by Kate Hewitt
Alexa rose to snatch it before I could even turn. I didn’t mind; I had no secrets. Not anymore. Still, I was a bit taken aback by her presumption.
“Alexa…”
“It’s the police.” She thrust the phone out at me and I took it automatically. “Why are they calling you?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I didn’t recognize the number, and I wondered how Alexa had.
“Maria Dzino?” The sound of Lisa’s voice, sounding so formal, made me tense. Instinctively, I angled my body away from Alexa. “This is Detective Lisa Allan from the New York Police Department.”
“Yes.”
“I wasn’t sure this was your number. Nathan West gave it to me, but…” A pause. “I didn’t realize you’d become a nanny to his children.”
“Yes.” Why did I sound defensive?
“Nathan didn’t inform me of that,” Lisa continued. “I learned it from a friend of yours at Global Rescue…? Neriha…?”
“Right.” I hadn’t seen Neriha since I’d come to work for the Wests. I hadn’t seen anyone from there, shedding my former life, such as it had been, like an old skin.
“It’s an interesting connection,” Lisa remarked, and I had no idea what that was supposed to mean.
“Was there a reason you called?”
“Yes, in fact there was. We’d like you to come down to the station, to answer a few questions that have arisen.”
I felt Alexa standing behind me, bristling with curiosity. “Why?” I asked, trying to hold onto my polite tone. “I’ve told you everything I know.” It took effort to keep my voice steady.
“Even so,” Lisa said, sounding both equable and firm. “It would help us in our inquiries.”
“All right.” What else could I say? “When should I come?”
“As soon as possible.”
As soon as possible? I swallowed, the sound audible even over the phone. “I need to take one of the West children to preschool,” I said. “And I have the oldest with me…”
“That’s fine,” Lisa assured me. “Why don’t you come after you drop the littlest one off?”
After I’d disconnected the call, I turned slowly to face Alexa, bracing myself.
She was glaring at me, her hands on her hips. “The police want to talk to you?”
“Yes, they have some questions.” I resumed loading the dishwasher, trying to hold onto the sense of peace I’d had only moments ago.
“Why do they want to talk to you?” Alexa asked, sounding aggressive. “What could you possibly know?”
“I volunteered with your mother, Alexa,” I said. “I might have seen someone.” I thought of that photo Nathan had seen, the man—whoever he was—walking behind me. I’d tried not to think of it. I’d told myself it had nothing to do with me. And yet, right now, it did. I was going to the police station, after all. “You should get dressed,” I told her. “We need to take Ruby to preschool, and then we’ll have to go to the station.”
Alexa looked as if she wanted to argue, but then, with a shrug, she strode off to her room.
I thought, briefly, of calling Nathan. He’d offered to accompany me, but I knew it would be a hassle for him, having to leave work, and there was a panicky part of me that did not want him there. I could not even say why.
“Come on, Ruby,” I called. She was sprawled on her stomach in the dining room, playing with some little plastic figurines. “Time to go.”
I knew I still needed to apologise to Alexa, but with the police visit pressing down on me, I told myself it could wait till after. We’d talk properly then.
I held onto that after as I walked into the police station downtown, having dropped off Ruby at preschool, Alexa sullen and silent by my side.
“She can wait here,” one of the desk sergeants said when I told them who I was. She smiled at Alexa. “Would you like a hot chocolate?”
While she fetched Alexa her drink, I followed another officer to a small interview room in the back with a metal table and a couple of chairs. It felt far more official and formal than when I’d been interviewed at Global Rescue.
I sat down, trying not to feel nervous, while the sergeant murmured that Lisa and Tom would be with me soon.
Had Nathan been in a room like this? Had he felt nervous the way I did, my heart starting to pound, my palms slick? What was I so scared of?
I took a deep breath and let it out again.
The door opened and Lisa came in, followed by Tom. They both looked serious.
“Thank you for coming in, Maria,” Lisa said.
Tom put a recorder on the table and I stared at it with apprehension. This conversation needed to be recorded? What was going on?
“That’s just routine,” Lisa assured me when she saw my nervous glance towards the little black machine. “Would you like a drink? Coffee? Tea?”
“Just water, please.”
A few minutes later, they settled in front of me, their chairs creaking as they sat down, while I clutched a plastic cup of lukewarm water and took a tiny sip.
“What do you need to ask me?” I finally said when no one spoke.
“When did you become nanny to Nathan West’s children?” Lisa asked, her tone not quite conversational.
“He asked me just before the New Year.”
“I didn’t realize you knew each other.”
“He came to the center, to Global Rescue. He wanted to talk to someone who knew Laura. We went for coffee…”
“And from that he asked you to be his children’s nanny?” Lisa raised her eyebrows.
I found myself blushing. “Yes, more or less.”
“More… or less?” I heard a slight edge to her voice then and something flared to life inside me.
“Why are you asking me things? What does it matter?”
Tom leaned back in his chair, affecting a pose of relaxation. “It’s just strange, that’s all. Surely you can see that. Maria.”
I didn’t like the way he said my name, like an afterthought.
