by Aimee Molloy
“What are you doing?” Lowell asks Francie later that evening. She’s sitting on the living room floor, her stomach in knots, placing lavender-scented candles in a circle around Will, who lies on the blanket in front of her.
She tries to keep her voice steady. “I’m practicing hygge.”
Lowell nods. “Oh yeah? What’s that?”
“It’s all the rage in Denmark.” Francie blows into her mug of tasteless chamomile tea, aware of the way Lowell is looking at her. Watching her. “It means ‘being cozy.’ It’s why those people are so calm and happy. I thought it might help Will’s mood.”
“That’s a good idea.” Lowell sits on the sofa and opens a beer. “And how’s your mood?”
Francie puts a fresh pair of cotton socks onto Will’s feet. The article said it was best to surround oneself with sheepskin, but she didn’t dare spend the money on the rug she found online, knowing these Carters’ cotton socks will have to do. “My mood? Fine. Why?”
“What do you mean why? Can’t I ask my wife how she’s feeling?”
“Well your mom told me this afternoon she thinks our floors are unhygienic. And that I should wash them with bleach.” Francie keeps her voice low. Barbara is in the bathroom, soaking in her nightly bath, her face set in a mud mask, listening to talk radio on her iPod.
“What’d you say?”
“Nothing. But I can’t use bleach on these floors. Bleach? Around a baby? I feel like she’s finding fault with our apartment. With half the things I do.”
“Francie.” His face clouds. “She doesn’t think that. You’re imagining it.”
Francie sips the tea, trying to force back the anxiety. She doesn’t want to talk about Barbara, she wants to talk about Winnie, about their conversation earlier. But she can’t, not with Lowell. She didn’t tell him what happened, knowing how angry he’d be at her for bringing Will to Winnie’s apartment. To make matters worse, Barbara stayed home all afternoon, her hair in furry plastic curlers, whispering into the phone in their bedroom. Francie assumes she was calling friends back in Tennessee, asking if they heard that Lowell was mentioned in the news, telling them she’d been right all along about the dangers of New York City. Barbara emerged from the bedroom only after Lowell came home, and by then Francie was too afraid to say anything at all.
“France, come on. She means well. Things were different when she had kids. She just—”
“Oh my god!” Barbara’s yell from the bathroom startles Francie, and she spills a few drops of hot tea onto Will’s arm. He begins to wail as Lowell jumps to his feet, bumping the table and spilling his beer, extinguishing two of the candles. He rushes down the hall toward the bathroom and knocks on the door.
“Mom!” He tries the handle but it’s locked. “Mom! You okay?”
“I knew it!” Barbara’s voice is triumphant. “I said it from the beginning.”
“What are you talking about?”
The door bursts open and Barbara steps into the hallway, wrapped in a towel, her face a tight sheet of gray, bubbles sliding from her shins to the floor.
“They’re bringing her in for official questioning,” Barbara says, her mask cracking. “That friend of yours. The mother. I knew she was hiding something.”
Chapter Nineteen
Night Eleven
I have an image of someone cutting me.
A long, thin knife penetrating my stomach, just below my navel, an easy slit, a straight line to my heart. I’m empty inside. As black as ash, my organs like dust. One touch and my heart crumbles into a million sooty specks, black powder left on the floor, leaving dark footprints wherever I walk.
I’ve always been this way. A bad little girl. My father said it all the time. “Leave her alone,” my mom would yell at him. “Do better,” she’d whisper to me when he wasn’t around. “Stop giving him reasons to be mad.”
I thought becoming a mother was going to change me, but I was wrong. The baby just made everything worse. And now everyone is going to know the true me. It was inevitable, right, that they’re on to me? Francie, that nosy, meddling twit.
Midas’s blanket. Why didn’t I take care of that earlier? Why
Why
Why why why
My thoughts are unraveling. I have to remain calm. I hear a booming voice in my head, as if it’s speaking through a megaphone. I can picture the voice. It’s mustached and wears a large top hat, circular wire glasses, and emerald shoes that curl up at the toes.
