Striving for normalcy—for Renny’s sake, and their own—Elsa and Brett have spent the last few hours watching television on the couch with their daughter between them. Elsa has almost managed to convince herself that it really is just any other Saturday morning—until the doorbell rings.
She looks at Brett in alarm, even though she knows Marin Quinn is hardly likely to show up boldly on their doorstep.
“It’s probably UPS,” Brett says unconvincingly.
“Do they even deliver on Saturdays?”
“Sure they do.”
“Shh, I love this song.” Renny is fixated on the screen, where Ariel the Little Mermaid is singing the “Part of Your World” reprise.
“Stay here with her,” Brett tells Elsa in a low voice. “I’ll go see who it is.”
She instinctively pulls Renny a little closer to her side as he leaves the room.
Even if Marin Quinn really were at the door, Brett would never let her get past him.
But what if she has a gun, and forces her way in?
Elsa’s heart pounds wildly as she waits, her whole body tense.
Oblivious, Renny sings along with a plaintive Ariel, longing to stay and live where she is now.
Elsa hears Brett open the door.
For a moment, the swelling music and Renny’s voice drown out whatever’s happening in the hall.
Then Elsa hears Brett. “…nice to meet you. Please come in.”
Relief courses through her. He would never say that to Marin Quinn. Never in a million years.
“Elsa?” Brett calls from the hall. “Bring Renny in. Her new caseworker is here.”
Caroline’s offer to come meet him in Boston had caught Jeremy completely off guard. But he’d quickly realized that while it hadn’t been his own idea, it was a good one.
He can’t leave New England until he takes care of business once and for all, and he wasn’t thrilled about keeping the whole Caroline situation on hold until that’s over.
She’s already on her way here, having caught an early Acela. “It’s a high-speed train,” she told him excitedly. “I’ll be in Boston in a few hours, tops.”
“That’s great. I’ll meet you by the Dunkin’ Donuts in South Station.”
“Can’t wait.”
“Me either.”
Lying, Jeremy realizes as he hangs up the phone, is getting to be a regular habit.
Thank God I left the kids at home, Lauren thinks as she hikes toward the terminal at JFK airport. She wound up parking what feels like—and might actually be—miles away, after wasting half an hour circling around hoping to find a vacant spot in the jammed short-term lots.
At least her mother-in-law’s flight from the West Coast landed late, according to the arrivals board. Hopefully, she’s already collected her luggage and hasn’t been waiting too long.
If she’s anything like her son, patience isn’t her strong suit. Nick always hated flying for that reason. He couldn’t stand to wait at the gate, or on the runway, or at the baggage claim…
Nick. Even now, Lauren feels a little stab of shock. Never in a million years would she have imagined that he’d leave her, or—
Or what about this? Being here, today?
She’d certainly never pictured herself coming face-to-face with the mother-in-law who hadn’t even seen her own son in decades.
That’s partly why she didn’t want to drag the kids down here this morning. Not just because they act more human when they sleep in—they probably won’t even wake up for at least another hour—but because she wanted to meet their grandmother before thrusting her upon the kids.
She seemed cordial enough on the phone—even wistful. But what kind of woman turns her back on her own young son?
As Lauren hurries into the crowded baggage claim area, her cell phone rings. It’s probably Nick’s mother now, wondering where she is.
Taking it out of her pocket, she glances at the caller ID window.
Marin.
Yesterday’s worry for her friend comes rushing back at her. About to answer the phone, she hears a voice calling her name.
“Lauren? Lauren Walsh?”
She looks up.
A woman is coming toward her—a woman with silver hair and Nick’s eyes and Nick’s smile and tears rolling down her weathered cheeks…
Marin momentarily forgotten, Lauren shoves her phone back into her pocket and opens her arms to her mother-in-law.
Brett can see that Elsa’s hand is shaking a bit as she pours hot water from the whistling tea kettle into a trio of bone china cups on the counter.
She’s doing everything she can to convince the new caseworker that this is a carefree household; that they’re the perfect parents for Renny.
He notices that she leaves the box of tea—expensive, fair trade organic green tea—prominently placed on the counter. No one wanted it, but she made it anyway.
Maybe she’s trying too hard; maybe they both are.
“Would anyone like some fresh fruit?” Elsa asks as she sets the cups into saucers waiting on the table, careful not to spill the scalding water. “I have some berries…”
“I love berries!” Renny exclaims over the rim of her milk cup.
“You sure do.” Elsa goes promptly to the fridge, takes out a container, and starts to carry it over to the sink. “Oh.”
“What’s wrong?” Brett asks, seeing her stop in her tracks.
“They’re moldy. They’re organic,” she adds hastily, with a worried glance at the caseworker. “They never last long enough.”
“It’s okay, Mrs. Cavalon. Actually, I don’t have much time today anyway. I was thinking that I could take Renata out for a bit this morning so that we can get to know each other.”
“Oh…” Elsa looks at Brett. She can read his mind: he’s thinking the same thing she is.
We have to let her go.
This, they both know, is how the system works. Unannounced visits. Private outings and conversations between the social worker and child.
