by Baby Grand
Jamie practically fell into the small room and shut the door behind her, pressing her back against it. It was warm inside; she was grateful for it and almost didn't notice Reynaldo standing stunned behind the counter.
"Can you help us?" she asked.
In her arms, to Reynaldo's immense surprise, was Charlotte Grand.
"Do you know this little girl?" she asked.
Reynaldo nodded, looking at the wet, filthy, bruised woman standing in his office. "What happened to you?"
"I need to call the police," Jamie said.
A pair of headlights flashed across the front windows. "Don't move," she said, adjusting her body so that she was unnoticeable from the outside. "Pretend I'm not here. Look at your papers."
Reynaldo did as Jamie told him. He moved his head down until the headlights were gone.
"Can I use your phone?" Jamie asked.
"The power is out," Reynaldo said, motioning to the lantern hanging above them. "It's running on battery."
"Do you have a cell?"
"Yes, but the service has been touch and go for the last couple of hours," Reynaldo said. "I can drive you to the police station."
Jamie had an overwhelming desire not to leave, to stay in this warm, dingy office in the middle of nowhere with this tall man with the long, curly hair and the kind eyes until the power came back on, but she knew Bailino would be looking for her, and she had to keep going.
Reynaldo sensed her indecision. "You're safe here," he said, coming out from behind the counter.
"Please, wait..." Jamie held out her hand.
"Okay, okay. I'm staying here." Reynaldo put his hands in the air. "I'm not going to hurt you. I'm not."
The tears poured from Jamie's eyes, the kind of powerful tears that a child who has been trying to be brave cries after an ordeal is over. She held up Charlotte. "I don't think she's okay anymore. I think she's sick." Jamie sucked in air. "She hasn't been moving. I don't know what to do."
"I'm coming over, okay?"
Jamie nodded.
Reynaldo slowly approached and put his hand on the little girl's chest. "She's breathing all right," he said, "but you're not. Let me take her."
"I'm not letting her go."
"But I know her."
"But I don't know you," Jamie said. "Please, if you're going to drive us, we need to go now. Where's your car?"
"It's right outside. By the curb. I'll get it and bring it to the door..."
"No," Jamie said. "Please don't leave me."
"I won't," Reynaldo said. And he meant it. "We'll go out together."
"Wait, I'm not ready." The thought of going back outside frightened her, and she began to choke.
"Are you all right? Do you want something to drink?"
"Yes, if you have..."
"What would you like?"
"Anything."
Reynaldo ran to the back of the room and stooped down to open the small fridge he kept stowed under the counter. It was Nada's job to keep it stocked for the customers, and, against his better judgment, he hoped that it would be. He swung the door open and found a half-used quart of milk, a leftover cheese sandwich, and an unopened can of Yoo-Hoo.
"Does this work?" he asked, holding up the Yoo-Hoo.
"That's fine."
Reynaldo jumped up on top of the counter and grabbed the lantern.
"Can you turn that off?" Jamie asked, peering outside the front window.
"Sure." Reynaldo turned off the lantern, the room went black, and Jamie felt as if she were again in the woods, alone, running.
"Take my hand," Reynaldo said.
Reynaldo waited in the dark, hand outstretched, but he didn't feel anything.
"It's okay," he said. "I'm going to help you."
He felt her hand press into his palm, and he tightened his fingers over it and opened the front door.
There were no approaching headlights. Everything was still, quiet. Reynaldo locked the shop door and pulled Jamie behind him toward his car. He clicked open the locks, which caused the car's interior light to go on, and he opened the passenger's-side door for Jamie, tossing his aunt's pocketbook, which she had forgotten, into the backseat. By the time Reynaldo got around to the other side, Jamie had turned Charlotte around so that she was sitting with her back toward Jamie's chest.
"Can I have the Yoo-Hoo, please?" she asked.
