It was time to test this feeling out. Maybe between the therapy and the decisions about nursing and having a night out with a friend and, oh my God, had she been flirting with a man at the bar? A little, mischievous smile nibbled at the corner of Veronica’s mouth. She wasn’t proud of the flirting, but if it was a sign that she was starting to recover, she’d take it. Without a watch or her phone, she guessed it was early morning based on the sun’s position and the feeling of the silent house. It was like her house could tell her the time of day just by the sounds it made when a breeze hit its siding or the mild temperature before the sun hit its full arc in the afternoon sky.
Today the feeling was early, six, seven at the latest. Sophie was usually still asleep till eight, always needing a full twelve hours, but maybe today she’d woken up early because of Veronica’s late-night visit, or there was always the possibility of a growth spurt changing the course of her nighttime endurance. Why hadn’t her mother woken her, though? That was the only question that still nagged at the edge of her pounding brain.
A chill went down her spine. This was too familiar. Empty crib. Quiet house. Missing baby.
She shook her head. That was seven months ago, that was in the Broadway house, that wasn’t today. No one took Sophie out for a drive; there wasn’t going to be a tragic phone call at the end of this search. She refocused. Usually Barb would go downstairs and make breakfast with the morning news programs blaring, but this morning when Veronica perched at the top of the stairs, it was silent down below. She’d set up a small Pack ’n Play in her mom’s bedroom once Sophie got old enough to crawl. Sometimes Veronica was sure that her mother would put Sophie in it with a bottle while she got a few extra minutes of shut-eye, but she didn’t have a camera in her room, so she couldn’t prove it. It wasn’t Veronica’s favorite thing, but she’d learned that there were times she had to give her mother her way, especially since Veronica wasn’t able to do any of these important things for her own child.
Barb’s bedroom was at the end of the hall, just after Veronica’s studio and before the master suite. It had a private bathroom and shower; well, it used to share the bathroom with the art studio, but her mother had insisted that she have her own bathroom if she was going to be living there long-term, so they sealed up the door to the studio, and now it was so covered with drawings it was hard to even see it anymore.
She knocked lightly on her mother’s door. “Ma,” she whispered. “Ma!” she added with a little fervor, listening for any movement inside the door.
Nothing but a sleepy silence from inside the room. Using her lightest touch, Veronica turned the doorknob and opened the door with a slow, careful swing. The room smelled of her mother, in a good way, the way she smelled when she used to pull Veronica in for a snuggle when she was a little girl, or more recently when she stood by her in the kitchen while they made dinner. It was a smell that was more like a hug than a scent.
Barb lay on the far side of the queen bed that was arranged against the middle of the side wall. Sophie’s playpen was obstructed from view by the bed and the mound of blankets that made up her mother. Barb’s snores were soft and played like the constant hum of a sound machine.
Veronica was surprised by the gush of relief that filled her when she saw Barb sleeping so deeply. Maybe it was best if her second attempt at touching Sophie was without Barb’s eyes watching her, eyes that would be filled with a hope she was always unable to hide. And inevitably, those same familiar eyes would be filled with sorrow if Veronica failed, as she had so many times in the past.
If this was real, if the anxiety was abating and Veronica was on the cusp of holding her daughter, soon she could pick her up and carry her to Barb. Veronica imagined her mother’s shocked surprise if she came in to put Sophie in her swing after a nap, only to find her wrapped up in Veronica’s arms, nursing.
She felt a touch of anxiety, raised heart rate, heat crawling up her neck, tightness in her shoulders and chest that very quietly whispered, “You don’t have to try . . . You can wait . . .” But the symptoms were mild enough that she could use the breathing Lisa had suggested. Slow breath in counting to five. Another five count as she breathed out, staying as silent as possible to keep from waking her mom. It was time.
It only took a few noiseless steps to make it to the foot of the black wrought-iron bedframe. The taupe-colored playpen peeked over the top of the comforter, and Veronica felt the flutter of worry suddenly shift to anticipation. She was going to hold Sophie, and this time—she’d remember it. Veronica ran her palms over the rumpled skirt of her dress and patted at her hair like Sophie would have an opinion about her personal style and hygiene.