“We’re so close to finalization, Mr. and Mrs. Cavalon…I’m hoping we can get this paperwork pushed through in the next couple of days.”
Elsa’s breath catches in her throat.
Finalization.
Adoption.
It’s really going to happen.
Not overnight, of course, but once the paperwork is finalized, the agency interaction will all but cease—and so will their power to arbitrarily take Renny away. It’ll just be a matter of time until it’s made legal with an adoption hearing in court.
Elsa opens her mouth, but can’t seem to find her voice.
“That would be…” Brett clears his throat, sounding hoarse himself. “Wow. That would be absolutely great.”
“I know you’re going to be a wonderful family.” Melody Johnson, a statuesque, beautiful blonde, smiles at the three of them and stretches out her hand. “Come on, Renata. It’s a beautiful day.”
When no one picked up Lauren’s home phone, Marin tried her cell, but got no answer there, either.
Now what?
“Talk about helpless…you need help just finding help,” she whispers aloud, forcing a grim little smile.
She can’t, given her circumstances, just start dialing random psychiatrists’ numbers. She knows better than to trust just anyone; she needs someone who comes highly recommended; someone guaranteed not to betray her family’s privacy.
Clearly, people are still interested in the Quinns. Look what happened just yesterday, when Marin was ambushed on the street with a camera.
Okay…so, no Lauren.
Her next step was going to be confronting Caroline, but maybe she should wait a little while, just so she has a plan in place when she approaches her daughter. Maybe, if she gets a couple of names from Lauren, she can even call and get an appointment right away, and tell Caroline about it.
Yes. A concrete plan. That’s the way to go.
For now, she just has to settle back and wait.
; Setting the phone on the bedside table, she shoots a longing glance at the orange prescription bottle sitting beside it.
No.
She looks at it.
But why not?
Suddenly, she can’t remember.
Here you are thinking you’re helpless, and you’re not. Not at all. Sleep always helps.
She picks up the bottle.
If she took a couple of pills, she could rest for a while. She’s going to need all her energy for what lies ahead.
Yes.
Marin carries the bottle into the bathroom, flips on the light, and turns on the water. Waiting for it to run cold, she catches a glimpse of her face in the mirror.
Once again, she’s struck by her reflection—and she remembers all the reasons why not.
She turns off the water abruptly, whispering, “No.”
She unscrews the plastic childproof cap, opens the toilet lid, and holds the open bottle over the bowl.
Go ahead. Get rid of them.
It’s absolutely what she should do—dump these pills, and the ones still tucked away in her bedside drawer. It’s the only way to guarantee that she won’t take them—and with Ron and Heather out of the country, she won’t have access to more.
Hurry up and do it, before you change your mind.
A moment later, she returns to the bedroom and jerks open the bedside drawer.
She hesitates only a moment before dropping the bottle beside the others and closing the drawer.
Just in case.
Just so you won’t be helpless.
Every time Lauren comes back home after leaving her children at home alone, she flashes back to the nightmare last August, when she stepped over the threshold and found that they had disappeared.
Some scars, she knows, might never fully heal, and yet…
She looks at Nick’s mom, holding the door open for her. “Come on in.”
“Thank you. What a beautiful home.”
“Anyone home?” she calls.
Three bedroom doors burst open overhead; three sets of footsteps pound down the stairs, and she smiles.
Truer words have never been spoken.
It’s a beautiful home.
“You said yourself you wished we could get Renny out of here for a bit,” Brett reminds Elsa, watching her pace to the window again to look out into the street.
“I know I did, but I can’t help it. I’m just nervous after everything that’s happened.”
“So am I.” Brett fingers the envelope of pictures. He’s been going over them with a magnifying glass, looking for…
Well, he doesn’t know, exactly. Some kind of clue to when they were taken, maybe?
“Maybe we should call the agency and double-check.”
He looks up at Elsa to find her holding the phone. “I don’t know…you don’t want to rock the boat over there right now, do you? And she had ID.”
Melody offered her credentials the moment he opened the door. Her photo on her agency identification card was unmistakably her, and the card itself was the same as Roxanne and the other employees carried.
Besides, there was something familiar about her. Brett is certain he’s seen her before, probably at the agency.
“Look, chances are everything’s fine.”
“I know, but…” Elsa shakes her head. “I just have this feeling…I’m worried anyway.”
“About the caseworker?”
“About everything.”
“Look, we know who did this.” He waves the envelope of photos. “It wasn’t Melody Johnson. It was Marin Quinn.”
Yet even as he utters her name, Brett feels a twinge of misgiving.
Again, he thinks of Mike Fantoni. If his death had anything to do with their case—and Marin Quinn couldn’t have been in Boston at the time—then there could be someone else out there. Someone who wanted to keep Mike from going to Mumbai. Someone who wants to hurt them.
Hurt Renny.
Why the hell didn’t he think things through more carefully before sending his daughter away with a stranger?
Calm down. Be rational here.
Melody Johnson isn’t really a stranger. She’s familiar, even if they haven’t officially met her before. She’s a social worker. Renny’s social worker.
