Pretty Baby: A Gripping Novel of Psychological Suspense

by Mary Kubica

  There was an enormous parking lot that we passed, with pieces of cars. When I asked about those cars, Matthew told me it was called a junkyard, and I asked him what’s a person possibly to do with cars without wheels or doors.

  “They use ’em for parts,” he said, leaving me to wonder what good wheels or doors do without a car. But I found myself searching for Momma and Daddy’s Bluebird nonetheless, for the upside-down car, the smashed-in hood, the broken headlights, the mirrors that hung from the door by a string, bumpers and fenders squished down to half their size. This is the image I’d carried in my mind for all those years, a snapshot on the front page of the paper: I-80 Crash Leaves Two Dead. Momma and Daddy’s names were never mentioned. They were called casualties, a word I didn’t even know at the time.

  “Where are we going?” I asked for a third and final time.

  A smile flickered on Matthew lips as he said, “You’ll see.”

  “Where did Matthew take you that day?” Louise Flores asks. I think of Matthew living in that house with me all those years, all those years that Joseph kept me locked inside. I wondered what Matthew thought about that, or maybe he didn’t think about it at all because he had been a kid and Joseph was his father, and he didn’t find it the least bit strange. Living in that home with Joseph and Miriam had become commonplace to me after all that time. I had to look real far inside my heart to realize that being cooped up like that, it was wrong. I thought maybe it was the same way with Matthew. That was the way it had always been since he was a kid. He never saw Miriam come and go. He never saw me leave.

  And besides, Joseph said that no one would believe me. Not a soul. It was his word against mine. And I was a child. A child that no one—no one—besides him and Miriam wanted.

  “Where did he take you?” Ms. Flores asks again, and I say, “To the zoo.”

  “The zoo?” she asks, like there’s a million places in the world she’d rather go.

  And I say, “Yes, ma’am,” with a smile on my face as big as the sun because there wasn’t any place in the world I would’ve rather been except for maybe with Momma and Daddy.

  The zoo. I had been to a tiny zoo before, in Lincoln, but we’d never been to Omaha before. We saw antelopes and cheetahs that day, gorillas and rhinos. We went for a train ride, and into a giant dome that looked just like the desert inside, a real live desert. Matthew spent just about every penny he owned on me there at that zoo, buying me popcorn, too!

  I loved every minute of it, though the truth of the matter was that I was a little scared of the people. Lots of people. I didn’t know a whole lot about people back then. What I did know was summed up into the scattering of people in my life, and all of them packed into three categories: good, bad and otherwise. It wasn’t just that I hadn’t been outside of that Omaha home for years. It was that I hadn’t seen a whole lot of folks, other than Joseph and Miriam, Isaac, Matthew and, from time to time, every six months or so, Ms. Amber Adler. I stared at all the people we passed and wondered, over and over again, if they were good or bad.

  Or if maybe, they were otherwise.

  But Matthew held my hand tight the entire time; he didn’t ever let go. I felt safe when I was with Matthew, like he was going to protect me, though I knew that sooner or later I’d have to go home, back to Joseph and Miriam’s home. As it was, it was sooner rather than later because Matthew said we couldn’t risk Joseph getting home before us. We couldn’t take a chance of him knowing I’d been gone.

  Because then, Matthew said, Joseph would be mad. Real mad.

  And then I wondered what he might do.

  That night I dreamed of antelope. Antelope in a herd, running throughout the African savannah. Free and uninhibited as I only wished I could be.

  HEIDI

  We’re getting ready for bed when Willow steps into my bedroom and says good-night, her voice apprehensive in that way that it almost always is. Zoe is on my bed staring blindly at some sitcom on the TV, and I grimace internally every time someone on screen says the word damn or hell or a couple shares a romantic kiss, not quite certain when we graduated from the Disney Channel to this. Is my twelve-year-old daughter old enough to watch this, to grasp the sexual innuendos and adult humor that suffuse the TV screen?

  But she stares blindly, not laughing along with the audience as some man slips on an icy patch in a parking lot, falling onto his rear end, a carton of eggs soaring from his hands and into midair.

