The Secret Life of CeeCee Wilkes

by Diane Chamberlain

  “Everyone thinks that,” CeeCee said.

  “Cory’s tiny, so I guess it wasn’t too bad for you,” Marian said. “I’ll leave that up to you, then. If you change your mind, there’s a wonderful woman OB in town you can go to. She’s at a clinic, too, so it costs a pittance. Could even be free, if you don’t have any money, and I’m guessing you don’t.”

  “I have a hundred dollars,” she said. “I could help buy food or—”

  “No, you hold on to your money, okay? I have all the money I need. I do day care because I love children, not because I need the money. Speaking of which, I don’t want you to help me with my day-care kids right away, either. I think you need to take care of you first. You seem a little shell-shocked right now.”

  “I’m just…” She smiled weakly. “I guess that’s a good description.”

  She wanted to tell Marian the truth. Marian would understand, and she would know a way to get the baby to the governor. But she didn’t have the energy to go into it all and Marian had made it clear she didn’t want to know. CeeCee felt as if she were being swept along by a current she no longer had the will to stop.

  Marian put her in a bedroom wallpapered with huge pink cabbage roses that reminded CeeCee of one of the foster homes she’d lived in. One of the good foster homes, where her stay had been cut all too short by the sudden illness of the foster mother. The room had a double bed, a mauve-colored contemporary upholstered chair that seemed out of place in the house, and a six-drawer dresser. Marian moved a second bassinet into the room from somewhere else on the second floor.

  “She’s been sleeping in bed with me,” CeeCee said.

  Marian looked as though she might want to say something about that, but bit her lip. “We’ll put the bassinet right next to your bed, then,” she said. “Keep her close and safe at the same time.”

  Marian ran a bubble bath for her in a deep claw-foot tub, and CeeCee pinned her hair on top of her head and sank into the lavender-scented water with relief. She’d fed and changed Cory, and Marian was rocking her to sleep in the living room. For the first time in days, she felt calm, and she leaned her head back against the tub and closed her eyes.

  She was soaping herself when she heard the jangle of Marian’s doorbell. She froze, holding the washcloth against her neck. Listening hard, she heard voices. A man’s. A woman’s. The police?

  She scrambled out of the tub, barely drying herself before pulling on her jeans and sweater. By the time she ran down the stairs, she was certain Cory had been taken away by the police. That was what she’d wanted a few hours ago; now the thought was unbearable.

  Marian sat reading on the living-room sofa, and she looked surprised when CeeCee raced into the room in her bare feet.

  “What on earth’s the matter, honey?” Marian asked.

  “Where’s Cory?”

  “Sound asleep.” Marian nodded toward the bassinet in the corner.

  CeeCee peered into the bassinet and saw the baby, asleep beneath a soft, pink blanket. She grabbed the edge of the bassinet to keep from toppling over, light-headed from the hot bath and fear. She felt Marian’s hand on her back.

  “What is it, Eve?” Marian asked.

  “I heard someone at the door. A man’s voice. Who was it?”

  “A neighbor,” Marian said. “He saw my lights on and wanted to be sure I was all right.”

  “It wasn’t…” She didn’t dare mention the police. “It wasn’t someone looking for me?” She examined Marian’s face for the truth.

  “No, honey.” Marian nearly chuckled. “You’re safe with me. I’ve lived here forever. People think I’m the guardian angel of the neighborhood. The widow lady they can turn to with any problem. I’m not.” Marian laughed. “But they think I am, and that’s what counts. You’ll come to trust me in time. You just need to relax.”

  “I do trust you.” She glanced at the window, where the shades were wide-open, exposing her to the world. “I was just afraid they might have followed me. That maybe they’d take Cory away.”

  “You have that protective instinct new mothers get,” Marian said. “Isn’t it wonderful? It’s a hormonal thing.”

  I doubt that, CeeCee thought to herself. “It’s just that I love her so much,” she said honestly.

  “Of course you do.” Marian nodded.

  “I’ll…” CeeCee lowered herself to the straight-backed chair next to the bassinet. “I’ll just sit with her for a while, okay?”

  Marian nodded. “Sure,” she said, and she walked into the kitchen as though she knew CeeCee needed some time alone with the baby.

  CeeCee’s heart still pumped against her rib cage as she held on to the edge of the bassinet. What if the police had taken her away? Wouldn’t that be the best thing for her? It didn’t matter if she loved her; the baby’s welfare had to come first.

  “What should I do, Sweet Pea?” she whispered.

  She looked into the bassinet, where Cory moved her lips and wrinkled her nose, lost in the peace of a baby dream.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Within days, she became Eve Bailey. Marian introduced her as Eve to the parents of her day-care charges and to a couple of neighbors who stopped by to meet the new houseguest. She felt very young, meeting the adults in Marian’s world, much as she had on her first visit to Naomi and Forrest’s house, when she’d been more comfortable with Dahlia than with the grown-ups.

  She was grateful that Marian didn’t want her help with the day-care children right away, since she was more tired than she’d expected, the events of the previous couple of weeks catching up with her. Cory needed her attention every few hours, even during the night, and Eve’s scattered, nightmare-filled sleep left her dazed and forgetful. She now understood how a mother could get to the end of her rope and wind up hurting a child, and yet she knew she would never be that sort of mother. Even in the middle of the night, she could see straight through Cory’s crying to the distress behind it, and all she wanted was to ease the baby’s discomfort.

