Calling, “ ’Bye, Mom,” as he went, he walked out the door and down the stairs.
“Tell Dad to drive carefully,” she called after him. “And be sure you buckle your seat belt!”
It was snowing like crazy that February morning. The roads were slick.
She wasn’t there to watch as her son—her baby—strapped himself into the passenger’s seat beside his father. Carmen was on his way to work; he was going to drop Dante at school. He was in kindergarten then: five years old.
That snowy morning so long ago was the same as every other weekday morning, except . . .
Except it was the last morning. There would never be another morning.
Gato is curled up on Dante’s bed when Alex steps into the room. He stares at her with unblinking green eyes, looking a bit smug.
“Good kitty! You didn’t mess it up.” Alex steps carefully around the Lego construction on the floor: a nearly completed skyscraper rises amid heaps of stray pieces on the braided rug.
“Can you help me finish it, Mom?”
“Sure I can.”
“Let’s make it skinnier at the top just like the Chrysler Building, okay?”
“Okay, sweetie. Okay . . .”
“I’m going to build the tallest building in New York when I grow up.”
When he wasn’t building something, or sorting the baseball cards that still sit in binders on the bookshelf, he was playing the electric guitar Carmen had brought back from one of his trips.
“Why electric?” she’d asked Carmen the first time that discordant music blasted through the house when they were trying to sleep. “Why not acoustic?”
“That’s cowboy music. You know we like good old rock and roll,” Carmen said with a grin.
She learned to live with it—and it wasn’t discordant for long. Her son had talent, real musical talent.
“Mom, I’m writing a song. You’ve got to hear it! Are you ready?”
“I’m listening . . .”
“I’m going to be a rock star when I grow up, Mom.”
“A rock star who plays baseball and builds skyscrapers?”
“Can I be that?”
“You can be anything, Dante. Anything you want to be.”
“I want to be everything, Mom!”
“You are everything. You’re everything to me . . .”
Alex sits down at the desk, careful not to let the chair bump the Lego towers. She takes a fresh sheet of paper from the stack and reaches for the box of crayons. She’ll start with the red, as always.
Gaby arrives back at her seat just as another batter comes up to the plate.
“Long line in the ladies’ room?” Ryan asks without taking his eyes off the field.
“How’d you guess?” She settles back and feigns interest in the scoreboard. “What’d I miss?”
“Yankees scored a run. Two outs. Two men on.”
She pretends to be absorbed in the ball game—cheering when the crowd cheers, groaning when the crowd groans—but her thoughts are on the past.
When she was a little girl, Abuela would warn her not to run around playing stoopball right after dinner because she’d get a cramp. She did it anyway, of course—egged on by Jaz, who never followed the rules—and learned that Abuela was right. The pain, right below her rib cage, was so sharp she could barely speak, barely breathe.
That was what it was like after Josh died. Only the pain never subsided. She couldn’t do anything—couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, couldn’t think—without being aware of that all-consuming pain . . .
“Yes!” Ryan shouts, jarring her.
Realizing that the inning just came to an end with a third out for the Yankees, Gaby wonders whether Ben is shouting “No!” somewhere behind her.
She’ll be seeing him again soon. He has to pick up his box of memories, not lost forever, after all.
“Good game.” Ryan rests his arm on her shoulders. “Even if we’re rooting for opposite teams. Glad you came?”
“Really glad.” She smiles at him and tries to ignore a twinge of guilt.
Alone in the dark, Carlos feels around for the tray she left on the foot of his bed.
His fingers find the linear rim of the tray, the curved plastic edge of the plate. The food on it has already grown cold.
His hunger pains have passed. But past experience—and a rustling, scampering noise somewhere in the corner—tells him he’d better eat it now. Before something else does.
He takes a bite of the burger, eats a few mealy fries. The food seems to lodge in his throat. Is it tainted?
He reaches for the glass to wash it down, raises it to his mouth, and something tickles his face. Startled, he throws the glass and hears it break on the floor—
Then realizes it wasn’t the glass after all.
It was a vase. He’d glimpsed it on the tray: a vase, holding red flowers that brushed his cheek just now.
She’d called his attention to it as she set the tray down on the bed, as if bestowing some sort of gift.
Chains jangling, he bends over to pick up the broken glass so he doesn’t forget and step on it later. As he feels around on the floor, a shard pierces his fingertip. He sticks it into his mouth and tastes blood.
Blood . . .
All this time, Carlos has been trying to think of a way to escape this hellhole . . .
There is a way out, he realizes. Only one way.
But is he man enough—or desperate enough—to take it?
Chapter 5
The next morning dawns bright and sunny. The heat wave broke with a violent overnight thunderstorm. Rain poured in sideways, waking Gaby, and she’s been awake ever since she got out of bed to close the window.
Now she opens it again to let in the fresh air, hoping the rain temporarily washed away a good portion of the pollen that aggravates her allergies.
She still has over an hour before she has to leave for the office, and sits down with her coffee and laptop to check her e-mail.
Ben said last night that he’d get in touch. Maybe he already has.
