Two Mothers, One Child

## Chapter 12: Wanted

Marcus Voss's trial lasted four days.

The jury deliberated for six hours. Guilty on all counts. Custodial interference. Identity fraud. Obstruction of justice. Tampering with an official investigation. The arson charge was dropped due to insufficient physical evidence, but the prosecutor noted in closing arguments that the fire's origin remained under active investigation.

Marcus stood when the verdict was read. He was wearing the navy suit. He didn't flinch. He didn't speak. He looked straight ahead at a point on the wall behind the judge, and his face held the same composed, pleasant expression it always held, like the world was a dinner party and he was performing the role of gracious host even as the house burned down around him.

Gloria Voss was not in the courtroom. She had submitted her testimony by deposition and then checked herself into a cardiac rehabilitation facility in Charlottesville. She'd had a mild heart episode the week before the trial. Elena sent flowers. She didn't visit. She wasn't ready for that yet. Maybe later. Maybe not. Some things don't have a schedule.

The sentencing hearing was set for six weeks out.

Elena didn't go to that either.

On the first Saturday after the verdict, she drove to Forest Hill Avenue. Parked in the lot. Walked up the stairs to unit 207 and knocked.

Sophie opened the door.

"Elena!" Not Dr. Voss anymore. They'd crossed that bridge three weeks earlier, at a park, on a bench, eating popsicles. Elena had said, "You can call me Elena if you want." Sophie had said, "That's a pretty name. It sounds like a song."

"Hey, kiddo. Ready?"

"Almost! I can't find my left shoe. Mr. Hops hid it."

"Mr. Hops is a troublemaker."

"I know. He's a bad influence."

Nora appeared in the hallway. Dressed. Smiling. Not the tight, rehearsed smile from the first appointment. Something looser. The kind of smile that happens when you stop clenching.

"I found the shoe," Nora said. "It was under the couch. With three crayon wrappers and a granola bar from October."

They drove to Maymont Park. The three of them. Elena drove. Nora sat in the passenger seat. Sophie was in the back with Mr. Hops buckled into the seat beside her because, as she explained, "He gets carsick if he doesn't have a seatbelt."

The park was crowded. Families. Dogs. A man playing guitar badly near the fountain. Sophie ran ahead to the Japanese garden and then ran back because she saw a turtle and needed both of them to come see it immediately.

"It's huge," Sophie announced. "It's like a dinosaur turtle."

"That's a snapping turtle," Elena said. "Don't get too close."

"Does it really snap?"

"It really does."

"Cool." Sophie crouched at the edge of the pond. The turtle sat on a rock, unbothered, ancient, unaware that it was the most important thing in a seven-year-old's universe right now.

Nora and Elena stood behind her. Side by side. Close enough that their shoulders almost touched.

"She asked me something last night," Nora said quietly.

"What?"

"She asked if you were going to come to her birthday party."

Sophie's birthday. January 14. The real one, not the forged January 12 on the manufactured certificate. The correction had been filed with the court. Sophie Kincaid was legally recognized as Lily Voss Kincaid. Both names. Both mothers on the guardianship filing. The first joint arrangement of its kind in Henrico County, according to Priya, who had seemed both proud and mildly terrified when the judge approved it.

"What did you tell her?" Elena asked.

"I told her of course. That you wouldn't miss it."

Sophie stood up from the turtle. Turned around. She had mud on her knees and a leaf in her hair and she was grinning the way kids grin when everything in the world is exactly right and they don't know how rare that is.

"Can we get ice cream?" she asked.

"It's 10 in the morning," Nora said.

"So?"

Elena looked at Nora. Nora looked at Elena.

"She makes a valid point," Elena said.

They got ice cream. Sophie chose strawberry. Nora chose vanilla. Elena chose chocolate and then gave half to Sophie because Sophie decided she wanted both.

They sat on a bench near the Italian garden. Sophie between them. Mr. Hops on her lap, his uneven ears flopped against her arm. Inside the longer ear, a piece of paper with Elena's handwriting waited for a day that was still years away, when a young woman would discover it and read it and understand something about where she came from and who wanted her and how two women who had every reason to be enemies chose, instead, to be family.

But that was later. For now, there was ice cream and a dinosaur turtle and the simple fact of three people on a bench in the sun, together, which is not a small thing. It is not a small thing at all.

Sophie licked her cone. Strawberry dripped onto Mr. Hops. She wiped it off with her sleeve and said, "Mr. Hops says thank you for the ice cream."

"Tell Mr. Hops he's welcome," Elena said.

"He also says he wants rocket shoes for his birthday."

"When is Mr. Hops's birthday?"

Sophie thought about it. Hard. The way kids think about things that matter to them, which is everything.

"Same as mine," she said finally. "Because we were born on the same day. January fourteenth."

Elena's hand found Nora's behind Sophie's back. Nora squeezed once. Quick. Then let go.

The sun was high. The park was full of people and dogs and bad guitar music and one ancient snapping turtle on a rock. Sophie finished her ice cream and asked if they could go see the bears and then the waterfall and then the other turtles because, apparently, one was not enough.

They went. All three of them. Together.

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