Dead Giveaway Read Online Free Page A

you up, you quit crying right away. You knew we belonged together.''
      More hairy little feet on the nape of my neck. More painful glances from Will.
      ''But that's not how things worked out,'' I said.
      ''Thanks to Jasper .'' She practically spat his name. ''Will was sent to me. God knew how much I wanted a baby, but Jasper called the police—even after I told him it was downright blasphemous to go against God's will. We should have kept our baby.''
      ''But . . . your husband did what he was supposed to,'' I said, trying to sound apologetic for pointing this out.
      She looked at me like I'd tracked horse manure onto her plush white carpet. ''The right thing to do, my dear young woman, is to accept what God gives you. And He gave me a perfect baby boy.''
      Will subdued a ''Yeah, she's definitely crazy'' smile by scooping up one last giant forkful of potato salad and shoving it into his mouth.
      ''If you'd kept him,'' I said, ''wouldn't people have wondered where this baby came from?''
      ''They might have had questions,'' conceded Verna Mae. ''But folks in town knew we wanted to adopt. It's not like I didn't talk to everyone and their stepcousin about our desire for children.''
      ''Did you apply to be Will's foster parent after he was taken from you?'' I asked.
      ''That's not something I wish to discuss.'' From her brusque attitude and the little twitch near her eye, I figured I'd better leave the subject alone.
      According to my amateur psychological analysis, this woman was angry at her dead husband and mad at the system that took Will away—grudges she'd held for nineteen years. Focusing on her old wounds wouldn't help Will find his birth parents. I needed to know what had not appeared in the newspaper articles, anything that would give me a place to start looking for clues. I said, ''The articles Will's parents kept about the abandonment were pretty sketchy. Did Will come with a note? Or a special formula or baby bottle? Anything?''
      ''Nothing but the little T-shirt and diaper he arrived in,'' she said.
      ''No blanket?'' I asked.
      ''Maybe a flannel receiving blanket. I don't really recall.''
      ''Did he arrive in a box or a car seat or . . . what?'' I asked.
      ''One of those plastic infant seats that you could buy anywhere back then. Officer Rollins took everything with him that night. Said he needed them for evidence. Evidence. Like it was a crime God left Will here with me.'' Her eyes filled and she blinked hard to fight back the tears.
      Explaining to this woman that child abandonment was indeed a crime back then, and still is if you don't drop the baby off at a hospital or other safe haven, would have done no good. I chose another direction. ''Did you hear anything about the baby in the days that followed?''
      ''Only that CPS got custody. Ridiculous arrangement. He already had someone to love him. But look at him,'' she said, beaming at Will. ''He's turned out beautifully despite all those mistakes.''
      She put her hand on Will's forearm and kept talking, rattling off stories about championship games he'd played in, starting with Little Dribblers. Little Dribblers, I learned, was not a team of bib-wearing toddlers but rather a youth basketball league.
      Will and I may have been squirming before, but this was the Twilight Zone moment—when we realized she'd followed Will around, maybe even with a camera. ''And . . . how did you learn all these things about Will?'' I asked. Because she shouldn't have known anything, not even his name.
      She stared at me, color rising in her cheeks. ''Why does that matter?''
      ''Probably doesn't,'' I answered quickly. Getting her more agitated than she already was did not seem like a good plan, so I decided to keep my thoughts to myself about how Will's adoption information should have been better protected.
      ''It's been very difficult since he went away to college, though,'' Verna Mae went on. ''That drive to the