Free Girl of Lies by Charles Sheehan-Miles

figure in Carrie’s arms. Tiny. She stood up and moved to Carrie in deliberate motions.
    Carrie met her eyes and smiled. “Andrea, this is Rachel.”
    Andrea swallowed. Her chest was tight, stomach clenched, throat closed up to the point she felt as if she was going to have difficulty breathing. She whispered. “May I… may I hold her?”
    “Very carefully. Have you held a baby before? Cradle her head.”
    “I have,” Andrea replied. Carrie wouldn’t know, of course, but Andrea had spent much of the last four years babysitting for two young couples in her building. She knew how to handle babies.
    But this was different.
    She took baby Rachel in her arms, sliding her left hand up behind Rachel’s head. For just a second, Rachel’s face began to go red, and her toothless mouth opened. Andrea pulled her a little closer then rocked on her feet.
    Rachel quieted. Her skin was very pale, like Carrie and Andrea’s, and her eyes were a faint blue. A diaphanous fringe of hair showed on her head.
    “She’s beautiful.” Andrea said it in a reserved voice, not demonstrating any of the storm of emotions she felt. Inside, it was as if a gale had been unleashed. Her emotions on holding the infant were confused, conflicted. More than once she’d sat at home in Calella and felt a cold knot of resentment in her stomach. Not for her parents, who she knew were shits. But for her sisters, who knew it too, but who didn’t seek her out. Except for Julia, she knew about the rest of her sisters’ lives through Facebook, or in Carrie’s case, through the newspapers.
    She didn’t want to feel that way. And this infant drew her in. Instead of disdain, or separation, or anger, what she felt was fierce protectiveness. She looked in those eyes and knew that if it came down to it, she’d give her life to protect that baby. It was a difficult, confusing emotion, and her eyes flooded with tears as she thought about it. She looked up at Carrie, and saw in Carrie’s expression the mirror of what she felt. Except that Carrie wasn’t looking at the baby. Carrie was looking at Andrea.
    She swallowed. That naked protectiveness and love felt raw and dangerous. She held Rachel out to Carrie, her hands suddenly shaking.
    Carrie took the baby without hesitation. “Are you all right?” she asked. Her eyes dropped to Andrea’s shaking hands.
    Andrea nodded. In her peripheral vision, she saw Leah Simpson stand.
    “I’ll be going. For the time being, until we have more permanent arrangements made, two uniformed officers are stationed in the lobby and one at your door twenty-four hours a day. If you need to go anywhere, please talk with the officer outside so you’ll have an escort.”
    Andrea nodded, desperately wanting to get out of that room.
    “Here’s my card,” Simpson said. Andrea reached out and wordlessly snatched it. She needed this woman to leave. She needed to step out of this room.
    Sarah was staring at her frankly now, eyes filled with curiosity.
    “I… I need to… I’ll be back.”
    Clutching the card in her hand, she ran down the hallway to the bathroom and slammed the door behind her. She barely made it to the toilet before the nausea forced her to her knees.

2. Leslie Collins. April 29. 12:30 pm
    Leslie Collins looked around the relative darkness of Assaggi’s on Bethesda Avenue and took a bite of his tortelli di zucca. Organic whole grain fresh pasta filled with pumpkin and glazed with a butter sage sauce, it was surprisingly good. Despite the fact that his job frequently forced him to eat in sometimes inconvenient and occasionally downright awful locations, Collins preferred to eat at home, with his wife.
    Today that wasn’t an option. For one thing, the planned topic of discussion would ruin her appetite.
    Filner was late. Again. Collins would have preferred to have met somewhere more discreet, or not at all. Or that he’d never been forced into his uneasy business relationship with Mitch Filner in the first place.