  Her gaze turns to Willow as she enters, a coldhearted stare in her warm brown eyes.

  She scrabbles for the remote control and turns the volume louder, trying to drown out the sound of Willow’s spineless good-night.

  Zoe is upset at me, upset that I forgot to pick her up from soccer practice, that I got sidetracked at the clinic with Willow and the baby. That she had to wait an extra hour, maybe more, with Coach Sam while he called—and then called again—my cell phone to remind me of my daughter waiting at Eckhart Park as the Chicago sun sank lower and lower below the horizon. By the time we arrived, her teammates were long gone and Coach Sam had grown cold and antsy, though he faked a smile and told me it was all right when I apologized for the umpteenth time for my delay.

  Zoe didn’t speak to me when we arrived home; she didn’t speak to Willow. She showered and climbed inside the bed, saying that she wanted to be alone. This, of course, didn’t surprise me in the least, and I could see in her vacant eyes, in the sulky expression that expropriated her face, that she hated me, as she hated most everything. I’d made it to that never-ending list that included math homework and beans and that nagging substitute teacher. That list of things she hated. Me.

  But the baby. The baby on the other hand was full of smiles. Toothless smiles and mellifluous baby sounds that filled the room like bubbly lullabies. I clung to her greedily, not wanting to share. I prepared a bottle when she began to forage around in the pleats of my shirt for my breast, sneaking off into the kitchen without asking or telling Willow where it was that I was going, or asking whether or not it was okay to feed the baby because if I did, she might suggest she do it herself, and then I would have to relinquish the baby, relinquish the baby to her care, and that was something I found I simply could not do. And so I stood in the shadows of the kitchen, feeding Ruby, and tickling her sweet little toes, pressing a terry-cloth dish towel to her mouth to catch the drops of formula that escaped, sliding this way and that down her chin like a pair of pinking shears.

  And then: “It’s time for her medicine, ma’am,” Willow declared, appearing suddenly in the kitchen, a bolt of lightning on an otherwise quiet night. I’d been caught, red-handed, with my hand in the cookie jar, or so they say.

  Her words, themselves, were benign, and yet her eyes bore holes into me, there, in the kitchen; she didn’t have to say anything to make certain I knew I was in the wrong. I was fearful of Willow, all of a sudden, fearful that she would hurt me, fearful that she would hurt the child.

  Her image, again, did an about-face before my very eyes: helpless young girl with an affinity for hot chocolate, teenage delinquent who’d managed to sneak her way into my home.

  She stood there, in the kitchen, arms wide-open for the baby’s return. She was cloaked in yet another outdated article of Zoe’s clothing: jeans with a hole in the knee, a long-sleeve shirt that, on Willow, mutated into ¾ length, peppering the lower half of her arms in goose bumps, the hairs of her forearm standing on end. There were socks on her feet, a gaping hole in one of the big toes, and as I stared at that big toe, I found myself considering how naive I’d been, to bring Willow into my home.

  What if Chris was right after all, right about Willow?

  I hadn’t paused to consider the effect it would have on my own family’s well-being, for I was far too worried about Willow’s well-being to consider Zoe, to consider Chris.

  What if Willow couldn’t be trusted?

  My eyes flashed to the drawer where we keep the Swiss Army knife, hidden among a collection of junk—birthday candle
s, matches, flashlights that don’t work—and I found myself suddenly scared, suddenly wondering who this girl is, who she really truly is, and why she is in my home.

  As she stood there, staring at me, she didn’t ask the obvious: what was I doing?

  But she took the baby from my hands. Just like that. She just took her, leaving me helpless and short of breath. I stood in the kitchen, helping Willow dispense liquid antibiotics into the baby’s mouth, and then stood, horrified, as Willow turned away with the baby in her arms. The baby I had just been holding, feeding, and without her, without Ruby, I felt as if something was suddenly lacking from my life. I watched as Willow settled cross-legged onto my sofa and laid that baby in her lap, wrapping her up in the pink fleece blanket like a caterpillar in a cocoon.

