into his speech today, the weaselly tone matched exactly.
“That be a shame, sugar.” Norma Rae snaked her arm around my waist and yanked me close to her side, all while fluttering her eyelashes at Patrick. “My girlfriend and me be just so eager. We been talkin’ ’bout a baby for almost a year now, ain’t we honeybuns?”
I plastered a smile on my face and nodded so hard I almost pulled a neck muscle.
Patrick stepped farther out into the hall. “Well, like I said, normally I wouldn’t do so, but I happen to be free until four o’clock today. If you ladies would like to begin the process, we can sit down and discuss what needs to be done. Unfortunately, we’ll have to talk in the waiting room. Our offices here are set up as examination areas for the expectant mothers.”
Norma Rae ran her gaze over the waiting area before flashing Patrick a giant smile. “The reception desk be lookin’ so much more comfy than that stubby old coffee table. Mind if we sit there?”
He peered around us. Supposedly he already knew the layout of his own clinic, so I imagined he was checking for stray patient files left out in the open. “Yes, that will be fine.”
He took a step toward the desk, but before he could sit down in the receptionist chair Norma Rae bustled in front of him and claimed it herself.
“Ah,” she said. “This chair be cushionin’ my ass just like a glove.”
Patrick stilled, his forehead creased as if he were struggling to come to terms with the sight of Norma Rae occupying the most comfortable chair in the room.
Of course, I’d already deduced that her real motive for suggesting the desk and snagging the chair behind it had nothing to do with comfort. The file cabinets lay one swivel away.
I took advantage of Patrick’s shock by dragging over two waiting room chairs, placing one directly behind him so he couldn’t misinterpret its intended user. I pulled my own chair around the desk and sat next to Norma Rae, dropping my purse in my lap.
“Please, have a seat,” Norma Rae told him, sweeping her arm sideways as if she really was the office receptionist.
But instead of sitting down, Patrick circled around to our side of the desk. I stiffened and clutched my purse tighter. I feared he would order us to leave, but he just reached above us and opened the top drawer of the closest file cabinet.
I sucked in a breath, assimilating the fact that the doctors left at least one drawer unlocked. Norma Rae gave me a little kick under the table.
Fortunately, Patrick didn’t appear to have noticed. He extracted a folder from the drawer before returning to the other side of the desk and lowering himself into the proffered chair. He handed us two sheets from the folder. “Here are the forms we require.”
I glanced at the documents. The first one looked pretty basic, a joint application and background check asking for standard information about the applicants. The second was some sort of financial-liability acceptance.
I frowned. Either adoptions managed by Options were much simpler than the ones I’d read about online, or these two pages only marked the start of the process and Patrick didn’t want to scare us off too quickly by burying us under a mountain of paperwork. I’d filled out more information when applying for my last frequent-shopper card.
“What else ya got for us, sugar?” Norma Rae asked.
“I also have information on the women looking to adopt out in here.” He tapped the folder. “You will get to review their profiles and decide which of their babies best matches your interests.”
Norma Rae fingered the edge of the folder. “Can we see ’em?”
I expected Patrick to slap her hand away, but he pushed the folder toward her. “Help yourself.”
I squinted at him, struggling to reconcile this Patrick with the one I’d spoken to on the phone. Phone Patrick would never have permitted this. Right about now he’d be yelling something about client confidentiality and forcibly ushering us from the building.
“We go by first names only at Options,” Patrick said. “On their profiles, the women provide any personal information they feel comfortable sharing. We do encourage them to include some of their physical characteristics and their nationality in order to help adoptive parents like yourselves picture the babies’ likely qualities.”
Norma Rae pulled the folder closer and flipped it open. “Makes sense, sugar.”
“All our adoptions are anonymous and confidential. That means you will never meet the mother, and the mother will never meet you. Your selection of a child is based entirely on the profiles in front of you. If you feel none of the children portrayed will fit with your family, we’ll ask that you provide more details on the type of infant desired, and we’ll keep you informed when we locate a good match.”
“You got a hearty selection here,” Norma Rae said, riffling through the stack of papers. Twenty profiles must be in the folder. “I’m sure my honey and me won’t be havin’ any problems findin’ ourselves a little one.”
