The Woman in Our House

by Andrew Hart

  “Like the doggy?” asked Veronica, her face pale, her gaze level.

  “What?” I asked, momentarily completely lost, then filled with sudden horror as I realized what she meant. “No! She’s fine. She will be fine. Babies get temperatures all the time. We just have to get her looked at.”

  Veronica looked scared.

  “Mommy?” she said, her own voice rising as she caught my panic.

  “She’ll be fine,” proclaimed Oaklynn, as if nothing could be more obvious. “Right as rain. Baby Grace has a bit of a fever is all. We’ll get that seen to right quick; you just see if we don’t.”

  Again, the smile: full, composed, and confident.

  “I’ll drive,” she continued. “Unless you’d rather I stayed home with Veronica?”

  I hesitated. Grace had been colicky, but it had never led to the emergency room, and I had always been just a little unnerved by hospitals. Oaklynn checked the thermometer again, looking coolheaded and professional, just like a nurse.

  “We’ll all go,” I said.

  “To the pospital?” Veronica ventured, her unease swelling.

  “Absolutely to the hospital,” Oaklynn breezed, as if this had all been planned as a special treat. “Why don’t you grab Lamby and a nice book, and we’ll get ready to go?”

  Oaklynn’s manner and the mention of the stuffed toy worked on Veronica like music, and though she was still serious, she went out of the room with a sense of purpose I had not been able to find.

  “I can drive,” I tried.

  “If you like,” said Oaklynn. “But you might be better in the back with the girls. Keep an eye on them. Keep them happy.”

  I blinked and nodded, sensing that Veronica had returned, or had never really left, and was hovering in the doorway, watching.

  “Yes,” I said, managing a smile for my eldest.

  “Grab that diaper bag, will you?”

  I did, sleepwalking through the action and those that followed as we went out and buckled the children into their car seats. I couldn’t take my eyes off Grace for more than a few seconds, which was, of course, no state to drive in. Oaklynn, by contrast, moved with easy efficiency, taking charge, and I was glad to let her lead, albeit distractedly and always a step behind.

  “The emergency room is at the corner of Queens and Fourth,” I supplied.

  “I have it in my phone,” said Oaklynn, checking the kids once more before setting the Camry rolling softly backward and angling around to face the main road. There were no other cars on the quiet street, and I was reminded of just how isolated the house could feel. I was barely aware of where we were, my attention staying on Grace except to give Veronica an encouraging smile and assure her all would be well, but I sensed my surroundings as if I were inside a dream where even ordinary things had a strangeness to them and the merest indefinable hint of menace.

  Grace was still making those odd, discomforted noises, and though they seemed to be slackening off, I found the change more disturbing than encouraging.

  “She’s going quiet,” I said. “You think that’s better or worse?”

  I should know, I thought, feeling stupid and incompetent.

  “Nearly there,” said Oaklynn softly. She never took her eyes off the road.

  We followed the signs down to Presbyterian Medical Center, Oaklynn barely glancing at her phone as if she intuitively knew the way or was drawn there by some inner force. The more anxious I became, the more she had become steely and focused, the arrow in flight to the bull’s-eye. I was impressed and grateful, but I felt unnerved by my sense of Grace’s suddenly obvious fragility, so that the journey continued to have a fuzzy, dreamlike quality. I muttered vague encouragements I didn’t quite believe as the world slipped by the car too slowly.

  “How much farther?” I muttered. “She’s stopped moaning. What do you think that means?”

  “Pulling in now,” said Oaklynn. “I’ll let you out here and find a place to park. You go on in with Grace, and I’ll be along with Veronica in a moment.”

  My panic spiked, but I wrestled it down and nodded.

  “OK,” I said. I hated the idea of going in alone, not knowing exactly what to say or where to go, but Oaklynn seemed to read my thoughts.

  “There will be signs. The staff will ask you questions . . .”

  “Right,” I said. “Come quickly, though, yes? You know as much about her usual routine as I do, and there may be something you noticed even if you didn’t realize it . . .”

