Closer Than You Know

by Brad Parks

  The shower poured down on me. The lather carried the dirt away. The steam did its work, taking away some of the wrinkles of the world.

  And then the answer crushed me.

  Alex.

  The people messing with me were trying to get my baby removed from me. They had already succeeded, temporarily. And they were going to persist until they made it permanent.

  It was starting to make sense. Alex was the only valuable I could claim as my own. And as a healthy white male baby, he clearly had tremendous value to someone else too. What was he worth? Twenty thousand dollars? Forty? A hundred? Had there been an auction?

  Whatever the amount, I’m sure there was enough money involved that whoever was doing this could bribe Social Services. Or perhaps they had found another way to control the system. The how of it only mattered so much now that I understood the why.

  I had thought of myself as the target in this attack and Alex as the collateral damage. What if it was the other way around? What if taking Alex was the prime objective all along?

  And what if I was just the woman in the way?

  EIGHTEEN

  I barely recalled getting myself under the covers that night. I also didn’t stir when Ben got home and climbed into bed.

  My sleep was deep and unbroken, which was in itself a novel phenomenon. Between pregnancy and nursing, I hadn’t experienced a solid night’s sleep since sometime in my second trimester.

  At morning light, I was still groggy. My first thought came to me when I was still in half-dreaming mode, before my central processor really kicked in. And it was a panic: I had slept too hard, straight through Alex’s cries. He must have been starving by now.

  I bolted upright. Then I remembered reality, which hit me with a sharp stab to the heart.

  For a moment or two, I laid back down. But there was no getting back to sleep. I looked over at Ben, curled on his side, still in slumber. Wanting to feel closer to Alex, I rolled out of bed and padded softly into the nursery.

  It was exactly as I had left it two mornings earlier, when I had hastily straightened it. The hole in the ceiling remained. I had yet to put the air-conditioning exchange cover back into place.

  I picked up Mr. Snuggs from the changing table, just to have something to hold. Then I wandered over to where Alex should have been and stared down at the sheet cover, which was stretched out drum tight and snapped down, to prevent suffocation. There was a thin dusting of baby powder on the cover. I hadn’t noticed it before, though Ben was sometimes a little more liberal with the powder than I was. A blanket was laid out, waiting to swaddle a child who wasn’t there.

  What I should have been doing right then was bending down, scooping Alex up, unbundling him so he could move his little arms around, then taking him over to the chair where I nursed him.

  He was always so snuggly and soft and warm first thing in the morning. His absence made me feel all that much colder by comparison.

  What sprang into my mind was the famous six-word memoir usually attributed to Hemingway: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” Mine probably would have read something like, “My morning: throbbing breasts, empty crib.”

  I used my hand pump, then sat down on the carpet that filled the middle of the room. After a feeding, I often plopped Alex down on his stomach so he could have some tummy time. He had this mat with a flexible plastic mirror built into it. He loved staring at himself and slobbering on it while he struggled to lift his head, which was so big compared to the rest of him. I always cheered him on.

  So what was I supposed to do with myself now? Alex’s arrival had not only given me purpose, it had filled every crevice of my days and nights. When I wasn’t at work or asleep, I was with him. What did I do with my time before Alex?

  I stared dumbly at the wall, waiting to get some idea. Nothing came to me.

  Somewhere in the midst of this pathetic reverie, Ben entered the doorframe. The first thing I saw was his dark, skinny legs, jutting out from his boxer shorts. My eyes worked up from there to his face, which looked puffy behind his glasses.

  “Good morning,” he said.

  “Hey,” I replied.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I don’t know,” I said quite honestly. My voice sounded hollow to me.

  “You want some company?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  He entered the room and sat down next to me, close but not quite touching.

  “You were out cold when I came home last night,” he said.

  “Yeah, I just passed out.”

  He accepted this without comment. “I tried to call you yesterday. A couple of times.”

  “I still don’t know where my phone is.”

  “We should really just get you a new one,” he said. “You’ve got to be eligible for an upgrade by now. You haven’t gotten one in a while. They have a bunch you can get for free if you sign up for a new contract. I’ll stop by the wireless store today and see if I can do that for you if you want.”

  I craned my neck and stared at him for a moment. With everything going on, it struck me as preposterous my brilliant, perceptive, empathetic husband was talking to me about cell-phone plans.

  “Whatever,” I said, and returned to staring at the wall.

  Then, without looking at him, I asked what I really wanted to know.

  “Where were you yesterday?”

  It came out as an accusation as much as it did a question.

  “Yeah, I’m sorry about that. I couldn’t find anyone to take my section. You know what Kremer is like if someone tries to cancel anything. Teddy convinced me he could handle it. He said they’d probably just give you a court date and let you go. He said it was really no big deal. I . . . I mean, I figured he’d know better than I would.”

  And I figured my husband would want to be there.

  “How did it go, anyway?” he asked.

  “It turns out assaulting an officer is a felony, punishable by up to five years in prison.”

