Lullaby and Goodnight

by Staub, Wendy Corsi

  And then, moments later, the warbling cries of an infant who just took her first breath.

  The proud daddy cuts the cord, freeing his child at last.

  “It’s a little girl,” Rita gently tells the exhausted mother as she places the blood-slicked newborn against her mother’s warm, bare breasts.

  “Oh my God. Look at that. Look at her.” Kevin peers into his daughter’s solemnly alert gaze. “She sees me. She’s turning her head. She knows I’m her daddy.”

  “Of course she does. She’s heard your voice for the last nine months,” Rita tells him with a smile, as she gently dabs a smear of blood from Jessica’s inner thigh.

  “She’s beautiful,” Jessica whispers in awe. “Thank you, Rita. Thank you for being here. I needed you. You’re . . . you’re like a guardian angel.”

  A guardian angel.

  Rita nods and looks away, unable to find her voice, haunted once again by memories of Allison.

  “And you say you didn’t see the Bible that was left under your friend’s pillow?”

  Peyton shakes her head, wishing the police officer were a little less . . . dubious.

  Well, at least he’s older and kinder than the last one who was here.

  Aloud, she says, “I don’t even know if there’s a connection between mine and hers. But it seems like an odd coincidence, doesn’t it?”

  He doesn’t answer, merely leans over the counter to scribble more notes on his report. If he’s noticed the broken china in the adjacent sink, he hasn’t mentioned it.

  “So what you’re saying, ma’am, is that your friend’s mother might have broken into your apartment and left a Bible for you, same as she did for her daughter?”

  “No! I mean . . . maybe. I don’t know.” Peyton rakes a hand through her hair, exhausted. “What do you think?”

  “Frankly, I don’t know what to think. It’s definitely an odd coincidence.”

  Terrific. That’s precisely what she just said. Isn’t the policeman the one who’s supposed to put the clues together?

  “You say you’ve never even met this woman?”

  “Allison’s mother?” Peyton shakes her head. “No.”

  “But she’s some kind of lunatic Holy Roller who—”

  “I don’t think she’s a lunatic,” she interrupts.

  “So she’s some kind of Holy Roller,” he amends, though it’s clear from his expression that he thinks Holy Rollers qualify as lunatics, “and she goes around quoting the Bible, and you think she might have—”

  “I don’t think anything,” Peyton cuts in again, frustrated. “I just know that I found this Bible after the break-in, and Wanda told me Allison found one, too. I haven’t seen hers, and I don’t know which quotes were highlighted, but if they’re at all similar, I think it would be obvious that there would be a connection.”

  “So you think your friend’s mother disapproves of both of you for being unmarried and . . .” He pauses, as though trying to figure out how to put it delicately.

  “Knocked up,” she supplies impatiently. “And yes, I know her mother disapproves, at least of Allison. But—”

  “So you think that’s why your friend took off? Because of her mother?”

  “I don’t know if she took off,” Peyton tells him wearily, folding her arms and leaning against the fridge for support. It’s been a hell of a long day. Maybe she should have waited to call the police.

  But you have to do this. For Allison.

  Aware that her throat is beginning to constrict with emotion, she says quietly, “I’m worried that she didn’t take off. I’m worried that whoever left that Bible for her might have . . .”

  She trails off, unable to say it aloud.

  “Abducted her?”

  The officer’s words are more benign than the scenario in Peyton’s worst nightmares. His scenario is difficult, but one she can handle.

  “Yes,” she agrees, “abducted her.”

  He scribbles more notes on his report, then returns his pen to his pocket, looks up, and promises, “We’ll look into it.”

  “Now? Tonight?”

  He hesitates. “Ms. Somerset, you have to understand that another precinct is involved and—”

  “What does that have to do with anything? This isn’t some little petty break-in. It’s a missing-person’s case, for God’s sake.”

  “I’m aware of that, and I’m also aware that ninety-nine percent of the time in cases like this, where the kid and the mother were at odds, it turns out to involve a runaway.”

