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I pictured my mom, driving home with the baby in the car. Then crashing just a hundred yards from the house. My dad opening the door and finding his beloved wife dead. Checking the baby…and finding her dead, too.
My dad, heartbroken, inconsolable. And in his grief, he’d come up with a desperate plan. He knew that Maria had just given birth to his baby in Poland. He knew that she was unstable, that she drank and did drugs. He’d probably been planning to give her money to raise the baby but now there was another way.
He must have buried the baby’s body in secret. Then, some time in the next few days, when everyone thought he was taking care of the baby at home, he’d secretly flown out to Poland, given Maria the hundred thousand dollars to let him raise me in America, and brought me back home, substituting me for the baby who died. In those days, airport security was much lighter. With a few bribes to officials, it wouldn’t have been difficult to get me into the country surreptitiously. And once I was there, who would know the difference? I was the same age as the baby who’d died, give or take a few days.
Now I knew why I was so different from Miles. We shared the same father but while his mother had been a politician, mine had been a math prodigy. And I knew why my dad had kept me close, instead of sending me off to boarding school: he was overcompensating after losing his first daughter. He probably thought he was doing a good thing, making up for his affair by giving the baby the best life he could give it. But to Radoslava…this American had snatched her baby sister away to raise in paradise, while giving her mother the money that would wind up making Radoslava’s life a living hell. “Oh Jesus,” I whispered. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Radoslava.”
“I don’t want your apologies,” she said coldly. “Upstairs.” She motioned me to the steps that led up to the roof terrace and I slowly climbed them. She followed, pulling Cody along with her.
I stepped out into the pounding, freezing rain and had to blink just to see properly as the water sluiced down my face. I turned back to Radoslava and she nodded me onwards. “To the edge,” she told me.
The roof terrace ran right to the back of the building. One day, there’d be a parapet for safety but for now, there was nothing, just a raw, concrete cliff and a sixty-floor drop. I knew what was coming. I looked helplessly at Cody, who’d started to cry. He was all that mattered. “You’ve got me, now,” I told Radoslava. “Let him go.”
“I’m not going to hurt him,” she told me. “But I’m not letting him go, either.”
I stared at her, confused, and she stared back at me, a tiny smile on her lips. She was waiting for me to realize. And suddenly, sickeningly, I did.
This wasn’t just about my dad. It wasn’t just about me. It was about Cody, too. I knew now why she’d come up with this complicated plan and inserted herself into our lives as his nanny. I started to hyperventilate. “No,” I begged.
“Mom?” asked Cody. “What is it? What’s happening?”
I stared at him in terror, every motherly instinct surging up inside me. As Radoslava saw it, my father had robbed her of the ability to have children. So she was going to take my son and raise him as her own, just like my dad had taken me. That’s why she’d become Cody’s nanny: it had been about motherhood, all along. “You can’t,” I sobbed.
“Don’t worry, I’ll give him a good life.” said Radoslava. “He’ll grow to love me, in time.” She pointed to the edge of the building. “Now I want you to walk out on there.”
I followed her finger. A metal beam stuck out into space from the edge of the roof. “No,” I pleaded. I didn’t care about myself, but the idea of Cody being brought up by her…
“Do it,” she told me. “Or I’ll kill you both.”
I looked desperately between Cody and her. Would she do it? Or had JD been right, did she love him?
I couldn’t risk it.
“Cody?” I said, my voice shaking. “I love you.”
“Mom!” Tears were streaming down his cheeks, now, and he was fighting against Radoslava’s grip, but she held him tightly against her. “Don’t make her! Please, Paige! Mom, don’t!”
I walked slowly to the metal beam. It was so narrow, I couldn’t even put both feet side-by-side on it. I took the first step, the smooth metal slick under my heels.
“Mom!” yelled Cody.
I looked back over my shoulder. “Don’t make him watch,” I said through my tears. “Turn him away.”
Radoslava nodded. She twisted Cody around so that he was facing her and pulled him tight against her chest. “To the end,” she told me, raising her voice over the wind.
