Fresh Kills by Carolyn Wheat

folded her arms and remained standing.
    â€œWho’s the father, Amber?” I asked conversationally.
    She stiffened. “I’m not sure,” she said. “I think Scott.”
    â€œMarla served papers in which she claimed Josh was the father.”
    â€œHe could be.”
    â€œHe could be,” I repeated. I didn’t have to exaggerate my tone of disbelief. How the hell had I come to be sitting on this fourth-hand sofa listening to my client tell me she’d had sex with the man who was adopting her child?
    â€œNo wonder Josh picked your ad out of the Dreamchild newsletter,” I remarked, remembering Ellie’s glow of surprised pleasure when she told me how Josh had selected Amber out of all the birth mothers in the listings. “He must have written the damned thing in the first place.”
    She didn’t bother confirming something so obvious, just walked back and forth along the cold wooden floor, her long toes reaching for the boards like prehensile appendages.
    She was thinking, searching for words to explain the unexplainable, to justify the unjustifiable.
    Then she found them. “It was like I told you,” she began. The insolent stare was gone; her eyes refused to meet mine. “We went out on a date. We had dinner, and the next thing I knew, he was ripping my clothes off. I told him I didn’t want to, but he forced me. Then when I told him I was pregnant, he said he’d adopt the baby but his wife couldn’t know it was really his. So he set up the whole thing with Doc Scanlon and Marla, made me pretend I’d never seen him before.”
    I was having a hard time accepting Josh Greenspan as a rapist, but even if Amber had consented to sex, it made sense that Josh would try to protect Ellie from knowledge of his affair with another woman. Especially another woman with working ovaries.
    I decided to proceed as if I believed Amber’s story—at least for the moment.
    â€œSo you decided to get revenge,” I said. “Set him up to believe you’d give him the baby, then change your mind at the last minute. Pay him back for raping you. Good plan, Amber,” I complimented my client, “except of course that you’re hurting Ellie even more than Josh and she certainly didn’t rape you.”
    Amber turned her face toward the window, where the April sun struck the crystal wind chime, making long rainbow streaks of color against the white wall.
    â€œHe hurt me,” she said in a low growl. “He pinned me down with his big hairy arms and pushed himself into me. Then when I told him I was pregnant he grabbed me and—” Amber ran long fingers against her arm, rubbing herself as if to soothe the pain of that long-ago assault.
    â€œHe said he had to have the baby. He said he’d pay anything, anything I asked for. His eyes were crazy.” She turned her own blue eyes on me, begging for understanding. “And after what he did to me, I didn’t want his baby, so I said yes. And then I met Ellie, and I—”
    She dropped her eyes, let her hands fall to her sides. “I wanted so much to make her happy.”
    She stood in silence for a moment, seeming to go deep inside herself. I’d never seen Amber so naked, so vulnerable.
    â€œIt’s not revenge,” she said at last. She turned the full force of her intense blue eyes on me. “It’s the baby. He doesn’t look like Josh, he looks like Scott.”
    â€œSo your wanting him back depends on the outcome of a DNA test?” I asked. “Marla’s petitioned the Family Court to order one, so we’ll know soon enough who the father really is.”
    She shook her head. “That’s what I thought at first,” she replied, her voice a near whisper. “But the more I think about Jimmy, the more I know I can’t live without him no matter who the father is. I want my baby, Ms. Jameson. I want him more than anything in