  “Allison wasn’t a kid! She isn’t some teenaged runaway! She’s a grown woman!”

  “I understand that. But she lived under her parents’ roof, with a mother who was driving her crazy. Chances are, she just snapped and took off for a while. Adults are allowed to do that, you know.”

  Peyton nods. Yes, she knows. She knows, at least, intellectually, that he could very well be right.

  But she can’t ignore the nagging feeling in her heart, in her gut, that there’s more to this.

  That whoever left her the Bible is behind Allison’s disappearance.

  That it wasn’t Allison’s mother.

  And that something catastrophic has happened to a woman who had everything—well, the most seemingly relevant thing, anyway—in common with Peyton herself.

  A twig snaps amid a chorus of crickets, and she freezes, her foot frozen in place, waiting to be exposed in the sudden glare of floodlights.

  A moment passes, and then another, and, reassuringly, another.

  She dares to breathe again. The house remains dark, at least on the outside. Lamplight spills from the bay windows on the first floor and a gabled corner one on the second, above the porch. The glow illuminates peeling paint, a gap in the spindles, a broken shutter.

  Is that her room? Is she up there somewhere beyond the twin swoops of parted curtains, preparing for sleep?

  There’s a trellis alongside the porch. It looks rickety, but it wouldn’t be difficult to climb it if it holds her weight. Not at all difficult to creep across the porch roof and peek inside. Just to get a glimpse.

  She’ll never suspect. Even if she did happen to hear something, or even see something, she might chalk it up to a suburban Peeping Tom.

  For a few more minutes, she waits, standing absolutely still, her black-clad figure blending with the inky night.

  Then, satisfied that nobody heard the twig snap beneath the heel of her Ferragamo loafer, she begins to move forward again.

  She assures herself that she won’t be discovered even if she slips through the darkness to the porch. That she can scale the trellis, take a quick look, and then be on her way.

  That’s all I need. Just one look. At least, for tonight.

  She’s taken precisely six painstakingly counted steps toward the trellis when she hears the rumble of a distant motor. Growing rapidly closer, the rumble is swiftly followed by the arc of headlights as a car turns onto the end of the street.

  Panic swells within.

  Heart pounding, adrenaline surging, driven by primal instinct like one of the deer that roam the woods beyond her Bedford rose garden, Anne Marie Egerton flees toward the shelter of shadowy undergrowth.

  But you’ll be back, she promises herself, and the unwitting stranger in the room above the porch.

  Because once the door has been opened, there’s nothing to do but go through it.

  Month Five

  June

  CHAPTER NINE

  “How about Saturday, then?” Gil asks Peyton as they stroll down Seventh Avenue on a humid Wednesday evening in June. “We can have dinner and then go downtown and listen to some music or something.”

  “I can’t, Gil. I already promised Rita I’d have dinner with her that night.”

  “Again?”

  Peyton shrugs, unwilling to explain to him the fast friendship she’s formed with Rita, and with Julie, and Wanda, and Nancy . . .

  Irrevocably united in tragic loss, the women have formed a so
lid bond, spending as much free time in each other’s company as possible.

  Almost a month has passed since Allison disappeared, with no sign of her.

  Hope has all but died. Even if she did run away, she’d surely have come back eventually for the sake of her other children. And she’d have had the baby by now.

  All you need when you’re in labor is to be surrounded by people you totally trust.

  Remembering her friend’s heartfelt assertion, Peyton is certain she wouldn’t choose to be alone somewhere to deliver her child. She’d have at least called Rita from wherever she was, for emotional support if nothing else.

  “I sound like a jealous boyfriend, don’t I?” Gil asks ruefully, intruding on her grim thoughts. “Whining because you actually have friends and a life, Runt, and I don’t.”

  “You still have friends and a life, Stretch.”

  “Not really. You’re my only friend these days. Karla’s poisoned all our mutual ones. And my life consists of work and sleep.”

