The Waiting Room

by Emily Bleeker

  “I’ll tell you the whole story on the way.”

  CHAPTER 24

  It only took a few minutes to get to Veronica’s street. After hearing a significantly abbreviated version of Sophie’s rescue, not including the confrontation with Gillian’s ex or the handgun, Mark suggested that she take one drive past her house to assess the situation before heading in. She agreed and turned tentatively onto Mayfair Lane. The streetlights were different from the black iron ones in Durham and didn’t have the same romantic effect. These lights were tall with sliver posts and yellow light that washed out the surrounding greenery into a sickly jaundiced color and turned Veronica’s pale arms into sallow appendages.

  The small, counterfeit family drove past Veronica’s house, going the exact speed limit. Veronica had expected the car-lined street of that morning, unmarked vehicles and squad cars alike up and down the road in front of 7380 Mayfair like kids waiting with their empty candy bags for a parade to start.

  But even before reaching her bungalow, it was clear that the street was empty. All that remained was the broken-down Buick two houses down that probably hadn’t left its parking spot on the street since well before Veronica had signed the mortgage on the house and, on the other side of the road, a bike that some kid had ditched hastily, maybe too late for dinner to put it away in the garage. No squad cars, lights flashing. No uniformed police officers pacing in front of the house. No curious, suited detectives discussing strategy on the front porch. In fact, as they passed the house, not one light was on. It looked completely empty.

  “What the hell?” Veronica cursed under her breath, wondering if she was imagining things or had somehow forgotten where she lived. But no, it was her house and it was her empty driveway and dark windows.

  “I thought you said the place was crawling with police?” Mark asked, scanning the house even as they passed it.

  “It was when I left this morning.” She turned her eyes forward again, trying to think through it all. “Maybe it’s a ruse? Maybe they want me to think it’s safe to come home so they can trap me.”

  “Damn, maybe. You said your mom has been texting you?” Mark asked. Sophie started to fuss, small whining grunts that grew into louder sounds of displeasure. With the instincts of a seemingly well-practiced mother, Veronica reached back and rocked the car seat with one arm while continuing to debate with Mark.

  “Yeah, but I didn’t think the police would just leave. Or God, it could be the police pretending to be my mom. I didn’t even think of that.” It was sad to Veronica that this idea of the police setting a baited lure was more comforting than the idea of her mother asking her to come home.

  The rocking wasn’t helping. Sophie’s whimpers turned into full-on cries, and instead of running away, Veronica felt the urge to pick up the baby and comfort her. Mark continued, but it was hard to listen with Sophie’s wails.

  “Yeah, it’s not procedure to let a person of interest leave the scene of the crime. I mean, if we were in New York, this would be all-out manhunt, tracking you down in different counties, following the location of your phone using cell towers. But I’m here now. I can corroborate your story. You have Sophie. This will all work itself out, I promise.”

  “You know what?” Veronica put both hands back on the steering wheel. It was time to finally put her child’s needs first in her life. “You’re right. We’ve got the baby; that’s enough information. If it’s a trap, then all we have to do is tell them about the house in Durham. My baby is hungry; we are going in one way or another.” Veronica looked up and down the road and then made a slow U-turn in the middle of the intersection. They traveled the street again, and this time Veronica pulled up into her driveway as if she were coming home from a trip to the store.

  “Do you think we should go through the garage rather than the front door, just to be safe?”

  “Yeah, good idea.” He scanned the front of the house like the officer had earlier that week when the alarm had been tripped. How had she missed these protective traits in him when she thought he worked at a boring bank job all day? “Wait till you have the baby out just in case they don’t know we’re here yet.”

  “Okay,” Veronica agreed. After parking in the driveway, she quickly unbuckled Sophie, who was screaming desperately now, her fists flailing and face red. Sad little trails of tears streamed down the side of Sophie’s face, and Veronica wiped them away, the wetness soaking in and healing some broken part of her. She wrapped her arms around Sophie and held her tight but not suffocatingly so, hoping just the beating of her mother’s heart against hers would bring comfort before she could get a bottle warmed and her diaper changed.

