by Fran Louise
“I told them everything,” he said. “They’ll find her.” He didn’t soothe me or try to calm me. He sat very still, even though I knew I must be hurting his arm.
I couldn’t stop. If I were to let go, I might float away. I might just disappear into blackness, and never come back out again.
A doctor arrived sometime later. Jay tried to guide me to one of the bedrooms, but I resisted, threatening to scream the place down. “You’re not sedating me,” I said, yanking out of his grip. Suddenly I was superhuman, the earlier weakness leaving me in a rush of adrenaline. “I’m staying awake. She’ll need me when she gets back,” I added, shaking on the spot.
“She’ll need you rested, Stella,” Jay said. “Just lie down for an hour. You don’t have to sleep. We’re not achieving anything by sitting up all night on the sofa.”
Out of the corner of my eyes, the policeman from earlier stepped into the elevator. Turning in alarm, panic gripped me. They were all in there, all five or six of them. “Are the police leaving?” I cried. I strode towards them. “Are you leaving?” I shouted. “Where are you going?”
Jay’s arm caught me from behind. “They’re going back to their precinct,” he said in my ear, turning me towards him. “We have to let them do their jobs.”
“Why can’t they work here?” I said.
“They’ve gathered all the forensics they need,” he said carefully. “Come on, Stella—please. They need to work. They’re not going to get anything done here. They’ll call us as soon as they know anything.”
I buried my face into his chest, sobbing suddenly. “No,” I wailed, unable to believe this terrifying noise was coming from me. “No. I thought they would have found her by now, Jay.” I clasped his waist, for some reason terrified by the fact that we were alone in the apartment again. “What if they don’t find her?”
I agreed to the sedative some time later. The panic and terror escalated to a point where I thought I might lose control. There was a voice inside of me screaming and screaming and I could feel it rising closer to the surface with every passing second that Nina was gone. Contemplating even one day into the future without her was unthinkable.
I lay on the sofa in the den, unable to go back to the bedroom alone. Jay sat next to me, and I lay for a long time with the feel of his hand turning a slow circle on my scalp. My body was leaden but I was finally able to focus on something above the basic functions of my heart and lungs.
My thoughts grew hazy; it was hard to focus on anything good or bad. I registered sensations: the feel of Jay’s hand; the scent of his skin under clothes; the occasional sound of his voice as he cleared his throat or spoke quietly on the phone to someone. I closed my eyes and buried my face in his lap, blocking everything else out.
Jay would make sure they found her. He had to.
#
“Stella, we found her.”
I woke up with a start. I tried to sit up but my body was sore and slow. My tongue was too large for my mouth. I blinked into jarring brightness through the window. Where was I?
“Stella, wake up. We found Nina.”
“What time is it?” I said, but the words ran together in a thick, unintelligible mess. I realised it was morning. My neck hurt so bad that I gasped, rubbing it with a clumsy hand.
Reality came tearing back with terrifying force and speed. “Nina!” I dragged my body up, my arms folding clumsily in on themselves.
A pair of arms lifted me into a seated position. I was on the sofa. Jay, the sheer angular mass of him, moved to squat in front of me on the floor. He held my face in his hands.
“They found her,” he said, speaking the words slowly and carefully. “Did you hear me?”
I had. I did. My brain pulsed. “Yes,” I said, trying to nod my head and getting tangled in his hands. The words were still getting stuck in the groggy wadding in my mouth.
Desperation gripped me; I fought for control, fought to wake up. I realised dimly that scalding, fat tears were running down my cheeks. “They found her,” I repeated inanely, forming the words carefully. “Where is she?”
“She’s on her way. She’ll be here in fifteen minutes.”
“Is she okay?” The speech had returned, and with it, the panic.” Oh, God, Jay … tell me, is she all right?”
“She’s fine,” he said, emphatically.
“Where is she?” I clasped at his arms, already coming to my feet. “We should go get her. We should meet them.”