  “Go on in, Anna,” said Oaklynn patiently. We were idling outside the main doors. A cop had already noticed us. Another moment and he’d come over and ask us to move. “I’ll be right there.” I hesitated for just a second, and she turned to me, smiling. “You’ll be fine, Anna. You’re her mom. I’ll be with you in just a moment, I promise. Go.”

  And I did. Veronica sat very still, her eyes wide as she watched me climb out, and then I was gathering Grace into my arms and walking away. She felt cooler now and had gone quiet, sleepy, but I took no comfort from that. Not yet. Once through the automatic doors, I hesitated and turned back to the Camry, but it was already pulling away, and I had no choice but to handle things alone.

  And, again, I did. It wasn’t hard. The staff—as Oaklynn had said—took charge, asked questions, and I, apart from an anxious disorientation and niggling sense of shame, contributed what I could while nurses buzzed around Grace, who, startled by all the activity, had begun to cry again. It was a normal, healthy crying this time, not the animal whining of before, the droning distress that had seemed so unlike her. Before she had sounded feral, like one of the neighborhood coyotes in the darkness of the woods, but now she was my daughter again, and some of that unsettling dreamy quality of the last twenty minutes or so melted away. Even so, I stood there feeling useless, still unfocused and a little jittery, so that when Oaklynn appeared holding Veronica’s hand, I clung to them both.

  “How are we doing?” asked Oaklynn, addressing not just me but also the attendant nurses. There were two of them, both in pale green scrubs, both in their midthirties, one white and fleshy, the other black and pencil thin.

  “Temperature is still a tiny bit high,” said the black nurse whose name badge said Alysha, “but that might just be the excitement of coming here.”

  “Excitement?” I said blankly.

  “There’s no party like an ER party,” said Alysha. She said it deadpan but flashed a little grin at the end to show she was joking.

  “It was one hundred four when we left,” said Oaklynn.

  “One oh four?” said the other nurse, Jackie.

  Oaklynn gave me a questioning look.

  “She just said it was high,” said Jackie.

  “Feverish,” I inserted, knowing my voice was unnaturally shrill and brittle. “I said feverish.”

  “It was one oh four,” said Oaklynn.

  “It’s not now,” said Alysha, shaking her head. “And she was throwing up?”

  “Yes,” I pushed in. “I told you.”

  The nurses hesitated just long enough to make it clear they wanted Oaklynn’s confirmation.

  “Had breakfast at seven. Threw it up twenty minutes later and hasn’t eaten since,” said Oaklynn.

  “How’s she acting?” asked Jackie. “She seem herself?”

  “Well, I don’t really know her moods that well yet,” Oaklynn began. The nurses frowned, puzzled.

  “I’m her mother,” I said stiffly. “She’s the nanny.”

  “I know,” said Alysha, giving me an odd look.

  Of course I was the mother. Grace had my coloring, my eyes. That big, pale Oaklynn wasn’t a blood relative was almost insultingly obvious.

  “Sorry,” I said, not sure to which of them I was apologizing but feeling flustered and foolish.

  “No problem,” said Alysha. “So can you say if Grace seems to be behaving normally?”

  Having ensured the question came to me rather than Oaklynn, I suddenly realized I didn’t know how to a
nswer it.

  “Well, she was making odd noises,” I said. “Like she was . . . distressed. Uncomfortable. And she was really hot.”

  “Which would explain the distress,” said Jackie, half to herself. “Well, she seems OK now, but at her age, we don’t want to take any chances. We should check her over properly. Have a seat, and the doctor will be out in a few minutes.”

  I did as I was told, holding Grace tightly to me, while Veronica looked on, stroking her baby sister’s hand.

  “It will be fine,” said Oaklynn. “She’s better already.”

  I nodded mutely, but when Oaklynn just kept smiling with understanding, with compassion, I found a kind of explanation for my defensiveness.

  “I haven’t been to the hospital since she was born,” I said. “Checkups at the doctor’s office, sure, but never a hospital. Nothing for Veronica either. They freak me out. Hospitals, I mean. Something about the smell or . . . I don’t know. I don’t really smell it here. It’s just in my head, I guess. An association. A fear. Infection, maybe. They say you can catch all kinds of resistant bugs in hospitals. But that’s not it either,” I confessed, puzzling my neurotic reaction through, trying to make sense of it, while Oaklynn held my hand and nodded without judgment.