Hey lady, it yells through its megaphone. You must remain calm. This is no time to get hysterical.
(Ha, guess what, voice? I’ve done it. I’ve become exactly what my father said all women become. Hysterical.)
We’re going to disappear. I know I keep saying that, but this time I mean it. Tomorrow. The problem is, well . . .
The cash is almost gone. I’ve been too afraid to look, but I did. Yesterday. $743.12. That’s it.
I had no choice but to tell Joshua.
“But don’t worry,” I said last night, keeping my back to him so I wouldn’t see the shock and anger in his eyes. “Not all of it.” (For the first time in months I’m happy Dr. H isn’t around. “I said it a million times: be careful with that money,” he would say, his expression a study in disappointment, as if I were still a teenager.)
Then today Francie showed up, distracting me from the money, reminding me we have bigger problems. What if they don’t believe me? I finally spoke that question out loud. What if they see through the story we’ve created?
What if I go to jail?
But Joshua just turned away from me. I know even the mention of it terrifies him. Later, as we ate our dinner in silence, I was well aware what he was thinking.
Little Miss Clever can’t get us out of this predicament. Miss Tenth-Grade Math Whiz, and you still haven’t figured out a solution to a very simple equation of where to go?
I can’t waste any more time. Not with the way they’re closing in on me. Tennessee. Montana. Alaska. We’ll drive until we find where we want to be, or run out of gas. We’ll settle down. I’ll get a job. We’ll rent a cabin. Joshua is hoping for something remote and private. Land on which we can lose ourselves, start over. Somewhere we can never be found.
I want that too. I think I do, at least, when I try to picture it. A garden in the back. Maybe some chickens.
A gun nearby for protection. Just in case.
Chapter Twenty
Day Twelve
To: May Mothers
From: Your friends at The Village
Date: July 16
Subject: Today’s advice
Your baby: Day 63
It’s been nine weeks since you gave birth, and it’s time to talk about BALANCE. We know how it is. Taking care of the baby. Buying groceries. Getting back in shape. For some of us, preparing to go back to work. It’s not easy. The best thing you can do for yourself—and your baby—is to strive for the right balance in your life. Maybe you hire a mother’s helper a few hours a week, or ask a friend to babysit so you can go to the gym. Maybe you spend a little extra money having your groceries delivered. Find what works for you. After all, a happy mother, a happy home.
Nell’s body feels as if it’s made of cement, her legs cast in plaster. She hears the crying, but it’s muffled. The baby is calling to her from under water. She tries to move, but she doesn’t have enough strength.
“Nell.”
She smells the trace of vanilla in her mother’s hand lotion and opens her eyes. Margaret is standing over her.
“Am I late for work?” Nell asks.
“No. It’s not yet seven.” Her mom crouches beside her. “I hate to wake you, but you need to see something.”
Nell notices the look on her mom’s face. She sits up. “Is Beatrice okay?”
“Yes, sweetheart. She’s fine. She’s sound asleep. Sebastian just left for work. But come out to the living room with me.”
Nell lifts herself from the warm sheets and follows her mom down the hall. Mar
garet arrived yesterday evening, leaving work immediately after Nell called, driving the four hours from Newport to Brooklyn without stopping. She slept on an air mattress in the living room, the monitor beside her, tending to Beatrice so Nell and Sebastian could have their first full night of sleep since the baby was born.
The television is on in the living room, and Nell sees that Mayor Shepherd is standing at a podium, stepping aside to give Rohan Ghosh a place at the bank of microphones.
Nell looks at Margaret. “What happened?”
