by Joy Fielding
She walked into the living room, the hope she’d felt only moments earlier rapidly dissipating as she surveyed the chaos. Pillows from the living room sofa lay scattered on the hardwood floor. There were used coffee cups everywhere. Something sticky grabbed at the soles of her shoes. A plate of leftover pieces of Kentucky Fried Chicken sat largely untouched on the water-stained coffee table in the middle of the room. Cindy carried the plate into the kitchen, swept the food into the garbage disposal under the sink, the sink full of dirty dishes. “What a mess.” She stacked the dishes in the dishwasher, then rinsed out by hand the half dozen wine glasses on the counter.
Was Faith drinking? Or was it Ryan?
Does your daughter drink? Detective Gill had asked.
No, Cindy said.
Occasionally, Tom corrected.
“Stop it,” Cindy said out loud. Not everything is about Julia.
Julia’s reflection winked at her from the large window overlooking the backyard. “Of course it is,” she said, as upstairs, a baby started to cry.
TWENTY-SEVEN
CINDY hurried up the stairs to the nursery, glancing toward the closed doors of the master bedroom as she tiptoed past, hoping the baby’s cries wouldn’t disturb Faith. “It’s okay. It’s okay,” she cooed at the screaming infant, his face scrunched into a tight, wrinkled ball, like a roll of bright pink yarn. She reached into the crib and drew the baby gingerly to her chest, kissing his soft, sweet-smelling forehead as she rocked him gently back and forth. “It’s okay, baby. Don’t cry. Don’t cry.”
Amazingly, the infant stopped howling almost immediately.
That was easy, Cindy thought, standing by the side of the crib, continuing her rhythmic rocking. Too easy, she realized, as seconds later, the baby stiffened in her arms, his hands and feet shooting from his body like the limbs of a leaping frog. A fresh round of screams pierced the air. “My goodness,” Cindy muttered, tapping the door to the nursery closed with her foot. Had Julia ever screamed this loudly? “Do you need changing? Is that the problem?”
Cindy looked around the nursery, noticing for the first time what a lovely room it was. Pale blue walls, bleached wood crib and hand-painted dresser, a high shelf filled with soft, colorful, stuffed animals that ran along three of the walls, a bentwood rocking chair by the small side window, its curtains the same delicate blue-and-white gingham as the crib sheets. A mobile of dancing elephants hung from the overhead light fixture; another mobile, this one of pastel-colored butterflies, dangled over the crib. “Everything you could ask for,” Cindy told the crying infant, lying him across the changing table against one wall and reaching for the giant box of disposable diapers at her feet. “We’ll get you all cleaned up and then you’ll be happy. You’ll see.” She unsnapped the baby’s clean white sleeper and removed his diaper with a sure and steady hand. “Just like riding a bicycle,” she told the baby, whose response was to scream even louder. “Not too impressed, I see.” And not wet either, she realized, replacing the dry diaper with another, then leaning forward to secure the tabs just as a sudden arch of urine sprayed into the air, narrowly missing her eye. Cindy pulled back, startled. “Oh, my,” she said with her mother’s voice. “Well, I only had girls. They didn’t do things like that.” She wiped off the top of the changing table and replaced the now-wet diaper with another clean one, then gently maneuvered the baby’s wriggling feet back into the legs of his sleeper, before carrying him out of the room. “Ssh,” she cautioned, hurrying past the master bedroom and down the stairs. “We don’t want to wake Mommy. Mommy needs her sleep.” Mommy needs a psychiatrist, Cindy thought, proceeding past the messy living room into the now-tidy kitchen. Or, at the very least, a housekeeper. She reached into the fridge, located one of the baby’s bottles, and popped it into the microwave, the baby screaming steadily in her ear. “It’s okay, sweetheart. We’ll have you all fixed up in no time.”
Or not, Cindy thought when the infant refused to take the bottle. “Come on, sweetheart. You can do it. Mmmm. Warm milk. Yummy delicious. Try some.”
