Finally pony free, clean, and more relaxed, Jill slipped on her robe and hurried down the hall to the main bath, where she found David kneeling by the side of the tub, washing Sophia.
“Hi Mommy!” Sophia grinned up at her, fully recovered.
“Hey, feeling any better?” David smiled at her. He lifted Sophia from the tub, wrapping her in a towel. She looked like a little cherub, all peachy pink from her bath, hair sticking out in all directions. He looked handsome, kneeling there with his shirt-sleeves rolled up, his hair falling forward into his eyes. Jill leaned down and kissed him. He pulled her to him with wet hands and kissed her again, lingering.
The buzzing of his cell phone interrupted. David let go to slip the phone from his pocket, but he shoved it back when he saw the number. “I’ll call them back.”
“Go ahead,” Jill said. “I can finish with this little madam.”
“I’m not madam,” their three-year-old chirped, “I’m—”
“Sophia,” Jill and David finished with her. They all laughed.
“You sure?” David said, but he was already on his feet with the phone in his hand.
“I’ll put her to bed; you go.”
He thanked her with another, faster, kiss as she took the towel from him. “Here you, lift up, sweetie.” Jill dried under Sophia’s arms and around her neck where the hair continued to drip. She pressed her head in the towel, rubbing gently while Sophia giggled, and finished with combing her hair. “There. You’re all set. Go get your pj’s on.” She shooed her playfully out the door and Sophia ran giggling down the hall to her room.
Pajamas were rejected in favor of a nightgown, which Sophia wriggled into with only a little help. “Okay, time for bed,” Jill said, pulling back the covers. She wasn’t surprised when Sophia bypassed her and ran to the bookshelf instead, hauling a familiar book back to Jill and thrusting it into her hands. “Story, Mommy!”
“What’s the magic word?” Jill prompted, putting the book aside for a moment to get Sophia into bed and tuck her under the covers.
“Please!” Sophia snuggled against Jill, who sat on the edge of the bed and opened the picture book that was her daughter’s favorite. “On the night you were born,” Jill began, no longer having to look at the words, but turning the pages so Sophia could enjoy the pictures. When she got to Sophia’s favorite part, the little girl chanted the lines along with Jill, “until everyone heard it and everyone knew, of the one and only ever you!”
By the time the story was finished, Sophia’s eyelids were drooping, but she reached for a hug as Jill bent to kiss her good-night, mumbling, “You’re my one and only ever mommy.”
“And you’re my one and only ever Sophia.” Jill held her tight. “Sweet dreams.” She checked that the night-light was on before switching off the room light and pulling the door almost closed behind her.
As she stood outside Sophia’s room, waiting a minute to make sure that she settled into sleep, Jill heard a door close downstairs. David must be in his study. Had he finished the call? Jill walked to the head of the stairs and listened for the familiar sounds of David locking up for the night, but she heard nothing. Maybe he was still on the phone.
She padded barefoot downstairs and crossed the cold slate entry tiles to get to his study. There were no voices. She tapped quietly before opening the door. The lights were off. If her husband had been in there, he’d left. “David?” she called, closing the door behind her. There was no answer. She wrapped her robe more tightly around her as she walked toward the kitchen and the back of the house.
The kitchen was dark. She reached for the lights, switching on the patio ones as well, and cried out as something moved outside the French doors, jumping when she spotted an inquisitive raccoon. “Shoo!” She rapped the glass and he scurried off into the darkness. Jill stood there for a second, puzzled. Maybe it was the raccoon she’d heard, though she could swear it had been a door closing. It had been a click. Definitely a click.
Jill pulled a bottle of Pinot Grigio from the fridge and poured a glass. Something creaked like footsteps at the front of the house and Jill dropped the glass. It shattered on the tile floor, spraying wine and shards everywhere. “Oh shit!” She knelt to pick up the biggest pieces of glass, crying out when a large shard sliced two of her fingers. Coin-size drops of blood spotted the tile floor, then the sink basin as she ran the cuts under water. Just small, thin cuts, but they bled so much. She bound them with a paper towel before cleaning up the mess with a broom and dustpan and then going over it again with a dish towel to mop up the blood.
When it was finally clean she headed back upstairs with two more glasses and the open wine bottle, bare feet moving soundlessly over the carpet.
David stood in the walk-in closet with his back to her, talking on his cell phone. “No. Absolutely not.” He rubbed his forehead, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Because it can’t happen again.” She set the wine bottle and glasses on the bureau and David whipped around, face ashen. He said, “I’ve got to go,” and pushed the off button. “Christ, Jill, how long have you been standing there?”
“I just got here.” Jill poured a glass of wine and held it out. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. Who on earth was that?”
“Nobody important.” David slipped the phone in his pocket and took the wine glass. “Thanks. Did Sophia get to sleep okay? I didn’t want to open her door and risk waking her.”
Jill nodded. “She’s out—it was a long day.” She poured her own glass of wine and took a sip. “It didn’t sound like nobody.”
“Who?” David took a sip and put his glass down on the dresser. He focused on unbuttoning his shirt.
“The person you were talking to—it sounded important.”
