The Bone Collector, page 28
“What does that mean?” Gift asked. “How did he feel about you?”
Park made a disgusted sound. “Kendrick had a very one-sided interest in your mother. He made no secret of it.”
“He brought me to work in his Bangkok office until he could find a permanent position for me out of the field. But I didn’t truly understand who Kendrick was until I saw him there in Thailand, a U.S. diplomat with full immunity and no moral compass. He was far worse than we’d ever imagined.” She shakes her head slightly, as if suppressing a shudder. “While I was there, I worked alongside a beautiful, young girl named Sukhon, but everyone called her Petal. It suited her. She had the most beautiful skin.” She reached out and stroked Gift’s cheek. “Like you.”
“Are you saying…”
She didn’t answer directly, instead saying, “We were both pregnant. She was a few weeks ahead of me, though she was doing her best to hide it. She barely had a bump compared to me. I kept her secret. Even though she was married, there was a lot of discrimination against pregnant women. She said she worried if Kendrick knew, she’d lose her job. And her husband had run out on her. She needed that job to take care of the baby.”
Gift chewed on his nail, a slippery feeling settling in his stomach.
“After I’d spent a few months in the office, Kendrick came in one day and told us there was a leak, that someone in our office was selling U.S. secrets to the highest bidder. A few days later, over lunch, Petal confided in me that she suspected it was Kendrick himself. I did my best to put her mind at ease. Kendrick was a pervert and incompetent, but espionage? Treason? I couldn’t wrap my head around it. He wanted to be president one day.”
Gift took Park’s hand, not missing the way his mother’s gaze dipped to stare at their joined fingers for a long moment before seeming to remember herself.
“No matter how much the agency investigated, we couldn’t plug the leak. Then Kendrick brought me into his office one day and said he suspected Petal was the mole. He said he had proof but that he needed to catch her in the act. He wanted my help. He suspected she’d been sneaking into his office at night, accessing his computer. It was supposed to be easy. I just had to wait in Kendrick’s darkened office and, when she arrived, Kendrick would come in and confront her. It was a terrible plan. Ridiculous, really. But it seemed harmless enough.”
“So, what happened?” Park asked.
“There was no chance to confront her. She walked into Kendrick’s office with a gun in her hand and she shot me. By the shock on her face, I assume she expected to find Kendrick. She dropped the gun and ran. Kendrick chased her. I passed out. I woke up six days later to learn that my baby girl was dead, Petal was dead, and the leak had been plugged. I was too grief-stricken to even think about her baby.”
She shook her head, like she was back in that moment, her anguish real. “I was furious with Kendrick. I hated him. I probably would have killed him if I had any strength at all. This stupid plan was the reason my baby was dead. He was the reason I’d never have any more children.” She flicked her gaze to them then away again. “The bullet caused so much damage that they had to remove my uterus and part of my liver. He begged me not to tell anyone about his stupid plan. He said he’d shown the higher ups proof that Petal was the leak and that it was over. I told him death was too good for him and to get out of my room and never come back.” She gave Gift a look that made him feel like crying. “But two days later, he was back and he brought me…you.”
Tears streamed down her face. She got on her knees in front of Gift and held his hands. “You were so small. You had these big ears and this tiny nose…like a mouse. You had ten fingers and ten toes and these big, soft brown eyes. He said you were mine. That they’d saved Petal’s baby but not her and you had nobody who could care for you. He said he’d already arranged everything. There was a birth certificate showing you were ours—mine and your father’s. Kendrick bragged about pulling a lot of strings to get a U.S. birth certificate to Bangkok so quickly. I just had to keep his secret. Holding you, keeping Kendrick’s stupid plan a secret seemed such a small price to pay to have you.”
“But you said you didn’t even want a baby,” Gift whispered, clinging to his mother’s sweaty hands.
She smiled through her tears, shrugging. “I didn’t. At first. But as I got further along, I fell in love with my baby, with the idea of her…or him. When she died, it felt like someone had ripped my lungs from my body. Then they told me I’d never carry a child again. I was inconsolable. Kendrick knew that. He brought you to me to buy my silence. But how could I say no?”