  “Yeah, well, I can relate to that. How about Sunday?” Peyton asks to placate the poor guy, whose loneliness is palpable.

  One minute he was married with children; the next, he’s being forced to move into a rented apartment, alone.

  He just showed her around his new place. Never having seen the town house where he lived with his family, Peyton found it exceedingly livable. But Gil kept pointing out all its shortcomings, to the point where she had to remind him that there are worse things in life than living without a dishwasher or linen closet.

  Far worse things.

  “Sunday is Father’s Day,” he informs her now. “I get the kids all day. I’m taking them to a baseball game.”

  A baseball game.

  Peyton can’t help but think of Tom, whose two tickets to the Yankees she was forced to turn down last month, along with all the other invitations he’s extended since. At first he seemed undaunted by her avoidance, much to her frustration. He just kept popping back into her life, and she kept insisting she was too busy at work, too upset about Allison, to see him.

  In truth, to let him see her, and the pregnancy that’s challenging to hide under even the baggiest of clothing.

  Mercifully, he finally left for the Orient on business for ten days.

  A few days ago, knowing he was back, she stopped wondering when he would call, stopped answering her phone at all, stopped caring.

  Well, no. She hasn’t stopped caring about him.

  But Lord knows she has tried.

  “Okay, so at least you get to see the kids on Father’s Day,” she tells Gil absently, her thoughts still on the man who might have been perfect for her, if things had been different.

  “Yeah, terrific. I get to see them after Karla has spent the week filling their ears with lies about me.”

  “I’m sorry, Gil. I know how hard this is for you.”

  “Thanks, Runt. I keep telling myself that I’m lucky. You know, that it would be much harder if she took them to the West Coast.”

  He goes on, talking about his ex-wife and devious plans and her evil lawyer, and his own barely competent lawyer and the unjust separation agreement he was refusing to sign.

  Peyton fulfills her role as sympathetic listener with an occasional comment, but her thoughts are wandering again.

  To Tom. To Allison. To the baby, now making its presence known on a regular basis with bold kicks and unexpected flutters.

  The prospect of motherhood is her unwavering anchor in these tumultuous times. Sustained by the realization that there can be moments of pure bliss in the midst of such discouragement, she continually manages to get out of bed in the mornings and face whatever lies ahead.

  Aside from the all-too-fleeting, magical interludes when her child stirs within, her long days consist of a montage of meetings and pink message slips, client presentations and stacks of paperwork.

  Now that she’s showing, a number of coworkers have at least politely acknowledged her pregnancy, if not grilled her about the father, the due date, her plans.

  But not Tara.

  It’s become a bizarre, ridiculous waiting game, as far as Peyton is concerned. Tara refuses to comment, clearly expecting Peyton to state the obvious.

  She has no intention of doing that.

  Call her stubborn—Allison did—but she isn’t in the mood to hear Tara’s take on single motherhood or what it will do to her career. Sooner or later, it will have to be addressed, but not until Tara brings it up—or Peyton herself is forced to when, say, maternity leave is imminent.

  If her days are difficult now, her lonely, restless nights are excruciating.

  Her apartment, her bright little sanctuary, no longer feels safe.

  She had yet another dead bolt installed, along with an alarm system, but she might as well be sleeping out on the sidewalk for all the protection they seem to offer. All she can think is that somebody slipped in before, and they might somehow do it again.

  The police don’t seem to think so. To her frustration, they aren’t even taking seriously the possibility of a link between her break-in and Allison’s disappearance.

  She’s called the precinct nearly every day since the officer took away as evidence the annotated Bible she found in her drawer.

  According to them, Allison’s parents couldn’t find any such Bible among her possessions. Her grieving mother was so incensed at the mere suggestion that she could have had anything to do with her daughter’s disappearance that the detectives presumably dropped that line of questioning.