  “You love your daughter,” she said, smiling with such tenderness, such total comprehension, that my eyes filled with tears. All I could do was nod, holding my baby tight to my breast. “That’s how it’s supposed to be,” she went on. “You love her, and you were frightened for her. That’s all there was to it. You did fine. Everything will be OK.”

  “Thanks to you,” I managed, caught between a self-deprecating laugh and a sob that made a surly-looking young couple two chairs down turn and stare at me. “I’m not sure what I would have done without you.”

  “You would have been fine. You’re making too much of it.”

  “Well, you were a big help.”

  “Good,” said Oaklynn, beaming. “That’s my job.”

  The doctor, when he arrived, looked barely old enough to be qualified, but he seemed efficient, and though he spoke with practiced ease and fluency, he didn’t seem cocky. He was white and slim, with heavy black-framed glasses that looked somehow ironic, as if they were part of a costume he was wearing for a joke. He busied himself with his stethoscope, consulted Grace’s chart, and put the back of his hand to her forehead. She was sleeping now and looked both healthy and angelic, so that a part of me felt ridiculous for having brought her in at all.

  “When was her last wet diaper?” he asked.

  I blinked stupidly, blushed, and looked at Oaklynn.

  “I changed her at eight,” she said. “Nothing since then.”

  “And it was just wet or dirty, too?” asked the doctor, pulling his gaze from me to her.

  “Both. No blood or anything, and it looked normal.”

  I hadn’t thought to ask about that.

  “Good,” he said.

  “What do you think it is?” I said. It was a stupid question, but I needed to feel involved in the conversation.

  “Could be a number of things,” he replied, “but she seems fine now. I’m going to send you home with some Pedialyte and have you watch her. If she isn’t back to normal before she goes to bed tonight, you should take her to see her pediatrician in the morning. Of course, if anything gets worse, you bring her back here.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” said Oaklynn. “I hope we haven’t wasted your time.”

  “Not at all,” he replied, smiling at her warmly. “You did the right thing. Baby Grace is very lucky to have you.”

  He turned to include me in that last remark, but he did it as an afterthought. In other circumstances, I might have been indignant, but as it was, I just felt weary and irrelevant.

  “He was a very nice doctor,” said Veronica as we signed out and dealt with insurance cards and copays. “I think I might be a doctor when I grow up.”

  “Really?” said Oaklynn. “That’s a wonderful idea. But you’ll have to work very hard.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “You’re all set,” said the receptionist. “Have a good day.”

  “Thanks,” I said, feeling better about it all now that it seemed to be over. As we headed out, I took Veronica’s hand.

  “I thought you wanted to write books when you grew up,” I said, trying to sound cheery, even playful.

  “That was when I was little,” Veronica replied, rolling her eyes dramatically at Oaklynn and taking her hand as we approached the double doors to the outside world. In spite of everything, I felt a prickle of annoyance that my daughter was so enthralled by my sweet and capable nanny, even as I knew the thought was unworthy of me.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Edward Flanders had called every nanny agency based in Utah he could find, but no one using Nadine’s name showed up in their records. That wasn’t a surprise, but it meant that he was looking for a needle in a haystack. A needle that might not actually be there. He tried Charlene and other known aliases, but Nadine, for all her many faults, wasn’t that stupid. He revisited his list, which featured names like Helpers West, All About Nannies, Family Connection, and Nanny on the Net, and jotted down the addresses of the biggest agencies, figuring he’d have his best shot in person.

  He drew blanks on the first four, getting a combination of blank looks in response to his picture and party-line blather about privacy and the need for warrants to see internal records. But at the fifth, an agency called Nurture, he saw a look of panic flash through the receptionist’s face as she considered the photo and knew he was onto something.

  “If you’ll just wait a moment, I’ll see if the manager is available,” said the receptionist, whose badge identified her simply as Rachel. She was white and wholesome-looking.

  “You processed her paperwork?” he said, smiling, his voice low, almost soothing.

  “I’m not sure,” said Rachel, flushing, her eyes moving uneasily to his badge.