  Mark stood behind Veronica every step of the way, like he was blocking her from some sort of invisible threat, close enough that she could smell his fabric softener or deodorant. After retrieving Sophie, she leaned inside the car and pressed the garage-door button. It lifted with a whir, just as empty as it had been that morning.

  “Here, take my key.” Veronica passed her keys to Mark.

  “Uh, why don’t you let me do that?” He put himself in front of her again, slipped in the key, and tested the doorknob before she could protest at his overprotectiveness. The door opened on his first try, and he swung it wide and put up his palm and a finger over his lips, reminding Veronica that he used to do this for a living. He disappeared inside the darkness as she shushed Sophie and considered how ridiculous it was to tiptoe into her own home with a screaming baby.

  Without waiting, she crossed into the house. Her baby was hungry, and she wasn’t going to be able to nurse her, so it was time to pay the piper, swallow the pill, face the music, or whatever other silly idiom that could define her life right now.

  “Shhhh, sweetie. Mama is here. Let’s get you some food.” Hearing Sophie’s cries echo through her main floor, Veronica felt a sudden shame hit her in the gut; she remembered once again all the time she’d lost with this little girl but made herself push forward into the kitchen. She grabbed a teething ring from the freezer and placed it gently into Sophie’s open mouth. Her gums slowly worked at the cool plastic, and she soon started sucking. “There you go.”

  Trying not to think about what Mark might find elsewhere in the dwelling, she opened the fridge and grabbed the first bottle on the top row.

  “Hm.” She inspected it closer. Empty. It was strange, but the whole day had been strange, so Veronica dropped the bottle in the sink, wondering if it had been returned by her mother after a feeding, and grabbed the next bottle. Empty. “What in the world?” she whispered. Sophie dropped the teether on Veronica’s third trip to the fridge and started to fuss again. This time Veronica took out each of the last three bottles one at a time and then tossed them in the sink. They were all dry as a bone. Every last one.

  Angry but trying to stay calm for Sophie’s sake, she yanked down a new, sterile bottle from the cabinet by the sink and then slid the can of formula over from its hiding place behind the paper-towel holder. She’d made a few bottles for Sophie since getting the can, but the slightly sweet smell of the dust still made her feel conflicted. Right now, she didn’t have time for those feelings; Sophie was close to exploding, so she blocked them out. It was like closing a door, and before, the pushback on the other side kept her from ever getting it completely shut, but today, for some reason, she got it slammed closed.

  Shaking the bottle to mix the powder and purified water, Veronica put Sophie into a cradle hold and wormed the bottle’s nipple into her mouth. Sophie’s tongue played with the plastic tip until a drop fell onto her tongue, and she wrapped her mouth around it gratefully. As she sucked blissfully on the off-white liquid, she locked her eyes on Veronica’s face like she was trying to memorize it. Veronica smiled.

  “I’m going to be here all the time now, baby. I promise.” Like she’d been waiting to hear those words her whole life, Sophie’s eyelids started to droop, and her sucking slowed slightly as she dream-ate her good-night meal. No matter where the milk came from,
Veronica felt immense satisfaction at personally participating in feeding her child.

  With Sophie taken care of, a new concern came to the front of her mind. Where the hell was Mark? There couldn’t be police in the house, or they would’ve come when Veronica walked in with a crying baby, so where was he?

  She left the kitchen, still holding the bottle to Sophie’s mouth with one hand and cradling her body with the other. Veronica’s feet were still bare, and the cool tile of the kitchen sent a shiver through her that made her want a hot shower. Yes, that’s what she needed once she got Sophie fed and changed—hot shower, new clothes, some real food. She wished going to bed were on that list, but bed wasn’t an option until she’d found out what had happened to her mom and why she let those people take Sophie.