“Sophie,” Veronica whispered. “Mommy is here, sweetie.” She put her hands on the edge of the playpen and peered in, hoping for a smiling baby but also wondering if it would be better if she was asleep. Her nails dug into the soft canvas-like fabric, the padded bar pressing against her fingertips, and a short gasp burst out from her mouth. Seven-month-old Sophie wasn’t asleep. She also wasn’t gumming smiles from the bottom of the bed.
Sophie wasn’t doing anything, because Sophie was gone.
CHAPTER 12
“You’ve got to calm down a little, Ronnie. You’re hysterical,” Barb said for the twentieth time, head on her fists, robe loosely tied around her waist with a belt. She held out her hand for the phone Veronica was clutching with a death grip. “I’m calling Lisa. Is she the kind of therapist who can give you pills? Val thinks you need something to help you calm down.”
Her mother’s phone was upstairs. Veronica had taken it away when she wouldn’t stop texting her nurse friend, Val, instead of doing something to help her. She kept saying that Val thought this had to be a misunderstanding, just like Barb did. That Veronica needed to calm down. She kept saying that if Veronica had been drunk last night and was able to go in Sophie’s room, maybe Veronica was the one who moved her. Barb suggested she check the car seat in case she tried taking her for a drive or maybe the stroller on the back porch, but they were all empty. Veronica couldn’t care less what Val thought anymore.
“Calm down? You’ve got to be shitting me. My baby is missing!” Veronica took her eyes off the front yard for a brief second to glare at her mother. She refocused on the phone she squeezed in her hand. Her mother remembered putting Sophie down for bed and turning on the baby monitor, but after that—nothing but sleep. She hadn’t taken the baby into her room when she awoke in the morning, and there had been no midnight feeding. The night was apparently as blank and dark for Barb as it was for Veronica.
“I know. I know,” Barb repeated, wringing her hands in front of her repeatedly, like she could rewind time if she just twisted hard enough. “It’s going to be okay. It has to be okay.”
“It’s not going to be okay, Ma. You used to say that when your boyfriend Chuck would smack you around—and it was never okay. You are not a very good judge of okay.” Reality clamped over her mouth like sweaty, fat hands. If it weren’t for the thick blackout curtains she was gripping, she’d be on the floor of the living room.
“Hey, this is not my fault.” She’d expected to hear some trace of tenderness in her mother’s voice, but instead it sounded like anger. “I was trying to help . . . if you had gotten help sooner. If you would’ve tried even a little . . .” Barb rushed forward and put her hands on Veronica’s shoulders from behind. “Look at me.”
Her grip was heavy, painful, like blades straight into Veronica’s bones. How could this happen again? Last time, she lost Nick and Sophie was saved only by her car seat. It was like the “powers that be” had decided to rebalance history, like Sophie should’ve gone to heaven with her daddy and now their little girl had wandered off in answer to death’s call, leaving Veronica all alone. She had to call 911. She had to get help.
“My fault?” She shrugged her mom’s fingers off her shoulders and spun around, almost getting tangled in the fabric of the curtains. “I can’t talk to you when you’re like this. I
need to call the police.”
Barb stumbled backward, her eyes wide and mouth open like she didn’t know what to say. Veronica took an aggressive step forward, heat rising into her chest and flicking up to her cheeks, turning her vision blurry, like she was looking through flames.
“I’m sorry, Ronnie. Don’t be mad at me,” Barb whimpered. “You’re right, this is my fault. I’ll fix this. I’ll call the police. You rest,” she said, taking a few steps backward, heading for the stairs. Each word seemed like it’d been specially chosen, as if she were tiptoeing through a floor covered in razor blades.
“Damn it, Ma,” Veronica shouted. “Can’t you listen to me for once? If you want to help, go look for Sophie. I’m her mom, not you. I’m going to make the call.” Despite the fire inside her, Veronica’s voice was ice-cold. She lifted the phone in her hand and flipped open the phone app.
