by Mary Kubica
I get angry for Josh and Meredith. “Did they have a warrant to search your house?”
He shakes his head, says remorsefully, “They didn’t need one, Kate. I gave them permission to search. I didn’t think we had anything to hide. We don’t have anything to hide.”
I get it. For Josh, the invasion of privacy was worth it if it meant the police finding something that might tip them off about Meredith and Delilah’s whereabouts. He just didn’t expect them to draw certain conclusions when they found Meredith’s pills in the medicine cabinet. Meredith struggled with postpartum depression after Leo was born. She wasn’t ashamed of it. She didn’t try and keep it a secret. In fact, she was unapologetic and unreserved, appreciating how her own experience made her better at what she does. Meredith saw a therapist for a while, and was put on antidepressants. The antidepressants helped; she was in no rush to get off them, because if they were working, then why would she be?
“So what?” I ask, wondering what Meredith’s antidepressants have to do with anything.
“They asked a lot of questions. About her mental health. About whether she’s ever tried to hurt herself or one of the kids.”
“My God,” Bea says, her hand going to her heart. The media has sensationalized postpartum depression, made it out to seem like all women who suffer are the kind to kill their children. It’s not true. Postpartum psychosis is something else. It’s different and rare, and even of those affected, only a small percentage do something violent. I know because Meredith told me. She talked once about writing a blog about the experiences of women, and this was one of the things she considered writing about. Postpartum psychosis both fascinated and saddened her.
“What did you tell them?” I ask.
“I told them no, of course not. Meredith is the most sound person I know. Ask anyone, I said,” Josh tells us, and it’s true. Meredith has always been the glass-half-full type. She teaches yoga, she meditates. She rarely has a bad thing to say about anyone else. She’s a good person. She’s not capable of hurting her kids, under any circumstance.
“The police are way off base if they think Meredith has done something to Delilah,” I say. I’m getting worked up. I’m angry. The wine hasn’t helped because I feel less inhibited, free to say whatever I want. But the police are wasting time if they think Meredith did this.
Josh takes a big, long swig of his beer and says, “There’s more.” He’s guarded as he says it. Quiet. He sinks back into his chair, takes another long drink from the bottle and sets it slowly down. He wipes at his mouth with the back of a hand, his eyes focused on the wood grain of the table, avoiding Bea and me.
“They found blood,” he says, and only then do his blue eyes rise slowly up.
There’s a sudden heaviness in my stomach. I push my glass of wine away, no longer able to drink from it. Josh’s words make me instantly sober up. Blood. “Where?” I ask. Bea leans forward to hear.
“In the garage.”
“You hadn’t noticed?” I ask.
Josh shakes his head. “It’s dark in the garage. One of the bulbs is burned out. I keep forgetting to fix it. It’s not what you’re imagining,” he explains. “There wasn’t a ton of blood, Kate. Even after the police pointed it out for me,” he says, “it was still hard to see.”
“But it was there,” I say, voice drifting.
“What do they think?” Bea asks. She’s standing at the head of the table, hands on the top rail of the backrest. Beside Josh, I sit. I reach my hand out and touch his. He takes my hand into his and holds it for a minute. Neither of us speak. I can’t imagine what he is going through. His hand trembles in mine. I doubt that Josh has had anything to eat all day and a beer, on an empty stomach, can’t be good. I let go of his hand, push his plate of pasta closer and encourage him to eat.
To appease me, he takes a couple of bites before setting the fork down. “They’re seeing if it’s Delilah’s or Meredith’s,” he says, about the blood. “We should know soon.”
I wonder what good knowing this will do. I think, if anything, it will make Josh, in addition to Meredith, look bad. More victim blaming.
It’s as if Josh can read my mind. He confesses, “They asked where I was that day, if someone at work could vouch for me.”
“An alibi?” Bea asks, and he nods his head. “They think you did something to her?”