“Trust me—it was nothing interesting. Just work.” He saw the makeshift bandage on her hand and grabbed her wrist. “What happened?”
“Nothing, I broke a wine glass.”
“How did you do that?”
“Scaring myself.” She told him about the strange click and then hearing what she’d thought sounded like footsteps.
“You probably just heard me or Sophia. Sound travels.”
But Jill remembered something else. “Did you go in the guest room today?”
David slipped off his shirt and balled it, tossing it in the hamper. “No. Why?”
“The light was on in there.”
He took another sip of wine. “So? One of us must have left it on from the last time we went in there.”
“I’m never in there.”
David shrugged. “Maybe I went in to get something.”
“What? There’s nothing of yours stored in there except your tux.”
“Okay, so maybe the cleaners left it on.”
“They don’t clean that room most of the time. It doesn’t need to be cleaned. And the closet door was open, too.”
David set down his glass and rested his hands on her shoulders, massaging lightly. “Hon, c’mon. You had a rough day and you’re letting your imagination run wild.” His hands moved from shoulders to neck. He brushed her wet hair out of the way and bent down to kiss the tender skin at the nape. “You need to unwind.”
Jill leaned into his touch, wanting to believe him.
chapter thirteen
JOURNAL—AUGUST 2009
You left early again and I’m splayed on the bed, your seed spilling out of me. At the end you never want to linger. You believe in the quick finish. It has taken me some time to cut through the flattery and charm that brought me literally to my knees. That’s where you like me to be when I suck your cock. Is that too vulgar for you? I picture you wincing, though this is precisely the sort of language you prefer when you tangle your hand in my hair and use it to control my head.
When we are together, you tell me that we have an incredible connection that you just don’t have with your wife. Not that you’ve ever called her that or called her anything at all. “Home” is the euphemism. “I don’t have this at home,” you sa
y. “You’re the only soul mate I’ve got.”
I know, I know. Stupid, right? I am the classic dummy when it comes to male behavior. Your secretary tried to tell me once, did you know that? She approached me in the ladies’ room, the one that the male partners like to crow about whenever gender discrimination issues come up because they added three more stalls and think that makes them supersensitive to women’s issues. We stood at adjoining sinks. “Do you mind if I tell you something?” She had a smile on her heavily powdered face, and it didn’t occur to me that it would be anything less than friendly. I gave her an expectant smile in return, standing there with the water running. “You’re not the first easy lay in this firm and you won’t be the last, so stop thinking that you can fuck your way to partner.”
My face flamed; I felt offended, misjudged. I didn’t realize the real message behind her warning, not for some time.
I think about leaving every day, but I’m too inexperienced to attract the attention of another decent firm. Every interviewer asks why I’m leaving my present firm, but I can’t tell them the truth, can I? I’m stuck, which means I’m stuck with you because as much as I long to end it, the truth is that I’ve fallen in love with you. It’s an illness, this sort of obsession. I know you’re bad for my health, but like a smoker reaching for “just one more” from that pack of cigarettes, or the dieter who justifies eating that slice of chocolate birthday cake, I keep acquiescing.
You’ve never said you’ll leave your wife, but I fantasize about it all the same. We don’t talk about her, but she looms large between us when you’re fucking me, D. Sometimes I think I can even see her, a ghostly apparition hovering in a corner of the room during every encounter—watching, judging.
I have seen her for real, you know. Once we actually rode the elevator up together. I recognized her from the photos you have on your desk, the pictures of a life that you should be having with me. She’s a beautiful woman, and I felt a surge of jealousy that she got to be with you, sleep with you, wake up next to you every morning.
chapter fourteen
NOVEMBER 1, 2013—THE DAY
Jill woke suddenly, startled by something. She sat up in bed, heart racing, while David lay snoring softly beside her. A glance at the clock showed it was 6:27 A.M. Her alarm would go off in three minutes anyway. She’d had the nightmare again, another endless journey down a shadowed hallway, the feeling of dread gaining in intensity the closer she got to the door at the end. Except she’d woken sooner this time and she didn’t know why. She had the sense it was something external, a noise of some sort, but she couldn’t hear anything beyond David’s heavy breathing and the low hum of the furnace kicking on.
She slipped out of their king-size bed and padded into the large master bathroom, the tile floor a sudden chill under her feet. The first day of November and there had already been flurries. Soon the remaining leaves would fall and winter would arrive with the promise of lots of snow. She hated the cold, but she did love photographing the clean, unbroken sweep of a snow-covered hillside or the starkness of black tree trunks against a perfect expanse of white. And Sophia loved the snow—making snow angels and snowmen, throwing snowballs. Jill smiled remembering Sophia’s grin as she’d clomped through mounds of snow in the pink sparkly boots she’d worn last winter.
Thinking of Sophia made her realize that they’d gotten through the night without her crawling into bed with them.
David was still lying in bed when Jill came out of the bathroom. She leaned down to kiss him. “Good morning.”
“’ello,” he mumbled into his pillow.
“Notice anything?”
He stared up at her, bleary-eyed. “Um, you’re more awake than I am?”
“Sophia slept in her own bed.”
“Great.” He yawned and rolled up to a sitting position with a groan. “Then why don’t I feel any more awake?”
