The Perfect Child

by Berry, Lucinda

  The images had played themselves out like unwanted movie clips. The harder I had tried to stop them, the more they had come.

  “Did you tell anyone what you were experiencing? Christopher? Allison?”

  “No.”

  How could I have told anyone what I was seeing? Having images of stabbing your baby wasn’t consistent with being in love with your baby, and I loved Cole with all my heart. I’d been terrified of something happening to him. Utterly terrified. I’d mentally walked through every possible danger, each one a graphic novel in my head. I hadn’t trusted anyone to keep him safe, not even Christopher.

  “Have you thought any more about your diagnosis?”

  I shook my head. The psychiatric team said I’d had a psychotic break from postpartum depression. They told me there was nothing I could have done to stop or prevent it and assured me it resulted from a combination of biological factors beyond my control—my sleep deprivation, dramatic hormone shift, and genetic predisposition—but I knew I was still responsible for what I’d done. It didn’t matter how much therapy they gave me or what kind of drugs they pumped into me. I had tried to drown Janie.

  “My psychiatrist told me everything I felt or saw was delusional, but he was wrong. Some of it was right. It was real.” I took a deep breath before going on. She needed to know the truth. “Janie was the only person who scared me more than my thoughts. I didn’t want her anywhere near Cole. Christopher thought I was just irritated and frustrated with her because I was so tired, but Janie would’ve hurt Cole if she ever got the chance. That part was never delusional, and I don’t care how much medication you put me on; I’m not going to change my mind.”

  She interrupted me. “But that’s the problem, Hannah. You can’t trust your mind anymore.”

  CASE #5243

  INTERVIEW:

  PIPER GOLDSTEIN

  Luke slid the album across the table. I didn’t have to look at the cover to know what it was. I’d been through it many times. “Is this the journal submitted into evidence?”

  “It is.”

  “And what did you think when you read it?”

  How could he understand that nothing I had read fit with the woman I knew? All he saw was the woman from the last few months, and that person was a stranger. She wasn’t Hannah. But this time I didn’t have to try and explain myself.

  “I can’t discuss records in an open child-protection case,” I recited exactly as I’d been told by my supervisor.

  He had no choice but to switch tactics. “What did you do with the journal?”

  “I handed it over to the authorities investigating the Bauers’ case.”

  “Did you tell Allison about any of the things you read in the journal?”

  “No.”

  “Why was that? Didn’t she have a right to know?”

  “I assumed Hannah had told her because the two of them were so close. They weren’t just sisters. They were best friends, and best friends tell each other everything, even stuff that’s horrible, so I just figured she knew everything.”

  “But she didn’t know everything, did she?”

  I shook my head. “No, she didn’t.”

  Would it have made a difference?

  FIFTY-FIVE

  CHRISTOPHER BAUER

  In all my years as a doctor, I had never been on a locked psychiatric ward before, and I was horrified by the place. It must’ve been designed to be as grim as possible because there was nothing warm about it. The rooms were in desperate need of a paint job. Their whitewashed walls had become a grimy yellow. There weren’t any windows. Nothing that spoke of life. Just stale recycled air and a complete sense of isolation. How was anyone supposed to feel better in a place thick with depression?

  There were all these plainclothes orderlies who were paid to watch the patients like glorified babysitters. One of them led Hannah into the room, and she shuffled in, her head hanging low and her hair haphazardly falling forward. It was matted and had a big ball in the back. I couldn’t believe they’d just let her walk around like that. Why didn’t someone brush her hair? Her pajama pants dragged on the floor. She wasn’t allowed to be alone, so the orderly guided her into a seat, then grabbed one of the chairs for himself and plopped down in the doorway, leaving the door open so he could listen.

  I barely recognized her when she looked up. Her eyes were clouded and hazy with all the drugs they were pumping into her. She stared at me like she wasn’t seeing me. I wasn’t sure she was.

  “Hi.” I didn’t know what else to say.

  She put her hands on the table, nervously wringing them together, and looked down.

  “How are you doing?”

  Still no response. The silence was so thick you could reach out and touch it.

  “Do you want me to leave?” I asked.

  She mumbled something, but I couldn’t understand.

  “Excuse me? Can you say that again? I didn’t hear you.”

  She refused to answer. We sat in silence. I could hear the orderly breathing in the doorway. Hannah played with her hands. I stayed for another few minutes, but it wasn’t long before I couldn’t take any more.

  “I think I’m going to go,” I announced.

  She didn’t flinch. I stood up and left without saying goodbye.

  She’d brushed her hair, so she didn’t look quite so ragged at our next visit. She shuffled into the room in the same manner she had before. It was a different orderly in the doorway this time.

  “Hi.” I tried again.

  “Hi.” Her voice was raspy and hoarse.

  We sat in the same spots as before. She put her hand in her mouth and anxiously chewed on her fingernails. She’d never chewed her fingernails before.

  “I didn’t think you’d come . . .” Her voice stopped.

  I bit back tears. “I couldn’t leave you here alone.”

  Her eyes were vacant; she wore a thousand-yard stare.

