Pretty Baby: A Gripping Novel of Psychological Suspense

by Mary Kubica

  CHRIS

  I pass through Chicago on the way to Denver for a meeting with a potential client. Face-to-face meetings are big in the world of investment banking; we have a quota for our firm, how many meetings we’re to attend each month. Twenty. That’s what our CEO says. Twenty face-to-face meetings with clients. Skype won’t do. FaceTime doesn’t work. Even though I’m eight hundred miles away, giving presentations to try to entice potential investors to purchase shares of an IPO for another client, I’m to pop into the office for the client meeting, then catch up in Denver with Tom, Henry, Cassidy and the rest of the crew later in the day.

  I take the first flight out of LaGuardia at 6:00 a.m., landing me in Chicago at 7:28 a.m., local time. The meeting is at nine, barely enough time to gather my luggage from baggage claim and catch a cab to the Loop.

  The client meeting goes exceptionally well. They usually do. Apparently I have some charm I don’t know about, a tender face that makes people want to put their trust in me. It’s the reason I’m usually at the forefront of meetings with potential clients. It has nothing to do with an impressive MBA or the years of experience I have tucked beneath my belt. It’s all about my smile, and the boyish good looks my mother swore would get me in trouble someday.

  I have an afternoon flight out of O’Hare, to the Mile High City; not enough time to go home, shower, shave, change out of the rancid suit jacket I’ve worn for days—though I’ve managed to short myself on clean socks and underwear, and my lucky tie, for this never-ending trip to hell and back. I put in a call to Heidi, never thinking in a million years that she’d do me this favor, and yet she does, she packs a spare bag of clothes and offers to meet me at an Asian grill for a quick bite.

  It’s only been forty-some hours since I’ve seen Heidi, and yet there’s something different about her, something casual, something that conflicts with the Heidi I left the other morning, asleep in bed, the overthinking, premeditative Heidi she evolved into somewhere along the path of our marriage. I see it in her step, as she walks briskly down Michigan Avenue, right there where the Mag Mile crosses the Chicago River, at the Michigan Avenue Bridge, completely unruffled by the hubbub of the city. There’s a bounce in her step, and she’s dressed in a dress, a stone-colored dress that just skims the ankle, surprisingly fitted and chic, not quite what I’m used to seeing on Heidi. She looks amazing. And yet, she’s got the damn baby strapped to her in one of those baby slings, and when I ask, “What the heck is that?” she tells me it’s called a Moby Wrap, as if this is the most normal thing in the whole entire world, her, wearing someone else’s baby like luggage.

  “Where’s her mother?” I ask, searching left and right, up and down for the girl. “You didn’t leave her at home?” I ask. “Alone?” I’m prepared to go into some big diatribe about that girl stealing my big-screen TV, and how she was never, ever to be left unattended in our home.

  But Heidi smiles kindly and says that she dropped her off at the library, on the way to meet me for lunch. That the girl wanted to check out a few books. Black Beauty, she says, and A Wrinkle in Time, tacking on, “The classics,” knowing good and well the only thing I read as a kid was the Wall Street Journal. She says that she thought I’d prefer it if Willow didn’t join us for lunch, a statement I can’t altogether argue with; I just happen to wish she’d left the baby at the library, too.

  And then Heidi steps forward and kisses me, an impromptu kiss, that’s not too short and is entirely sweet, the kind of thing my Heidi would hardly ever do, not in public at least. Heidi is a strict opponent of PDA. She’s been like this for years, forever maybe, scowling when she sees some couple kissing on a corner or at the bus stop, even a quick peck, the have a good day kind of kiss normal couples share all the time. She presses close to me, the napping baby sandwiched in between, running her hands up and down my arms. Her hands are warm to the touch, vulnerable in a way that Heidi rarely is. Her lips press firmly to mine, decisively, and she whispers, “I missed you,” and as I draw slowly away, I know those words, those simple, golden words, and the desiring tone of her voice will stay with me all day.

  We eat lunch. I order crab rangoon, Heidi the chicken pad thai. I tell her about my week; she tells me about hers. I apologize for the gazillionth time for missing her call last night, but unlike the seething voice mail she left me a mere twelve hours ago, this time she shrugs mercifully and says it’s okay. What I tell her is that I fell fast asleep, completely bushed from the week. I say that I had a beer or two—maybe three—with dinner, and I didn’t hear my phone ring.