She reached under the table and squeezed my thigh. I nearly banged my knee against the underside of the desk.
Patrick smiled. “Yes, I’m comfortable we’ll find a good match for you and your partner. Of course, our main priority lies with making sure the expectant mothers and their unborn babies stay healthy and safe. That way you can feel secure in the knowledge that your baby will emerge ready to start off their life with you.”
I nodded to show I was as engaged as Norma Rae despite being mute.
“The women here are of limited means. We expect the adoptive families to bear the burden of all expenses related to keeping the baby, and therefore the mother, healthy. We spare no expense when it comes to prenatal care.”
It dawned on me what Patrick was driving at, in however a roundabout way. He wanted us to know this would be an expensive venture, and we had better be prepared to whip out the credit card the minute he named a figure.
Norma Rae’s head bobbed. “Naturally. We ain’t happy no other way.”
Patrick clasped his hands together, a smile spreading across his face. “We require regular weekly payments of one thousand dollars for the term of the pregnancy. Since the women are in various stages of pregnancy already, you will need to make a one-time initial payment of five thousand dollars to reimburse us for some expenses incurred during the gestational weeks already passed. If an extra payment is needed to cover a medical emergency or another unanticipated expense, we will give you a month to provide that as well.”
Norma Rae’s mouth flapped open as though her jaw had become unhinged. Realizing I must look as shell-shocked as she did, I hastily clamped my own lips together. I reminded myself that although the cost of Options adoptions unquestionably leaned toward the high end of the spectrum, they weren’t completely out of line. I’d read earlier that people paid upwards of $40,000 to adopt one measly baby. But hearing a number quoted in person made the cost sound so much more ridiculous.
I was starting to understand how people ended up convicted of stealing unattended children from baby strollers and raising them as their own. The prospect of shelling out forty grand for a legitimate adoption would tempt anyone to pursue less orthodox methods of parenthood.
Norma Rae coughed. “How soon ya be needin’ the money, sugar?”
“Right away,” Patrick said. “In fact, you can include a check for the initial payment made out to Options when you complete your application.”
Norma Rae and I glanced at each other. She raised her eyebrows as if to say, Why not? Or maybe the look meant, Can you believe this money-grubbing medical bastard?
I swallowed, wondering how long it took a bad check to bounce. Would we have time to come back in a few days for a follow-up appointment, or would the game be up by then?
Patrick reached underneath his lab coat and pulled a pen out of his shirt’s breast pocket. He set it on the desk. “Are you ready to fill out the application now?”
“Yeah, might as well,” Norma Rae said, smiling brightly.
He stood up and rubbed his hands together. “Fantastic! I’ll leave you two lucky parents to the paperwork then. I’ll check back with you in a few minutes.” He retreated down the hallway. Seconds later, I heard a door click shut.
Norma Rae grabbed my arm. Speaking in an exaggerated whisper, she said, “Five thousand bucks? Today? Crazy!”
She seemed to have lost the ability to form a complete sentence, however grammatically incorrect. I couldn’t really blame her. The clinic’s pay-through-the-nose-now policy had thrown me for a loop too. I had anticipated fibbing my way through several rounds of interviews before remitting a payment.
I took a deep breath and forced my thoughts away from the outrageous amount of money being asked from us. Now that Patrick had left the room, I had to focus on our mission.
I darted a glance toward the hallway to make sure he wasn’t silently hovering around the corner before turning to Norma Rae. “I need to check these file cabinets before he comes back.”
She looked at the cabinets behind her, her eyes widening as though she hadn’t expected to still see them there. “Right, right. I be forgettin’ why we here.”
“Cover me.”
I stood up, slung my purse strap over my shoulder, and willed my knees to stop knocking together. When I felt steady enough, I tiptoed to the farthest cabinet and pulled on the top drawer. The noise it made when it slid open sounded utterly deafening.
Norma Rae gave me a thumbs-up.
My throat constricted as I peered inside. Sliding folders hung on a wire rack lining the drawer. A label at the top of each one contained a single female name.
Dumbfounded, I could only stare at the folders for a few seconds. Locating Carly’s file surely couldn’t be this easy.
“What you see?” Norma Rae hissed.
