by Janet Rebhan
She poured herself a generous serving, swallowing the last two Xanax from her purse with the first sip before retreating upstairs to the master suite, where she undressed and ran a hot bath. Charlie followed her and lay near the tub on the fuzzy white bath mat. Charlie was almost all white himself except for some gray around the tips of his ears, eyes, nose, and mouth, so that his fur blended with the bath mat, and if Fiona squinted her eyes a little, it was as if the bath mat became one big round white blob of fat cat with a tiny face in the center.
Before settling into her bath, Fiona added a few drops of lavender oil and lit some scented candles she had placed on nearby shelves, which had been built into the wall near the tub. She stepped in carefully, making sure the water was not too hot before reaching for the remote control she kept inside a small wooden box on the table next to her free-standing tub, which was positioned in the center of the room. She had purchased her house three years ago, primarily for the master bedroom with the decadent en suite bath that the previous owner had spared no expense building when he had added it on to the original floor plan as a gift to his wife.
Using the remote control, Fiona turned on her sound system and lowered the lights. She sipped her wine and let the lyrics to Pink’s “Perfect” sink slowly into her psyche, but the words just seemed useless to her now. Before she replaced the box with the remote, she removed the straight razor. The one she’d kept there since her abortion. The same one she’d kept there since the cataclysmic downfall of her marriage that followed close behind. She had used it only a few other times, but only for cutting lightly “across the tracks” of her wrist: practice runs.
The razor glistened in the sunlight streaming from the high window above the tub, biting sharp. Enough so that it only took one hard, quick vertical stroke along the blue vein of her left forearm and it was done: pressure relieving pressure. She winced from the pain and let her arm fall into the hot water. Inside her head the inner critic let go a hollow sarcastic chuckle, though her face did not smile and her mouth never opened. She reached with her right arm for her wineglass and knocked it over. It fell on the rug next to Charlie, who promptly ran away after getting doused with red. But by this time, Fiona was already too tired to care. She closed her eyes and hummed. Humming had always calmed her as a child. She saw her mother’s cross face before her, scolding her in a voice from the past: You stupid girl! You can never do anything right! I hope you never have children of your own because if you do, they’ll probably be stupid, too, just like you!
She wasn’t sure how long she drifted in and out. Eventually, she found herself drifting above the tub—suddenly feeling clear-headed and composed. She looked down at her body and became filled with tremendous remorse and sadness for the woman lying in the tub. She thought of Charlie, and instantly she was with him in the living room, where he crouched behind the sofa, stained in red—poor scared little Charlie. Who would take care of him now? She felt herself being pulled headfirst through a dark tunnel. She heard muffled voices but couldn’t make out what they were saying. She saw Dr. Goodwin’s disembodied face in a sea of black, pointing his finger at her, then covering her mouth and nose with the large palm of his outstretched hand. She felt an incredibly strong pull from the center of her chest and a strong bright-white light shone above her. A calm, soft voice called her name tenderly. “Fiona . . . Fiona. . . Oh dear, dear Fiona, what have you done?”
Book Two
CHAPTER 12
The afternoon sun dipped behind the large oak tree in the front yard of the tiny yellow house on Gresham Street, causing light to filter between the leaves in a dance on the large plate glass picture window in the front living room. Rachael watched with delight and cooed at the moving shapes as she stood holding on to the side of the playpen in the corner of the living room before losing her balance and falling back down on her bottom. A few colorful toys vied for her attention inside the playpen, but she was much more challenged by the constant struggle to pull herself into a standing position so she could survey her surroundings from a higher perspective. At the age of seven months, she had two new bottom teeth and was in continuous motion whenever she was awake. If placed on her back, she immediately turned over onto her tummy and began to crawl. If near anything taller than she was, she began to use it as leverage to pull herself into a standing position. Some things were not so stable, and she would teeter and fall, sometimes hitting her head on the floor in the process and garnering a lump and a bruise on her forehead. At this point, it became safer for her foster parents to leave her in the playpen, where she couldn’t hurt herself. And with four other children to take care of, all age ten and under, it was just easier this way.