  “Mark,” she said, not sure if she was whispering because of the nonexistent police or the possibility that her mother might be still hiding out in the house. “Mark?”

  She listened closely after each call, hoping that she’d hear his deep voice calling to her or telling her everything was going to be all right. Nothing, not even the shifting movements of someone walking through the house. It was like she had made him up. He wasn’t in the front room, where the chairs were in their altered positions from when she’d moved them to cover the blood from her mother’s fall. The dining room looked like someone had come in with a laser beam and disintegrated everyone in the middle of a meeting, the table filled with scraps of paper, a random pen, empty coffee cups, one with lipstick on the lid, and chairs pushed out in all directions. The house was a ghost town, and it seemed that anyone who walked into it disappeared into thin air.

  A rumbling erupted in Sophie’s diaper, and even with little hands-on experience, Veronica knew that sound. Her search for Mark would need to wait. He was probably doing that overprotective thing again and searching every corner of the house. She was finding it less and less annoying. The bottle was empty, so she dropped it in the sink with the other five empty bottles, shifted sleepy-eyed Sophie to her shoulder for a burp, and then headed upstairs.

  The third stair creaked, and a nervous, excited feeling bubbled up inside Veronica’s midsection. This was real life. She’d been hiding from it for a long time, but now it was finally here. Somehow the euphoria of finding Sophie and holding her numbed the confusion and concern about her mother. As she reached the top of the stairs, something made her slow down. The door to Sophie’s room was closed, and a yellow light cast a pale net on the floor in front of it. The whole house was dark; she hadn’t dared to turn on a light yet just in case the police drove by and changed their minds about her guilt. Sophie let out a soft burp and hiccup, and a warm gush flowed over Veronica’s shoulder.

  “Oh, sweetie,” she gasped. She put Sophie on her clean shoulder, rubbed her back, and ran up the last few stairs, even more ready for a shower than before.

  The door swung open easily, and after being in near darkness since the sun went down, Veronica was disoriented by the light in the room. She blinked rapidly, the room coming into focus. Mark was standing on the far side of the room with his back to the door, facing closed curtains.

  “Mark. There you are.” He spun around on one foot, a look on his face that said he didn’t expect to see her there. He seemed—off. It scared her.

  “Veronica,” he started, but she interrupted.

  “Are you okay? What’s going on?” she asked, taking another step forward into the room, but then she stopped in her tracks. Mark was not alone. Sitting in the rocking chair was Barb DeCarlo.

  She was fully dressed, hair and makeup done like she hadn’t run out of the house in her pajamas, a white bandage on her temple the only sign of their fight that morning. She slid her bottom to the edge of the seat and sighed a deep, sad, meaningful sigh.

  “Mom,” Veronica said flatly, not sure if she should run out the door or call 911. “Where is your car? What the hell do you think you’re doing here?”

  “My car isn’t important right now. I’m here to help you, Ronnie,” she said, her eyebrows hanging low and mouth turned down so drastically it looked like she was faking a frown. “I’m sorry this got so out of hand.”

  “Help me? That’s cute.” An internal fury bubbled and brewed, growing till it burned her from the inside out. “You sure helped me a lot when the police were here this morning, or when you let strangers come into my house and take pictures of Sophie’s room, or when you helped crazy people take away my child.”

  “Half of what you just said is total drivel,” her mother shot back. She ran a careful gaze over Sophie. “You know you can’t keep her, right?”

  “Damn you,” Veronica growled. “Damn you to hell. How dare you. Look, Ma, I’m holding her. I fed her a bottle, of formula, no less. Thanks for dumping my breast milk, by the way. That was below you, Ma.”

  Barb shook her head and then covered her face as though she couldn’t stand to look at her daughter holding her grandchild. Sophie started to squirm in Veronica’s arms. She needed a diaper change and to go to bed. Barb wasn’t going to stop Veronica from taking care of her baby. Maybe if she saw it with her own eyes, things would change.

