“I wouldn’t know.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m in the hospital. I had some cramping, so I called Dr. Lombardo’s office, and—”
“What?” Rita sits up straight in her chair, her heart sinking. “What is it?”
“Preterm labor.”
“Oh, Peyton, no.” Swept by emotion, Rita swallows hard, trying to find the right words. “You’ve been through so much, sugar pie. What did Bill say?”
Peyton pauses for a split second. Then, as though she just realized that Bill is Dr. Lombardo, she tells Rita, “He wasn’t at the hospital with me. He was busy with a delivery so the on-call doctor came in. He said the baby’s okay, but they want to keep me here until the morning, just to be sure. Then I have to go home and stay on bed rest until the baby is viable.”
After a quick calculation, Rita asks, “About six weeks?”
“About that. I’m still in shock. What am I going to do about work?”
“They’ll have to get along without you,” she says, peeved that it’s even an issue. “This is life and death, Peyton. You’ve got to take care of yourself and that baby.”
“I know. And I will.” She yawns deeply. “Listen, I need you to do something for me. They won’t release me tomorrow unless I have somebody here to bring me home.”
“I’ll do it,” Rita offers quickly.
“I knew you would. Thank you.”
Peyton describes what happened, then, and apologizes profusely for going back on her word to just go home.
“Where’s Gil now?”
“He stayed here with me until he was sure I was okay. Then he went to my apartment to meet the alarm installer.”
“The alarm installer?” Rita echoes.
“I can’t spend the next two months in that apartment without a security alarm. I can’t even spend a night there without one. So Gil called a place from the hospital, and they said they could do it tonight.”
“You gave him your keys?”
There’s a moment of silence. “Rita, it’s Gil. I’ve known him forever.”
Rita shakes her head in disbelief. “And that’s a reason to trust him? I thought you realized that you can’t trust anyone.”
“Not even Gil? I was thinking I might ask him to be my labor coach.”
“Not even anyone. You never know, Peyton. The person you think is your closest friend might be an enemy.”
There’s a moment of silence.
Then Peyton asks, “Have you heard from Wanda again?”
“Not a word. I tried calling her when I got back home. No answer.”
“Did you leave a message?”
“No. If I’d have said what I felt like saying to her, I doubt we’d ever see her again.” Rita sighs. “Look, don’t worry about Wanda right now. Worry about you.”
“I can’t help it. First Allison disappeared, and now—”
“Wanda hasn’t disappeared. I spoke to her just yesterday, remember?”
“I know. But she wasn’t in the hospital where she claimed to be, and she wasn’t home. I just keep feeling like maybe she’s in trouble.”
Not about to disclose to Peyton her disturbing theories about Wanda Jones, Rita purses her lips, then says, “I’m sure she’s fine. Just take care of yourself now, Peyton, for the baby’s sake.”
“But what am I going to do alone in my apartment for weeks on end? How will I survive?”
“I’ll help you,” Rita says simply, knowing she’ll do whatever it takes to get Peyton through the rest of this pregnancy. There is nobody else the woman can turn to, nobody else she can dare trust with her baby’s life. “I won’t let anything happen to this baby, sugar pie. Everything is going to be just fine. I promise.”
“Thanks, Rita.” Peyton sniffles. Peyton, whom Rita has never seen cry. “Because the baby is all I care about now. Nothing else matters. Not work, not Tom, not anything else. You’re a mother. You understand.”
Rita nods. “Exactly. I’m a mother. I understand. Now get some sleep, okay?”
“Absolutely. And thanks, Rita.” Speaking around an enormous yawn, Peyton says, “Nancy was right. She told me I’d be able to count on you.”
Rita frowns. “Nancy?”
“She answered the phone when I called the office, and she met me over at the hospital. She stayed after Gil left, to help me get settled in and keep me company. She even offered to go take care of the alarm, but Gil insisted on doing it. Nancy’s great, though, you know?”
“Yes, she is great,” Rita agrees, biting back a warning there’s really no reason to give.
For the next two months, Peyton will be cocooned in her apartment, protected from the rest of the world by alarms, locks . . .
And me, Rita reminds herself with fierce resolve. As long as I’m there at her bedside, standing guard, nobody’s going to get to her, no matter what.
Mary is about to press the last digit on the telephone dial when she hears a sound so faint she wonders if she imagined it.
A baby’s whimper.
Her heart stops.
Dawn?
Mary throws the telephone aside and hurries toward the sound, calling her daughter’s name.
By the time she reaches the front door, it’s already opening.
Javier stands there, the baby in his arms.
“Where were you?” Mary sobs.
He doesn’t reply.
She hurtles herself forward, reaching for the fussy infant, holding her close. “How could you put me through that?”
But the words aren’t accusatory, nor is her gaze when at last she lifts her head in his direction.
He says only, “I thought you needed to see more clearly.”
Unable to speak, she can only nod, hoping he can see in her eyes all that she needs him to know.
In those terrible hours, she lost the only things that will ever truly matter.
Now that she has them back, she’ll fight to keep them at any cost.
“You won’t tell?” Javier asks, his dark eyes boring into hers, and she shakes her head.