“Stranger things have happened,” I said. “I thought you had some questions about the… the incident?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact we do.” Lisa took a photo from a file and placed it on the table in front of me. “This is the suspect. He’s walking right behind you.” It had to be the photo Nathan had seen, and though I’d been expecting it, it still jolted me.
There I was, in grainy black and white, walking along the sidewalk. I recognized my bag, my coat. And there behind me, his back to the camera, was a man. I searched his form, the rangy length of it, the shaggy hair, but I knew no more than I had at the beginning.
I looked up at Lisa and Tom, shrugging helplessly. “I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t recognize him?”
I stiffened. “Of course I don’t.”
“Why don’t you look again,” Tom said.
“I don’t need to,” I returned sharply, more sharply than I would have usually dared. “It’s the back of his head. There are dozens, hundreds, of people on the street. I don’t recognize him.”
We stared at each other for a long, tense moment. Finally Lisa shifted in her seat, folded her arms. “We’ve had some new information about the suspect,” she said. “He flew to New York from London in September of last year.” Two months before Laura had been shot. I said nothing. “And before that, he flew to London from Tirana.” A heavy silence.
“Tirana…” I stared at them blankly. “That is the capital of Albania.” More silence. “What does that have to do with me?” A shrug. “Tirana is hundreds of kilometres from Sarajevo; and I haven’t been back to Sarajevo in twenty years,” I reminded them, my voice not quite steady. “You know that from my records.”
“We have some other pictures of the assailant, taken from various CCTV cameras,” Lisa said as she reached for more photos from her folder. “Why don’t you take a look at them?”
Wordlessly, I held my hand out. Lisa gave me several sheets of paper—black and white pr
int-outs, magnified to blurriness, all of the same man. I studied them each in turn, willing my heart rate to slow. This had nothing to do with me. I had nothing to be afraid of. I kept telling myself that, chanting it silently like a prayer.
On the third photo, I paused. Unwillingly, I brought it a little closer. The silence in the room grew as thick as smoke. I studied the photo until it blurred before my eyes. The raggedy hair. The thin face. A scar on the left cheekbone, near the eye, no more than a nick.
“Maria?” Lisa’s voice was sharp. Tom stayed silent, watchful. “Do you know that man?”
I looked at the next photo, another close-up. Peaked eyebrows. A pointy chin. That scar.
“Maria.”
“I just want to be sure,” I murmured. “You know this is the man who shot Laura West?”
“Yes.” Lisa spoke firmly. “Without a doubt. Do you recognize him?”
I looked through all of them again, each one in turn, deliberate, thorough. Then I shuffled them into a neat pile. I looked up at Lisa, and when I spoke my voice was steady. “I do not know that man.”
“You took your time.”
I kept her gaze; I didn’t even blink. “As I said, I wanted to be sure.”
“And are you sure?” Lisa pressed. “Quite, quite sure?”
A pause in which a lifetime unfolded in front of me—a matter of seconds, and yet I saw it all. Ruby losing her first tooth. Ella coming out of her shell, eating properly. Alexa starting to smile, finally coming to peace with her anger. A lifetime I feared I would no longer be part of, because how could I now? How could I? “Yes,” I said, my voice firm. “I am very sure.”
Lisa stared at me for a long moment; Tom did, too. I didn’t move, I didn’t even blink.
Then Lisa nodded slowly. “We’ll call you if we need you to come in again,” she said.
“I am free to go?”
“This was only a request, Maria,” Lisa answered. “You were always free to go.”
Back in the waiting room, Alexa had finished her drink and was looking bored, tossing aside an old magazine as I came through the door.
“Are you done?”
“Yes,” I said in the same firm voice I’d used with Lisa, and I started towards the door. Alexa hurried to keep up with me.
“What did they ask you?”
“They had some new photographs. They wished to know if I recognized the man.”
“And did you?”
“No.” I walked faster, down the street, towards the subway.
“Slow down,” Alexa complained, but I couldn’t. I was fighting the urge to run, although where? I did not even know.
“We need to get Ruby,” I said, even though it was still over an hour to her pickup time.
As the train rattled uptown, Alexa brought it up again. “Did they have information about him? The… the man?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Not that they’d tell you,” she muttered, and I nodded in agreement. That much was certainly true.
Thankfully, she lapsed into silence then, and I stared at the wall opposite, the windows looking onto black tunnels, my face reflected in the dark glass. I looked like a ghost.
Above the doors, there was a poster with a poem on it, just a few short words: So much depends upon a red wheelbarrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens.
It did not seem like much of a poem to me, and yet at the same time I thought it so beautiful, I could weep. I imagined the wheelbarrow, the chickens, just as I imagined the sunny kitchen this morning, pancakes and sticky syrup, and both seemed completely beyond my reach, glimpses of a world I would never know.
I bowed my head, closing my eyes against the rattle of the train, the beauty of the poem, the dark windows and a sunlit kitchen. I closed my eyes against a scar by an eyebrow, a pointy chin, peaked eyebrows.
Because when Lisa had handed me those photos, when I’d looked at those grainy images of a man I had been so sure I couldn’t possibly know, I’d realize who they were of. Who had, at least according to the police, shot Laura West.