  “You look better today,” I said. I talked to her doctor every day, and she kept me updated on Hannah’s progress. They’d recently added a new medication to her cocktail of antipsychotics.

  “You were here before?” she asked.

  I nodded. “Yes. You were pretty out of it.”

  “I hate the drugs. You know how I feel about drugs.” Her voice was flat, devoid of emotion.

  I cleared my throat, nervous to ask. “Do they help?”

  She shrugged.

  “Are you eating?” I didn’t know what to talk about.

  “Not really. The medication makes me nauseous.”

  “Is there anything that sounds good? Maybe I could bring you something.”

  “You’d bring me food?” Her eyes filled with tears.

  I reached across the table and pulled her hand out of her mouth. I put it in mine. Her hands were dry, scaly. I rubbed my finger gently on top of hers. “Yes.” It was hard to speak around the lump in my throat.

  She jerked her hand away. “Don’t touch me.”

  I dropped her hand. “I’m sorry. I just—I just . . .”

  “Please go. Just go.” Tears streamed down her cheeks. “Don’t come back.”

  “I’m not going to go, Hannah. I’m not just going to leave you here. I love you. That doesn’t change because you’re sick.”

  Her voice trembled as she spoke. “I am more than sick. I tried to kill a child. Don’t try to make this better for me.”

  “We’ve all done some horrible things during this.” I lowered my voice to a whisper so the orderly sitting in the doorway couldn’t hear. “I hit you, Hannah.”

  FIFTY-SIX

  HANNAH BAUER

  Our meetings blended into each other like one never-ending session. Twice daily. Sometimes three if it was a really bad day. Dr. Spence didn’t have a time limit. Not like Dr. Chandler. No way to tell if they were going to go twenty minutes or three hours. This one felt like it’d been going on forever. We might break our record.

  “Do you remember when you started hearing voices?
” she asked.

  “Remember those images I told you about earlier?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  “The voices worked the same way. From out of nowhere, a voice started whispering, ‘Janie’s possessed by a demon.’ At first they were murmurs, just whispers that made me wonder if I’d heard them at all. I kept telling myself they weren’t there. That it wasn’t real. I felt my mind snapping, going somewhere it’d never gone, but I couldn’t stop it. I was outside myself watching it happen.”

  The investigators had shown me my journal and all those things I’d written. Allison had given me the journal at my baby shower. She’d used the same one with her boys. I remembered my first few entries, but most of it was like reading a story about someone else. It was hard to believe it was me.

  “You never sought help?”

  “I didn’t.” I hung my head. “It’s different when it’s happening to you. I kept telling myself that it was normal because of everything going on and I’d adjust in a little while. But then I didn’t . . .”

  “And then what happened, Hannah?”

  “You already know what happened. Everyone knows what happened.”

  “It might help you if you talked about it.”

  That’s where she was wrong—where everyone was wrong. Nothing was going to help me. And I didn’t care how many times doctors told me I had had a psychotic break. It didn’t justify what I had done. It never would. I had walked into the bathroom that day intending to drown Janie. That part was crystal clear. So was how hard she’d fought as I’d tried to hold her under the water.

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  CHRISTOPHER BAUER

  Janie screamed in the background of my phone. It’d only been twenty minutes since I had left Allison’s house after my visit with the kids, and it was the same routine every time. Janie sobbed and clung to me when it was time to leave, and Allison had to pry her off. Sometimes it took her thirty minutes to calm her down. Other times it took three hours.

  “She bit me again,” Allison said.

  I turned my Bluetooth down as I drove; it made Janie’s piercing screams in the background lower. “I’m sorry,” I said.

  I’d lost count of how many times I had apologized to her in the past few weeks. Even though Hannah had confessed to hurting Janie and Cole, the Department of Children’s Services treated me like I was a criminal, too, as if I’d been in on some conspiracy with her. They didn’t understand that I had been as blindsided as they were when I had discovered the baby journal. The shock had dulled over time, but it was still there. Hannah’s story corroborated everything Janie had said—she’d been trying to drown Janie when she had slipped and Cole had hit his head as she’d fallen. None of that mattered, though. Janie and Cole still had to stay with Allison until they cleared my name. Piper said it was standard practice, but it didn’t make me feel any less like a criminal.

  “She actually drew blood this time. Blood, Christopher. Do you know how hard you have to bite someone to draw blood?”

  “Have you tried distracting her?” I asked. Janie wasn’t making any of this easier on anybody. Every time I talked to her, I told her she needed to behave better, but she never listened.

  “Of course I’ve tried distracting her. We’ve tried everything. Nothing works.” She sighed. “I don’t know how much longer we can keep doing this. She’s still stealing food. That hasn’t stopped. And today? She smeared feces on the bathroom wall.” I could hear the disgust in her voice. “I don’t know how you deal with her.”

  “It’s not easy. You might have to lock up the refrigerator. I can send you the link for the locks we used.”

  “I refuse to lock up the refrigerator like we’re in some weird prison. I’m sorry, I know you guys do, but I just don’t feel right about it. It’s not fair to my boys either. None of this is.”