Cindy carried the baby into the living room, and sank down on the pillowless green velvet sofa, cradling Kyle the way she remembered cradling Julia. She’d nursed Julia for almost a year, she remembered fondly, as Kyle’s lips bounced across her white T-shirt, searching for her breast. “Oh, sweetheart, I’m so sorry. I don’t have any milk. But I have this yummy bottle.” She slid the rubber nipple into his mouth, even as Kyle tried turning his head away in protest. “Come on, sweetheart. Give it a chance.”
Kyle’s lips suddenly locked around the rubber nipple, his crying shuddering to a halt as he devoted all his energy to draining the liquid from the bottle.
“That’s a good boy. Yes, that’s it. Now you’ve got it.”
Julia used to suckle with that same ferocious determination, Cindy found herself thinking, recalling the hard tug at her breast each time Julia would settle in against her to be fed. She kissed the top of Kyle’s down-covered head, tried remembering the same scene with Heather. But Cindy had few memories of nursing Heather, and those few she did have revolved more around Julia, who’d sit screaming at Cindy’s feet, her arms wrapped tightly around her mother’s knees, every time Cindy tried breastfeeding her younger child. Ultimately, everyone involved was a nervous wreck, and Cindy switched Heather over to a bottle when she was barely two months old.
“Well, well. Look at you go.” Cindy watched the milk rapidly disappear from the bottle. When the bottle was empty, Cindy lifted Kyle over her shoulder and gently patted his back until she heard him burp. “What a guy,” Cindy murmured, rocking him back and forth in her arms until he drifted off to sleep.
She’d always loved this part. The baby part. She knew a lot of women didn’t, that they had trouble relating to their children until their children started relating to them. Maybe Faith was one of those women. Maybe once Kyle started responding to her, she’d stop viewing his outbursts as evidence of her own failure. Maybe as the year progressed, and Kyle started sitting up, trying to stand, to walk, to talk, she’d realize what a miracle she and her husband had created together, the tremendous gift they’d been given, and she’d be happy.
Except it wasn’t as easy as that, and Cindy knew it. Postpartum depression, if indeed that’s what Faith was suffering from, couldn’t be cured with simple platitudes or even common sense. Another case of hormones running amok, Cindy thought, wondering if Ryan had taken her earlier advice, talked to Faith’s doctor about prescribing stronger medication.
I certainly can’t keep running over here every time there’s a problem, she thought, carrying Kyle up the stairs to the nursery.
Why not? she wondered. What else do I have to do?
Cindy felt an unexpected tear wend its way down her cheek, then drop onto the top of Kyle’s head. He stirred, his little fist shooting instinctively into the air, as if preparing to defend himself. Cindy pressed him tighter to her breast, hunkered down in the chair, began rocking back and forth.
Within minutes, she was fast asleep.
(Dream: Cindy is walking down the empty corridor of Forest Hill Collegiate, where she attended high school, trying to locate the principal’s office. It’s over there, Ryan tells her, appearing out of nowhere to pass her in the hall. Suddenly Cindy is standing in front of the long reception desk in the middle of the main office. I’m looking for Julia Carver, Cindy tells Irena, who is too busy ironing a pair of men’s slacks to look up. Room 113, Irena says curtly. Cindy races down the hall, past a drinking fountain that is shooting water blindly into the air, then bursts through the door to Room 113, her eyes sweeping across the rows of curious student faces. Where’s Julia? she demands of the dwarflike man at the head of the class. Michael Kinsolving lowers the script he is holding to his sides and walks menacingly toward her. Who’s Julia? he asks.)
Cindy woke with a start, causing the infant in her arms to stiffen and cry out. “It’s okay,” she reassured him softly, coming fully awake, grateful when the baby’s body
drifted back into sleep. She took a deep breath, carefully adjusted Kyle’s position, and checked her watch. Eleven o’clock! She’d been asleep almost two hours. She checked the time again to make sure, then pushed herself out of the rocking chair, her legs wobbly, her shoulders and arms stiff. “Those pills of Neil’s were really something.”
Slowly, with meticulous care, Cindy deposited Kyle on his back in the crib, then crept from the room, closing the door after her. She proceeded down the hall to the master bedroom, each step a deliberate exaggeration, then cocked her ear against the closed door, wondering if Faith was still asleep. After several seconds, she pushed open the door, and stepped inside.