My brother Petar.
Twenty-Five
Nathan
I used to think life was like a house. You made a plan, you laid the foundation, and you built it as you wanted. Simple. But after Laura died, and after Maria told me all that had happened to her, I realized life wasn’t like that at all.
You might have a plan, but you weren’t given the material or tools that you needed. Or perhaps you were, but then a massive wrecking ball smashed into the side of that lovely house, and you were left trying to figure out how to rebuild it all over again, or even if you could, with what broken tools and poor materials you had.
The night after Maria told me her story, I lay in bed and wondered how she could have endured so much. I wondered how I could be allowed my grief when hers was so much greater, and yet I knew she wouldn’t give credence to that type of thinking for a moment. Grief is grief, she might have said.
And it was her grief that had drawn me to her in the first place—that sense of calm stillness and contained emotion. She might have called herself a ghost, but she’d still survived.
And I wanted to survive—I wanted to do more than survive, three and a half months on from Laura’s death. I wanted to thrive. I wanted the girls to thrive. Not yet, not even in the next few weeks or months, but eventually. I wanted to see it in our future someday. And I knew that meant taking steps towards it now. More steps than I’d been willing to take before, more than a support group or a sunny morning, a milkshake or a swim meet.
So I texted Frank to let him know I’d be a little bit late, and I got up with Ruby and we made pancakes, just as we had once before, except this time the egg landed in the bowl and Ella didn’t burn herself and I even laughed. This time I wasn’t just going through the motions. I wasn’t full of joy, not yet, not even close, but I could see it hovering on the horizon, tomorrow’s sunrise, whenever tomorrow came.
I knew things needed to change. I did.
That day, after I left the apartment, after I told Alexa I loved her, I dropped Ella off at school and I went to work. I told Frank I was going to adjust my schedule to four days a week. He looked at me in horrified amazement.
“Nathan, are you serious? We’ve got so much work coming in. We need you…”
“And I’ll still be here. But I’ve got a family, Frank. I’ve got daughters who need me. Right now I need to work four days a week, and I need to leave the office every day by six.”
“Six…”
It was not an outrageous request. Plenty of people, even in Manhattan, even in the most demanding industries, left work at six.
“We can review it in six months,” I said. “And see how things are going then.”
After that, I called my in-laws. Paul answered, his voice full-bodied and firm as usual. “Nathan. I was going to call you, make sure the girls had their all their ski stuff ready—”
“The girls aren’t going skiing with you, Paul.” My tone, surprisingly, was almost gentle.
An electric pause. “We’ve already booked the condo.”
“I’m sure you can find someone to take it. Or I’ll pay you for it, if you can’t.”
“It’s not about the money—”
“No, it never was about the money, was it?” I said. “It just felt like it was.”
Another pause, this one bristling. “Look, Nathan, whatever it is—”
“I’m not going to do this,” I said firmly. “I’m not going to have you take my daughters from me every holiday. I want them to have a relationship with you. Believe it or not, I recognize how important that is. I know Laura would have wanted it.”
“Then…” For the first time, Paul sounded uncertain.
“You can’t cut me out of the picture. I know I was never what you wanted for Laura. I didn’t have the right background, the right breeding, all that. But she loved me, and I loved her, and we had three beautiful girls together. And like you said, they ar
e what matter now. And for their sakes, we can’t trade them between us. They feel the tension, Paul, and it’s not good for them. Don’t make them choose. Don’t put them in the middle.”
A long silence followed. I waited, feeling more certain than I had in a long time. Finally Paul spoke, gruffly. “What are you suggesting?”
“I’ll bring them to visit you. We’ll do it together. Skiing, Cape Cod—”
“You never wanted to come to Cape Cod.” He practically spat the words.
“No, that’s true. I didn’t. But I do now. I want us to get along, Paul. For Alexa, Ella, and Ruby’s sakes.” I paused, my throat thickening. “And for Laura’s.”
“Do we have a choice?” he finally asked, sounding bitter. I hadn’t expected some heart-warming reconciliation, but his tone and words still stung. I was trying; why couldn’t he?
“I’d rather not think about it in terms of choices.”
“How would you like to think of it, then?”
“I’d like us to work together. To want to.”
“Yet you just cancelled our vacation. Elaine was looking forward—”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it as some sort of penalty. I just think the girls need to be at home with me right now.”
“You mean with your nanny.” He said nanny as if it were a rude word.
“With all of us. I’m going to take some time off—”
“That would be a first.”
I heard the hurt and anger in Paul’s voice, and I understood it. I felt something I hadn’t felt for him before—compassion. “Yes, it will be,” I agreed. “I’m trying to change. I’m trying to do the right thing.”
“Nathan…” My name was a warning, but I wasn’t heeding it.
“I’ll let you think about it,” I said, and then I disconnected the call.
I sat in my office, my hands flat on the table, everything in me both peaceful and buzzing. I was taking steps, and they didn’t feel so limping. I was moving forward. We all were, even if it hurt.
* * *
That afternoon, Alexa called from the home phone.
“Alexa, sweetheart? Is everything okay?”