  With a desperate glance at Mark, who seemed caught between wanting to help Veronica and not knowing what was going on, she turned her back on her mother, praying that he would protect her if Barb tried anything crazy. Just twenty-four hours earlier, she would’ve placed a million dollars on the fact that her mother would never do anything to betray her, but until she heard a better explanation for what had happened that morning and why her mom still wanted to take Sophie away, Veronica was going to keep up her guard.

  Veronica laid Sophie on the changing table, keeping one hand on her belly and grabbing the supplies from the open shelf underneath. With wipes and clean diapers at Sophie’s feet, Veronica unbuttoned Sophie’s onesie and started on the process of changing her daughter. She hadn’t done it in so long, and back then it’d been a tiny newborn’s bottom and not a wiggly, smiley, curious eight-month-old’s bottom.

  “Hey, darling. Mama’s got you. I’ll never let you go. I promise.” She started to sing as she worked. It felt so right, so natural, like she’d done it a million times before.

  When Sophie stopped wiggling and looked up into her face, Veronica hummed a soft, slow version of “You Are My Sunshine,” the same song Nick used to sing while rocking Sophie through her colic. She drew the last words of the verse out, their meaning more profound than ever before because she’d almost lost her “sunshine” that day. As she finished up the diaper change and slipped a layette gown over Sophie’s head and wormed her arms into the sleeves.

  “There you go, darling. You are ready for bed.” Veronica kissed her daughter’s cheek and then sterilized her hands with the pump under the changing table. Veronica turned then, holding Sophie up for her mother to see, almost like when she was a little girl and started to love art and would bring home her special pictures for her mother’s approval. But tonight, her mother didn’t smile and tell her, Good work, baby! Tonight, Barb DeCarlo was crying.

  “I told you I could do it, Mom. See. I don’t know what happened, but I can do it now. I can take care of her. I’m cured!”

  “I can’t do this,” Barb cried and covered her face with her hands again. “I can’t take the baby away. Don’t ask me to.”

  Veronica, about to put Sophie in her crib and rub her back till she fell asleep, stopped. A sickening feeling came over her like her insides had been pulled out through her throat in one massive yank. She backed away from the crib and, more specifically, from Mark.

  “What the hell is she talking about, Mark?” Veronica’s voice was now as cold and hard as a stone in a mountain river. She glared at the man she’d let into her life, first because of what seemed like a coincidence and then out of desperation. Mark, who had been leaning back against the window frame, stood tall, so much taller than she’d remembered. He was more well muscled than she’d let herself notice before when she’d been playing ar
ound with ridiculous flutters of romantic interest.

  “Don’t panic, Veronica. Your mom explained everything. It is a big misunderstanding, and it’s all going to be okay,” he said, and if it’d been twenty minutes earlier, she might have believed him. But not now, not with the slow and determined way he was walking across the room with his hands outstretched and his focus always shifting between Veronica’s face and the baby. “All you need to do is give me the baby.”

  CHAPTER 25

  Veronica lunged backward as if a poisonous snake were trying to bite her child, but her feet tangled in the multicolored carpet, and she stumbled and fell, hard, turning her body so that Sophie was protected. When she hit the floor, all the air rushed out of her, lungs empty of oxygen, she tried to take a breath but couldn’t.

  The world spun around her, and she could feel Sophie slipping from her fingers. The more she grasped for the baby, the closer she came to losing consciousness completely. On the edge of her awareness, Veronica could hear Mark talking to her mother. Sophie was not in her arms anymore.

  “Go, take her back to Daisy. We’ll be in touch soon.”

  Air started to return to Veronica’s deflated lungs, and as the oxygen hit her brain, she rolled to her side and attempted to get on her knees. Her mother held Sophie in her arms.

  “Please don’t let anyone hurt her, okay? This isn’t her fault.”

  “I would never let anyone hurt Veronica, I promise.” Mark put a hand on Barb’s shoulder but, seeing Veronica’s movements, pointed to the door. “Hurry.”