  I wanted to cry, staring at the all but empty bottle in my hand, the vacancy left in my arms. I found myself wanting, consumed by an impassioned need to hold that baby, my thoughts gripped by the image of Juliet, of Juliet being scraped from my uterus by a curette. It was hard to breathe, nearly impossible, as my thoughts dithered between a longing for that baby—for Ruby—and a longing for my Juliet, my Juliet who’d been discarded as medical waste.

  How long this went on, I don’t know. I stood there, on the threshold between kitchen and living room, hyperventilating, the carbon dioxide escaping my blood at an alarming rate so that my lips, my fingers, the toes on my feet begin to tingle, and I clung hard—knuckles turning white—to the granite countertop so I wouldn’t faint or fall to the ground, imagining my body convulsing on the hardwood floors, envisioning Willow and Zoe standing by and doing nothing, simply watching Sesame Street or some sitcom on the TV, until I began to loathe them—the both of them—for this disregard, no matter how hypothetical it might be.

  And now I stand in my master bath, Zoe tucked in bed with the ridiculous show on TV, as Willow utters her good-night. She’s made it all the way into the bedroom and stands, just shy of the bathroom door, watching as I hang my precious golden chain, my father’s wedding band, from a shabby chic hook on the wall, a filigree bird painted a distressed red.

  I don’t turn to Willow as I mumble, “Good night,” and wait until she’s left the room to breathe. I slip into a satin nightgown and, locking the bedroom door, join Zoe in bed, sliding the Swiss Army knife under the pillow.

  I spend the sleepless night tossing and turning, trying hard not to wake Zoe from sleep, Zoe who turns so that her back is in my direction, hugging the far edge of the bed so our bodies don’t connect. Zoe, who used to long to climb in bed with Chris and me, who begged to fill that empty space between Mommy and Daddy’s protective bodies, now pushed far enough away that she might fall off the bed.

  When I finally do sleep, my dreams are filled with babies. Babies and blood. They are not happy dreams, of cherubs and cherubic babies as I’ve had in the past, but rather bloody babies, dead babies, empty bassinets. I find myself running from room to room in my satin nightgown, searching for baby Juliet, finding her nowhere. In my dreams, I retrace my steps as if maybe, just maybe, I overlooked her lying in the middle of a room, wrapped up in her fleece blankie. I look in those places where the cats like to hide: in the closet, behind a closed pantry door, under the bed. She’s nowhere.

  And then I peer down to find my satin nightgown slathered with blood. Like ketchup on a hamburger bun. It’s on the nightgown, on my hands, and as I peer at my reflection in a mirror—aging, ten years or more older than I was when I went to bed—I see blood staining my once-auburn hair red.

  I wake, in a sweat, from the nightmare, certain—absolutely certain—that somewhere, off in the distance, I hear a baby crying.

  I rise from bed and tiptoe across the room. The digital numbers on the alarm clock read 2:17 a.m. I find the hallway dark, save for the feeble light from the kitchen stove that wanders its way into the hall. It’s quiet as I press my ear to the office door; there is no sound. No baby cries.

  And yet I was so sure.

  I lay my hand on the satin nickel knob and turn.

  Locked.

  I try again, just to be sure, my heart beginning to accelerate in my chest. I’m worried something is wrong on the other side of the door, as a million unwanted thoughts sneak into my mind, everything from Willow rolling over and smothering the baby, to some madman climbing up the fire escape and fleeing with Ruby in his arms.

  I need to get inside that room. I need to make certain she’s okay.

  I could knock on the door and wake Willow from sleep, making her open the door so I can investigate how secure the windows are and whether or not the baby is all right. I could tell her I was worried that something might have happened to the baby.

  And if I am right, then my panic would be justified. But if I’m wrong...

  If I’m wrong, the girls—Willow and Zoe, the both of them—will think I’m insane.

  I scamper down the hall to the kitchen junk drawer where we keep a collection of keys—for it’s the kind of lock that simply needs to be unlatched with some sharp object; a paper clip would do. I return to the office door again, where I insert the makeshift key, turn clockwise and voilà!

  The door opens in a cinch.