“Stella, sit down for a minute. You’re still sedated.” Encircling my waist, he held me firmly against the soft cushions. “She’s on her way, okay?” His dark eyes, gentle on me, nonetheless glittered hard with intent.
Whatever was happening, he had it under control.
Relief started to crack the terror. The shaking increased. I had to grip my hands together in my lap to keep them still. Jay’s eyes followed the movement, his jaw flexing. He kissed the side of my mouth gently, his breath escaping in a frustrated stream. It was all I needed; I clasped my hands around his neck and pulled him into me. Sobs wracked my body and I held on to him, nourished by the heat and the solidity.
After a short while, once the worst of the pressure had eased, I extricated my body from his. “Are you okay?” I asked.
He didn’t respond. The handsome features were haggard with lack of sleep. He grimaced—though perhaps it had meant to be a smile—and then rubbed his face. “I guess. I’ll be better once Nina’s back.”
“Who took her?”
Though the words left me, I hadn’t quite formulated them with any intention. The way his expression flattened into stark anger suggested I might not be able to deal with the response.
He was right. I needed to see that she was safe first, and unhurt. That was the only thing that mattered. There would be time for rage later.
“I have to wash my face,” I said, sitting back without giving him a chance to respond. I wiped a graceless hand across my nose.
Running the rough pad of his thumb down my cheek, he considered me for a moment. “Can you walk?” he asked.
I nodded. “What the hell did they give me last night?” I asked.
He laughed, the sound frayed. “Something strong,” he said.
I couldn’t walk particularly well. Like an invalid, I let Jay guide me to the nearest bathroom. Once inside and left to my own devices, I sat on the toilet. I stayed there long after I’d peed, feeling sick and woozy and relieved and so torn apart inside I wondered if it would ever heal.
Oh, God—Nina. Nina, my baby. Had she been scared? Would she have known what was going on, or would she even remember any of this? She’d never been apart from me at night, never woken without her mother at hand. How were we going to get past this terrible thing? How would I ever let her out of my sight again?
Eventually, my hands shaking, realising I wouldn’t find an answer to these questions right now—maybe not ever—I got to my feet and flushed the toilet. I washed my hands and splashed my face. Jay knocked on the door again and I called him in.
“They’re five minutes away,” he said.
I stared at his reflection in the mirror. His face was the same and yet somehow askew. Alarm shot through me, as though I’d seen a stranger in the mirror. I battened down on the rogue emotion and turned to him, focusing on the face I knew, the face that had experienced the same terror as me last night.
My eyes dropped, unable to keep his watchful gaze. I turned back to the sink. He’d only known Nina a while … did he feel all of this like I did?
“Do you want to have a shower before they arrive?” he said.
I brushed my hair back. “I might have a bath, with Nina, when she gets back,” I said. I knew I wouldn’t be able to put her down once she was here. With almighty effort, my hands gripping the washbasin, I asked, “Why did they take her?” I paused. “Was it a random thing? Did we do something-?”
“Let’s talk about it later, after she’s here.” Another beat of silence. “She is okay. I promis
e. She’ll be okay.” His voice thickened. “This won’t happen again, not under my watch.”
My eyes welled. “Thank you, Jay.”
“What for?” he asked, visibly perturbed.
For keeping me alive through this.
He walked into the bathroom. He’d changed into sweats at some point during the night and he looked as grubby and manhandled as I did. I stared at his face, forcing myself to recognise it, to look past the impassive sheen. Still gripping the sink, I did a catalogue of the straight nose, the high cheekbones and the wide brow that so often creased with both patience and a lack of it. I saw Nina in there somewhere; the limitless capacity for love behind those deep caramel eyes.
The eyes shifted. Approaching the sink, he reached up and brushed my hair back from my neck. He placed a gentle kiss on the exposed skin. I turned and held him close to me, realising after a moment that I may not be able to let go.