Gift didn’t realize he was crying, too, until his nose started running, causing him to sniffle loudly. He wiped at his cheeks with the back of his hand.
“I told your father everything. I couldn’t do this without him. He wanted to be a father so badly and you were right there. Absolutely perfect. You never cried. You were so quiet we worried something was wrong with you. But you were just…content despite everything you’d been through. Your father named you Kla. Brave. But I just called you Gift. Because that’s what you were. It’s what you are.”
Gift hugged his mother hard, crying buckets for the second time in twenty-four hours. Park rubbed his back but otherwise stayed quiet, like he wanted them to have their moment.
After a while, Gift pulled away and his mother returned to her chair.
“So, why is Kendrick trying to kill me? Kill us?” Gift asked.
Her expression turned grim and she glanced at a clock on the wall. “Because you and I are the only people who can prove what really happened to Sukhon.”
“I don’t understand.”
There was a knock on the door just as his mother said, “You will.”
“Who is that?” Park asked sharply, drawing his gun and pointing it at the door. “There’s no way we were followed.”
Anchali shook her head. “Don’t,” she said, pointing to Park’s weapon. “I expected her. No matter what happens, just let me handle this. Okay?”
Her? Park hesitated, then nodded, muscles tense.
To Gift, Anchali said, “Don’t be scared, okay, noo. You’re safe.”
The moment Anchali opened the door, a woman shoved a gun in her face. Anchali didn’t seem surprised, but Gift sucked in a shocked breath, bolting to his feet. “Mom!”
The woman at the door flinched at Gift’s cry, eyes jerking to him, then back to Anchali, eyes wide.
After a moment, she shoved past Anchali, rushing at Gift. Park stood, putting himself between them, pointing his weapon at the skinny, unkempt woman.
“Stop. Stop. Stop,” Anchali said in Thai. “Both of you. Please. Please, just listen.”
“I don’t understand,” the woman said in Thai, still brandishing the gun in one shaky hand but with far less conviction.
The pieces fell into place as Park studied the woman. She was older, gaunt, and her clothes, though clean, hung off her. Her face showed signs of a hard life, but she had rich brown hair, delicate features, soft brown eyes, and rounded cheeks.
Gift clearly took after his mother. “Petal,” Park muttered.
She blanched like she’d seen a ghost, eyes wild as she looked from Anchali to Park and back again before asking Park, “Who are you?” She pointed the gun at Anchali. “Who is he?”
Anchali gave her a gentle smile. “That’s Park. Gift’s…boyfriend…” she explained, tone implying she could hardly believe she had to utter those words out loud.
Gift blinked rapidly, looking between the two women. “What’s happening here?” He looked at his mother—at Anchali. “Who is she?” he said again. “What is this?”
Park could see his gears turning. It was hard enough coming to terms with learning he was adopted and that his biological mother was a dead traitor selling government secrets, but having said woman resurrected and standing in the same room just moments later was a much harder hill to climb. Even Park was having a hard time fathoming this.
“Who are you?” she asked again, gesturing to Park with the gun. Clearly, she wasn’t buying Anchali’s boyfriend story.
“Park,” he said calmly.
“Park? What’s happening?” Gift asked in English.
“Thai,” she snapped at Gift, then her face softened, her voice gentle as she repeated, “Speak Thai.”
Gift gave a jerky nod, repeating his question in Thai before adding a hasty, “I’m sorry.”
She gave him a watery smile. “Come. Come.”
Anchali gave Gift a sharp look of warning. It said don’t move. She looked pained as she spoke with the other woman. “Sukhon, please listen. I brought you here for a—”
She swung the gun at Anchali. “Shut up. You stole my baby. You stole him from me while I was left to rot.”
“What?” Gift asked again, white as a sheet, looking at his mother in horror.
“Please, just listen,” Anchali tried again, but the woman wasn’t having it.