  “Oh my God. You didn’t even mean to hit him.”

  “I don’t think that’s considered a defense.”

  “But what are you . . . what are you going to do?”

  Maybe my English background made me too sensitive to pronouns, but I was annoyed by his use of the second-person singular. An ugly thought sprang from my head: If I was the mother of his biological child, would he have used the first-person plural? Would he have showed up in court yesterday?

  “The trial is scheduled for May eighteenth. They assigned me a lawyer. Mr. Honeysomethingorother.”

  “Is he any good?”

  “I can’t say I’ve been terribly impressed so far.”

  Ben adjusted his glasses.

  “I talked to Teddy for a while yesterday,” he said. “I really don’t think those drugs were his.”

  “Me neither.”

  “So . . . I’m sure you’re been thinking about this too, but . . . A half a kilo of cocaine doesn’t just magically show up in your house.”

  “I know.”

  “Where did it come from?”

  I just shook my head.

  “Do you think there’s a way we could, I don’t know, track it back to the source?” he asked. “Maybe if we can find who the original dealer was, we can figure out who bought it and therefore who planted it?”

  “How would we do that?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “But whenever you’re trying to understand something historically, you usually have to go all the way back to the beginning. It seems to me the same concept applies here.”

  We sat in silence, still not touching.

  “And what’s the deal with the drugs charges?” he asked. “It seems weird you haven’t heard from anyone about that.”

  “The prosecutor mentioned something about indicting me, but . . .�
�

  “Yeah, but don’t they have to arrest you first? Or charge you? Or something?”

  “I don’t know,” I snapped.

  I knew Ben was just trying to be helpful, but his questions were irritating me. I didn’t feel like rehashing any of this with him. Whether I had to beat the drug charges first or the assault charges first, the fact remained I couldn’t convince Social Services I was a fit mother from the wrong side of a jail cell. I needed a legal strategy.

  And neither Ben nor Mr. Honeywhatever was going to help me with that. I had to find a real lawyer. I wondered if I could eke out the money to afford one who wasn’t appointed by the court. Could I talk to the bank about reducing our mortgage payments for a few months? Could we sell the house I loved in the hopes our small improvements would allow us to make some money on it?

  Ben finally tuned into the testy edge to my voice, because he placed his hand over mine.

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t there yesterday, okay? That was obviously a mistake. I shouldn’t have listened to Teddy and . . . That’s not even the point. It’s not Teddy’s fault. It’s my fault. I should have been there. And I want to help, okay? Don’t freeze me out here.”

  I stood up. “I have to get ready for work. Can we just talk about it later?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “What’s your schedule like today?”

  “Same as usual. I was going to do some dissertation stuff in the morning. I have a section this afternoon. Then I’m tutoring till eight.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I guess I’ll see you at home after that.”

  He was still sitting on the floor when I left the room.

  NINETEEN

  My morning routine—which usually involved spending 90 percent of my time getting Alex ready and about 10 percent on myself—was now significantly streamlined, as was my commute. There was no trip out to Mrs. Ferncliff’s to worry about.

  I was fifteen minutes early when I pulled into the parking lot of Diamond Trucking. Which was fine. I was actually eager to get to work. At the moment, eight hours of playing eighteen-wheel Sudoku—which was dispatching at its essence—sounded like a vacation.

  Once inside, I was greeted warmly by the guy who pulled the graveyard shift, a former trucker everyone called Willie, because he looked like Willie Nelson.

  Willie was just finishing up his rundown on everything I needed to know when the front door opened. A nervous-looking woman in a teal sweater set, gripping a matching purse, peered around the door for a tentative moment, then entered.

  “Hi? I’m Amanda? I’m here for the training?” she said in a squeaky voice that had the habit of turning up at the end of every sentence.

  Willie and I swapped empty looks.

  “Training for what?” I asked.

  “The . . . the logistics manager job?” she said, now even more uncertain.

  “Oh,” I said. “Then, yes, I guess you’re in the right place. I’m Melanie. This is Willie.”

  In the past four years, I had trained several dispatchers, including Willie. Normally I got an email saying I should expect a new trainee coming in. But I would forgive the lapse if it meant I was preparing Amanda to replace deadbeat Warren Plotz on the swing shift.

  “On the phone, I spoke to a Warren?” Amanda said.

  Warren? Since when did Warren hire dispatchers?

  “Warren is the owner’s son,” I said. “He’s not . . . Well, whatever. First thing you’re going to need is a headset. You’ll be spending your whole shift on the phone, and you’ll need your hands free to type. Let me see if there’s a fresh one in the supply closet. We sort of have a rule among dispatchers that you don’t use someone else’s headset.”

  “Yep,” Willie chimed in. “Believe me, you don’t want mine. I spend my whole shift spittin’ on it.”

  Welcome to Diamond Trucking, Amanda.

  I went into the supply closet in the next room and rooted around in it until I found a headset. When I returned, I felt a scowl reflexively spreading across my face.

