Pretty Baby novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: Cicero

My mother lived in a new condo in Cicero with a doorman and a fake fireplace.

I had never been inside it.

She'd bought it three years ago, she'd said, with "a little inheritance," and I had been too proud to ask which relative had died.

Now I stood in the lobby with Crane's fifty thousand dollars still lying on his desk, and I understood the math.

"Lydia?" she said, opening the door in a silk robe. "Honey, what's wrong? You look like you've seen a ghost."

"I'm the ghost," I said. "Can I come in?"

Bernadette Kaufman was fifty-one and still pretty in a hard way, with dyed blonde hair, a gold cross and a smoker's voice.

She poured two glasses of wine I didn't touch.

"Mama," I said. "Who signed my release forms at St. Brigid's?"

Her hand stopped halfway to her mouth.

"What release forms?"

"The ones that gave my daughter away while I was under anesthesia."

The glass shook.

She put it down so carefully that it made no sound at all.

"The baby died, Lydia," she said. "We talked about this. I held your hand when you woke up."

"You held my hand and told me she was dead."

"She was."

"She's six years old," I said. "She's got my hair, and she hums the song I used to hum to her in my belly."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"She lives in Lincoln Park with a man named Stefan Hartwell."

My mother's face did something I had never seen it do.

It went completely empty.

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