  I don’t tell her about drinks in the hotel bar; I don’t tell her about Cassidy proofreading the offering memorandum in my hotel room, alone. That wouldn’t be very sensible; in fact, it’d be downright dumb. I don’t mention Cassidy’s lissome frame or the profile of her breasts in the rust-colored dress, though still they’re on my mind, like some greedy little kid wishing for candy.

  “What did you need to tell me?” I ask, and she laughs wholeheartedly and says, “I can’t even remember anymore,” as the waiter refills our glasses of water.

  Heidi’s smile is sympathetic, the epitome of the submissive wife. Her hair is clean—no more spaghetti hair—and there’s some sort of musky-perfumy scent coming from her, something I hardly recognize anymore in my wife. I didn’t even know Heidi still owned perfume. Or maybe it’s the shampoo.

  Her words come out solicitous, as she says, “You must be so tired, Chris. You’re always on the go.”

  And I admit I am—tired. And then she tells me about the baby, how the antibiotic has been helping her get better. She’s feeling better and sleeping better, which, in turn, means Heidi’s sleeping. I can see that her eyes look rested, she’s found the time to take a shower and put makeup on, not much—a dab of blush, maybe some lip gloss—but enough that there’s color to her skin; she’s not a frightening white.

  Maybe that was all that she needed, I think. A good night’s sleep.

  “When I get home,” I say, “we’re going to need to talk about all this. The whole Willow situation,” and though I’m expecting some sort of backlash—casual Heidi to disappear and be replaced with uptight Heidi once again—it doesn’t come.

  She simply says, “Of course. Yes, let’s talk. When you get back from Denver. But,” she adds, massaging my free hand—the one that isn’t stuffing deep fried dumplings into my mouth like I haven’t eaten for a week—and then lacing her fingers through mine and offering a squeeze, “I have a feeling everything is going to be just fine. You’ll see. It’ll all work out.”

  And I find myself, somehow, convinced that it will be fine.

  We say our goodbyes and exchange bags: me taking the clean socks and undies, my lucky tie, Heidi carrying away my dirty laundry like some dutiful 1950s housewife.

  I watch as she heads off, down the street, veering in and out of pedestrian traffic, heading in the opposite direction of the library.

  I take a peek inside the bag, to make sure she brought it, that she brought my financial calculator, because I said the ones from the office sucked, citing their microscopic digits and keys that don’t work as the cause though Heidi never asked. But in reality, it was the only small thing I could remember that the elusive Willow Greer had touched inside my home—that first day, in my office, when she leaned over to retrieve it from the floor, a shaky hand tracing each and every key, leaving behind an unmistakable identity neither she nor I could see—the only thing that would be within reason for Heidi to bring to me when we met for lunch.

  I could hardly suggest she bring the remote control, baby bottles, the old suitcase.

  And then I hurry to meet Martin Miller before I board the next plane.

  WILLOW

  On one of her prearranged visits, Ms. Adler arrived with a letter from the Zeegers, as usual, though this one was completely different. She appeared on the front stoop, stomping the snow off her big fleecy boots before coming into the home. Joseph took her coat from her and laid it over the arm o
f a chair, and we all went into the kitchen where, as usual, we sat around the wooden table and a doped-up Miriam served us cookies and tea.

  This letter though, wasn’t about my Lily and how well she was doing in school and how big she was growing up to be. No this letter was completely different. This letter made the blood in my veins run cold, the air in the room too thin to breathe. I grasped that letter in my shaking hands and read aloud—as Joseph made me do so he wouldn’t be left in the dark—about how ten months before, Big Lily found herself suddenly, curiously pregnant, and how Rose (Lily) had become a big sister in December. The letter gushed with the minutia of the baby’s pale eyes and delicate hair, her gentle demeanor, the musical sound of her coo. This, Big Lily explained, was what she and Paul had always dreamed of: to have a baby of their own. Her name was Calla, as in the Calla Lily, half of a whole, and my Lily—no longer a Lily but now a Rose—was excluded. Left out. Not the baby she and Paul had always dreamed of.