  Warren Plotz had just walked in. He was wearing his $250 aviator sunglasses, the ones he thought made him look like Justin Timberlake and I thought made him look like a jerk.

  “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

  “Uhh, my job. Why?”

  “Shouldn’t you be in jail or something?”

  I felt my face flush. Amanda’s eyes widened. She clutched her purse a little tighter.

  “No,” I said. “I got bailed out.”

  “Well, we don’t need you here anymore.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You’ve been fired.”

  The earth shifted a little under my feet. “What?” I demanded.

  “Fired. As in not working here anymore. This girl here is your replacement. You can just get along now. I’ll have your last check mailed to you.”

  Trying to stay calm, I placed the headset box on the table next to the phone. Warren’s animosity for me dated back to an incident that happened in the office maybe a week or two after I started working there. He made a clumsy pass at me, and I firmly swatted it away. Maybe too firmly. He had been looking for a chance to get his revenge ever since.

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “I have been a dedicated employee of Diamond Trucking for four years now. You have absolutely no cause to fire me.”

  “Yeah, I do. You didn’t show up for work yesterday.”

  “You don’t show up for work all the time!” I burst out. “And unlike you, I actually called to say I wasn’t going to be here so I didn’t leave anyone hanging.”

  “Yeah, that doesn’t matter now. I had the Sheriff’s Office come to my house yesterday, asking about you. I ended up going down to headquarters. They told me all about you. They were saying you might have been getting your drugs from one of our drivers. Next thing you know they’re going to be sniffing around here, wanting to talk to everyone. I can’t have that.”

  “Those. Drugs. Weren’t. Mine,” I said fiercely.

  “Sure they weren’t. Look, this is my family’s business. We got a reputation to uphold. I can’t have people at church going around thinking we employ drug dealers.”

  “Would you stop? For the love of God, Warren, you’ve known me for four years. You really, seriously think I’m a drug dealer?”

  “I think the Sheriff’s Office pulled a whole bunch of coke out of your house and they say you’ve been dealing. That’s good enough for me.”

  “This is absurd,” I said. “This is . . . I mean, this is just an accusation at this point. I’m innocent until proven guilty. And besides, you can’t fire me. I don’t work for you. I work for your father.”

  At this point, Warren got a wicked grin on his face.

  “Oh yeah? You think I didn’t talk to him about this? Go ahead. Call him if you want to. He’ll tell you the same thing.”

  This stopped me cold. I could handle Warren Plotz being as nasty to me as he wanted to be. His father was supposed to be different. He had been unfailingly kind, a man who always looked out for me, a man I thought cared for me as more than just an employee.

  To have him assuming the worst about me, thinking I could have possibly done what I was accused of—and essentially giving up on me—was crushing.

  “Oh,” I choked out.

  “That’s right. So you just get along now,” Warren said, sneering at me, knowing he already had me beaten. Virginia employment law was a joke. A private employer like this one could fire you for virtually any reason, or no reason at all.

  There was no fighting this. I had too many other fights on my hands already.

  I had to get out of there. Any moment, I was going to cry. Warren was enjoying my distress too much already. I stumbled into the women’s bathroom, where I stored my breast pumps, and grabbed both of them.

  Then I w
ent back out into the office and looked around to see if there was anything I needed to take with me. There wasn’t.

  I had poured four years of my life into Diamond Trucking, but I would be leaving it without a trace.

  * * *

  • • •

  Not knowing what else to do, I drove home. My hope was that Ben would still be there when I arrived. For as bitchy and standoffish as I had been to him earlier in the morning, I was now aching to collapse into his arms.

  But he had already left. The house was empty—way, way too empty.

  I couldn’t stay there. That home had been meant for a family, not a morose, childless, jobless woman.

  Sparing myself any internal debate about whether I should bother him, I got back in my car and pointed it north, toward Harrisonburg, and James Madison University, and Ben. Selfish as it may have been, I was on the brink of a breakdown. I needed my husband.

  As I drove, I tried not to think about the implications of what had just happened to me. But it was impossible. I felt like the Little Dutch Boy, trying to stick my finger in the dike and hold back the sea. The problem was, I had more leaks than fingers. The deluge was coming.

  What was I going to do without an income? My $18 an hour might not have been princely, compared to what some of my UVA classmates were now pulling in, but I was still our primary breadwinner by a large margin.

  I needed to find another job. And quickly.

  There were other trucking companies in the area, but they’d all want to know why I left my old job. Diamond Trucking was known to have the best benefits package in the area. Most people left other companies to go to it, not the other way around. There would be no hiding that I had been fired.

  Who was I kidding? There would be no hiding anything about my circumstances. If the entire Shenandoah valley didn’t know about me already, one quick Google search of my name would bring up media reports where I had been christened Coke Mom. Who would hire me with felony charges hanging over my head?

  Even my fallback, or what used to be my fallback, was gone: Marcus had left Starbucks two years ago and was now working at some kind of benefits management company.