“Files,” I said, knowing I sounded as awestruck as if I’d found the drawer full of gold nuggets.
“No shit!”
I batted my hand at her so she’d pipe down. I needed to concentrate on locating Carly’s file before Patrick returned. Who knew what he would do if he caught me in the act. He might start screaming about confidentiality, or he could become physical. He might break my fingers. He could wrestle my purse away to make sure I hadn’t absconded with any privileged materials, then discover I was Carly’s pesky roommate and make a citizen’s arrest before calling the police.
I pushed the disturbing scenarios aside and flicked through the thick folders, looking for one labeled Carly or Caroline. If she had one here, it wasn’t filed alphabetically like the others.
Frowning, I started from the front. The first file was for an Adelaine. I thumbed past it and continued through the two dozen folders present. Amy, Courtney, Emily, Garnell, Judy, Lauren . . . Zoe. No Carly. No Caroline.
I shut the drawer, shaking my head in response to Norma Rae’s expectant look. She scrunched up her nose.
I turned to the bottom drawer. It housed reams of blank paper, notepads, and other office supplies. I closed it and moved on.
The top drawer of the next file cabinet held information relevant to the adoptive parents. A couple folders identical to the one Patrick had used to brief us on the process sat at the bottom. Three files labeled Mark/Paula, Stephen/Candace, and David/Dana hung from the runners. I assumed these belonged to the families who had arranged to adopt. Their files weren’t nearly as thick as the ones for the girls.
The bottom drawer was completely empty. Since no other cabinets occupied the area—thereby giving me nothing more to search—I stupidly studied the emptiness in case something like a file for Carly materialized out of thin air.
“Her file’s not here,” I said, although Norma Rae must have already determined that when I hadn’t taken anything. I closed the drawer and dropped back into my seat. “Maybe he removed it after she died.”
“Already? The poor girl ain’t even buried yet,” Norma Rae protested. “Ain’t that sacrilegious or somethin’?”
We both whipped around when a door opened. Within seconds Patrick appeared by our side.
If he had emerged half a minute earlier, he would have caught me snooping.
Acute awareness of my narrow escape sent a dizzying wave of relief crashing through me. I gripped the chair’s armrests to steady myself, and hoped I didn’t get sick all over the adoption paperwork.
“How are you ladies doing with the application?” Patrick bent over to get a better look at our progress, the corners of his mouth turning down when his eyes landed on the blank form.
“My honey and me be just so excited to find us a little one that we been lookin’ through these mama pages instead,” Norma Rae said, picking up one of the profiles and waving it in front of Patrick’s nose.
To do my part in continuing this ruse, I grabbed one of the profiles and held it up to my face. From behind the page, I peeked at Patrick, who had his brow furrowed.
“Just remember that the sooner we can process your application, the closer we’ll be to getting you that much-anticipated little one,” he said.
And you your check, I thought.
“And I have an appointment at four,” he reminded us, “so I need everything filled out during the next half hour.”
Norma Rae snapped her fingers. “We’ll do it now,” she announced, as if she’d come up with the perfect solution to his predicament.
Patrick rubbed his hands together, no doubt envisioning them filled with piles of fresh Benjamin Franklins. “Excellent. And don’t forget to include your initial payment of five thousand dollars, made out to Options.”
“How could I forget that, sugar?”
Patrick’s smile faltered, but soon returned in full force. Norma Rae’s own hundred-watt smile must have fooled him into thinking he’d imagined the snarkiness of her tone. He said, “I still have a few things to attend to in my exam room, so I’ll leave you ladies alone for a couple more minutes.” He ducked down the hall.
The second his door clicked shut, Norma Rae leaned in my face. “What now?”
I pointed to the desk, some of the tension in my shoulders lifting now that Patrick had disappeared again. “You need to fill out the application.” I tilted the chair back and angled my head in the direction of the hallway. “I’ll wander around to see where else Carly’s file could be.”
She scooped up the stack of profiles and shoved them into my hands. “Take these as cover.”
I clutched the pages close. “Good idea.”
I stood up, more confident now than I had been when searching the file cabinets. Given enough time and opportunity, I could get in the habit of infiltrating medical offices and compromising doctor-patient confidentiality.