Ghosh is holding up his hand. “I’ll speak when you all quiet down,” he says, pausing to sip from a bottle of water. “Last night, we were led to conduct a new search of the car owned by Winnie Ross, in which we discovered a blue baby blanket stuffed into the tire well. The blanket matches the description of the one taken from Midas’s crib the night he was abducted. Our forensic team has confirmed that the fibers of the blanket contain traces of Midas Ross’s DNA, as well as evidence of his blood.”
“No,” Nell says, her chest growing tight.
“What led you to look at the car again?” someone yells from the crowd.
Ghosh continues to speak, raising his voice. “At approximately six this morning, Winnie Ross was taken into custody and formally charged in the disappearance of her son, Midas Ross.”
Nell gasps and her mother comes to stand beside her, taking her hand. “Did you find the body?”
“We’ll have more details for you later today. Right now, I’d like to thank Detective Mark Hoyt for his diligent work on the case. And, of course, recognize Mayor Shepherd. You guys were pretty hard on these two, but everyone involved did a stellar job.” Ghosh collects the papers from the podium. “That’s all for right now, folks. Thank you.”
Nell grips Margaret’s hand as the image on the screen switches to footage of Winnie being led from the back of an unmarked SUV into police headquarters in Lower Manhattan. Winnie peers at the cameras from under her dark hair, her wrists in cuffs behind her back, a uniformed man at each of her elbows.
She enters the building, and a newscaster’s face fills the television, but then the video starts again from the beginning: Winnie getting out of the car, walking toward the police station, looking up into the camera, her eyes vacant, her face like stone.
No. Francie bounces Will up and down the hall, saying the word out loud. “No.”
She takes her phone from the counter and types. Are you getting my messages? We need to talk about this. I have an idea.
She needs Will to stop crying. She needs a moment to think. She goes into the kitchen, relieved to finally have the apartment to herself, Lowell on his way to the airport to drop off his mother. She hasn’t eaten since lunch yesterday, and she’s faint with hunger, but there’s nothing she wants in the cupboards. She opens the freezer and takes a packet of frozen corn from the shelf, holding it to the back of her neck. The apartment is sweltering—confining—and she wants to turn on the air conditioner, but this morning Lowell asked her, his voice just above a whisper, to avoid using it to save money on their electric bill until she gets paid for the photography job she lied about having.
“No.” She says the word louder this time. They haven’t found his body. He could still be alive.
The doorbell rings again. It’s been ringing for the last two hours. Journalists seeking a comment. Mrs. Karan, her landlady, called Francie earlier, telling her she needs to make them get off the stoop and go away, complaining that somebody knocked over her potted geraniums. Francie checks her phone, impatient for a response from Nell and Colette, and writes again, typing with her free thumb.
I’m serious. We should talk to Scarlett. I think she can help.
That woman Francie saw on the balcony across from Winnie’s building, watering the plants: Francie thinks that may have been Scarlett. At first she wasn’t sure, but last night, while Lowell slept in their bed and Barbara on the couch, she locked herself in their hot, windowless bathroom, studying the notebook she keeps in her underwear drawer, searching for anything she may have missed. Thirty minutes later, naked in the tub, the shower water like ice pricks on her back and scalp, her hair like curtains down her cheeks, she remembered something: the last May Mothers meeting a few weeks earlier, when Scarlett told them that Winnie was depressed. Francie clearly pictures it. They were sitting on the blankets, sipping the wine Nell brought. Scarlett said how worried she was about Winnie. How they were neighbors, and had taken walks together.
Francie places Will gently into the swing, works the pacifier into his mouth, and flips the dial to the fastest setting.
Maybe Winnie told her something, she types. Something that could help.
She hits send, and her phone rings right away. It’s Colette. It sounds like she’s crying.
“Francie, you have to stop. You’re grasping at straws.”
“No, I’m not.” Francie begins to cry, too. “The blue blanket. The police didn’t even check Winnie’s trunk before last night?”