But when she checks her work e-mail address, everything in her in-box is business-related.
She quickly closes out of the account. It can wait until she gets to the office. Instead, she clicks over to the InTune Web site.
Maybe Ben misunderstood her and sent her a message there.
She hasn’t bothered to check the account since her date with Ryan last weekend. There are dozens of new messages from men who are interested in connecting. Some of them are intriguing at a quick glance, but that’s not why she’s here.
Nothing from Ben.
She looks for him, perusing the files, searching eligible Manhattan men . . .
Maybe the InTune search engine is only showing men who are good matches for her, and its algorithms aren’t computing that Ben is a good match.
Or is he even on this site anymore? Maybe he took his profile down. Maybe he’s happily settled with someone new already—or maybe he’s just no longer interested in finding . . .
Happiness.
That was it, right? The one thing he’s looking for.
You make me so happy . . .
Those were the words that kicked off his marriage proposal to her years ago.
She responded—before she realized what he was up to, “No, I don’t. You’ve always been happy, Ben.”
His sunny disposition had drawn her to him in the first place, before they even met.
“That guy is always smiling,” she remembers saying to one of the other girls after her first few days in the training program. “I wonder why?”
“That’s just Ben,” said the girl, who knew him from the swim team. “He’s a happy guy. You’ll see.”
She did see. They became fast friends during their long hours at the training facility. Ben’s smile was infectious, his laugh even more so. He was fun, and funny, and creative. He did his best to raise the group’s morale as the program became increasingly demanding.
&
nbsp; Gaby wasn’t disappointed when they were both hired at Orchard Beach after passing the written, swimming, and skills certification examinations.
During long days on the job, whenever their breaks coincided, they’d sit watching the clouds drift across the summer sky, telling each other what they saw in the formations. It was their little game: coming up with outlandish cloud visions to make each other laugh. Breaks always ended much too soon—as did summer itself.
She was caught off guard when he asked her out on their last day working together. A few years later there he was, sitting across the table from her at a fancy restaurant, claiming that she was the one who made him happy. As she argued with him that the opposite was true, he dropped to one knee, pulled out a ring box, and proposed.
Of course she said yes. About a thousand times, giddy with excitement, and then—
Ben’s profile page pops up, jerking her back to the present reality.
Yep. He’s still out there. Still looking for happiness.
If she’d stumbled across his profile and picture without already having married and divorced the man, she’d probably conclude he’s a perfect match. Who wouldn’t?
He’s a handsome structural engineer living on the Upper East Side . . .
Oh, but he’s lost a child.
Damn you, Ben, for putting it in your profile.
Last night when she was face-to-face with him, she’d forgotten he’d done that. Now, renewed anger takes over.
Why did he find it necessary to be so brutally honest here, among strangers?
Come on, Gaby. Ben has always believed in honesty. You know that.
Still . . .
There’s a part of her that wonders whether he’s really just playing the sympathy card, hoping to capture attention from nurturing women.
How well does she really know him now? How well did she know him ever?
One thing is certain: when worse—the worst—came, she’s the one who changed.
I don’t like myself anymore, she realizes. I don’t like being a joyless person who gets up alone every morning and goes through the motions of the day and goes to bed alone at the end of it. I want—
Her phone, sitting beside her on the table, vibrates with an incoming text.
She picks it up, sees that it’s from Ryan.
Great time last nite!
For some reason, his abbreviated spelling rubs her the wrong way.
She’s tempted to write back: It’s night! Not nite! Are you too lazy to type one extra letter?
Maybe it’s the editor in her.
Or maybe she’s looking for an excuse not to see him again.
Yes, because that’s entirely rational. Using jargon and abbreviations while texting is the ultimate character flaw, right?
Nobody’s perfect, Gaby, Ben said to her years ago, when she’d apologized to him for one of her rare volcanic temper explosions. You have your faults; I have mine. People can love each other despite their faults. And sometimes, even because of them.
She pushes Ben away—again—and quickly types: It was fun! Thank you!
His reply bounces in a moment later: Busy tonite?
She isn’t.
But she tells him that she is.
His response: a sad face icon.
Again, she’s unreasonably irritated.
Just yesterday she’d found Ryan utterly charming. So why, today, is he getting on her nerves?
Ben, under her skin again, dammit. She’d been so sure they’d resolved everything in the divorce.
But now that the fog of grief has begun to lift at last, she still seems to need some kind of closure.
Alex has been working at the small private practice in White Plains for a long time now. Five years, at least. Probably ten. Maybe longer. She loses track.
Located in a small brick building on a mainly residential tree-lined street, the office houses a pair of general practitioners—one who’s well past retirement age and another who just came on board last year after completing her residency.
When Alex started, there was just one physician, and Dr. Baird did everything the old-school way—from making house calls to keeping handwritten records. His wife was the office manager and hired Alex to replace the practice’s eighty-four-year-old nurse with very few questions asked and most likely no reference or license verification check. Mrs. Baird still oversees the administrative duties, but now that Dr. Patel is on board, everything is done electronically—and by the book.