Reynaldo shook it and handed it to Jamie, who opened it and put it near Charlotte's mouth. She maneuvered the can opening so that it was against the girl's lips, which were unresponsive, and began to pour. Chocolate liquid spilled over Charlotte's mouth and clothes, but a few drops had gone in, because Charlotte coughed and pushed the can away.
"Please, honey, drink," Jamie said, bringing the Yoo-Hoo again to her mouth. Her hand was shaking, and Reynaldo reached over to help steady the can.
"Carlota," Reynaldo said, gently. "Carlota..."
Charlotte's eyes opened, tiny slits of recognition, and she turned toward Reynaldo's face. Jamie put the can to her mouth. "Drink, baby, drink." But when Jamie poured, the liquid spilled again.
"Oh my God," Jamie said.
"Espera!" Reynaldo reached into the back seat and pulled Miss Beatrice out of his aunt's bag. "Carlota... Mira!"
The little girl's eyes opened and then grew wide at the sight of Miss Beatrice.
"MaBa..." the little girl said softly. "MaBa, MaBa..." Charlotte patted the doll's hair and rested it across her belly.
Jamie stared at Reynaldo in disbelief. "Who are you?" she asked.
"A friend," Reynaldo said and pulled into the street.
Chapter 54
Phillip looked at the clock on his nightstand: 11:00 p.m. Time was running out. He had been lying in bed for the past few hours with the telephone in his hand, trying to decide what he'd say when they picked up the phone at Stanton. He'd never stayed an execution before, so this was going to be big news, and he envisioned the rampant speculation on the next day's news hours when Charlotte turned up unharmed hours later. Nothing he could say seemed believable or convincing enough, especially for a vocal, stalwart, card-carrying conservative like Phillip Grand.
The Executive Mansion was running on auxiliary power, and for a brief moment that afternoon, when the lights blinked off and then on again, Phillip thought the execution would have to be postponed and was terrified at the prospect of not knowing what that meant for his daughter's safety. But he realized that Stanton prison, even if on the same power grid as Albany County, also had supplementary electrical systems in place. The court-sanctioned killing of Gino Cataldi would go on as scheduled.
All afternoon, Lieutenant Governor Waxman Tanner had issued hourly press statements about the blackout and when power would be restored, as Phillip lay under his blankets, like a little boy who had been told to go to his room and think about what he'd done to deserve what was happening to him. Katherine had stopped in once or twice to check on him, carrying a sandwich both times, but he was standoffish and curt, and she took the hint, putting the meal trays on the table and leaving. They were still there untouched, the bread hard, the mayo soured, as Phillip had only one thing on his mind: Don Bailino.
Over the years, Phillip had watched Don rise up the ranks of the local business scene, but always from a distance. Following their discharge from the army in 1992, he and Don, having grown very close during their time in the service, had tossed around the idea of getting an apartment together downstate in one of the outlying boroughs of New York City. The idea had intrigued Phillip, who'd yearned for an adventure, a life away from the Grand legacy, but his father wouldn't hear of it.
"Do you know who that fellow's family is?" he had said. "Who they associate with?"
Phillip did know. Don had told him. They had talked about lots of things in the extreme heat of the constant desert sun when they thought that they would drop from fatigue, when they thought that they may not live to see another day. Still, feeling the pressure of being an only heir, Phillip obeyed his father. He
and Don had that in common—they felt that overpowering need to make their fathers happy, two capable men trapped within a course that had been predetermined, including their enlistment in the military.
From that point on, the relationship had strayed. Years passed, and the contact dwindled. On the night Phillip was elected to the state assembly, his assistant had tapped him on the shoulder to tell him he had a call. "Who is it?" Phillip asked, champagne glass in hand. "Don Bailino," she said. A wave of nervousness overcame him. "Take his number, and tell him I'll call him back," he told her. But he never did. He'd kept that telephone number, scribbled on a piece of paper, in his desk drawer for years until he finally threw it away; he hadn't seen it again until it popped up on his caller ID two nights ago.