The room was dark and stuffy, an etherlike pall filtering through the air, like a miasmal mist. Cindy inched her way across the clothes-strewn broadloom toward the huge cast-iron bed that sat against the far wall. Faith lay on her back in the middle of the bed, one arm tossed carelessly above her head, one foot peeking out from underneath a pile of heavy blankets, her uncombed hair matted against her forehead, her mouth open, a series of snores emanating from between parched lips. Cindy smoothed the damp hair away from Faith’s face, then replaced her foot beneath the covers. How many times had she done the same thing for Julia? How many times had she tucked in errant toes and smoothed away stray hairs?
Don’t do that, Julia would protest, slapping at her mother’s hand, even in her sleep.
Cindy was halfway down the stairs when she heard the steady sound of barking and realized it was coming from next door. Elvis! She’d forgotten all about him. Had he been barking the whole time she’d been away?
“I should run home and let him out,” Cindy said to an imaginary panel of judges. “It’ll just take two minutes.” Except it wouldn’t. You just didn’t let Elvis out. You escorted him around the block and waited while he sniffed each blade of grass until he found just the right one on which to do his business, and then you went through the whole ritual again. And again. And again. There was no such thing as two minutes with Elvis. Twenty minutes was closer to the truth. And she couldn’t leave Kyle alone for twenty minutes, even with his mother sleeping in the next room. Faith was practically comatose. She couldn’t just take off. Who knew what might happen? How many times had she read articles about children dying in fires while their caregivers were out of the house? I only left him alone for two minutes!
“Okay, so what do I do?” Cindy asked the empty hall.
Shouldn’t have been so quick to get rid of me, she heard her mother say.
Please, her sister added. You think this is a problem? You should spend a day at my house.
The baby started crying.
“Well, that settles that.” Cindy scribbled a note for Faith telling her she was taking Kyle for a walk, then left it on the floor outside her bedroom door. “We’ll change you later,” she told the baby, carrying him down the stairs and grabbing the house key hanging from a nail near the front door.
She located the large English-style carriage hidden along the side of the house, and laid Kyle inside it, the baby’s fierce screams bracketing Elvis’s angry barks. Leaving the carriage in her driveway, she bounded up the outside steps and unlocked her front door. Elvis shot out at her, as if from a cannon, almost knocking her over. “How did you get out of the kitchen?” Cindy asked in amazement, watching as Elvis ran down the front steps, and peed against the wheel of the carriage. “Great. Oh, that’s great. Okay, wait. Let me get your leash.” Cindy opened the hall closet, her hand whipping across the floor in search of the dog’s leash. “Where is it? Damn it, where are you?” Where had she put the silly thing? “Okay, stay there,” she directed the dog, whose response was to bark loudly four times, then run toward the sidewalk. “Where’s the leash?” Cindy yelled at the empty house, racing into the kitchen, checking the countertops, trying not to look too closely at the floor.
She finally located the leash in one of the drawers she reserved for old birthday cards and unsolicited stationery that had been sent by various charities trying to pressure her into making a donation. “Elvis,” Cindy called out, carrying the leash outside, seeing the dog disappear around the corner. “Come back here.” Cindy pushed the carriage to the sidewalk, then stopped dead, her heartbeat freezing in her chest.
The baby was gone.
She knew it even before she looked down.
She’d left him alone for no more than sixty seconds, and in those sixty seconds some lunatic had jumped out from behind a nearby maple tree and absconded with her neighbor’s child. Already the abductor was in his car, speeding toward parts unknown. She’d lost another child. The Sellicks would never see their baby again.
“No,” Cindy pleaded, fearfully lowering her eyes to the carriage, her knees buckling as she saw Kyle’s huge blue eyes staring up at her, his tongue poking out between his lips, a cascading bouquet of tiny bubbles balanced on its tip.
He was there. He was safe.
Cindy crumpled to the sidewalk, as if her legs were made of paper, her heart all but exploding in her chest. “You’re going to give yourself a heart attack if you keep this up,” she whispered into the sweaty palm of her hand. And suddenly Elvis was at her side, licking her face and poking his head toward his leash, his tail pounding eagerly against the side of the carriage.
