Free What You Wish For by Kerry Reichs

does that mean?”
    “My schedule is open for you today. Can you come by?”
    Wyatt recognized that he wasn’t going to get anything out of Katherine Feely Jones until he met with her in person. As the school principal he made similar calls to parents on a daily basis. He was a master. Katherine was his match. “I’ll come directly after school,” he capitulated.
    “I’ll have the kettle on.” Katherine liked meetings to feel like fireside chats. They didn’t. They felt like American Idol auditions, the applicant nervously wondering if his song and dance was going to win a golden ticket. Ilana had been his golden ticket, and now there was a “hiccup.”
    “I’ll see you then.” He disconnected.
    The afternoon passed in a blur. Wyatt Googled Ilana Lloubina a number of different ways involving initials and the creative use of quotations, but it yielded no city morgue reports or L.A. Times exposés, just the usual nothing. An astonished Sammy Whitcomb, senior class hooligan, scurried out of the principal’s office unable to believe his luck after he was dismissed with a vague “Don’t do it again” for selling ninth-graders individual cigarettes at two bucks a pop behind the gym. After all, mused Wyatt, it was a victimless crime. It wasn’t as if he’d mugged a defenseless pregnant woman, leaving her an unidentified amnesiac in a hospital ward somewhere.
     
    “Wyatt! Welcome.” Katherine ushered him into her office. Her artificial red hair was poufed into some sort of lopsided Victorian bun arrangement, and she wore a periwinkle suit that Wyatt was sure had A Name. Her lipstick showed little ravines where skin met her upper lip, creviced from years of smoking. They sat at a grouping of overstuffed love seats rather than by her desk. Wyatt felt he might bounce right off if someone plopped down next to him.
    “Coffee?”
    “No thanks.”
    “Tea?”
    “Fine.” Wyatt wanted to get on with it. He accepted tea he wouldn’t drink.
    For once Katherine dispensed with the jokes. “Wyatt, I’m afraid I have bad news.”
    Wyatt braced himself.
    “It seems we’ve both been the victims of a scam. Ilana has disappeared without further notice. I visited her apartment to find it cleaned out, with no indication of her whereabouts.”
    This was not what Wyatt was expecting to hear. “What do you mean? Where has she gone?”
    “I’m afraid I don’t know. I received a call this morning from a diligent Assistant U.S. Attorney in Orlando, Florida. Ilana Lloubina, under the name Ilya Petrov, has pulled this scam before.”
    “Scam?” Wyatt was bewildered. “Before? What happened to the baby?”
    “According to the prosecutor, Ms. Petrov became pregnant while unmarried, and was guided to consider open adoption by a church counselor. A broker matched Ms. Petrov with a wealthy Orlando family, who set up Ms. Petrov in a nice apartment, with a generous stipend and a car. It was a satisfactory arrangement all around.”
    “Can we call her Ilana, please?” Wyatt tried to take in Katherine’s story.
    “Of course. The situation may have proved a little too satisfactory. Ilana came from a large Russian family of little income, and found her new lifestyle infinitely preferable to sharing one bathroom with eight siblings. Ilana found a second family that sought open adoption and contracted with them as well. The first family paid the bills directly, and she convinced the second family to provide her with cash to pay the same bills. Quite enterprising.”
    “For the same baby?”
    “Yes.”
    “Was it . . . is it . . . my baby?”
    “No. Unfortunately, that pregnancy failed. Ilana suffered a late-term miscarriage, and both contracts were dissolved, with all the parties none the wiser. Ilana would have walked away a little richer, but she got greedy.”
    “She got pregnant again.” Wyatt hated the thought that his baby was conceived as a scam. He wanted to steal the child away and protect it from hurt. He also