Usually, it was Jesse who paid the most attention to Rachael. Jesse had been in the foster home only a few months longer than Rachael, so they were both new to the family. Jesse was nine years old and took an immediate liking to Rachael, who reminded her of her own baby sister, who had died in an apartment fire shortly before Jesse was sent into foster care. Jesse would balance Rachael on hips she really didn’t have, so she had to stand slanted with one leg slightly lifted on tipped toes to create a side shelf of sorts for Rachael to fit into. Rachael liked to pull Jesse’s long brown hair and would giggle when Jesse had to pry her little baby fingers open in order to keep her from jerking it out of her scalp. Jesse taught Rachael to play Pat-a-Cake and This Little Piggy and would sing songs to her every night to help her go to sleep: “Hush, Little Baby” and “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” were Rachael’s favorites.
Jesse liked giving Rachael her bottle before bedtime. This was usually around eight in the evening, shortly before Jesse herself would take an evening bath and tuck herself in around nine. She would sit on the end of the leather sofa in the living room and prop her elbow up with a blanket so the weight of Rachael’s head didn’t make her arm sore. As Rachael sucked on her bottle, she looked into Jesse’s eyes, sometimes stopping to smile and coo at Jesse between suckles. This always delighted Jesse, who thought Rachael could do no wrong. Rachael never cried unless she had a good reason. She was either hungry or needed her diaper changed, or she was perhaps getting a new tooth. Jesse felt like Rachael knew more than the average seven-month-old. To Jesse, it was as if this baby already knew everything about her, understood her pain and her loneliness, yet was still able to make her smile and laugh in spite of it all. Once when Jesse gave Rachael her bottle, she reached up and touched Jesse on the face where she had the burn mark that was the source of so much teasing from some of the kids at her school. At first Jesse flinched, but Rachael persisted in touching the pink webbed surface with her tiny, delicate fingers until a tear found its way down Jesse’s cheek. When it reached the baby’s fingers, Rachael looked back and forth between her wet fingers and Jesse’s eyes before smiling and cooing softly at Jesse and patting her cheek lightly with the palm of her tiny little hand. Jesse stuck the index finger of her free hand up near her cheek until Rachael grabbed hold of it, wrapped her fingers around it, and squeezed it tight. Then she kissed Rachael’s fingers and told her she would never let anything bad happen to her. So long as she had any kind of say in the matter, she would protect her new little friend, even with her own life if she had to.
Marge and Freddie Bechtel owned the little yellow house in Winnetka with three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a converted garage. The surrounding lot was almost half an acre, mostly flat, and backed to an alley. They had one grown son from Marge’s first marriage—Benjamin—who had moved out years ago and now worked as a pharmacist in Santa Monica. Ben and his partner, Langdon, didn’t plan to have any children. Marge had three more years to go working as a legal assistant at a midsize Encino law firm before she could retire. Freddie had always been in construction. It had been his idea to convert the detached two-car garage behind the main house into a guest house with a full-size bathroom, bedroom, kitchen, and laundry. They rented out the guest house for a sizable sum. That money, coupled with what they received from the state for
their foster children, enabled Freddie—who was partially disabled from an on-the-job back injury—to work only part-time now, and they owned their house free and clear as of last May.
Marge grouped the foster children two to each room: the boys, ages nine and ten, in one room and the girls, ages nine and eight, in the other room. They all shared the full hallway bathroom. The master bedroom Marge and Freddie shared had a full en suite bath, and Freddie had extended the bedroom somewhat into the backyard to create an area for office space they now used as a small nursery for Rachael. They had not planned to take on a fifth child, but Marge had been specifically requested to take Rachael. Since her other foster children were older and Freddie was only working occasionally, she had agreed. She had been informed the baby had a couple already trying to adopt her, so she didn’t think Rachael would be staying with her long anyway. But bureaucracy being what it was, it had now been almost six months. She was getting a little anxious to be done with the assignment since a seven-month-old child is a lot more mobile—and therefore more of a handful—than a weeks old child. And Freddie’s bad back made it difficult for him to be constantly picking her up to protect her from getting into things.
