Since Annabelle seemed content in her stroller, Chelsea quickly stashed the milk and second burrito in the fridge and perused the shelves. Nothing but condiments and Leo’s microbrew beers.
The cupboard was bare.
Besides the burrito in the fridge, there was nothing besides cereal and oatmeal to eat in the long, dark nights ahead.
Her cell phone buzzed, and she retrieved a message from Leo.
Sorry about the groceries. I should have stocked up. My bad. Get someone to help you. Emma or Eleni?
Leo was right. She needed some help. Emma would stop by tonight, but Chelsea knew they would both be too tired to head out for groceries at that point of the evening. She needed a plan, and returning to the grocery store with Annabelle in tow was no solution.
She scrolled through her cell phone and found the number for Eleni Zika, the teenage sitter, and shot off a text:
Can you watch the baby right after school for an hour or two?
It was the right thing to do—build a network of support. It would only be for two hours, and babysitting on Monday afternoon wouldn’t give the girl the same temptations as a Saturday night. There would be no boyfriend on the scene; Chelsea would make sure of that.
The little squeaks from across the room reminded her that it was feeding time. Chelsea grabbed a half-pint of milk and sat down to nurse. A few minutes later, Eleni’s message indicated that she could be at the house by three.
Okay. This was going to work. She would make it work. She had to patch meals and sleep together until Leo returned.
When Annabelle dozed off, Chelsea nestled the baby into her chair and hurried through a shower so that she’d be ready to go when the sitter arrived. She blew out the hair around her face with a round brush, then tried on a tweed jacket she’d loved pre-pregnancy.
The buttons didn’t close comfortably, but the shoulders fit and the lines were flattering.
Just like the old days. She flipped her dark hair over one shoulder as she checked her profile in the mirror. She could see herself grabbing her keys and driving to the office, singing along with the radio on the way. Independence was so underrated.
Downstairs, Annie was still asleep—a gift. She checked the mail, her stomach lurching at the sight of three more bills from the hospital.
You can do this. Call now, and it will ease your conscience.
She picked up the phone and called Sounder Insurance’s eight-hundred number. Pacing with the bills in her hand, she waded through the choices on the menu. A recorded voice kept reminding her that she could “do it all” on the Web, but when she’d tried their Web site, it had only given her a list of the invoices that had been rejected.
After a few minutes, there was a click and a smooth, calm voice. “This is Janet Walker.”
Janet . . . wasn’t that the woman she’d yelled at on Saturday?
“How can I help you today?”
Determined to keep her cool, Chelsea gave her name, rolling her eyes as she answered the endless questions that verified her coverage. She told Janet that she was calling about a new set of bills for Annabelle, who was supposed to be covered under their policy. Yes, she would hold while Janet checked on it.
To her surprise, Janet came back on the line quickly. “Ms. Maynard? I have some good news for you. Your daughter, Annabelle, has been added to the policy, and we can begin to process claims for her.”
Chelsea frowned. “What do you mean ‘begin’?” Hope waned when Janet told her that she needed to resubmit each invoice for Annabelle’s treatment.
“Are you kidding me? All that paperwork?”
“It is company policy,” Janet said. “But maybe I can help you. Do you still have the original invoices?”
“There are three right in front of me.” Chelsea glanced at the rolltop desk. “And I know I can dig out the rest.”
The insurance rep asked Chelsea for the case number from the corner of an invoice. “Give me a minute and I’ll try to resubmit these electronically.” There were clicking noises as Janet input the data. “Looks like that one went through.”
“Hallelujah.”
“Do you have another invoice for Annabelle?” Janet asked.
Chelsea started reading off case numbers. She found a stack of invoices for Annie’s treatment in the rolltop desk and fed those to Janet, too.
“It looks like they’re all going through,” Janet reported after she had processed every bill for Annabelle that Chelsea could find. “Yes. We’ll be processing those invoices for payment sometime within the next thirty days. Is there something else I can help you with today?”