  “But how?” I whined. “She wasn’t... I thought...” I set the letter on the table and swallowed hard against a bulge in my throat. I would not let Joseph see me cry, or Isaac who stood, back to the wall, a smirk on his ugly face.

  The caseworker was all smiles. “How wonderful,” she said, and, “What a wonderful surprise. Imagine Rose—a sister,” as if Rose hadn’t been a sister all along. My sister. Mine. “Sometimes,” she explained to me, her voice dumbed down like I was some idiot, “this happens. I suppose they were never truly infertile. Just—” her voice wavered off for a split second before she added “—unlucky.”

  Unlucky to have Little Lily in their life rather than the baby they’d always dreamed of.

  There was no mention of my Lily in that letter, other than the simple blurb that she was a big sister. The rest of the note oozed with details of Calla’s life: how she slept peacefully throughout the night, how for Lily, giving birth to her own flesh and blood had been sublime. There was a photo attached: Big Lily and Calla, my Lily hovering in the background like an afterthought. Her hair was a mess, red sauce dribbled down the front of a plain white shirt.

  But Calla was pristine, in the softest-looking mauve one piece, a denim headband with bow on her head.

  There was no letter from my Lily included. No third-grade school picture, no stationery with the red bird and tree, no distorted name printed across the front: Rose Zeeger.

  My Lily had been replaced.

  It plagued me for days. I stayed awake night after night wondering what would happen to my Lily. Would the Zeegers overlook her for the rest of her life, not good enough now that they had their own flesh and blood? Would they decide that two children were one too many, and would Lily be sent back to that group home to await a lousy foster home like the one I was living in? Would she stay in that group home forever, or until she turned eighteen, and was sent out into the world to fend for herself, to live like a waif on some Colorado or Nebraska street? I could only imagine. I conjured up visions of the Zeegers ignoring her, forcing her to wear that stained white shirt for the rest of her life. The very name haunted me in the middle of the night: Calla. Calla.

  I hated it. I hated her.

  Calla had ruined my Lily’s life.

  The days went on. I spent every waking hour reading and rereading that letter from Big Lily, staring at that photo of Big Lily and the baby, my Lily pushed so far into the background she almost fell out of the picture.

  This photo, unlike all the others, Joseph let me keep. In fact, he taped it up to that flowery wallpaper lest I forget that this baby, that Calla, was plundering my Lily’s happy childhood.

  But what could I do?

  HEIDI

  I spend the night in the rocking chair, hardly able to take my eyes off the sweet baby. When Zoe awakes and asks where Willow is, her cross eyes scanning the closed office door as she slides down the hall with a half-asleep gait, I say, in a hushed tone, “Still sleeping,” though I know good and well that isn’t true.

  I don’t think about her at all. I don’t think about Willow.

  Zoe departs for school, and the day comes and goes. I hardly take notice. Other than a quick lunch with Chris, the baby and I don’t leave home. We spend much of the day in the rocking chair, my strides calculated, rhythmic as Ruby sleeps on my lap, soundly, like a newborn babe. I can think of little but the shape of her eyes, can do little but count the milia on her nose. I watch as, out the window, the sun rises and then moments later, it begins to set, slipping beneath the massive skyscrapers that dot the city sky, staining the gauzy clouds a deep pink, a navy blue, a tea rose. Out the window, people awaken, commencing their workday; they return home, a second later, the day through. Breakfast, lunch and dinner come and go; my phone rings, there’s the bleep of the intercom system—someone or something beckoning me from the first floor—and yet I can’t be bothered, won’t be bothered, can’t take my eyes off the baby as she sleeps, and then awakens; sleeps, and then awakens, foraging in the folds of a fitted dress when she wants to eat and it’s then, and only then, that I rise from the rocking chair and prepare a bottle for her to consume. As afternoon gives way to evening, I watch Ruby sleep while crepuscular rays fill the sky, straight lines that spill downward from the descending sun. Shafts of light, the Fingers of God.