“Please don’t be mad at me,” her mother begged again, clasping her hands in front of her. It reminded Veronica of how toward the end of Barb’s marriage to Veronica’s father, Barb used to grovel at his feet, pleading for forgiveness in order to end a drunken tirade. Back then, though Veronica should’ve been upset with her father for being an abusive asshole, she was far more disturbed by the doormat her normally self-assured and strong-willed mother became when faced with the men in her life. Now that same gesture made Veronica cringe.
“I can’t take care of you right now,” Veronica slashed at the air. “Go call Val or wait in your room or something, but I can’t carry you through this. I need to find Sophie.”
Her mother’s face crumpled, and she took a few more steps in Veronica’s direction, the robe falling off her right shoulder, hair pressed into a flattened poof on one side like someone had blown off only half of the dandelion head.
Veronica couldn’t watch her mother any longer. It brought up too many memories. Too many feelings. It made her want to run away, but she couldn’t, because she had to find her daughter. She had to find Sophie, and there was no running away from that. She glanced down at the phone in her hand. Seeing the numbers 911 typed out in the cold, bricklike font made a sickening realization come over Veronica: This was not a mistake, and they weren’t just going to find Sophie hiding in the hamper or crawling around in a neighbor’s yard. She was a baby. If she was gone—someone took her.
With the fingers of one hand still wrapped in the stiff fabric of the formal sitting-room curtains and the other around the waiting phone, Veronica felt her knees buckle. She collapsed, hitting the ground with the full force of her weight. The impact reverberated through her bones and up into her jaw, where she bit into the soft sides of her tongue. It must’ve hurt, but she couldn’t seem to feel it. Blood filled her mouth, and the hot, coppery liquid made her gag and dribbled out the side of her mouth.
“Oh, baby, you’re bleeding.” Barb rushed forward, arms open, like she was going to scoop up her adult daughter in her arms and make her boo-boo better with a cartoon-adorned Band-Aid. But she wasn’t her mother’s baby anymore, and Barb couldn’t make any of Veronica’s pains go away with words or adhesive bandages.
“Stop. Just go away, please,” she begged, wiping at her mouth and flinching at Barb’s open arms and the mascara-tinted streaks on her mother’s face. That sight and the thought of Sophie in the arms of a stranger, hungry and scared, turned every thought and feeling into a growing fireball. Part of Veronica wanted to melt into her mother’s embrace, ask for forgiveness, and truly believe everything really would be okay . . . but she wasn’t that naive.
“Let me help you, Ronnie.” Barb kept her slow advance, creeping closer and closer to Veronica, her voice filled with the panicked sound of pleading. Veronica needed her mother’s groveling to stop so she could think, so she could call the police, so she didn’t feel so terrible about who she was as a mother and daughter. “Let me help . . .”
“I told you to leave me alone!” Veronica shouted, and as her mother’s hands touched her, the burning ball of fury that had gathered inside her, dense and blazing hot, raced down her arms to her palms, which landed with full force against her mother’s chest. The sound was loud and hollow, like beating on a bass drum. Barb let out a loud “oof” and stumbled backward, this time her feet tangling in the sash of her bathrobe.
Veronica covered her face with her hands, the mascara still lingering on her eyelashes crunching against her fingertips. A sickening crack bled into her ears and another deep moan and then—nothing.
She’d heard that sound before, or one very like it, the night her father left. Veronica had been in bed when he came home from a night at the bar. The fighting started, and Veronica had waited, thirteen years old, with the covers pulled up to her nose, for the crescendo of her father’s angry accusations and her mother’s crying and begging. But that night the begging never came. Just a crack and a thump and a door slamming and an uncomfortable silence that was out of place in their home. Her mother woke her in the morning with a cut over her eyebrow and the news that her father had gone away. Veronica lay in bed, feeling the emptiness of her father’s departure.
But now it wasn’t the monster of her childhood that had hurt her mother; it was the monster inside Veronica. That was the thing about the demons inside: They were hard to see and even harder to escape. Just like when she was a child, Veronica pulled her comforter over her head. Her mother would come any second and whisper that everything was going to be all right just like she had when her father left. She had to.