She shook her head frantically, pacing back and forth. “I’m taking my baby and I’m leaving. We’re leaving.” To Gift, she said, “Come.” Her eyes were pleading.
What had Anchali been thinking bringing this woman face to face with Gift? She was clearly unstable.
“Mae,” Gift gasped, not looking at Anchali but at Sukhon.
Park put an arm out, barring him from moving towards the woman. Gift didn’t go to the woman, but he was now close enough to Park’s back to feel him trembling.
Sukhon’s eyes teared up and she nodded.
Gift smiled at her. “I-I remember you. You were in the van when those men tried to…kill me?”
“No. No.” She shook her head again. “Not kill. Just bring you home. I would never hurt you.”
“I know,” Gift said. “I know that now.”
Sukhon nodded, calmer now than she had been a moment ago. She held out her hand. “Ahrak.” She gestured for him to come once more.
“I-I can’t,” Gift said. Sukhon made a distressed sound, her expression growing pained once more. This time, it was Gift who made a pleading sound. “Not yet. But I’ll sit here with you. I want to talk to you. I want to know the whole story. Where you’ve been. What happened to you. If you tell me that, then maybe we can leave together. But I-I need to know the whole story. Can you please tell me what happened? I thought you were dead?”
She hesitated, wiping the palm of one hand on her jeans in an agitated motion. She looked back and forth between Park and Anchali then whined, pacing back and forth again like a caged animal.
Anchali was right. This woman wasn’t a threat. Both Park and Anchali could have disarmed her in mere moments, if necessary. Anchali clearly wanted this meeting. Maybe she, too, wanted to know how it was that Sukhon was still alive.
Park slowly bent to place his gun on the coffee table, raising his hands in surrender, before slowly moving to sit in the other armchair beside Anchali.
Gift took a seat and patted the space beside him, giving the woman an encouraging smile.
Park prayed Gift could reason with the woman. He didn’t want to have to kill Gift’s birth mother in front of him just as he got her back.
Sukhon hesitated for another moment, then seemed to make a decision, inching towards Gift, then finally sitting. She sat angled her body towards him, her knees pressed together and both hands holding the gun in her lap like she might be able to ignore Park and Anchali.
She gazed at Gift with a blind adoration that spoke of madness. Then she jerked forward, wrapping her arms around him in a vine-like grip.
Gift stiffened, then melted into her, hugging her back just as fiercely, letting his eyes fall shut. Fear shot through Park like electricity. What if Gift chose to leave with her thinking he was saving Park and Anchali?
The worry lasted only as long as it took for Gift to open his eyes and meet Park’s gaze, expression bleak. Gift pitied this woman. They all did.
When Sukhon released him, Gift smiled. “I look like you.”
She smiled back, and Park saw the damage to her teeth. Someone had neglected this woman for years. Decades, even.
Kendrick. What the fuck did you do?
Gift looked pained, but she didn’t seem to notice, so enamored of him, fussing over him like he was still a newborn, touching him wherever she could.
“Can you tell me what happened to you? To me?” He gently took the gun from her lap and set it beside them, taking both her hands in his. “You’re the only one who can tell me the whole truth. Will you?”
Her gaze flinched to Park and Anchali once more, like she expected an attack or, at the very least, a protest, but she gave a jerky nod when Gift smiled encouragingly.
“How do you know Marshall Kendrick?” he asked. Her face contorted, her rage and disgust evident. Tears sprang to Gift’s eyes as he whispered, “What did he do to you?”
Her expression softened at Gift’s tears. She pulled her hands free to wipe at them.
With one more hostile look at Anchali, she began to tell her story, her voice flat. “I worked for Mr. Kendrick as his secretary. It was a good job for someone like me. I had never finished school. I married when I was sixteen. I was good at my job…but he took advantage. He didn’t hire me for my skill. He forced himself on me. Made me do things to keep my job, even though he knew I was a married woman. Then my husband disappeared and things just got worse.”
Christ.