#
The next time I woke I was in bed. I was naked; Jay was naked, too. I stirred, stiffened by a jolt of alarm as the memories flooded back. I got up and out of the bed before I could even think, striding to the cot. Nina was in there. She was fast asleep. Her dark lashes twitched against the velvety-soft cheeks. Panic rose and subsided again.
I placed a hand on the sturdy hillock of her stomach. The steady, predictable rhythm of her breathing made my heart settle. Lowering the side of the cot, I nestled my face against her downy hair, careful not to wake her. Her scent—a scent that could never be replicated—filled me in long, grateful breaths.
Once I’d refilled my Nina tanks, I lifted the edge of the cot again. I breathed out, relieved, and yet astonished that even though this nightmare was over, I was still quaking. Fear circled me like a predator. Then I noticed Jay was watching me from the bed, the dark eyes narrow under messy blond hair, and everything turned topsy-turvy again.
He brushed his hair back to reveal a serious frown. I watched as he lifted his body centre and sat up, the cover tripping down his stomach. We’d bathed together that morning, all three of us, when Nina had been dropped off. It had been one of the most intimate, sensual experiences of my life, to feel his body behind me, supporting me, while I held the active, healthy body of our daughter in my arms. I’d sobbed like a child. That intimacy was still there in his eyes. It scorched me. It made me glaringly naked.
He exhaled. “I think I aged twenty years last night.”
I padded back to the bed and got in. I buried my face in his chest.
“How’re you feeling?” he asked. “Still drowsy?”
“A bit,” I said, testing my equilibrium with a gentle head-rocking movement.
He breathed amusement against my hair. “You look a lot better,” he said.
My gaze flickered up to his face. I let my head fall back into the crook of his arm as I watched him. There was so much I wanted to say. My heart was full of love, and terror. I was afraid to open it in case both came out. My eyes lingered on the firm lips, now pressed tightly together.
“I want to know,” I said, “what happened.”
A shadow passed over his features. In his eyes, I had the strangest sensation of watching something longed for slip from my grasp, like a precious object tumbling down into cold, dark water.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
I gathered strength and nodded.
“Elizabeth took her,” he said.
The earth seemed to spin on its axis. Dizzy, I jerked my head up out of his hold.
He inhaled, adjusted his position to accommodate me, the movement hesitant. “It was my first thought, last night. I guess I just didn’t want to believe it-”
“Why?” I asked, my head awash with disbelief. “How?”
“She still has a set of keys to the apartment,” he said.
The silence pressed between us, dense. I waited for him to elaborate, but the why seemed harder for him to address. I pulled my body up to sit next to him, holding the sheet to my chest.
His eyes followed me. He considered my features for a moment before going on. “She’s been under a lot of stress,” he said.
Anger sliced through me. “Did they arrest her?”
He nodded. I could see pain glint behind his eyes. “They’re going to keep her in for evaluation. Apparently she’s—in a very agitated state.”
I looked away. I stared at the blank walls blindly for a moment, trying to analyse how I felt about that. The terror from last night had turned into a flood of gratitude this morning once I’d seen that Nina was unhurt—gratitude wide and overwhelming and so much more powerful than any fear I’d ever known. It had washed me clean. Now the emotions were back, attempting to fill the space. Confusion mingled in with anger. There was, however, not a lot of room for sympathy.
I turned back to Jay. The hesitation on his normally confident expression was so acute that I recoiled mentally. To my amazement as much as his, I recoiled physically, too. I slid out of the bed, taking the sheet with me.
“Where are you going?” he asked in surprise.
I didn’t know. Anger tightened in my throat. I sat for a long time just trying to assimilate the waves of emotion coursing through me. I’d never been the type to throw things—I’d seen enough scenes like that between my parents to last a lifetime—but I could easily have trashed the room right at that second, so violent was the rage building in me.
“Stella,” he said finally. “I had no idea Elizabeth was capable of something like this. There’s no way I’d have suggested keeping Nina in this apartment if I’d thought there was any risk.”
