The Perfect Mother

by Aimee Molloy

  Nell reads aloud. “‘As first reported by TV personality Patricia Faith, three friends of Gwendolyn Ross, not identified by name, apparently arrived at the Ross residence, letting themselves in, until they were forcibly removed by an officer with the NYPD.’”

  “Forcibly removed?” Colette says. “That’s a little much.”

  “I know,” Francie says. “But that’s not the worst part.” The worst part was what else Patricia Faith said—the same thing Francie had read elsewhere—the information that now ties her stomach in knots. When it comes to determining whether an abducted baby will be found alive, the first twenty-four hours are critical. “If the police screwed this up as bad as these articles suggest, do you realize what that could mean?” She can’t think about it—the idea that Midas could be in even greater danger because of some incompetent policemen.

  Colette puts her coffee cup on the table in front of her. Something in her expression makes Francie stop bouncing Will. “What is it?” Francie asks.

  “Okay, listen. I feel weird sharing this, but I have some new information. About Midas.”

  “What do you mean?” Francie asks. “I’ve been reading everything. If it’s been reported—”

  “It hasn’t been reported. I found it through my job.”

  “Your job?”

  “Yeah. That memoir I’m writing? It’s Teb Shepherd’s.”

  “You’re kidding,” Nell says. “Mayor Shepherd?”

  “Yes. I’m his ghostwriter.”

  “Why does he need a ghostwriter? His first book was amazing.”

  “I wrote his first book,” Colette says.

  “You?” Francie says. Even she knows about that book. It’s all anyone could talk about for months—the beautifully written memoir by Teb Shepherd, the young, devastatingly handsome principal at a high school in the South Bronx. Lowell stayed up all night reading it; his mother’s book club discussed it. Business was still booming at the Greek diner Shepherd wrote about frequenting near his mother’s apartment in Washington Heights, groups of middle-aged women standing in line, hoping to spot him at a table in the back, eating his standard Saturday-morning order: a toasted corn muffin and a side of bacon.

  “It’s what I do,” Colette says. “I write books that other people say they wrote. I’m not allowed to tell you that, so you can imagine how much I’m not supposed to tell you this. But I was at the mayor’s office yesterday, and I found Midas’s file. From the investigation.”

  “You’re joking,” Nell says. “And what? You looked at it?”

  “Worse.” Colette kneels on the floor and reaches under the couch, sliding out a thick manila folder. “I made copies.”

  “Oh my god,” Francie says. “Does anyone know you did this?”

  “Nobody. I could get in serious trouble. I didn’t even tell Charlie. I’m so far behind on this book, I couldn’t admit how much time I spent last night, when he thought I was working, reading what’s in here.”

  “Does the mayor know you’re friends with Winnie?”

  “No. I was going to tell him, but after I took this file, it felt too dicey. Now I can’t. He’ll wonder why I didn’t tell him from the beginning.”

  Francie can’t look away from the file in Colette’s hands. “What’s in it?”

  “It appears to be recent reports, specific things they want Teb to see. If you look—” The doorbell rings. “Shit.” Colette waits a moment. “I’m gonna ignore that. It’s probably a package for Charlie. They’ll leave it downstairs.”

  “Actually, I think it’s Token,” Francie says.

  Colette shoots Francie an irritated look. “You invited Token?”

  He e-mailed Francie earlier this morning, asking if she wanted to join him for a coffee at the Spot. It was so strange. He’s never asked her to do something, just the two of them, and she knows so little about him. She’ll never forget her astonishment, back in early June, when she rushed down the hill toward the willow tree, ten minutes late to the May Mothers meeting, and noticed a man in the circle. He was sitting beside Winnie, whispering into her ear. Winnie listened, amused, and then they broke into laughter. Francie guessed that he was Winnie’s husband (although he wasn’t nearly as attractive as she would have guessed Winnie’s husband would be). He wore a frayed sky-blue baseball cap, the exact color of his eyes, and dressed like so many of the men in Brooklyn—a faded T-shirt and shorts, scuffed sneakers, aviator sunglasses stuck into the collar of his shirt. But as Francie took her seat, she noticed the sling across his chest, a baby curled inside. He wasn’t Winnie’s husband. He was a dad.