Sukhon’s pain was Gift’s, more tears already sliding down those soft, full cheeks, so much like his mother’s, even as underweight as she was. Park desperately wanted to comfort him, to hold him, to touch him, to help him somehow. But he couldn’t. He could only trust that Gift could work through this.
How far had Kendrick gone to keep Sukhon under his thumb? Had he wanted her badly enough to make her husband disappear?
Gift held her hand tighter, nodding encouragingly for her to go on.
She looked at Anchali, then back to Gift. “After Anchali came, it was better…for a little while. He couldn’t touch me as much then. I was terrified he would find out I was pregnant and force me to get rid of it. Of you.”
There it was.
Gift’s mouth fell open, the color draining from his face. “Kendrick…is… Is he my father?”
Sukhon looked startled at his question but shook her head rapidly. “No. No. It was my husband’s baby but that wouldn’t stop Marshall from forcing me to get rid of it. He already commented frequently that I was growing fatter every day.”
Gift looked relieved to know he shared no part of Kendrick’s DNA but made a hostile sound at his mother’s admission, blowing out a breath through his nose. “Bastard.”
Sukhon patted his cheek again. “When I started to realize Marshall was corrupt, I went to Anchali…who I thought was my friend. She didn’t believe me.”
She turned a frigid glare on Anchali, who stayed quiet, even though it was obvious she desperately wanted to defend herself.
“And then what happened?” Gift pressed gently.
“Nothing at first. He kept abusing me. I kept taking it. Until one day, I couldn’t hide my condition anymore. He demanded to know if the baby was his. I lied and told him it was and that if he didn’t give me money to leave and start over somewhere else, I’d tell everyone he was corrupt and I would tell his wife about the baby. I just wanted him to leave me alone. I wanted to start a new life…with you.”
Gift made a choked sound, then nodded, swallowing audibly.
Park could see where this was going, like watching a train barreling towards a busload of children. He couldn’t do anything but watch.
“He said he needed time to arrange things. That it could take weeks—months, even—but I had to be patient. I agreed. As long as he stopped…touching me. The day Kendrick was supposed to give me the money, he called me into his office and said he’d changed his mind. I told him I was serious, that I would tell everyone who he really was. He told me that I was threatening the wrong man, that he could ruin my life, that he could make it look like I was the one who was selling secrets.”
Gift looked enraged.
“He demanded I come to his office that night, said he missed me. I’d had enough, though. I couldn’t stomach the idea of him touching me again, of him thinking he…owned me.”
Gift squeezed her hands.
“I went home and found my husband’s gun and went to his office as planned.”
Her voice had morphed from monotone to horrified as if she were right back in it. Like Anchali moments before.
“I was so afraid he would take the gun from me that the moment I opened the door, I fired. But it wasn’t him. It was Anchali.” A choked sob escaped. “I shot her. In the stomach.”
A look of horror washed over her as if she was realizing, perhaps for the first time, the consequences of her own actions. She turned to Anchali. “I… Your baby…”
Anchali’s face crumpled, and she just nodded. Gift looked at Park and he could see he was barely holding it together.
“I killed your baby.” She sobbed, dropping to her knees and putting her head in Anchali’s lap. “Forgive me. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I never wanted to hurt you or your sweet baby. Please, know that.”
Anchali was crying too hard to form words.
“Is that why you took my baby from me?” Sukhon asked. “To punish me?”
Anchali shook her head, voice thick. “No. No. Kendrick told me you died. He said there was a firefight and you’d been shot but they’d managed to save the baby. He said there was nobody to take him, to care for him. I could have checked, looked for your family, but I was selfish and convinced you were a criminal and…and I wanted him so much.”
Sukhon shook her head vehemently. “He didn’t shoot me. He took me to a prison somewhere inThailand—one run by your government. Told me I no longer existed. Said the world would only know me as a traitor to the United States. That I would be held indefinitely. I begged him not to do this. I was still pregnant, due any day. He ignored me. I thought I would never see him again, but the next day, he was back. Two guards dragged me to a medical suite and a man in a surgical mask knocked me out. When I woke up, I wasn’t pregnant anymore.”