Veronica sat in the same spot, having pulled the curtains around her in a protective skirt. They fell like waves of pale curls down her shoulders as she waited for her mother to pull her out of her hiding place, but she never came. She was a grown woman and not a child, so how could she sit there and wait? She had to help her mother. She had to find Sophie. Oh God, what would Nick think of her if he were watching right now?
The tears were there, hiding, in the deep recesses of her eyes. If she let them come, if she couldn’t keep inside this sense of impending doom, then she would dissolve again. When she lost Nick she’d melted like salt in the rain, leaving nothing behind but a useless puddle. As Veronica’s panted breaths made her head spin with lack of oxygen, rebellion surged inside her.
“You are pathetic,” she whispered to herself. “You are a failure. You can’t do anything right.” She pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes till it felt like she was pushing her eyeballs back into her skull, completely disgusted at who she was. It was almost as though she were watching her pathetic display from the other side of a TV screen. Why didn’t the character get up and try to fix at least one of her problems? “Get up, you idiot,” she yelled at the screen. “Get the hell up and do something. Do something.”
The rage she’d felt toward her mother intensified as she yelled at the frozen woman on the screen in her mind. It was a fury she wasn’t used to letting herself feel. But she wasn’t upset with her mother for being weak or wanting to solve all Veronica’s problems, not really. This red-hot hatred was what she felt for herself.
There had to be a way to start over, do this right. There had to be a way to leave her hiding place in the curtains, to hold her mother’s hand and find Sophie together. There had to be a way to not turn into a puddle. This time she would turn into something strong, something unstoppable. This time she would be a tsunami.
“Mom.” Veronica took her hands off her eyes and batted at the fabric surrounding her, trying to get back out into the open. “Mom, I’m sorry. Are you okay?” She scrambled to her knees and finally broke out of the prison of stiff damask and billowy voile. “Mom?” Veronica called again.
The room was empty, and the house was quiet, no telltale footsteps or voices echoing down the stairs. It was eerily silent and reminded her of the night Nick had taken Sophie for that ride in his car. Just like that night, it was too quiet. Too still.
Damn it, Mom, Veronica thought, feeling a pang of betrayal and abandonment. Why did you leave me too?
Standi
ng, she tried to breathe like Lisa had taught her and remember for Sophie’s sake that her mother was right—she needed to remain calm. But she wasn’t calm. Sophie was gone. Her mother was gone and probably injured, maybe even severely. And even though Veronica had told her to leave, she didn’t think it would happen so quickly, so fully, so entirely. Now all she wanted was to make sure Barb was okay and to get the chance to beg forgiveness and ask her to stay.
The sun was coming in through the windows stronger now, illuminating the still-dim room. A slat of light from the partially opened curtains highlighted the overstuffed, high-back couches and reflected off the glass coffee table in the center of the formal sitting room. Time was slipping by. She shook her head and tried to refocus. She was alone, and that was terrifying and left her feeling empty, but her mother must’ve left of her own accord, which meant that she couldn’t be hurt that badly, at least physically. Emotionally was another story, but Veronica would have to tend to those wounds after she got help finding Sophie. All this overthinking had to stop. No more hiding, no more worrying about moms or monsters. It was time to find her daughter. If she was going to be a tsunami, she needed to act now.
With the phone lying on the floor in front of her, Veronica leaned over to grab it and call 911. Even as she worked through all the steps to getting her phone open again. The 911 she’d typed earlier was still on the keypad, and taking another step out of the curtains, she hit the “Call” button.
“Hello, 911, what’s your emergency?” a friendly voice asked on the other line.
“My daughter is missing,” Veronica blurted. “She’s seven months old. She was in her crib last night, and then this morning . . .” The words were a jumbled mess and didn’t make sense even to Veronica. As the operator asked questions about where Veronica lived and Sophie’s vital stats and offered empty reassurances, Veronica paced the living room, wondering if her mother had been right. She should’ve made the call. Maybe she’d come in and take the phone and Veronica could fade into the background, just like she had in Sophie’s life.
The Waiting Room Page 10