  Peyton has only Wanda’s word that Allison found the Bible under her pillow, and Wanda claims she never saw it. Allison didn’t mention it to anyone else in the group, or to Nancy, or Rita.

  None of them knows what to make of that, or of the Bible that was left by Peyton’s prowler. Nobody is certain that Peyton is even in danger, although everyone agrees that she should watch her step.

  Big help that is.

  How can she watch her step when she has no idea whether there’s even a legitimate threat? And if there is one, where on earth does it lie?

  There are times when the marked Bible seems ominous, times when she feels ridiculous dwelling on that in light of everything else she has to deal with.

  For all she knows, the culprit could be somebody she knows—somebody who disapproves of her choice, but isn’t brazen enough to confront her directly. Somebody who has access to her everyday life, to her home, the way a total stranger would not.

  “Who’s that? One of your neighbors?”

  At Gil’s question, Peyton glances up to see him pointing at the stoop of her brownstone down the block.

  Somebody is sitting on the steps, legs sprawled onto the sidewalk, as though they’ve been there for a while. Waiting.

  Peyton’s heart quickens as she recognizes the figure.

  “No,” she murmurs to Gil, her feet instinctively picking up their pace. “Not one of my neighbors. It’s a friend.”

  A friend whose abrupt reappearance has caught her utterly off guard.

  “You can’t just leave! What about the baby?” Derry screams at Linden as he slings his hastily packed bag over his shoulder.

  “For God’s sake, will you listen to yourself? There is no baby!” he roars.

  “Yes, there is!”

  She hates him. She honestly hates him, with every ounce of energy she possesses.

  “You know there’s a baby. In October, the donor is going to—”

  “I don’t care about October,” he cuts in, fury gleaming in his eyes. “I care about now. And right now, you’re out of your freakin’ mind! You’re obsessed with this!”

  Obsessed? Because she turned down a lousy waitressing job this afternoon? A job that would have kept her on her feet for ten-hour shifts nights and weekends?

  When Linden came home just now and asked—no, demanded to know—why she turned it down, she initially considered making something up. Something he would agree was understandable.

  Bu
t in the end, she didn’t. In the end, she told him the truth: that she turned down the job offer, her first in a month, because the manager was clearly unsympathetic to her condition.

  “You don’t have no condition!” Linden bellowed.

  Don’t have any condition, Derry thought silently, clenching her jaw.

  “You are not even pregnant!”

  “Shut up!” she hissed, casting a wary glance at the open window. “The manager thinks that I’m pregnant, and he couldn’t care less. That means he won’t care, either, when it comes time for me to take time off to give birth, or be with the baby.”

  That made perfect sense to her.

  It merely convinced Linden that his wife has plunged off the deep end.

  “I’m not obsessed,” she says now, lowering her voice slightly in response to Mrs. Steiner’s renewed pounding on the wall. “I’m just not willing to work in a place that isn’t conducive to family life.”

  “We don’t have a family.”

  “We’re about to.”

  “You don’t need time off to give birth because you’re not giving birth.”

  “Why do you keep saying that? You’re trying to hurt me.”

  “No, I’m saying it because it’s true. And I’m starting to think that you really think you’re having a baby.” He leans in, eyes glittering with accusation. “I’m starting to think you’re really crazy.”

  “Shut up!” She reaches out to shove him away, but he stands his ground like a steel pole rooted in cement.

  “No, you are. You’re crazy.” His voice is tight with conviction. “Every day, I see you getting more and more into this thing. Every day, I tell myself that it’s not right.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about this.” He reaches out and snatches the prosthesis from beneath her blouse, wrenching it from the belt fastenings and heaving it into her face.

  That’s when she really does go crazy.

  She pummels Linden with her fists, calling him every heinous name she’s ever heard.

  He holds her off, infuriatingly, with just one strong arm, telling her that he’s through. Through with her, and through with the crazy adoption plan, as he calls it. He has no interest in pretending for even a moment longer that they’re expecting a child.