There was another stack of bills—folded paperwork with complicated billing codes that hadn’t gone through—but Chelsea didn’t have the time or energy to deal with that right now.
Take the small victory and run.
“That’s all I can handle for now,” Chelsea said.
“Ms. Maynard? Are you okay?”
“What?” Chelsea raked her bangs back from her eyes, not sure she’d heard correctly.
“When you called Saturday, I was concerned.”
Chelsea closed the rolltop desk and turned away from the paperwork. Janet was concerned. Besides Emma and Leo, no one else in the world even noticed her these days.
“That’s very nice of you.”
“Your health and your baby’s health are the number-one priority. That goes for Sounder Health Care, and it should go for you, too.” Janet’s voice dimmed. “When you said you thought about hurting your baby . . . well, that goes against all the things we stand for.”
“I . . . I never hurt her . . . I don’t want to hurt her. It’s just that I get these visions. Bad images of how she could be hurt or killed. Things that I would never have believed I was capable of thinking, but somehow they pop in to my thoughts.”
The silence on the line made Chelsea imagine the woman sitting back and shaking her head in judgment. But then came the steady click-click of Janet’s fingers on the computer, and then her voice. “Therapy isn’t usually covered under your plan,” the woman said. “But if you get a referral from your ob-gyn, Sounder will pay for three sessions if it’s related to postpartum depression.”
It was a nice thought, but Dr. Volmer would never rally behind her.
“But you didn’t hear it from me,” Janet added.
“Thank you.” Chelsea hoped that Emma’s specialist would offer her a solution so that she would never have to go back to Dr. Volmer for anything. As she hung up, she took a deep breath, enjoying the quiet in the house, mindful of the burden lifted by having Annabelle on their policy at long last.
The baby lay on her stomach, pushing against the thick baby quilt, mewling to herself as if she had just found a voice, along with hands to support her heavy head. Watching her, Chelsea smiled.
Was this how hope felt? Light and orange and glimmering around the edges?
The doorbell chimed, and Chelsea hurried to answer, not wanting Eleni to give up and slip away.
Dressed in black with more than a hint of cleavage showing and dark hair down to her waist, Eleni had a goth look that gave Chelsea a queasy feeling.
She’s not a black widow spider, Chelsea told herself. This is how kids dress now.
“Hi, Mrs. Maynard. Is she awake?” Eleni asked, dropping her backpack by the front door. “Oh, you are!” Eleni’s most endearing quality was her ability to relate to an infant. She knelt at the edge of Annabelle’s blanket, lifted her under the armpits, and put her face close to Annie’s. “Hey, girl. Wassup?”
No matter how sweet the teenager’s smile was, it seemed incongruous for hands with black glitter nail polish to be holding her baby.
Chelsea laid down the rules. “No friends over. Including Krispy.” In her former life, Chelsea would have gotten a charge out of Eleni’s boyfriend, Krispy, a longboarding, nose-pierced slacker who was obviously a stoner. But not anymore. It made her nervous to think of a dark star like that being around Annabelle.
; “You’re here to focus on the baby,” Chelsea said, catching Eleni’s dark eyes.
“Absolutely,” Eleni agreed. “Don’t worry about us, Mrs. Maynard. We’ll be fine. Right, Annabelle? Do you want to wave good-bye to your mom?” And as the sitter lifted the baby’s chubby arm in a waving motion, Annie actually seemed to smile in the girl’s arms.
Just gas, Chelsea told herself as she let herself out, locking the door behind her.
Chapter 11
The vibration of the cell phone in his pocket was yet another jolt of guilt that Leo had to ignore. He felt bad about leaving Chelsea alone, and he missed the little mush-melon. It felt strange knowing that he’d be spending the night in a bland hotel room while Annabelle’s eyes searched the room for his familiar face. Yeah, she was only three months, but she recognized him. He could tell by the way her face lit up when he came close to her.