She smiled and slipped into the silk robe hanging from a hook on the back of the bathroom door. “You can have the shower first; I’ll get Sophia up and start the coffee.”
It was dark in the hallway. She pulled the robe tightly around her, trying to rub warmth into her arms, and padded down the long hall to her daughter’s room. The master bedroom was at one end of the second-floor hallway, separated from three others by a laundry room and the large main bath. Sophia’s door was a tiny bit ajar, the way they left it every night, because Jill wanted to be able to hear her daughter if she needed them.
Jill listened at the door for a second, then slowly pushed it open. In the dim light coming through the gauzy curtains she could see the bed piled high with the blankets that Sophia loved to snuggle under. “Good morning, sleepyhead,” she called in a soft singsong, walking quietly across the carpet to the bed. She put her hand on the top blankets, expecting to feel the warmth and firmness of her daughter’s small body, but her hand sank into softness instead.
“Sophia?” Jill pushed down on the blankets, then pulled them off. Her daughter wasn’t there. Surprised, Jill switched on the light, looking around the room. “Where are you, sweetie?”
She took a quick peek under the bed, hoping to find Sophia stifling giggles underneath, but no such luck. Jill sighed and headed out of the room and down the stairs to the first floor. Twice, lately, they’d had a variation on the sleepless theme with Sophia going downstairs to make her own breakfast, in both cases before five A.M. The first time had involved cereal scattered across the counter and floor and a half gallon of spilled milk. The second time, it was grape jelly smeared on every available surface. Worse than the mess, however, was the fear that Sophia would try to use the stove or toaster on her own. The first time, Jill told her that she could help make breakfast like a big girl, but she had to wait until the morning and had to have Mommy or Daddy’s help. The second time, David spoke to Sophia very sternly and put her in time-out for three long minutes, during which she sobbed loudly and heartrendingly. Jill thought they’d gotten through to her, but apparently not.
She rounded the corner into the kitchen with a scold on her lips, only to stop short. All lights were off and the kitchen was dark. “Sophia?” No sound, except the steady drip of the kitchen faucet that they kept meaning to fix. No food out on the granite island, no dishes because she’d left the wine glasses and bottle upstairs. All the chairs were pushed in at the kitchen table. No one had been there.
The rest of the first floor was in shadows. Jill crossed out of the kitchen and into the empty family room beyond, tripping over one of Sophia’s stuffed animals lying on the floor. She put it up on a shelf, surprised that Sophia wasn’t curled up on the sectional in front of the TV. She moved on through the dining room, her footsteps quick enough to make the crystal glasses tremble in the china cabinet, and into the living room. There was no sign of Sophia anywhere.
Jill felt uneasy. She ran back upstairs taking the steps two at a time. “Sophia? Sophie, where are you?” She went back into her daughter’s room. “If you’re hiding it’s time to come out now.” She opened the closet door and swept her hands between the clothes on the lower rack, separating them. No Sophia. She checked under the bed again and then strode out of her room and through the next door into the empty guest bedroom. No Sophia.
Real fear came first as a tiny prickling feeling. She checked the bath, then Sophia’s bedroom again, before running back toward her own, the sound of the shower in the master bath getting louder. “Sophia? Are you in here?” She dropped to her knees and looked under the bed before checking the walk-in closet. The shower stopped and in the quiet she could hear herself panting. David came out of the bathroom toweling his hair.
“What’s wrong?”
“Sophia’s not in her room.”
He stopped drying and stood there with the towel in his hands. “She’s probably downstairs making breakfast again.”
Jill shook her head. “She’s not. That’s the first place I looked.”
“Well, where else could she be?”
They stared at each
other for a second, then Jill ran to the window while David said, “Could she have gone outside?”
Jill scanned the backyard. “Did you lock the French doors last night?”
“I don’t know, I think so.”
“You think so?” She couldn’t see her anywhere. “Oh my God, do you think she could have left the yard?” She turned and saw David pulling on jeans and hurried past him to do the same.
“No,” he said, yanking a T-shirt over his head. “At least I don’t think so.”
Jill ran from the room and heard David racing down the hall behind her. Back down the stairs and through the kitchen to the family room and the French doors. She stepped onto the back patio, the cold air like a slap against her face. She scanned the dark yard rapidly, searching for her daughter. It was still so dark out; would she really have gone outside on her own? “Sophia!” Her cry scattered a group of crows resting in an oak tree, and they rose shrieking into the air. David came out with the flashlight they kept under the kitchen sink, the beam bouncing erratically off bushes and the wooden playhouse.
Jill ran toward it and David followed. Sophia loved the little white house accented with pink shutters and door and real window boxes, a birthday gift from David’s parents. “Sophia?” David called this time, his voice louder than Jill’s. A light came on in an upstairs window of a neighbor’s house. The playhouse was empty; the toy table set with cups and saucers, and one of two small wooden chairs lay on its side.
Jill thought it looked untouched. “She hasn’t been in here.”
David swung the flashlight up and over the rest of the yard. Nothing.
“Do you think she would have left the yard?”
“No,” she said at once, then hesitated. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
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