Free The Lost Sister by Russel D McLean

reluctance to let go. But she had known what she was getting into. Must have done. Wickes had gone into detail, told me everything about the surrogate arrangement. How it was all above board. Utterly transparent.
    I couldn’t help thinking about the dog. About Deborah sitting in the dark, holding its corpse, unable to let go.
    Charges should have been pressed against Deborah. The way Wickes told it, Jennifer refused to proceed with pressing criminal charges and the situation was settled, “with a few words.”
    And still…Deborah persisted. Continued to try and insinuate herself into the child’s life.
    â€œWhen she came to me, she was a mess,” Wickes said. “Told me all of this. Nearly broke down, you see. Jesus fuck.” He wiped at his face as though batting away tears. Maybe the ones I’d seen earlier making another attempt to break through. “I mean, she was a state.”
    What did she tell him?
    She told him all that he had told me.
    Told him that after the courts slapped her on the wrist, she kept trying. Believing she was a woman getting fucked by the system.
    Mary was her child, and she knew it now, she’d make a better mother than the girl’s legal guardians.
    Surrogacy be fucked.
    Mary needed her mother. Deborah knew this – felt it – from the inside out.
    Deborah snatched the baby. In broad daylight.
    â€œShe had no control,” said Wickes. “Over her own actions.”
    Jennifer didn’t call the police.
    No, she went to her husband’s uncle.
    David Burns.
    â€œAll things considered,” Wickes said, “The bastard was gentle as a lamb.”
    Gentle as a lamb . Aye, sure, if that lamb shared traits with Hannibal Lecter.
    Even fifteen years ago, Burns had the kind of reputation that meant he no longer had to lift a finger. He gave the nod, a whole squad of would-be hardmen jumped to attention.
    The daylight snatch was resolved fast. Deborah had moved back in with her sister. Had taken the baby there. Christ, I could only imagine her reaction when the hard men came round to “persuade” her to give back the kid.
    I had to ask: “Did the sister know?”
    â€œMust have,” he said. Skipping over the subject like he wasn’t sure.
    Or he didn’t want to tell me.
    I wasn’t there when the men came for the child. Neither was Wickes.
    But he talked like he was. As though he’d been there. Watched the whole damn sorry affair unfold. And maybe he’d heard the story enough he could come to believe that he had been.

    Deborah had let herself in earlier that day using the spare key her sister had given her. She was sleeping in an upstairs box room on a fold out bed. She didn’t have many possessions. Had a few boxes that she left unpacked. Because she didn’t want her sister to see what she had in there.
    Baby clothes. Toys. All the shite she’d have bought for her own baby.
    No, she still couldn’t accept that Mary wasn’t “her” child. That it wasn’t as simple as who gave birth to the girl. That she had no claim, not after the paperwork had gone through declaring the Fursts as Mary’s legal guardians.
    She took the baby upstairs, wrapped in the blanket she had grabbed when she took Mary out of the stroller.
    Feeling ashamed of herself, even then. Or at least that’s what she would later tell Wickes, that she knew what she was doing was wrong.
    Yet did it anyway.
    Did that make her a bad person? Or just sick in some way?
    These were the questions she asked herself. Maybe that hinted at an answer. I couldn’t really say for sure.
    She laid the baby on the fold out bed. On top of the thick blankets her sister had pulled out of a cupboard a few days ago.
    Mary Furst, barely six months old, gurgled happily. She didn’t cry. Hadn’t done since Deborah had snatched her. The baby understanding that this was her mother. That this woman didn’t mean her any