It had been Marge’s close friend, Ragna, who was responsible for this particular assignment. She had taken a personal interest in Rachael and had asked Marge and Freddie to request the assignment from the child’s social worker. After all, they had been foster parents for many years in Los Angeles, and they were local. Surely the Department of Children & Family Services could do them this one favor. Marge had reluctantly agreed, primarily as a favor to Ragna, who had practically moved heaven and earth so she could keep a personal eye out for this particular baby. Marge had to laugh silently at the thought of her busybody friend, who fancied herself a detective of sorts. “In my next life,” Ragna had said to Marge on more than one occasion, “I’m coming back as Sherlock Holmes reincarnated.”
“But Ragna, he’s not even a real person. Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character from a series of novels by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I know because we studied him in my high school English lit class. Him and the guy who wrote The Great Gatsby—you know, what’s-his-name.”
“Oh yeah, you’re right,” Ragna would always say. “Well then, I’m coming back as the real-life character Sherlock Holmes was based on. You do know the author patterned him after a real person, don’t you?”
“No, I hadn’t heard that, but if you say so,” Marge would reply, and then they would move on to other subjects. It never once occurred to Marge there could be any possible danger associated with keeping this new baby. But then Marge always thought with her heart more than her head. Ragna got on her about this all the time, but Marge didn’t care. She was too old and too tired to concern herself with every little thing in life for which she could be afraid. She thought her friend worried too much. With Ragna, something scary always lurked around every corner: something sinister or suspicious that needed investigating. Even so, Ragna was a good egg. Suspicions and investigations aside, she was a very caring person. It’s the thing that bound her and Marge together as close friends—the thing they had in common. They were each what people referred to as the salt of the earth.
Freddie poked his head around the corner when he heard the thud just before Rachael began to cry. She wasn’t really hurt so much as she was disappointed. She could never stand holding on to the sides of the playpen as long as she wanted to. Her body would begin to tremble, and she would lose her balance before too long. Now, sitting on her bottom in the playpen, she could no longer see the pretty shadow dances the sun was creating through the tree leaves. Once she caught sight of Freddie’s face, she began to cry harder. Freddie walked around the corner and scooped her out of the playpen.
“Good grief, baby girl, but you are getting heavy.” Freddie groaned as he straightened his posture. He looked at Rachael, who immediately stopped crying and began to smile and coo at Freddie. “What?” Freddie said. “What are you trying to tell me? Are you wet? Do we need to change your diaper?” Freddie walked toward the nursery just as Jesse came bounding through the front door. She was out of breath from running.
“I’m home!” Jesse called out before being shoved aside by her foster siblings, who were right behind her. “Hi, Rachael!” she said, pulling off her backpack.
“Move it, Scarface,” said one of the boys as he shoved past Jesse.
“Hey, you guys, no pushing and no name calling,” Freddie said to the other kids as they made their way to the kitchen table, where they unloaded their backpacks and began to raid the refrigerator.
“Let me have her,” Jesse said to Freddie.
“I was just about to change her.”
“I can do it,” said Jesse, reaching for Rachael.
“Okay,” Freddie said. “But remember the tape goes in front this time. Last time, you did it backward.” He smiled and winked at Jesse as he handed Rachael over to her.
“All right already, Freddie,” Jesse said, rolling her eyes. She perched Rachael on her hip and walked down the hallway toward the master bedroom.
The phone rang. Freddie reached to pick it up.
“Bennie, my man. How’s everything going in pharmaceuticals?” Freddie quipped.
“Hey, Fred. It’s okay. Is my mom home?”
“She’s still at the office. Friday’s the day she gets off early.”
“Oh yeah, I knew that. So can you have her call me when she gets in? No emergency, just want to bounce an idea off her.”
“Sure, no problem. Is everything okay? How’s Langdon?”