I sidled down the hallway, which had two doors on each side. I skipped the first door on the right, labeled Restroom. The two doors on the left were designated as exam rooms. Since I’d seen Patrick hovering in the doorway of the first room upon our arrival, I jiggled the knob of the second door. It didn’t budge.
The door opposite the locked exam room had Storage stamped on it. I grabbed the doorknob, feeling no resistance as it rotated.
“Are you lost?”
I twisted around, my heart leaping into my throat. Patrick stood in his doorway, his eyes narrowed and his arms folded across his chest.
“Ah.” I willed my heart to stop pounding so I could think clearly. I looked at the profiles, which I’d crumpled in fright. I loosened my grip and waved them around, hoping the motion inspired me. “I was just . . . searching for a photocopier so Norma Rae and I can take copies of these home and study them. We don’t want to make a hasty decision about something so important.”
Patrick didn’t say anything. I hoped he wasn’t considering calling the police. Now that I’d been caught, all my confidence evaporated. My eyes darted around in search of a nearby emergency exit. Never mind that I’d be abandoning Norma Rae. She had enough street smarts to handle her own escape.
The only good thing about this encounter was that I was so petrified my voice didn’t even sound like my own. If Patrick did remember our phone conversation, he shouldn’t be able to tie me to the girl he identified as Carly’s roommate.
To my relief, the pinch between his eyes started to smooth out. He seemed to be buying my story, or at least granting me the benefit of the doubt—for now anyway. I didn’t think he’d take kindly to catching me in the storage room a second time before his four o’clock appointment, which meant my search for today had to end.
“Let me see which profiles you have there,” he said, approaching slowly as if to not startle me.
I shrank toward the wall and extended the pages toward him.
He accepted them and flipped through the stack. It took him seemingly forever to get to the last page. “These look like all the profiles currently available. You haven’t narrowed down your selection at all?”
“We want to keep our options open,” I improvised, feeling like a high school student caught turning in someone else’s essay. “You know, in keeping with the whole Options theme.” I emitted a little laugh in case my joke had gone over his head.
“Yes, choosing the best match can be a daunting task,” he conceded. He held out the profiles. “You’re welcome to take these copies with you, but we ask that you not share them. The less information circulating about our patients, the better. Some of these women have difficult situations, and we value confidentiality here at Options.”
“Oh, I understand completely.” I snatched the papers from him. He jerked his hand back as if I’d given him a paper cut.
I hugged the profiles to my chest and took a couple steps toward the lobby. I moved slowly, not wanting Patrick to think I was fleeing from the scene. But when he didn’t initiate another interrogation or yell for security, I walked a little faster.
He followed me into the reception area. “How are we doing with that application?”
“I’m just finishin’ that up now, sugar.” Norma Rae looked up from writing out what appeared to be a five-thousand-dollar check. She turned back to her task, signing with a flourish, then ripping out the check and handing it over to Patrick.
If he had any lingering unease, it vanished now. He lifted the check up to the light, his eyes transfixed. I didn’t think he could look more reverent if the Pope had just presented him with a piece of Christ’s body. “This is wonderful, ladies.” He grinned at Norma Rae. “I’ll be sure to process your background check right away.”
“Dontcha need the forms?” Norma Rae reminded him.
Patrick raised his eyebrows. “Of course. I figured you had those completed already.”
“I gotta get my honeybuns to sign.”
Norma Rae pressed the pen into my palm. Readjusting the profiles in my arms, I scribbled something where she indicated. She handed the two pages over to Patrick.
“Excellent,” he said, accepting the forms without a second glance. “It has been a pleasure meeting you ladies today.”
“You gonna give us a copy of the application?” Norma Rae asked.
Mention of copies made me jump as if I’d been prodded by a live wire.
“I will forward electronic copies to the email address provided,” Patrick told her, starting to back into the hallway. “Please let me know if you have any questions in the future.”
I held up the profiles. “And once we’ve decided on a baby.”
He cleared his throat. “Yes, naturally. I’m looking forward to doing business with you ladies.”
“And we be lookin’ forward to gettin’ that little one in our arms,” Norma Rae said. She stood up and headed for the door. “Too-da-loo.”
I scurried after her, waving to Patrick as I left. I didn’t stop to see whether he returned the gesture.