“Do you promise you’ll never bring it up again?”
She swallows hard, whispers, “I promise.”
Satisfied, he nods, and turns his attention to Dawn, now settled contentedly into Mary’s arms.
“She cried a lot,” Javier informs his wife. “I think she missed her mother.”
For a split second, Mary thinks of the teenaged girl. Then, with newfound resolve, she shoves her firmly from her mind.
Gazing down at the cherished baby in her arms, she croons, “Es bien, mi tesoro. Su madre esta aqui.”
Yes.
Your mother is here.
Alone in the hotel room, Anne Marie stares down at the red Bible in her lap.
She showed it to the police when Heather disappeared, but nobody ever considered it evidence that she had met with foul play—even when Anne Marie pointed out that she had never seen the Bible until she found it hidden in her daughter’s room.
Convinced Heather was another pregnant teenaged runaway, the detectives were unfazed by the odd, highlighted passages in the Book of Wisdom.
. . . the numerous progeny of the wicked shall be of no avail; their spurious offshoots shall not strike deep root nor take firm hold . . .
. . . for children born of lawless unions give evidence of the wickedness of their parents . . .
“Your daughter must have been doing some soul-searching,” Anne Marie was told by an older cop with judgmental eyes.
Ryan, to whom Heather was closer than anybody else, repeatedly assured Anne Marie that wasn’t the case. Not that she had any doubts. In her last days, Heather seemed serenely accepting of the next phase in her life.
According to Ryan, Heather found the Bible in her backpack a few weeks before she vanished, and thought one of the kids at school had put it there as a joke. She never worried much about it, and neither did he. It wasn’t the first time one of their peers saw fit to condemn her condition, just a more anonymous
and creative alternative to whispering behind her back.
Anne Marie knows now that it wasn’t a mean-spirited teenager who highlighted those Bible passages. It was somebody whose intention was far more malevolent.
Whoever left the Bible was responsible for her daughter’s disappearance and death.
But the baby survived.
Nobody could have guessed that. Heather’s remains had been dismembered and scattered, making it impossible for forensics to speculate that the fetus had been removed.
Who took the baby?
Who killed Heather?
She needs answers.
She needs closure, now more than ever.
That’s why she hired the private investigator to reexamine her daughter’s disappearance, unable to shake the vision she had glimpsed at the Bronx Zoo last summer. On several occasions this past spring, she snuck away to confer with Mason Hertz at his office in Upper Manhattan, telling Jarrett she was at the theater, or shopping, or meeting friends for lunch.
There were times when she knew he believed her grief had conjured the girl in the crowd at the zoo, times when she believed that herself. After all, it was preposterous to believe she had actually seen that hauntingly familiar face in a vast metropolitan area inhabited by tens of millions of faces . . . wasn’t it?
But then, she had spent a decade scanning every face in every crowd, everywhere she went, for her daughter, looking for her lost child in every little girl who passed.
In her heart, she knew Heather was long dead; she just needed proof in order to move on, to start living again.
But Mason Hertz didn’t just find proof of Heather’s demise.
He found Edgewood Elementary School, and he found Kelly Clements.
He also found a legal birth certificate that confirmed she had been born to the couple who are raising her.
“I don’t give a damn what that piece of paper says,” Anne Marie had told him that day in his office, flinging it back at him. “She’s Heather’s. And she’s mine.”
Ten years, wasted. Ten years when she might have been able to watch Heather’s baby grow, might have been able to raise her as she raised her own daughter and is raising her boys now. Just as Grace DeMario raised her.
There are no coincidences, Anne Marie.
No, there aren’t.
Yet there’s no use dwelling on what might have been.
She can only accept what is . . . and decide where to go from here.
She thinks of Ryan, all grown up now, working for a bank and planning a Christmas wedding to a woman he now lives with in Brooklyn. It wasn’t hard for Mason Hertz to track him down.
When Anne Marie called him that day from the pay phone to tell him that his daughter might be alive, she expected an incredulous gasp, joyful tears; a barrage of questions at the very least.
But her bombshell was met with silence, followed eventually by a weary “You have to let go, Ms. DeMario. Just like I have.”
“But . . . don’t you want to find your daughter?”
“No, I’m sorry . . . I don’t believe she’s really alive. How can she be?”
Ann Marie opened her mouth to convince him, but he went on, “And even if she is, I just . . . I can’t. I have a whole life now, I’m getting married, and I can’t go back to all that . . . pain. Please try to understand.”
But she couldn’t understand. And she didn’t try.
She hung up, knowing that she alone is responsible for uncovering the truth. She alone carries on in memory of the lovely young woman who is all but forgotten by the rest of the world, her child ripped from the womb and her body nothing more than a discarded incubator left to rot with rat-infested garbage.
Swallowing hard at the memory of the two calls she made on that day in the commuter parking lot, she picks up the telephone on the bedside table and dials.
She won’t call Ryan again.
Nor will she call the Clementses.
A groggy voice answers after several rings.
She looks at the clock, belatedly recognizing the late hour as she says softly, “Jarrett? I’m coming home.”