“No, that’s not what they said. They checked it again. Someone—”
“I was awake all night, thinking about it. If Winnie confided in Scarlett about her depression, maybe she confided in her about other things, too. Maybe there’s something there, something people are missing—”
“No.” Francie can hear the impatience in Colette’s voice. “You have to listen to me, Francie. I know this is hard. It’s hard for all of us. But I’m getting seriously worried.”
“I know. Me too. I’ve been worried—”
“No, Francie. I mean about you.”
“Me? This isn’t about me—”
“You need to get some rest, Francie. You’re not thinking rationally. You need—”
“But they haven’t said he’s dead. They haven’t found his body.” Francie’s throat is so tight, she feels as if she might choke. “Maybe he’s still alive. Maybe there’s still time to save him. He needs to be with his mother—”
“No!” The word is harsh in Francie’s ears. “He can’t be with his mother, Francie. His mother is the one who hurt him. Accept it. It’s over.”
Francie throws the phone onto the couch. Over?
The doorbell rings again, and then she hears footsteps on the stairs. There’s a hard knock on the door. It’s Mrs. Karan, coming to tell her she can no longer live with this chaos. She’s come to evict them. She, Lowell, the baby: they’ll have nowhere to live.
“Hello? Francie?” It’s a man’s voice.
She steps closer to the door. “Who is it?”
“Daniel.”
“Daniel?” Her head is spinning. That name. It’s familiar. Daniel.
She closes her eyes and presses her temples. The article she read. The interview Winnie gave after her mother died. I’ve been relying on Daniel. He’s the only thing getting me through the grief.
He’s banging harder.
Winnie’s boyfriend? He’s here, at her apartment? Did Winnie send him? Perhaps with a message—something to lead her to Midas?
“Francie, open up. Please. I have to talk to you.”
She turns the dead bolt and opens the door an inch, peering into the hall. The word comes out in a whisper.
“Token?”
“You were her boyfriend?”
“Yes,” he says. “A long time ago.”
“And now—you’re together?”
“No, no. It’s nothing like that.” Will lets out a cry, and Francie stands, but Token gets to him first, lifting him from the swing. He cradles him to his chest and begins to pace her living room.
She sits back down on the armchair, keeping her eyes on her baby. “But the two of you—”
“We’re just very good friends.” His gaze is on the floor, avoiding hers. “After her mom died, she ended it. She withdrew from everyone, including me. I did everything I could to change her mind, but she refused to see me.”
“I don’t get it. Why are you here?”
His laugh sounds strange—bitter even. “I don�
��t know, to be honest. I just wanted to see you. You may be the only person who sees what’s going on here.”
“What do you mean?”
“Winnie didn’t do this.”
Francie is so tired; her mind is cloudy. She doesn’t like him holding Will, but she feels lightheaded. “Your arrest. What—”
“How did you find out about it?”
“We saw your mug shot.”
“I figured. You found it online. But why did—”
“No. Not online. It was mailed to us.”
He stops pacing. “Mailed to who?”
“Us. Me, Nell, Colette.”
“What do you mean, it was mailed to you? By who?”
“I don’t know. It arrived in the mail. Someone sent it to Colette at the mayor’s office. There was no return address.”
“At the mayor’s office?” He closes his eyes. “I don’t get it.”
“What did you do?”
“I almost killed someone.”
Francie stands and takes Will from his arms. “Leave. Right now.” She turns her back to him, shielding Will from him. “I’ll call the police.”
“No, Francie, listen to me. It wasn’t like that. It was to protect Winnie. She was in danger.”
She turns around. “Danger?”
“She had a stalker.”
“Yes, I know. Archie Andersen. I read about it.”
Token nods. “It was after Winnie and I broke up. She didn’t know I was doing it, but I followed her to rehearsals, when she went back to work, making sure she arrived safely, that he wasn’t following her. Winnie thought he’d lost interest, but then he showed up at Audrey’s funeral. It terrified her. I wanted to make sure she was safe.”
