“I’m just saying she never specifically mentioned them. So you’ll tell the police?”

“Yes,” Iris said. “I’ll take care of it. They may want to talk to you, though.”

“Sure.”

“Thanks, Francie.”

She’ll track down the Butlers tomorrow. She can find them via Faceplace or her network of Lakehaven volunteers, with careful asking that doesn’t tip her hand as to her interest. The Butlers might be the answer to this whole terrible mystery. But as a successful adoptive parent, she’ll have to consider how she talks to a family that was turned away. Their resentment could be powerful. Hi. I’m here to talk to you about a murdered woman you blamed for your greatest unhappiness. She would have to be careful.

Now she has to get ready for this neighborhood meeting. All her neighbors, all talking about Danielle, all expecting her to be a voice of compassionate leadership, of calm and order, and Iris wants to run away from this awfulness and not think about what secrets her husband is keeping or why her daughter is more worried about a boy than her own family and why her son asked her the questions she’s always feared: if she had ever lied to him.

29

From Iris Pollitt’s “From Russia with Love” Adoption Journal

2002

Feliks drove us to the orphanage. The interpreter, Pavel, sat up front with him. Pavel was—pardon your mom for saying this—hot. Maybe twenty-five, blond hair, broad shoulders, square jaw. Seriously, he could get a modeling job. Back when I wrote songs, I knew people in modeling because of the models who dated the more famous musicians I knew—I could probably connect Pavel. Danielle whispered to me, “Pavel can be very charming with the administrators. He’s one of my secret weapons. His mother taught English at Saint Petersburg State University, so he was raised speaking both.”

If Pavel heard this, he ignored it. He laughed at something Feliks said.

I sensed Kyle studying the two men. It was weird to think what we had at stake with these two strangers. If Pavel said the wrong thing in translation, we might anger a decision maker. If Feliks made us late because he underestimated traffic, we might irritate someone who could stamp a giant red nyet on our application. The thought unnerved me.

I didn’t like the idea of control slipping away from us.