Although their paths hadn't crossed until Wednesday, it would be a lie to say that Phillip didn't think of Don often—he'd been an important influence on Phillip during the years they served together. It was Don who had counseled him when he'd hesitate during a shooting exercise at boot camp. "The people who die are supposed to die," he'd say. It was Don who pushed him to make a decision based on instinct rather than knowledge, a concept foreign to Phillip. Ever since, Don Bailino remained, hovering in the background of his life, silently influencing his political decision making, until Gino Cataldi decided to kill a fellow inmate while in prison, making him eligible for the death penalty—a core issue of Phillip's ascendance to the governorship. Phillip had pushed hard for capital punishment in the Cataldi case—harder than he ever had—and most political pundits assumed it had been to make good on the campaign promises that had gotten him elected. But Philip always wondered if part of the reason he doggedly pursued Gino's case was to banish the ghost of the man who, while once his friend and confidant, always made him feel like the lesser man in the room. On paper, Don Bailino had nothing on Phillip Grand—he dropped out of high school, lived a life on the streets in a forgotten section of Brooklyn, had a police record with a string of minor offenses—but in reality he was quite an extraordinary man. After all, it was Don Bailino who had saved his life in Iraq, a feat for which he earned the Army Medal of Honor, and as he lay in bed, Phillip also wondered if his taking on the Cataldi case was, at heart, some kind of perverse desire to see his old friend again. Although Bailino had visited Cataldi countless times at Stanton according to the prison logs, he never showed up in the courtroom or tried to contact Phillip after that phone call he made to his state assembly headquarters that first election night.
Since then, Phillip went out of his way to avoid crossing paths with his old friend, and he wasn't sure if it was out of embarrassment or fear. When Don's new Upackk factory opened last year and had gotten accolades not only from the trade but from Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design—a big to-do in today's eco-friendly world—Phillip had feigned a conflict and sent Tanner in his place for the recognition ceremony. Don was doing very well for himself, and although there was a part of Phillip that was competitive and jealous, for the most part he was glad. In the absence of a true relationship, with his only knowledge of Don Bailino coming from local or trade-press clippings or what he could glean online, Phillip found himself conjuring a new life for Don in his mind, one of the self-made businessman who was free from the constraints of his childhood and familial obligations. Phillip fantasized that Don had managed to do what he couldn't—escape the leash of his father. He imagined Don visiting old Gino Cataldi in prison more as an act of paying homage to his father than a harbinger of illegal activity, as the Feds would have him believe. Phillip was well aware that the government was keeping a close eye on Upackk and all of Don Bailino's business dealings, but until this point they had found nothing, and Phillip took that as a good sign that Don had left the bad behind. He probably would have lived the rest of his life under that delusion if he had not received that phone call Tuesday night.
Phillip got out of bed and walked toward Charlotte's nursery. The entrance had been cordoned off with crime-scene tape. He stuck his arm through, flicked the wall light switch, and peered into the empty room. The stuffed animals of the mobile over the crib, usually rocking in a gentle breeze, were still, the window closed. The familiar smell of baby powder and Desitin was faint.
He pulled the tape off the wall, each strand floating down and hanging along the doorframe, and stepped into the room. Out the window, he saw that the rain had stopped, and the picketers had grown in numbers as the clock ticked closer to midnight. Phillip watched the to-and-fro of the throng of people, thought of how small everyone looked from this high up, and wondered how Don had managed to pull this off. Had someone in the mansion betrayed him? He still didn't know.
A scuffle broke out among the picketers, resulting in a shoving match between two young women, one of whom was holding a sign that read, Governor Grand: Can you live with this?
Could he?
Phillip picked up a framed picture that was sitting on a small table next to the crib. It was a photo he had taken of his wife and daughter immediately after the birth, at the moment the doctor had placed Charlotte on Katherine's belly for the first time. Katherine hated the photo—"Look at me," she'd said, "I look so fat"—and only kept it there because of Phillip's insistence.