  I don’t mind the clock, completely oblivious to the aluminum hand that spins around the circular face, pointing at this Roman numeral, and then that. This Roman number, and then that. I hear neighbors in the hallway, coming home from work; I smell their dinners wafting under the door and through the walls: enchiladas and baked chicken, pork chops. My phone rings, and then rings again, but I can’t be bothered to rise from the chair and answer it, convincing myself it’s merely some telemarketer, or an automated message from Zoe’s superintendent about some upcoming meeting at the school which doesn’t concern me, pertaining only to graduating seniors or to the parents of students with special needs.

  And then the front door bursts open, suddenly, violently, and there Zoe stands in her pink jersey and pink shorts, her feet cloaked in a pair of muddy cleats. Her shin guards are on, the hot-pink socks that stretch all the way to her knees caked with mud. Her hair is woven into a double French braid, a unifying hairdo one of the team mothers has taken to giving the Lucky Charms each and every game day, complete with some kind of homemade scrunchie that matches their uniforms.

  And she demands, “Where were you?” while tossing her backpack to the hardwood floor with a thud. She’s glaring at me from the open doorway and I watch as, behind her, a neighbor passes by with a pizza box in hand, trying hard to ignore the angry tone of Zoe’s voice. The smell of it drifts into the room to greet me, and it’s then that I realize I’m hungry. “You missed my game,” she says, not giving me a chance to come up with some counterfeit response to the initial question. I forgot or I got caught up at work and couldn’t leave.

  Instead, all I can manage is, “I’m sorry,” knowing the words sound fraudulent because, in fact, they are. I’m not sorry, not sorry that I missed Zoe’s game because then I wouldn’t have had this time with Ruby, rocking here in this chair with Ruby in my arms.

  “I tried calling you,” she says. Her hands are placed on her hips, and there’s a pout on her face. She looks to the kitchen and back again, aware that I’ve started nothing for dinner, aware that in the near twilight, I’m all but sitting in the dark. She flips a light switch on over the kitchen table, and I find myself blinded by the light, waiting for my eyes to adjust.

  The baby lets out a moan, and I coo, “There now,” wondering if it’s the bright light or the surly tone of Zoe’s voice that upsets her.

  “Why didn’t you answer your phone?” Zoe barks out then. “I tried calling you. You missed the game. You missed the game completely,” she cries and for a second, I picture it: Zoe, at her game, with the rest of the Lucky Charms, refusing to acknowledge her mother’s presence, as is the case each and every game. It’s quite the quandary, it is: she doesn’t want me there, and ye
t, she doesn’t want to be the only one without a mother in tow.

  But I don’t answer this. I don’t answer Zoe’s question: Why didn’t you answer your phone? Instead, I ask, “How did you get home?”

  “Do you hear me, Mom?” she asks, and I realize that I don’t like that tone of her voice one bit. That sour tone of voice she’s taken with me as if she’s in charge and I’m the pliant one.

  “Yes, Zoe, I heard you, but I asked you a question, as well. How did you get home?”

  There’s a huff. A retreat into the kitchen to ransack cabinets for something to eat, slamming this one and that. And then, “Coach paid for a cab. He couldn’t stay there all night, waiting, you know? Like the other night. He has a life.” A pause, followed by, “You owe him fourteen dollars.” She yanks a bottle of water from the refrigerator door and states, “Ms. Marcue says she’s been trying to call you. She says you haven’t returned her calls.” Then, with a box of Saltine crackers and the water, Zoe heads out of the room. She’s gone about five feet when she pauses, stops dead in her tracks beside the closed office door and asks, “Why haven’t you returned her calls?”

  “I’ve been busy, Zoe. You know that,” I respond, knowing that in Zoe’s preteen mind she can’t make sense of it, how caring for an infant could classify as busy. Busy is doodling on a forearm and texting friends, eluding homework and salivating over the handsome Coach Sam. Busy is not the inexhaustible hours it takes to raise a child.

  “Well, are you going to call her back?” she asks. Her French braids hang long, their tail ends wrapping around the sides of her neck. She looks older to me than twelve, when she isn’t smiling and I can’t see the braces that remind me she’s still a child. I’m aware, for the first time in forever, of the sudden arrival of breasts. Were they there all along, and I simply failed to notice? Or has she turned into a young woman overnight?