“I don’t know what they think,” he tells us. “They’re just doing their jobs,” he says, and I admire his diplomacy. It would be easy to understand why he might get upset. I would be upset. I would be raging. But Josh doesn’t get upset. “I have an alibi, if that’s what you’re wondering,” he says, but he’s tight-lipped about it, unforthcoming. This suggests to me that Josh was doing something he shouldn’t have been doing.
My heart hurts. Was Josh seeing someone else? Was Josh cheating on Meredith?
“What were you doing?” Bea hesitantly asks, thinking the same thing as me.
“It sounds so shallow in retrospect,” he says, and she has to ask again, more insistent this time.
“Where were you yesterday, Josh?”
He takes a deep breath, slowly exhales. “Playing tennis,” he says, describing for us the very chichi exclusive club where they play. He’s ashamed, knowing now that while something terrible was happening to Meredith and Delilah, he was having a doubles match with a prospective client. He wasn’t having an affair.
“I won, not that it makes any difference now.” He swallows hard, keeping his emotions at bay. I don’t think he’d cry with Leo just in the next room. For Leo’s sake, he has to be strong.
“You can’t beat yourself up about it,” Bea tells him, relieved like me to know that he wasn’t with some other woman, not in the way we thought at least. “You didn’t know.”
“There’s no way you could have known,” I echo.
Bea changes the subject. She brings up the body found down there by the river’s edge. Shelby’s body. Josh says it’s something that will haunt him for the rest of his life; he won’t ever get that image out of his mind. An autopsy would still need to be done, but speculation was that she’d been dead at least a couple of days. I’ve seen animals dead a couple of days. It must have been horrific for Josh, seeing Shelby’s whole body expanded in size due to the buildup of gases inside. I just thank God it wasn’t Meredith he had to see that way.
“Do they think her husband killed her?” I ask.
“No one said.”
“We heard she was naked.”
“Mostly, yes,” he says. “But she was covered up with a blanket.”
“A blanket?” Bea asks. She’s surprised, as am I. It’s unexpected. It strikes me as an affectionate, intimate thing to do, not the kind of thing a ruthless killer would do. Unless of course the murderer knew his victim and had a fondness for her. Then he might do something like cover her up with a blanket.
I think of Bea and my conversation with Jason Tebow, with the midwife and what we learned about Dr. Feingold.
“How much does Meredith tell you about her clients?” I ask.
“What do you mean?”
“Did you know Shelby was a client of hers?”
The look on Josh’s face is clear. He didn’t know. “Meredith left her clients’ names out of it when we talked about them. Their privacy was important to her. She’d tell me when a husband was being an ass, or about a baby born with some abnormality, but she never called them by name.”
“Then you didn’t know that the Tebows are suing their obstetrician for malpractice. Meredith is to testify in a deposition against him,” I say.
The color fades from Josh’s face. “How do you know?” he asks, and I tell him. He looks at us in disbelief, his eyes going back and forth between Bea’s and mine. He asks, “You spoke to Jason Tebow? You should be more careful. He could be dangerous. What if he killed Shelby?” he asks. “How do you kn
ow he wouldn’t have killed you, too?”
Bea and I say nothing. Josh runs his fingers through his hair. The realization that Meredith might have gotten herself into something high-risk scares him. I can see the disbelief in his eyes. The worry. Once upon a time, Meredith told him everything. Even if she kept her clients’ confidentiality, testifying against this doctor was something she should have told him.
“What do you think, then,” he asks, “that this obstetrician did something to both of them, and Delilah, too?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “We’re just telling you what we know, Josh.” I say it softly because I know that he’s scared. He’s beside himself, barely keeping it together. He isn’t trying to be argumentative or defensive. I’m scared, too.
He inhales deeply, slowly lets the air out. “Maybe,” Josh says, thinking aloud, “that’s what Mr. Tebow wants you to think. Maybe it’s a lie.”
It’s possible, of course. I don’t know Jason Tebow. I have no reason to believe anything he said was true. In my mind, both men are equally culpable. But Jeanette the midwife corroborated much of what he said. What reason would she have to lie?