"Katherine," Phillip muttered to himself, as he placed the frame back down. He thought about what his wife would say about the last-minute stay of execution. She'd know if he placed the call that something was wrong, and she wouldn't let it go until she knew what. And he could never tell her, because she wouldn't be quiet, she wouldn't sit on the sidelines and watch Don Bailino go unprosecuted for the kidnapping of her daughter. It would be a wedge between them for the rest of their lives, and that's assuming they would be lucky enough to live them.
"Phillip?"
Katherine was standing in the doorway to Charlotte's room. She held up her hand, which held the baby-monitor receiver; the transmitter was located near the crib, next to the photo he'd picked up.
"I thought I heard you call me," she said to her husband who, standing there in her daughter's room, looked sadder than Katherine had ever seen him.
Phillip opened his arms, that familiar, welcoming gesture he always made toward her, and Katherine ran into his arms.
"I'm sorry," Katherine whispered into her husband's ear.
"I told you. Nothing to be sorry about," Phillip said.
"It doesn't look good, does it, Phillip?" She held him tightly.
"Have hope, honey."
Katherine pulled away. "I do need to tell you something," she said.
Phillip looked at his watch: forty-five more minutes.
"Can it wait?"
Katherine shook her head.
"What is it?" Phillip sat down on the rocking chair.
Katherine held onto the crib. "This is difficult to say..." She took a deep breath. "A few months ago, I attended the opening of the Lystretta Gallery downtown. I'm not sure if you remember... You were committed to a dinner of some kind, and I'm not even sure I put it on your agenda. The place is so tiny, and it wasn't even that impressive of an exhibit, actually, but the owner of the gallery, Jim Lystretta, is a board member of the New York State Council of the Arts, and you're not the biggest arts supporter, so I thought I should make an appearance and dragged Maddox with me. Anyway, I had had a bad day, the teachers' union had been on my back, and I was in a foul mood, and..." She took another breath. "I was standing there looking at a digital painting, and... this man came over, and we started talking."
"Who?"
The vivid image of Don Bailino flashed through Katherine's memory, but she shook her head; she just couldn't tell him that part yet. "It doesn't matter. He just came up to me and introduced himself politely and started talking about that detestable artwork. We talked for about thirty minutes that night, far longer than I ever expected to stay there. And when we parted, he said that he enjoyed chatting with me and hoped he'd see me again sometime." Katherine frowned. "It seems so silly now."
Phillip shuffled his
feet. "What are you saying, Katherine?"
"I'm saying that..." She paused. "I'm... saying... that..."
"Are you telling me you had an affair?"
"No, I did not." She looked Phillip in the eye. "I. Did. Not."
"Then what are you saying?"
"I'm saying that it was... unexpectedly... nice."
"All right," Phillip said. "So you had a conversation with a man in an art gallery, and you liked it." He smiled. "Katherine, that's okay."
"But that's not all."
"It's not?" Phillip's smile faded.
"A few days later, he called the switchboard and asked for me and left his number. I called him back from my cell phone, and we talked a bit. Although I wasn't doing anything wrong, I knew it was wrong. It felt wrong. He asked if I'd like to meet him for lunch. Apparently, there was another gallery opening somewhere."
"What did you say?"
"I told him no."
"Did you want to go?" Phillip fumbled with the phone in his hands.
Katherine shook her head.
"But you liked him?"
Katherine shrugged her shoulders. "I think I liked the attention." She crouched down in front of her husband. "You know, most men are afraid of me... I can't imagine why."
Phillip laughed.
"I love you, Phillip. I just need you to know that. You do know that, don't you?"
Phillip nodded. "Yes, and I've loved you from the moment you stormed into my life." He kissed his wife on the mouth. "Maybe it's my fault. Since Charlotte came..."
"It doesn't matter," she said. Under normal circumstances, Phillip volunteering to shoulder the blame for another person's indiscretions would infuriate Katherine, but this time, when those indiscretions had been her own, she felt comforted and protected. "As long as we can get past this."