The phone had been buzzing nonstop for the past hour, but the booth had been so slammed with prospective clients, Leo had only been able to answer one text from Chelsea. He wished he could be more responsive to her, but he couldn’t turn away prospective customers like the man examining the display right now.
“So just what are you selling?” asked the tall man with snow-white hair.
“We’ve created an application that collects and sorts data. We can customize it to suit your business needs.”
The man scratched his chin as he stared down at the video games set up in their display. “How does that work?”
“These display units are programmed to collect data,” Leo explained. “Say a customer comes into your store and plays a video game. Our program records how long he or she plays, what games are played—even what the player scores.”
“Nice,” the man said. “But I run a chain of produce stores.”
“And do you have an app to monitor your inventory and sales?”
“Not entirely. Shipments are on one program, sales on another. But there’s no easy way to sort through the sales receipts to see just what people are buying.”
Bingo.
This man was a perfect candidate for their services.
“That must be hard with produce. How do you monitor the pull dates for the fruits and vegetables?”
The man crossed his arms. “Let’s say I have some excellent store managers.”
“I’m sure you do.” Leo turned a monitor toward him and quickly brought up an application his company had designed for the produce department of a grocery chain. As he showed the man some of the features, his cell phone buzzed again.
Damn.
What if there was an emergency, and he was spinning his wheels with clients.
The man seemed interested in the program, so Leo took a chance and gestured to the mouse and keyboard. “Go ahead. Plunk in some numbers or requests and see how it responds.”
Frowning, the man clicked around the screen.
“That’s it,” Leo encouraged him, casually slipping his hand into the pocket of his trousers to retrieve his phone.
Eleven missed calls. His heart sank until he checked the number.
They weren’t from Chelsea. It was Jennifer calling him. He had put her new number into his address book so he would know when she called and be sure not to answer.
“You’ve got a directory of fruits here?” The man laughed. “I hate to admit it, but that could come in handy. Lots of folks don’t know a kumquat from a rutabaga.”
“Exactly,” Leo said as he slipped his phone back into his pocket. “That’s why we thought employees should have the information at their fingertips.”
The man handed Leo a business card. “I’m Dan Attolino, owner of Apple Dan’s. I’d appreciate meeting with someone from your outfit in the next few weeks so that we can talk pricing and time frame.”
“Perfect.” Leo handed Dan Attolino one of his cards and shook his hand. “I’ll handle it myself, Mr. Attolino. I think you’ll find we’re competitively priced in this market.”
“I hope so. This is the best program I’ve seen so far.”
As Dan Attolino headed off, Leo noticed that his boss had been watching.
“When did you get back from your meeting?” Leo asked casually.
“I’ve been here long enough to see you working every angle possible,” Mark said. “Apple Dan’s would be a sweet account.”
Leo nodded. “And while you were gone, I spoke with a CFO from a major rental car company. That would be a fun program to pull together.”
“Really? I’m sorry I missed that. Why don’t you take a few minutes? You’ve been going nonstop since the doors opened this morning.”
The phone buzzing in Leo’s pocket confirmed that he needed a break. “Okay. I’m going to wander around a bit. Back in a half hour or so.”
“I got it covered. Take your time.” Mark nodded, looking pleased as he sat on a stool in the booth and struck up a conversation with two passing women.
Leo had his cell phone out for one more look at the list of calls. Shit. All twelve of them were from Jennifer. What was wrong with that woman? He wasn’t her husband anymore, and he wasn’t going to be her “bestie” now that she’d moved back to New York. He walked past the line of booths, unable to focus on any of them as he tried to formulate a strategy to deal with Jennifer.
Apparently, ignoring her was not going to work. But he wasn’t going to see her, and he hated even talking to her without letting Chelsea know what was going on. He didn’t want her to think he was skulking around, but she’d been so messed up before he left that he couldn’t bear to make her feel any worse with Jennifer’s news.