After a long pause, Benjamin replied, “Yeah . . . we’re uh . . . breaking up.”
“Oh. Bennie, I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah, I can’t talk about it right now. Can you just have Mom call me? Thanks, Fred.” Benjamin hung up the phone.
Freddie stood looking at the phone in his hand for a moment, then hung up and surveyed his brood at the kitchen table. While the family cat busily lapped up spilt milk on the wood laminate floor, the boys grappled in a headlock, and Nicole, oblivious to it all, quietly completed her math homework as she nibbled on a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. Freddie sighed and made his way to the closet to grab the mop. As he walked, he clapped his hands together loudly until the boys stopped wrestling and looked in his direction. “All right,” he shouted, “which one of you lug nuts made this mess?”
CHAPTER 13
When she walked into a room, heads always turned. Men and women, young and old, sophisticate or simpleton, it didn’t matter; they all cast glances in her direction. Some brief and shy, some bold and lingering, some admiring, and some, no doubt, envious. All seemed curious to know what it felt like to have every eye drawn to you like a child to a bouquet of colorful balloons.
Her sculpted face had been covered since birth with skin of satin: smooth, poreless, and glowing as if from a light within. And for all her years, it hadn’t changed much. What once sat on top of her cheekbones now rested a bit lower, but she was no worse for the wear. If you hadn’t known her prior to the shift, you wouldn’t know anything was amiss. The face most women wore in their late twenties was the face Caroline now wore in her mid-forties. She had started out tauter, higher, and smoother from the get-go.
At least that’s how Jake saw it. And he was no less excited to see her walking toward him now as he was the very first time they met on a blind date, in the same exact restaurant, twenty years earlier. Jake’s college roommate, Ronnie, had set them up. Ronnie’s sister, Lauren, was Caroline’s roommate. Ronnie had tried to date Caroline himself, but Caroline politely declined. He wasn’t her type. He was a good-looking-enough guy, Caroline had said to Lauren, but she wasn’t into jocks anymore. Caroline went for the intellectual type. When Ronnie found out, he told Caroline he knew just where to find one.
Not that Jake was nerdy or bookish. He was smart, to be sure, and motivated too. He was a political science major planning on attending law school after graduation. But
he was also a good-looking man, with a strong jaw and a cleft chin. He stood just a hair under six feet tall with a slender, toned frame, and his blue eyes danced with merriment whenever he found something amusing. He was also a good communicator, and Caroline loved to talk. And both Jake and Caroline could be deep. Not many subjects had been left uncovered prior to their engagement. It seemed endless, the things they had yet to discover and talk about.
Their eyes met briefly from across the room as Caroline followed the maître d’ toward the table in the corner by the window, the one with the ocean view. The same table they dined at the night he proposed. As she got closer, Caroline curled her lips up at the corners and moved her lower jaw forward in the same subtle movement she always made when she knew she was being ogled. Only Jake knew she did this because she was trying hard to suppress a laugh. She thought it hysterically funny that Jake still soaked up moments like these with such obvious delight.
“Hi, honey,” Caroline said when she arrived tableside, kissing her husband lightly on the cheek before sitting down. She lay her small jeweled clutch on the white tablecloth before allowing the maître d’ to place a napkin in her lap.
“Every eye in this room is on you at this very moment,” Jake said after the maître d’ had gone. He followed his words with an incredulous sigh, shaking his head from side to side with feigned resignation, his blue eyes still dancing with self-contented amusement.
“And you’re loving every minute of it.” Caroline smiled and took a sip of water.
“Yes, I am.” Jake laughed and raised his wineglass. He always ordered the same wine for every anniversary and had filled Caroline’s glass as soon as she texted him from the elevator that she was on her way up. Although their tastes had been refined over the years, on the night he proposed he had splurged on an exclusive bottle of Cabernet Franc from Napa Valley that came highly recommended by the server that evening, so that twenty years hence, it was still an excellent choice. “To my wife,” Jake said. “The most beautiful woman I have ever laid eyes on.”