Anyway, we did the same thing with Roxanne, and with Peggy and Michelle who came before her. We met them, and then we let them meet alone with Renny. It’s fine. This is how the system works. This is how it worked when we adopted Jeremy, too.
Jeremy…
No, don’t think about what happened to Jeremy.
Anyway, he and Elsa really had no choice. A parent who acts rattled by an unannounced home visit or refuses to allow the child out of their earshot is just begging for trouble. At the very least, a closer look at the household—and what would be found, in this case?
Nothing we want anyone there to know about.
Still…his little girl is out there with a woman they’ve never met.
A woman whose first introduction to the case came by way of a Post-it note stuck to the front door. It’s not out of the realm of possibility, given the way the agency operates, but…
“Go ahead,” Brett tells Elsa abruptly. “Call the agency. Just…be careful what you say.”
Caroline has ridden the train before. When Daddy was campaigning, he insisted that they take public transportation sometimes. He said it looked good to the voters.
But it’s different today, sitting here by herself—no Daddy to make things fun, no Mom to put a damper on it, no Annie to get up Caroline’s butt every two seconds, no security guards or campaign aides, no photographers or chatty constituents.
It’s just me.
Caroline expected to find the freedom exhilarating, but instead, it’s kind of…well, lonely, sitting here in a double seat by herself, watching the scenery fly by in a blur. Lonely, and a little scary.
Not because of the high speed, or anything. That doesn’t bother her.
No, she’s just feeling like something is wrong, and she can’t put her finger on it.
For some reason, she keeps thinking about that rat in her bag; remembering how one minute, she was sitting there at the table with Jake and everything was fine; the next, she was screaming bloody murder.
At the table with Jake…
Jake.
She knows he didn’t do it.
If she thought he had, she wouldn’t be going up to Boston to see him, right?
Right. He’s a good guy. You like him. And he likes you, too.
If he didn’t, he wouldn’t have told her to come, right?
Right.
But then again…
Did you really give him much choice? You sort of invited yourself, don’t you think?
Um, sort of?
Face it. You did invite yourself.
But he didn’t say no.
He sounded like he wanted to, for a minute. But then he seemed to think it over, and he got into the idea. He’s even going to meet her at the station.
Everything’s going to be fine. Maybe she’ll stay in Boston with Jake, or they’ll go out to California together or something—someplace where they can surf—and they’ll live happily ever after, and she’ll never have to see her mother or Annie again.
She thinks things like that all the time, yet today, the thought is oddly disquieting.
Okay, so maybe she will see them again.
Who knows? Maybe someday, she’ll even want to.
She pictures herself introducing her mother to Jake, and smiles. Mom would probably like him.
Waiting for her call to be routed through the agency’s automated phone system, Elsa can feel an irrational wave of panic building in the pit of her stomach.
Maybe she wouldn’t be so uneasy about Renny’s safety if she thought Brett was still assured of it.
But he’s looking pale, thrumming his fingertips on the tabletop.
At last, Debra Tupperman, an office administrator, comes on the line.
“Hi, Debra, it’s Elsa Cavalon.” She does her best to sound breezy.
“Elsa! How funny—you were on my list of people to call this morning.”
“Really?” She looks at Brett, who raises a questioning eyebrow. “Why were you going to call me?”
That news—and the resulting expression of concern on Brett’s face—do nothing to ease her anxiety.
“I just wanted to talk to you about Roxanne Shields.”
“Oh…right.” Relieved, Elsa gives Brett a thumbs-up. “We were sorry to see her go,” she lies.
“Go?”
Elsa frowns. “She left the agency…didn’t she?”
“No, she’s just been sick for a few days. You were on her schedule, so—”
“Wait, she’s sick? She didn’t leave?”
“Leave? No.”
Shaken, Elsa sinks into a chair, her head spinning. “So you haven’t replaced her?”
“Replaced her? Not at all.”
Vaguely aware of Brett beside her now, clutching her arm, Elsa struggles to form her next question.
“But what…who…oh my God. Oh my GOD!”
Brett grabs the phone from her. “Debra, has a woman named Melody Johnson been assigned to our case?”
Elsa can’t hear the answer above the full-blown panic screeching through her brain, but she knows.
She knows.
It’s happening again.
Her worst nightmare has come true: Renny has been stolen away, just like Jeremy.
Her given name was Amelia.
When she was little she couldn’t pronounce it, and so, her parents told her years later, she called herself La La.
It stuck.
It was the perfect nickname, because she was always singing. She would use anything at hand as a pretend microphone—a Barbie doll, a carrot, a bottle from her parents’ liquor cabinet—and she’d perform.
As she grew older, she told anyone who would listen that she was going to be a huge star when she grew up, like the favorites she mimicked in her “act”: Mariah Carey, Gloria Estefan, Madonna…
Isn’t that nice, they would say politely—the substitute teacher, the woman in the supermarket checkout line, the new babysitter…
Then she would sing for them, and their eyes would widen, and sometimes, they’d even call other people over to listen. You gotta hear this kid, they’d say, and La La would sing for them all.
Scared to Death Page 26