In some ways, that’s better for Alex—more efficient for her unique purposes—though she worries about getting caught doing something she shouldn’t be doing.
This morning, she clocks in as usual at 7:45 and is ready for the first round of patient appointments at eight. The hours are preferable to her first job out of nursing school, the one at the hospital in the city. There, she frequently had to be on duty overnight, missing weekends and holidays with Carmen and Dante. But it paid the mortgage on the house, and for the dream house Carmen had designed and was planning to have built for them upstate on his family’s acreage.
“Someday, you won’t have to work at all,” Carmen promised. “Someday . . .”
Now there are no night shifts, and Saturday morning hours are reserved for the part-time staff. Yet now that Alex lives alone, weekends and holidays don’t matter nearly so much.
But that’s going to change again soon. Soon, she’ll be rocking her baby boy to sleep again. Soon, there will be Saturday morning story hours at the library and Sunday afternoon soccer games, and Santa will come on Christmas, the Easter Bunny on Easter . . .
Soon she’ll need those weekends and holidays to be a mommy again.
By eight-thirty she’s checked the vitals of a half-dozen patients, most of whom are impoverished or lower middle class, elderly, and have come here for as many years as Dr. Baird has been practicing.
“Nurse!” Dr. Patel, who either never bothered to learn Alex’s name or simply doesn’t care to use it, stops her in the corridor. “Can you submit these prescriptions right away, please? They’re for Mr. Griffith.” The doctor hands over a list of prescriptions and contact information for a large chain pharmacy, then turns to grab a folder from the plastic chart holder outside the nearest of the two examination rooms.
“Good morning, Mrs. Halpern. What seems to be the problem today?” Dr. Patel’s tone instantly goes from curt to compassionate as she steps over the threshold and closes the door behind her.
“Sure,” Alex says to the empty hall. “No problem. And you’re welcome.”
She heads straight to her desk in the cubicle at the end of the hall and signs onto the closed computer network used to transmit electronic prescriptions.
The task is complete less than a minute later.
She returns to the corridor, timing it just as Mr. Griffith, an elderly widower, emerges from the other examination room, leaning heavily on his walker.
“I sent your prescriptions, Mr. Griffith. I’ll be happy to pick them up for you again today on my lunch hour and drop them at your house.”
“You, my dear, are a saint.” The old man, incapacitated by diabetic neuropathy, grins at her and takes out his worn wallet and checkbook. “It hasn’t been easy lately. My legs are getting worse, and they ache so much at night that I can’t sleep.”
“The doctor prescribed something to help with that. You’ll sleep soundly tonight if you take it, believe me.”
“I hope so. I just wish you’d let me pay you for doing this for me. Especially since my own daughters can’t be bothered to help.”
“That’s not necessary. Like I always tell you, it gives me an excuse to stop by that great deli next door to the pharmacy.”
“This time, treat yourself to lunch on me.” He holds out a twenty-dollar bill, but she waves it away.
“Absolutely not. It’s my pleasure.”
“You’re too kind. You’ll be going straight to heaven.”
“Let’s hope so.”
Chuckli
ng, Mr. Griffith tucks the twenty back into his wallet, then hands her his Medicare card and writes out a check to cover the co-pay, leaving the amount blank for her to fill in.
“I’ll see you around one,” she promises him, folding the check around the card and slipping it into the pocket of her scrubs.
“I can’t sleep at night, but I have a hard time staying awake during the day. If I’m napping and I don’t hear the door, the key is—”
“Shh!” She holds a finger to her lips. “I remember where it is, and you don’t want to tell the whole world. You never know who might be listening.”
Though it’s beside the point. Anyone with even a shred of brain cell can find it where he has it “hidden”: under the doormat. When he first told her that, she cautioned him that he might want to make it a little harder to find.
Ironic, because she always leaves her own front door unlocked.
But I have my reasons for that.
“My daughter said to pick a new spot, too,” Mr. Griffin is saying, “so I hid it someplace else, and I still can’t remember where. Got myself locked out on a rainy day and I’ll never do that again. Had to make a copy and it’s back under the doormat where it belongs. I’ve had a key stashed there for fifty years and never had a problem, so there it will stay.”
What else could you say to that logic?
Now, Mr. Griffith offers her a warm smile as he positions his walker to make his exit. “I’ll see you later. Thank you for making my life easier, my dear.”
Right back atcha, Mr. G., she thinks, heading back down the hall.
In the midst of a morning editorial meeting, listening to Kasey gush on about the plot of a recent acquisition, Gaby surreptitiously checks her phone under the table.
There are three new e-mails in her work in-box.
When she checked half an hour ago, there were two—both from authors.
Now there are two more from authors, but the third is from Ben.
It was good seeing you last night. Do you want to have dinner tonight?
Her heart skips a beat, and she has to remind herself that this is just her ex-husband, not a hot new romantic prospect.
Kasey is winding down her monologue at last. Gaby knows she’ll be up next, discussing her lukewarm reception to a book proposal from a veteran author whose sales have been slipping.
The Black Widow Page 9