“We don’t know what to think, Josh,” Bea says. “God willing, Meredith and Delilah are fine. Completely and absolutely fine.”
“Still,” I say, hating to be the alarmist, but it’s something that can’t be ignored. “The connection between Shelby and Meredith. The fact that they knew each other. It’s concerning, right?” I ask.
They both look at me and stare, no one wanting to face the fact that it’s more than just concerning. What it means is that, with Shelby now dead, Meredith and Delilah are in serious trouble. We need to find them soon, if it’s not too late for them already.
MEREDITH
11 YEARS BEFORE
March
“Good morning,” Josh says as he appears in the kitchen doorway in a slim-fit dark gray suit. He smiles at me, looking smart, competent. I stand at the stove, already showered and dressed, making pancakes and bacon for Josh and the kids. Josh comes to me. He wraps his arms around me from behind and I get a whiff of him, of his shaving cream and his cologne. “How’d you sleep?” he asks me.
“Okay,” I say, though I didn’t sleep well. Now I’m up early, feeling anxious, wanting to know if Shelby is all right after her text last night. I keep checking my phone, but it’s quiet. It has been since shortly after three a.m. “How about you?” I ask, turning to face him. “How’d you sleep?”
“Like a baby,” he says, kissing me. His kiss isn’t rushed. It goes on far longer than the usual peck, which is all we ever have time for before we’re interrupted by kids. His kiss is tender, unhurried, and I find myself thinking how much I miss this, something as commonplace as kissing my husband. Everything else falls by the wayside. For one blissful minute, the anxiety of the last few days abates.
And then, from upstairs, I hear a toilet flush: the first sign of life. Delilah or Leo, whoever is up, will be down soon. Josh draws slowly away, still smiling.
“What do you have on tap for today?” I ask and he tells me.
“Finalizing a deal with a prospective client. Hopefully.” He and his team have been working on this pitch for some time. It would mean the world to Josh and his career to land this client.
“What time is the meeting?”
“Eleven.”
“Good luck,” I tell him. “Not that you need it.” Josh is incredibly good at what he does. He’s climbed the corporate ladder more quickly than most.
“Thanks,” he says, then asks, “Do you have a client in labor?”
“No. Why?”
“Your phone,” he says. “I heard a text come in in the middle of the night.”
“Oh.” Of course he did. I remember him drawing away, pulling the covers over his head to block the phone’s light. “Braxton-Hicks,” I lie, saying that a client thought she was in labor, but she’s not. It can be confusing, for first-time mothers. The contractions are not as intense as real contractions. They don’t come at regular intervals; they don’t progress. I often have to talk these women out of thinking they’re in labor.
It doesn’t matter, though, because it’s a lie. None of my clients is currently experiencing Braxton-Hicks contractions.
I don’t like lying to Josh. It isn’t something that happens often. In fact, it never happened, not until about six months ago when Josh started to get more apprehensive about my job. It began with a random carjacking. A young woman was stopped in town, at a red light near midnight. During the day, it’s a busy intersection. There’s a grocery store, a gym, Walgreens. But at that time of night it was vacant. Everything around was closed.
Two masked men approached the car at gunpoint. They made the woman get out of the car. They assaulted her first, before stealing her car. They left with her phone, her purse, her ID. She couldn’t call for help. She walked three miles home in the dark. They never found the people who did it to her. It left Josh scared for my safety. He’s overprotective as a result. He wishes I was a stay-at-home mom like Cassandra. We don’t need the money, Josh has said. It’s a conversation we’ve had often. He does it because he loves me. Because he doesn’t want anything bad happening to me. I get that. I love him even more for it. But I also love my job.
“Is she okay?” Josh asks, meaning my client with Braxton-Hicks.
“She’s fine. It’s unsettling,” I tell him. “The unknown. But she’s forty weeks yesterday. She’ll go into labor soon.”
“How long did she keep you up?” he asks, looking at me, sizing up my eyes. They’re tired, heavy. I’m on my third cup of coffee.