  “I’m a SAD,” he said a little later, as a way of introduction.

  “You’re sad?” Nell said. “Good. You’ll fit right in.”

  “No,” he said. “Not sad. A SAD.”

  “A sad?” Nell peered at him. “Is that a thing?”

  “A Stay-at-Home-Dad. An S-A-H-D. Man, that joke usually works.” He smiled and shrugged. “My partner works in fashion, and travels a lot. I don’t pay the bills and get to stay home with Autumn. Doing my best not to screw her up.”

  He became a regular almost immediately, but never offered more than a few details about himself—nothing significant enough for Francie to even recall. Francie still doesn’t understand where he went that night at the Jolly Llama, after disappearing from the table, and so this morning, when he e-mailed her about getting together, she told him the truth—that she and Nell were going to Colette’s—and invited him to join, hoping to pry some information out of him. “He asked if he could come,” Francie says quietly, hearing his footsteps in the hallway outside Colette’s apartment. “I didn’t know we were going to be talking about this.”

  “Hey,” Token says when Colette opens the door. He looks terrible: unshaven, his T-shirt damp with sweat. Francie is surprised to see he isn’t wearing the sling in which he always carries Autumn. “The baby’s with my mom,” he says, before Francie can ask.

  “Why did you come, then?” Francie catches her accusatory tone. “I mean, if I had a break from the baby, I’d be sleeping.”

  Token sits on the couch. “I wanted to see you guys.” He rests his forehead in his hands, and Francie notices the patches of gray spreading from his temples. “I’m so worried about Midas. Everything that’s happened—you’re the only ones I can really talk to about it.”

  Colette pours Token a cup of coffee and sits back on the floor. “Okay, so, about that,” she says. “Token. All of you. What I’m about to tell you—you can’t tell anyone.” She opens the folder and places three photographs on the floor. “They have a potential suspect.”

  Token jerks his head up. “They have a suspect?”

  “Yeah, this guy. His name is Bodhi Mogaro. They think he’s connected.”

  Francie kneels beside Colette. The man in the photograph has deep-russet eyes and light-brown skin; his black hair is shaved nearly to his scalp.

  “What do they have on him?” Token asks.

  “He was seen around Winnie’s building twice. On July 3, he bought beer and cigarettes from the bodega across the street. Used a debit card. It’s how they know his name. The clerk remembers him as being uneasy. Said he then went and sat on a nearby bench, along the park wall, watching her building. Casing it, apparently. The next night he was spotted in front of her building again, acting erratically. Yelling into his phone.”

  “The night Midas was taken?” Nell says.

  “Yes.”

  “He lives in Detroit,” Token says, reading a paper he’s pulled from the folder, the sunlight streaming through the window onto his patch of couch, washing out his features so that Francie can’t read his expression.

  “Yeah,” Colette says. “He flew into New York on the third of July. Had a flight back on the fifth, but he didn’t board. They don’t know where he is.”

  “What do you mean they don’t know where he is?” Francie asks.

  “I mean, the police can’t find him. He’s disappeared.”

  �
�Jesus,” Nell says.

  “Do they think he’s holding Midas for ransom?” Francie asks. “Actresses probably deal with this stuff all the time. But Lowell told me that if this were about ransom, they would have asked for it by now.” She’s still convinced Lowell could be wrong. After all, Lowell’s uncle—and his one source on law enforcement—is a sheriff back home in Estherville. What would he know about a case this big, with a once-famous actress, a multimillionaire, the daughter of a well-connected developer?

  “There’s no mention of ransom. At least not in this file.”

  “You see he’s originally from Yemen?” Nell asks.

  “Yeah, but he’s been here for twelve years,” Colette says. “I searched him online. There’s not much. He has a Facebook page, but it’s private, and everything’s written in Arabic. I did find someone with that name who is a mechanic for a company near Detroit that rents out private jets to rich clients. That’s got to be him.”