I turned. “This isn’t your fault,” I said, a tremor of suppressed emotion threading through my voice.
“Everything’s a mess,” he said. He rubbed his face with his hands again, raking them through his hair. His features settled into blank dismay as he considered the view. “A fucking mess. I don’t know how it could have gotten this bad.”
I watched him for a moment, feeling useless. “I don’t think we should stay in this apartment,” I said eventually. “Maybe we should go to D.C. for a while. I have a follow-up piece to do on the Internet bill.”
“I can’t leave the state.”
“Why?” I sat motionless as he carefully explained the complicated situation with his father, and the questioning yesterday by the FBI. “God, I’m so sorry,” I said once he’s finished. “I had no idea.”
He sighed. “To be honest, last night kind of put things into perspective.”
I stared at the carpet for a moment, out of ideas. “Do you have to go to the office today?”
“They suspended me,” he said, his tone flat. He shot me a smile. “I told you things were a mess.”
I grimaced.
“I was planning on leaving, anyway,” he said. He touched my shoulder, running a finger down my back and leaving a shiver in its wake. There was a spark of something irrepressible in his dark gaze. “They just beat me to it.”
His humour was contagious. “Oh, yeah?”
“I’ve been working on a new business on the side, with a few of my contacts in Washington. More focused on bills that actually mean something to me.”
He shrugged then, the blank look returning. The light in his eyes extinguished. “What is it?” I prompted.
“If I get arrested for fraudulent trading, they can ban me from being a director for a while—a long while.”
I paused. “Did you know what your father was doing with those shares?”
“Not really.”
Not exactly a stark denial ... I frowned at him. “Have you got a lawyer?”
“It’s complicated,” he said. He yanked the covers back and sat at the other side of the bed, facing away from me. “I have to speak to my father before I do anything else. I need to get down to the hospital.”
I stared at the impassive width of his back. Crawling on to the bed, I knelt behind him. It was my turn to elicit a shiver by tracing a hand down his spine. I didn’t want him to leave—not yet. He was right; ever
ything was a mess. I had an overwhelming urge to keep the three of us in this room for as long as humanly possible in case we got any more embroiled in it.
“Can I do anything to help?” I asked instead.
He turned so that I saw his profile. “Just pack,” he said. “I’ll see about renting somewhere else today.”
“I’ll find somewhere,” I said. “Let me do it.”
His upper body vibrated with a short burst of humour. “Okay. But no dives in Harlem. Let’s aim for something a little further south.”
I slid my arms around his waist and laid my head on his warm shoulder. At first he didn’t move, but then his hands slid around mine. We sat for a while in the early morning silence, the calm in the eye of the storm, Nina’s laboured breathing like a heartbeat in the background.
#
Nina woke some time later and effortlessly brightened the mood. She seemed unaffected by the previous night’s events. We had breakfast in the kitchen—the family scene as surreal for me as I think it was for Jay. The last time we’d been in this kitchen we’d been yelling at each other ... what a difference a couple of days could make.
As soon as he left for the hospital, my new number programmed on to his phone, I called the office and took care of some urgent tasks. Then I dressed Nina and sat on the sofa for a little while, thinking.
#
The brownstone on West 45th Street was eerily unchanged. The realtor showed me through each of the rooms, pointing out spacious closets where my clothes had once hung. “This room is perfect for a nursery,” she said, opening the door on to the room where I’d lain Nina when we’d first arrived back from the hospital. She marvelled over the fitted kitchen. “Those tiles are from the original build back in the late eighteen-hundreds,” she said, and I smiled, recalling the day Monica and I had stripped off the decrepit cladding and found them. We’d jumped around like a couple of gleeful school kids, dust all over us, while my weeks-old baby girl was slumbering in her car seat in the next room. “The last owner did a wonderful job at restoring it. There’s love in every detail.”