“Not long.”
“You’re a good person,” Josh says before he leaves for work. I hate how we’re always rushing off in opposite directions.
I also feel guilty for lying to Josh. But what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. I’m lying to protect him. To protect Shelby. To protect my career.
* * *
Through the window, Delilah sees Cassandra, Piper and Arlo leave for school. She gets upset because of it. She wants to leave, too. She wants to walk to school with Piper. But we can’t leave yet, because I can’t find one of Leo’s shoes.
“Help me look,” I tell Delilah, and she does. She finds it hidden behind the kitchen curtains. Leo won’t sit still long enough for me to put it on. By the time we make it outside, Cassandra and family are gone. They’re too far ahead to catch even if we ran.
“Don’t worry. You’ll see her at school,” I tell a pouting Delilah.
Leo and I walk Delilah the few blocks to school. We take her to the corner where parents congregate, watching as the crossing guard gets the children across the street and to the redbrick building on the other side.
Delilah makes us walk quickly to try and catch Piper before she crosses the street. She wants to walk into school with her. But by the time we arrive, Piper has already crossed the street. Even worse, she’s walking hand in hand with another little girl from school, Lily Morris. Lily Morris is in Piper and Delilah’s kindergarten class.
Delilah is upset because she has to wait for the crossing guard to allow her to cross. But the crossing guard is letting traffic pass now; she has to wait. I feel badly for her, having to watch these other girls walk into the building without her, feeling left out. Friendships are hard. I lean down and whisper in her ear, “You’ll catch up with them in class. It will be fine, honey. You’ll see.”
Cassandra and Arlo stand at the corner. I’d go over and say hello, but Cassandra is caught up in a conversation with Lily Morris’s mother, Amber. I don’t like Amber any more than Delilah likes Lily. Lily, according to Delilah, is not nice. She’s mean. She won’t ever play with Delilah. She makes fun of the kids. She calls them things like stupid and dumb.
I watch as Piper and Lily make it inside the building. Their mothers turn away, stepping past me. I hear the wo
rd playdate as they do, and I stiffen in reply. Piper and Lily are having a playdate without Delilah. I don’t want to get caught up in kindergarten drama. But she’s my daughter. If she’s being excluded, she’ll be sad. Delilah’s happiness means everything to me.
“Hi, Cassandra,” I say. I reach out to touch her arm as she sweeps by. It’s a reflex.
Cassandra turns to me and says, “Oh, Meredith. I didn’t see you there.” I find it hard to believe. There are only a dozen parents at the corner. And even now that she has, she doesn’t stop and talk to me. She keeps walking, with Lily’s mother. I feel a stab of jealousy, of resentment. Because Amber used to be the one Cassandra and I would talk about over coffee. How she’s so overinvolved in the PTO. How she thinks school bake sales are the end-all and be-all of life. Her grandiose sense of self-importance.
The tables have turned. I’d bet my life they’re talking about me. I try not to dwell on it. I have enough friends. I don’t need Cassandra to be my friend, though I like Cassandra. I like her a lot. I’d be sad to lose her as a friend.
The only reason Cassandra has for being angry, anyway, is one too many canceled coffee dates. It’s a hazard of my job. Childbirth can’t be planned. Cassandra knows this. She’s always been tolerant, until now. It’s not like she could know about her husband, Marty, and me. Unless he told her, but he wouldn’t do that. We’d agreed to keep things secret, for Cassandra’s and Josh’s sake.
Leo and I watch Delilah walk across the street, and then we walk back to the house. We get in the car. I drive him to the babysitter’s house. I put Cassandra out of my mind for now.
I park on the street. Leo leaves his blanket in the car, though he never likes to be apart from it. He does so reluctantly, with the promise that I’ll keep it safe while he’s gone. I walk him to the front door. When the sitter Charlotte comes, Leo throws a fit. This happens, sometimes, though it’s relatively new. Somedays Leo goes willingly. But other days he doesn’t want to go to the sitter’s house. He wants to stay with me.