  Airplanes? “He has access to airplanes?” Francie says.

  Poppy cries from somewhere down the hall. “I called Winnie again,” Colette says, standing up. “It’s the third time. She’s not responding.”

  Nell rubs her eyes. “And the scene around her apartment, with the cameras and journalists. It’s out of hand. Some asshole tried to stop me when I walked by on the way here, asked if I live nearby, if I have a comment.”

  More than a few of Winnie’s neighbors have already given interviews, asked what they know about her, if they’d noticed anything suspicious that night. It sickens Francie how many people are willing to chime in, to say whatever it takes to see their names in print: that Winnie seems quiet, a little aloof. That they’ve never seen her with a man. That they’ve been curious, they have to admit, who “the father” is.

  Token stands, pacing slowly to the window, peering across the street into the park. “They’re going to turn this into a fucking circus,” he says. “You can feel it.”

  Colette walks down the hall toward Poppy’s cries, and Francie continues to study the contents of the folder, scanning Mark Hoyt’s notes. She doesn’t want to say anything, but she’s also been by Winnie’s building a few times in the past three days, in the evenings, after the journalists have left. Will grows so fussy around seven each night, before Lowell is home to help. It’s hard to be in the apartment when he’s crying like that, trapped with the heat. She’s been taking him for a walk up the hill.

  She often takes a seat on the bench across the street from Winnie’s building. It’s been dark inside her house. But last night, as the sky grew dim with nightfall and the mosquitos buzzed in her hair, she pressed Will hard against her chest, whispering in his ear, pleading for some quiet, sure she saw someone moving inside.

  Chapter Eight

  Day Four

  To: May Mothers

  From: Your friends at The Village

  Date: July 8

  Subject: Today’s advice

  Your baby: Day 55

  Think your partner’s smile is heart-melting? Just wait. A baby’s first smile arrives at about the same time in all cultures, so if it hasn’t happened yet, prepare to be rewarded for all your loving care with a beaming, toothless, just-for-you smile. This will probably make you leap with joy (even if you’ve just had your worst night ever).

  Nell browses the rack of dresses that hang like boneless bodies from the thin steel pole. She checks her watch—she still has another two hours before she can pick up Beatrice from the day care. A young woman approaches, a cherry smile painted above astonishingly white teeth. “You want me to start a room?” She wears a black fabric rose pinned in her blond curls, and a shirt so short it reveals the sharp edges of her rib cage.

  “No, I’m ready now,” Nell says, following her to the back of the store, to a small dressing room separated from the racks of clothes by the same thin floral curtain Nell has considered buying at IKEA.

  “Let me know if you need another size,” the girl says, sliding the curtain closed. Nell takes off her shorts and shirt, tears building for the third time this morning. She can’t believe she has to return to work tomorrow, leaving Beatrice in the care of strangers for nine hours a day. She had to beg Sebastian to be the one to call Alma and tell her they’d decided it would be better, at least for right now, to put Beatrice into day care. Alma was a wreck. Nell listened at Sebastian’s ear as Alma said how sorry she was, how she hasn’t been able to sleep, how the journalists keep calling and showing up at her apartment, that she’s been questioned three times already by the police.

  “They’re asking me everything, again and again. What did I see? What did I hear? How was the mother acting? The priest is here. I’m praying for forgiveness.”

  Nell tries to close the gap between the curtain and the wall before pulling on a pair of pants. Two sizes up from what she wore before getting pregnant, and she can’t get them over her thighs. The blouse she tries next is no better. It cuts off circulation in her arms, and is too tight across her breasts. Sweat slicks her lower back as she pulls a formless black shift dress over her head. She’s annoyed to see there’s no mirror in the dressing room, and she quietly opens the curtain, locating the floor-length mirror near the sale rack. Within seconds, the girl is on her.

  “That looks nice.” Nell doesn’t respond, hoping her silence will compel the girl back to the front of the store, but instead she tilts her head to the side, her small-bird features creased in thought as she chews her bottom lip. “Know what this dress needs?”