What are you doing goofing off down here? he seemed to be asking.
Cindy attached the leash to the dog’s collar, then pulled herself to her feet. Kyle lay on his back, kicking his legs into the air and gurgling happily. “Thank you, God,” Cindy whispered, pushing the pram toward Poplar Plains, then continuing south toward Edmund. So much construction going on, she thought absently, noting the new fence going up around a sprawling Tudor-style home on the corner of Clarendon and a concrete porch being erected in front of a modern town house just across the street. Large trucks were everywhere. Workers in hard hats and tight jeans toted heavy rocks and tall ladders, nodding as she walked by. How long had they been in the neighborhood? Long enough to notice Julia?
Nobody struts a street quite like Julia, Ryan had remarked.
On Edmund Street, Cindy turned left, her eyes flitting warily between the large duplexes on the north side of the street and the single-family homes and large apartment buildings on the south. Was Julia somewhere inside one of these structures?
Cindy had always considered the area around Avenue Road and St. Clair to be so safe.
Was it?
Hadn’t Julia stepped onto these very streets—soon after eleven o’clock in the morning, almost the same time as now—and disappeared without a trace?
Cindy shivered, feeling cold despite the unseasonable heat, and picked up her pace, all but colliding with a frizzy-haired woman juggling an empty stroller while trying to maintain a grip on her squirming toddler’s hand. That’s right, Cindy urged the woman silently. Hold on tight. It’s not as safe as you think.
It’s not safe anywhere.
Elvis balked when they rounded the corner back onto Balmoral, obviously sensing his brief walk was about to end. “Sorry, boy,” Cindy told him, dragging him up the outside steps of her home and pushing him through the front door. Clearly there was no point in trying to lock him in the kitchen. “I’ll take you for a really long walk when Ryan gets home. I promise. Please don’t pee on the floor.”
The baby started crying almost the second they were back inside the Sellick house. Cindy carried him into the kitchen and retrieved another bottle of Faith’s breast milk from the fridge, then popped it into the microwave oven. She fed the baby, took him back upstairs, retrieved the untouched note she’d left for Faith, and changed Kyle’s diaper, careful this time to stand well out of the line of fire. After swaddling him tightly in a soft blue cotton receiving blanket, she laid him on his back in the crib and stood over him, gently rubbing his tummy until he fell asleep.
Her own stomach started rumbling, and she realized she’d forgotten to have breakfast. How many times in the last several weeks had she forgotten to eat, despi
te the constant prodding of her mother and sister? Her face was starting to look thinner, more drawn. Her bra was feeling a little roomy. Women gain weight from the bottom up and lose it from the top down, Julia had once remarked.
And Julia would know. Julia knew about such things.
Cindy checked on Faith to see if she was awake and interested in lunch, but she was still fast asleep, her bare toes once again protruding outside their covers. Cindy closed the door, found herself staring down the narrow upstairs hallway toward the bedroom at the front of the house. What was in that room? she wondered. Why was the door closed?
What if Julia is inside? she suddenly thought, marching down the hall and reaching for the doorknob, knowing she was being ridiculous, but unable to keep such thoughts out of her head. What if the Sellicks were a couple of deranged perverts who’d kidnapped Julia and were deriving sadistic satisfaction from having both mother and daughter under the same roof at the same time?
(Image: Julia, bound and gagged, struggling against her restraints, unable to give voice to her desperate cries, while her mother, oblivious to her daughter’s presence, changes diapers in the next room.)
Was it possible?
She’d read that murderers often attended their victim’s funerals, prolonging their sick pleasure by luxuriating in the family’s suffering.
Was it possible such monsters lived right next door?
The door fell open and Cindy stepped over the threshold, both relieved and disappointed by the thoroughly ordinary room that greeted her eyes, its furnishings utilitarian and undistinguished. Obviously Ryan’s home office, Cindy realized, noting the cluttered desk, the stacks of books, the architectural drawings spread across the large drafting table in front of the window. Black-and-white photographs of local buildings adorned the walls. Cindy’s eyes swooped into each corner of the room, seeing no trace of her daughter anywhere. Had she really expected to find anything?
The phone rang, poking her in the back like an accusing finger.