The water is boiling now, bubbling furiously in the small stainless steel kettle used solely for this sacred purpose.
A pair of tongs are propped against the rim, the pincers resting on the bottom beside the submerged knife, its extended blade camouflaged in the silvery depths.
Five minutes. That’s the length of time necessary for sterilization. Less than a minute to go.
If only the remainder of Peyton Somerset’s pregnancy could tick away as rapidly as the seconds on the stove timer.
But you don’t have to wait until her actual due date. The baby will be able to breathe on its own well before that. All you have to do is get through another few weeks . . .
All the while, resisting the temptation to stoke her paranoia.
The situation has become too precarious. One false move, and it could all come crashing down.
Better to lie low than risk being discovered now, when the plan is teetering on the verge of fruition.
Yes. Far, far better to be invisible, to watch, to wait until the time is right, and then—
The timer emits a low-pitched buzz.
It’s ready.
The knife is removed from its steaming bath with the tongs, and carefully dried on some sterile pads.
Then, in front of the bathroom mirror, the ritual begins.
There is no longer pain on the site of the scar when the blade slices carefully along the crimson line. Not physical pain, anyway.
With practiced expertise, the skin high on the forehead is split open just below the hairline, the blade dragged down a fraction of an inch to gouge the shallow flesh beneath.
Ah, there’s the blood. A scarlet trickle forms a droplet that clings for a tantilizing second before falling onto a ledge of pink tongue that savors the salty warmth.
When the ritual is finished, the knife is washed clean in hot, soapy water.
Then it’s set aside in a drawer, where it will remain until the wound begins to heal once again.
Month Eight
September
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The telephone rings just as Peyton is straining past her enormous stomach to turn over her final card in yet another futile game of solitaire.
“Rita? Are you going to grab that?” she calls, before remembering that her friend ran to Duane Reade to pick up more Tums for Peyton’s worsening heartburn.
The phone is just out of reach on the bedside table. She debates whether to bother answering. It rarely rings these days, and when it does, she’s never the one who picks it up.
Rita fielded the few calls from her office that came early on in her bed-rest sentence, as well as occasional inquiries from concerned family and friends. Aside from her mother’s nightly long-distance check-ins, Peyton’s contact with the outside world seems to have tapered off.
Gil initially popped in a few times, as did Nancy, and Kate, and Julie. But Rita discouraged prolonged visits, telling everyone Peyton needs her rest.
And she does. It feels good to hide away from the world, not having to deal with anything or anyone. It’s as though she’s been indefinitely cast adrift on a sea of tranquility, the weighty problems of the past having been cast away like anchors whose chains have been severed.
Legally unable to interfere with Peyton’s medical leave, Tara has all but ceased to exist. Candace stopped by last week to drop off the pretty handmade quilt now draped over the side of the crib beside the bed. She mentioned that Alain’s position remains open.
“I bet it’ll be yours if you want it, whenever you come back,” she confided.
If you want it.
Peyton, who has always known exactly what she wants, and how she’s going to get it, is no longer certain of anything.
Funny how now that she has all this time to lie here and think, her thoughts are more muddled than ever.
She might be inclined to throw hersel
f headlong into her career as soon as the baby is born.
Or she might be tempted to give up on Kaplan and Kline, on corporate America altogether.
The same uncharacteristic indecision hasn’t just infiltrated her views on her professional life. She still isn’t sure who, if anyone, to ask to be her labor coach. Rita keeps telling her there’s time, that she can get through it without a coach if she chooses. Peyton doesn’t know what to think about it.
Then there’s Allison.
Is she still alive? Was she a victim, or an instigator of her own disappearance?
In the dead of night, when Peyton has trouble sleeping, she believes Allison is dead, and that something sinister is lurking nearby, ready to strike her as well. She’s sure that the Bible and the bloody placenta are harbingers of catastrophes soon to come.
Then the sun comes up, Rita arrives to bustle around the apartment, and Peyton invariably decides Allison ran away, and that she herself merely fell victim to relatively benign pranks that may—or may not—have been played by a man she foolishly allowed herself to fall for.
The phone is still ringing. No caller ID on the bedroom receiver, either.
I should answer it. It might be Rita.
What if it’s Tom?
When she first came home from the hospital last month, he repeatedly tried to see her, tried to convince her to at least talk to him.
Finally, in a single, terse telephone conversation, Peyton apologized for the sudden breakup, but informed him that she was no longer equipped to focus on anything but the baby. When he persisted, she dutifully handed the phone over to Rita, who was loyally standing by.
The midwife told him under no uncertain terms that the slightest mental anguish could be dangerous for both Peyton and the baby.
“You need to leave her alone, Tom,” she said firmly. “And if you don’t, I’ll get the police involved.”
That was the last time he called.
Rita has since reported that she’s seen him from the window, lurking outside the building on occasion. But he’s never attempted to come in.
Not that he can. The place is a fortress. Peyton has learned to feel safe here even when Rita goes home at night, thanks to the dead bolts, the bars, the alarm—and the six-inch carving knife she secretly keeps under her pillow.
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