  “A sixty-percent markdown?”

  The girl laughs. “A statement necklace. Something to bring attention up, toward your neck. Away from the things you want to hide.”

  “What if the thing I want to hide is my neck?”

  The girl holds up a finger and turns on the chunky heel of her ankle boot. “Let me see what we have.”

  Nell returns to the dressing room anxious and frustrated—about the girl, about how bad she looks in the dress—questioning why she’s felt so unsettled since seeing those photos of Bodhi Mogaro yesterday afternoon. She discards the dress in a heap with the other clothes before fleeing first the dressing room and then the store, the jingle of the bell reverberating behind her. She snakes through the people on the sidewalk, unsure of where she’s going, past the other boutiques she’d planned to visit for work clothes, for something that will actually fit her body now, fourteen pounds heavier. But she can’t deal. Not today. Not with another store. Another dress. Another size-two sales clerk, smelling of hair products and cinnamon gum.

  Was it him?

  Was Bodhi Mogaro at the bar that night?

  She can’t get the questions out of her mind.

  Is he the one who ripped her shirt? Is it him that she sees when she closes her eyes, the blurry figure behind her in the bathroom, a pair of hands on her shoulders?

  Did he follow her, fight her for Winnie’s key, all without her remembering it?

  No.

  The idea is ludicrous. She steps around two boys on a scooter and a young mom buying a pig-tailed toddler a paper cup of rainbow sherbet from an ice cream cart. She would have remembered that; her mind is playing tricks. She’s worn down with sleep deprivation and worry. Last night she paced the living room for hours, combing her brain, trying to fill in the blank spots from that night.

  If only the press would report something to help her. There’s been no mention of Bodhi Mogaro, not even a hint that the police have zeroed in on a suspect. Instead, all the newscasters and pundits want to talk about are the mistakes the police are making. This morning, Elliott Falk wrote in the New York Post that Officer James Cabrera, who Nell recognized as the guy who told them to leave Winnie’s house, has been put on paid leave, blamed for leaving the door unlocked, for allowing people to enter Winnie’s home before evidence could be collected. Sources are reporting that he will probably be fired.

  Good, Francie e-mailed. They should fire him. Someone needs to be held responsible for screwing up this investigati
on.

  Patricia Faith is having a field day, calling for Commissioner Ghosh’s immediate resignation, laying the blame for everything squarely at the feet of Mayor Shepherd, for choosing his incompetent friend to lead the police department, for caring more about appearing on billboards for fashion labels than about protecting innocent children. “Am I crazy?” Patricia Faith asked. “Or is it almost like this mayor doesn’t want to see this case solved?”

  Nell stops at the corner and waits for the light, the heat like a woolen blanket shrouding her body, people brushing her arms as they hurry by. A white plane of sunlight reflects off a wall of windows on the bank across the street. She closes her eyes.

  A memory comes back to her. She’s standing at the bar, a cold drink in her hand. More, more, more. Someone is singing those words to her. She feels a chin on her neck, lips on her ear.

  She squeezes her eyes tighter, feeling hands on her waist. Someone is holding her arms.

  I want more, more, more.

  She opens her eyes and begins to run.

  The man sitting at the end of the bar is in his early thirties. He wears a black T-shirt and camo shorts, and both arms are covered in sleeves of black-and-gray tattoos. He’s sipping a pint of beer and glancing at the soccer match on one of the large television screens hanging above the rows of liquor bottles, a pen dangling above a copy of the New York Times crossword puzzle. The only other person there is the bartender, who leans over a sink, washing glasses. He shakes the soap from his wrists as Nell approaches. “What can I get you?”

  “A club soda.”

  She swallows half of it before sliding off the stool and making her way through the bar, the air dense with bleach and beer, to the patio out back. She moves a chair to the spot she occupied that night and tries to re-create the scene in her mind. Colette and Francie are across from her. Winnie is to her right. Token—at least for a little while—is somewhere in the mix. She closes her eyes and sees Winnie, sipping iced tea, stealing peeks at the phone in her lap.