  I turn the handle ever so gently, not wanting to wake Willow. The door creaks open and there I find her, as I did the night before, her back toward the baby, a pillow placed over her head. The baby is sound asleep, breathing blissfully. She’s kicked the green chenille throw from her own tiny body and lies exposed so that I can see the rise and fall of her chest to know that she’s alive, not smothered in blood as my dreams persuaded me to believe.

  She’s sound asleep, eyes and appendages completely dormant, inert.

  I want to take her in my arms and carry her down the hall to the rocking chair in the living room. I want to hold her as she sleeps, well into the morning light, watching out the window as the first buses and cabs of the day appear on the city street. I want to watch the sun rise with Ruby in my grasp, to see the golden pink hues discolor the dark April sky.

  And then there are other thoughts that fill my mind, thoughts of taking the baby where Willow cannot find me.

  I stare at Ruby, my body pressed into the shadows of the room, becoming a mere silhouette on the wall, a featureless shape backlit by the lightness of the walls, by the pale moonlight that sidles in from behind the pewter-gray drapes, pintuck drapes that always looked a mess to me, wrinkled, puckered. I imagine myself as one of those famous, iconic silhouettes: Jane Austen or Beethoven, or the trashy mudflap girls that grace big rigs and rednecks’ trucks, those girls with their hourglass shapes and enormous breasts.

  I place my hands on the wall to steady myself; I will myself not to breathe, so that I won’t wake Willow, trying hard to extend the time between breaths until I become lightheaded and dizzy.

  There is a clock in this room, as well, red digital numbers that drift from 2:21 to 4:18 a.m., all in the blink of an eye as I hover, there, at the foot of the sofa bed, wanting to cover the baby with the chenille throw, to move her, a foot or more from Willow’s body so that I don’t have to worry about her being smothered or squished flat.

  Wanting to lift her up and carry her from this room.

  But I can’t.

  Because then Willow will know.

  And she may leave.

  WILLOW

  In here we wear orange jumpsuits, the word juvenile stitched across the back. We sleep in brick rooms, two to a cell, on metal bunk beds, with heavy bars separating us from the concrete corridor where guards—tyrannical women with bodies built like men—stride all night long. We eat at long tables in a cafeteria, from chipped pastel trays loaded with foods from each of the food groups: meat, bread, fruits and vegetables, a glass of milk.

  It’s not all that bad, not when compared to picking food from the Dumpster and sleeping on the street.

  My cell mate is a girl who tells me her name is Diva. The guards call her Shelby. She has plum-colored hair though her eyebrows are a plain old brow
n. She sings. All the time. All night long. The guards, other inmates tell her to shut up, to put a sock in it, to shut her pie hole, calling the words out from places we can’t see. I ask her why she’s in here, behind the metal bars like me, sitting on the concrete floor because she swears her bed has been booby-trapped, but all she says is, “You don’t want to know,” and I’m left wondering.

  She’s fifteen, maybe sixteen, like me. I see the holes where she was made to remove various piercings: the lip, the septum, the cartilage of her ear. She sticks out her tongue and shows me where it’s been pierced, and tells me how her tongue swelled to twice its size when she had it done, how she couldn’t talk for days. How some girl she knew split her tongue right in two when she did it. She claims her nipple’s been pierced, her belly button. She starts to tell me about something that’s been pierced beneath the pants of that orange jumpsuit, about how the guard watched as she was forced to remove the j-bar from her clit before locking her up in the slammer, and then she mutters under her breath, “Fucking dyke.”

  I turn away, embarrassed, and she starts to sing. Someone tells her to shut her trap. She sings louder, high pitched and off-key, like the grating brakes of a freight train coming to a sudden stop.

  The guard fetches me from my cell. She binds my hands in cuffs, then leads me by the arm to where Louise Flores waits in the cold room with the steel table. She’s standing in the corner today, peering out the one window, her back to me when I walk in. She’s got on a scratchy-looking cardigan, the color of smoke, a pair of black pants. There’s a cup of tea on the table, a cup of juice for me.

  “Good morning, Claire,” she says as we both take our spots at the table. She doesn’t smile. The clock on the wall reads just after ten o’clock.

  Ms. Flores motions to the guard to remove my cuffs.