He purchased a chicken wrap and downed it in a few bites. Chelsea always said he ate too quickly, but at times like this he saw food as nothing more than fuel. He was tossing the wrapper in a can when his phone buzzed again.
Jennifer.
Steeling himself for her inevitable attempt at manipulation, he answered it. “This is Leo.”
“Why aren’t you taking my calls? You’re so mean to me.”
“I figure that if it’s important, you’ll leave a message,” he kept his tone low and level. “Or text me, like the rest of the world.”
“I can’t stand being back here and not seeing you. When can we get together?”
Try never, he wanted to say, but he knew her wrath was worse than her obsessiveness.
“It’s not going to happen, Jennifer.” He made his way down the aisle, looking for some privacy by a bank of windows. “I told you, I have a wife and baby now. And a job that I was trying to do when you called, like, a hundred times.”
“Patience was never my thing. And as I remember it, you were always pretty quick to pull the trigger.”
Before he could stop it his wretched mind went there. In bed with Jennifer, her naked body slithering over his, skin on skin . . .
He hadn’t had sex for months. The doctor had asked them to wait six weeks after the baby was born, but even after that Chelsea hadn’t been into it at all. He understood. He totally got it. But sometimes a man’s body had a mind of its own.
He gritted his teeth, took a breath, and pulled himself together. “Did you have some reason for calling me, or can I get back to work?”
“I want to be your friend. I want to hang out with you. We had a lot of laughs together, right? We can do that again. And I’ll even let you stay married.”
“It’s not going to happen, Jennifer. Find yourself another boyfriend.”
“But I want you. I want to meet your kid . . . the girl version of Leo.”
The thought of Jennifer going anywhere near Annie perked up his defenses. “Not going to happen, and I’d appreciate it if you stopped calling me. We made a clean break and it worked out pretty well. Let’s keep it that way.”
“Oh, now you’re pissing me off.”
“A necessary evil. You always test a person’s limit, Jennifer.”
“Honey, I haven’t begun to fight. And don’t think you’re getting rid of me so easily. I know where
you live. I’ve seen wifey and baby, more than once. And to be honest, the old girl looks like hell. I guess motherhood doesn’t agree with her.”
Fury flamed in his chest as he paced in front of the tinted glass windows. Jennifer couldn’t have known that her comment touched a sensitive spot. He didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of hearing his pain, but he wasn’t going to let her tear down Chelsea.
“Leave my wife and baby alone,” he snarled. “What you’re doing is borderline stalking, Jennifer, and I’m not letting you near my wife and kid. Don’t think I won’t call the police.”
“Leo, Leo, you were always so quick to jump to conclusions. I wouldn’t dream of upsetting your applecart. But if wifey and baby were to just happen to be in the same grocery store or restaurant, well, nothing I can do about that.”
“Stay away from them.”
Her laugh was cold and forced. “Oops. Gotta go.”
“Stay away!”
“Call you later, babe.”
The line clicked off, leaving him to deal with an afternoon of indigestion and worry.
Chapter 12
On the way to the grocery store, Chelsea turned left at the stop sign and right at the traffic light. She passed the 7-Eleven, where she used to stop for coffee every morning on her way to work. Yes, this was the route to her office, as familiar and comfortable as her favorite slippers.
How she wished she were going there. She pretended that she had a meeting this afternoon. Meetings were great—one of the most social aspects of working on the magazine. And after the meeting, when others were turning off lights and computers and heading home, Chelsea would be settling in to work during the twilight hours when the office grew quiet and the only thing that mattered was the article taking shape—morphing and growing and finding its own voice.
On impulse, she stayed on the road and shot right past the Safeway. Her mind cheerfully ticked off the small landmarks along the way—the deli with the picture of a boar’s head on the sign, the funeral home that was so well kept it resembled a movie set. She passed the row of stores where someone had once nicked her bumper while she was picking up clothes from the cleaners.
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