  He nodded at the lie and looked to the door. The receptionist’s hand had gone to the phone, but she hadn’t picked up the receiver. For a moment, she just looked at it like it might sting her.

  “Would you rather we took care of this just between the two of us?” he said kindly. “I’m not looking to get you into trouble here, and I’m sure your manager . . . ?”

  “Mrs. Hennessy.”

  She said the name in a breathy whisper that dripped with dread. She fidgeted with a stapler on the desk, put it down self-consciously, and then clenched her fist to hide the nervous flutter in her fingers.

  Little Rachel here, Flanders concluded, was a serial screwup. He could use that.

  “I’m sure Mrs. Hennessy is busy and all.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Rachel, meek and wide-eyed.

  “You recognize the picture?”

  “I couldn’t be sure,” she said, trying to push back from what she’d already given away.

  Flanders smiled sympathetically.

  “But you think so,” he said. “It’s OK. You’re not in trouble.”

  She returned his smile reflexively, but it was uneven, and her eyes wouldn’t hold his.

  “So,” he said. “Rachel, yeah? Have another look at the picture, Rachel. Take your time. It’s very important that I find this woman. And like I said, you’re not in trouble. But if you had some dealings with the person in the picture and don’t tell me . . .” He let the sentence hang and made a sympathetic face. The look said that he would feel bad about what might happen if she didn’t come clean now, but it would be out of his hands.

  “I think . . . ,” said Rachel, cautious and apprehensive, her voice lowered, her eyes flicking to the office door in case Mrs. Hennessy might suddenly appear.

  “You think you recognize her?” he said, still going easy, playing the ally.

  She nodded once, minutely, like a frightened rabbit.

  “OK,” he said, rewarding her with a broad, encouraging smile. “That’s great, Rachel. Really helpf
ul. Think you can pull up her file?”

  The receptionist took a long, unsteady breath and found a wobbly smile of her own.

  “It was a reactivation. About five months ago. I remember it because she’d changed between pictures, but it had been a long time, and pictures can sometimes make you look really different, right?”

  “Right,” said Flanders, still soothing. He had her on the hook and was starting to draw her in. “Sometimes when my girlfriend takes my picture, I’m like, ‘Who’s that guy?’”

  “Right? Anyway, I remembered. It will just take me a few moments to sort through the reactivations. Is she in trouble?”

  The tremble in her voice belied the question. Rachel wasn’t asking if the girl in the picture was in trouble, or at least was only asking if it meant trouble for herself.

  “She might be,” said Flanders, “but if you can help me find her, I’ll do what I can to keep you out of it. Sound like a deal?”

  Rachel bobbed her rabbit head again and returned her eyes to the computer screen on which she was sorting nanny profiles by date of activation. She hesitated over one file, then shook her head and moved on. A moment later, she had it.

  “Oaklynn Durst,” she said.

  Flanders very deliberately showed no emotion, though it wasn’t easy.

  “And does Miss Durst live locally?” he asked at length.

  “She did, but she is on assignment now.”

  “On assignment?”

  “Resident with a family. In Charlotte, North Carolina.”

  This time, he couldn’t quite suppress the flicker of his lips into a thin but satisfied smile. Rachel, thinking it was directed at her, smiled back and breathed a sigh of relief: off the hook.

  “That’s great, Rachel,” said Flanders, his cool, professional self again. “Very helpful indeed. Can I get that name and address from you, please?”

  Chapter Nineteen

  ANNA

  By the time we had left the hospital, Grace showed no sign of the sickness that had led us to the ER in the first place, and none of her previous symptoms reappeared over the next twenty-four hours. I called my pediatrician’s office and spoke to one of the nurses, who had access to the hospital’s electronic medical records, and was told that beyond being alert for any recurring signs of fever or gastro discomfort, there was really nothing to do. Kids got sick, she said, and they got better. Their bodies were remarkable at shrugging off the kinds of infections that would level an adult, and while it would be nice to know exactly what had happened in this instance, no news was good news. I was due to take her in for a checkup in a couple of weeks. Assuming there were no developments in the meantime, we’d review then.