  Janie usually loved her cousins, but she’d started being mean to them. She snuck into their rooms and broke their favorite toys. She took their homework out of their backpacks and scribbled all over it. The other day, she’d locked Dylan in his closet.

  “This has all been very hard on her,” I said. “She’s trying to work things out. Remember how Dr. Chandler said she’s probably going to act out for a while? That it’s really common for kids to do in these types of situations?”

  “It’s more than that, though. She scares me, Chris. She really does. I’m afraid she’s going to do something awful to my boys. I’m probably just being paranoid, but sometimes when she looks at me, it’s like she’s plotting something. Just waiting to get her chance. I don’t want to keep pushing this, but how long until the kids can come back to you?”

  “Believe me, I want them home as much as you do. I can talk to Piper again and see if she can move things any faster. Hopefully, we’ll know something for sure within the next week or so. I—”

  She stopped me. “Another week? Oh my gosh, I can’t take another week of this. Greg goes back to work on Friday, and they have to be gone by then. This was never supposed to be this long. It was only supposed to be a few days. I can’t do this by myself.”

  “But there’s no way they’ll let them come back home in two days. I can call later tonight after she’s calmed down and talk to her again about having good behavior.”

  Allison snorted. “Christopher, how many times have you talked to her? It never does any good.”

  “I’ll bribe her. I can promise to bring that new outfit she wants for her doll if she’s good.”

  “That never works either.”

  I was running out of options. “Please, Allison, I know this is hard, but it’s only temporary. Just a little bit longer, and you’ll get your life back.”

  “I’m sorry, Christopher. I can’t do this.”

  “What are you saying?” The seriousness of the situation suddenly became clear.

  “She drove Hannah over the edge. I know my sister, and that girl is what drove her crazy, and I’m not going to have the same thing happen to me. I was horrified when I found out what Hannah did. I couldn’t even imagine it. But you know what? Now I can. I’ve only had Janie in my house for a short time, and I’m already starting to not feel like myself. She makes me nervous and on edge all the time. Don’t you feel it? She doesn’t make your skin crawl just being around her?”

  Waves of fury passed through me. Janie was family. Nobody seemed to get that besides me. Just because Janie wasn’t the same as her perfect little boys didn’t mean we could throw her away. She couldn’t help what she’d been through.

  I did my best to sound calm and avoid pushing her any further away. “There’s no place else for them to go. They’ll put them in foster care if they can’t stay with you.”

  “I have to protect my family,” she said.

  “But she’s your family.”

  “No, Christopher. She’s not. I didn’t adopt her—you did.”

  “She’s serious, Piper. She wants them gone by Friday. What am I supposed to do?” I’d called Piper as soon as I had hung up with Allison. She already knew there was no place else for them to go. Dr. Chandler was working as hard as she could to get Janie into a program, but there wasn’t much she could do on such short notice, and I was unwilling to send her anywhere that wasn’t top of the line. “I could probably talk her into taking Cole, but that doesn’t solve anything for Janie. And besides, how traumatic would that be for her?” I lined my voice with sarcasm. “‘I’m sorry, Janie, but you can’t stay at your aunt Allison’s house, but your brother can.’ Do you really think she’d get over that?”

  “I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but there’s no way I can push anything through by Friday. The system doesn’t work that way,” Piper said.

  “But you have to do something. What’s going to happen if Allison refuses to keep the kids?” I asked even though I already knew the answer.

  “We have to place them in foster care until the hearing.”

  “They can’t go into foster care. Cole’s just a baby. And Janie? Im
agine what that will do to her. We have to do something. Piper, please.”

  “Is there any way you can talk her into one more week?”

  “I don’t think so. She was pretty adamant.” I’d spent the last five minutes begging her, but it hadn’t made a difference.

  “What about your parents?”

  “My mom’s diabetes is completely out of control right now. She’s been in and out of the hospital herself. Lillian just left last week. She’d turn around and come back in a heartbeat if I asked her, but Gene took a bad fall while she was gone. His hip is still bothering him. The timing on all of this couldn’t be worse.”

  “Look, why don’t I give Allison a call and see if I can change her mind?” Piper asked.

  “You’d do that?”

  “Of course. I’d do anything for you guys.”

  CASE #5243

  INTERVIEW:

  PIPER GOLDSTEIN

  Luke paused before continuing, “You seemed more involved with Christopher than with Hannah. Any particular reason why?”

  It was no secret that Christopher and I were close. We talked every day, sometimes multiple times. I wasn’t going to lie about it. Besides, they probably had the phone records anyway.

  “I helped Christopher navigate the legal minefield once everything started falling apart,” I said.

  “It wasn’t a conflict of interest?”

  “No. My role is very different. I’m not involved in the specific legalities of criminally prosecuting parents for abuse. My job is to determine the best placement in situations like Janie’s and Cole’s and then to provide recommendations to the family court.”

  “And did you do that?” Luke’s eyes had grown bloodshot as the hours had passed, and he spent most of his time sitting down now instead of animatedly pacing around the room, but Ron looked like he could go all night.