  There was one other thing she wanted—she needed—and that was to know where things stood with Tim and Marty and the governor. Marian had a small television set in the living room, which she rarely watched, and Eve felt too new in the house to ask if she could turn it on.

  On the fourth morning after her arrival, though, she was eating breakfast in the kitchen, Cory asleep in her sling, when Marian walked into the room and set a folded newspaper, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, on the other side of the table. Eve stared at the paper, her fingers itching to open it. Would the story be covered in a Virginia paper? It had been nearly a week since Naomi had spoken to Tim. She had to know what was going on.

  Marian bustled around the kitchen as she waited for her day-care children to arrive. She talked about the hassle she’d had getting a permit to convert her garage to a playroom. She talked about the neighborhood—she’d lived there for forty years—and she described the nearby park where parents took their children in the afternoon. “When Cory’s a little older, we can take her over there,” she said. Eve tried to sprinkle appropriate comments throughout Marian’s chatter, but all she could think about was opening the paper.

  The doorbell jangled.

  Marian grabbed a bottle of juice from the counter and a stack of small, plastic cups. “Take it easy today,” she said. “I’ll herd the kids right out to the playroom, so if you need anything, that’s where I’ll be.”

  “Thanks,” Eve said. She heard Marian greet one of the parents at the front door. Small feet thundered in the foyer. A child spoke in a soft voice, while another growled like an animal. Then the front door closed and all was quiet. She reached for the newspaper.

  The article was on the front page, topped by the headline Russell Still Optimistic. Eve read it through twice, barely breathing. There seemed no doubt in anyone’s mind that Timothy and Martin Gleason were responsible for the disappearance of Genevieve Russell. The brothers’ last contact with the governor had been on Thursday morning, four day
s ago. Authorities had so far been unsuccessful at finding the men. There was a quote from Peter Gleason, Tim’s father. “I’m in shock,” he said. “My sons were destroyed by Andie’s imprisonment, but I still can’t believe they would do something like this. I’m hoping it’s a mistake, and I’m praying for the safe return of Mrs. Russell.” The article described Marty’s psychological problems since his tour of duty in Vietnam and stated that Tim was a graduate student in the Social Work Department at the University of North Carolina. A professor at UNC was quoted as saying that, while Tim was intelligent and studious, “he was consumed by a passionate obsession with our penal system, to the extent that he was not completing assignments in unrelated courses and probably would not have received his Master’s in Social Work in the spring.”

  Oh, Tim. She thought of how hard he’d worked, the books spread out on the table in the coffee shop. She’d never realized that his focus had been entirely on his sister. She wished she’d known. Maybe she could have talked to him about it. If he’d opened up to her, maybe she could have found a way to prevent this tragedy from happening. Her heart ached for him all over again.

  The governor had refused to release Andrea Gleason, of course. He has integrity, Genevieve had said. He said he was still hoping for a “good outcome” and that he felt hopeful his wife and unborn child were alive and safe. There was a picture of him, and Eve carefully avoided looking at it as she read the article. She held her breath, expecting to see the name CeeCee Wilkes at any moment, but it was not there. The authorities seemed to think the brothers acted alone. Or maybe they did know about her and were playing their cards close to their vests, hoping she would begin to feel safe enough to come out of hiding. Maybe they even knew where she was. She imagined the police following her tire tracks from the cabin to Naomi and Forrest’s house, breaking down their door in the middle of the night and questioning them under bare lightbulbs until they cracked and told them they’d sent her to live with Marian Kazan.

  The governor’s eyes drew her to his picture before she had a chance to think. She’d seen his face in the papers and on TV, but she’d never paid much attention to him before. He looked young for a politician, with a slender build and a full head of dark blond hair, and he stood alone in front of five or six microphones. There were deep hollows in his cheeks and bags beneath his eyes. She touched his picture with her fingertips.

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

  She lowered her gaze to the sling and Cory. The baby sucked two of her tiny fingers. Her eyes were closed but she raised her eyebrows every once in a while, as if an idea had just come to her.

  “I need to get you to your daddy,” Eve said, but even as the words left her mouth, she knew she didn’t mean them. She wouldn’t try again. She could rationalize her inaction out of concern for Tim, Marty, Naomi and Forrest, but it was more than that. Every day, the bond between her and the baby was growing more complex and unbreakable. Everyone—Marian, her day-care parents, the neighbors—thought Cory was hers, and she was coming to believe the lie herself.

  She still cried every single day. She had not really cried, not this way, since the months after her mother’s death. She’d developed a strength that had gotten her through the years in foster care. She needed to find a new kind of toughness now and wasn’t sure how to do it. “Your bladder’s near your eyes,” Marian said to her one day, and it took her a few minutes to understand her meaning.

  She felt dumb, too. Not like the girl who had performed well in school and whose intelligence Tim had admired. She was someone who’d gotten involved in a terrible crime and had allowed—maybe even caused—a woman to die. Someone who’d failed to get an infant to her father and had set off a police car alarm. What had she been thinking? Of course that car would have an alarm. She was someone who couldn’t think straight to save her life.

  Plus, she felt like an incompetent mother. I’m only sixteen, she kept saying to herself as she struggled to take care of the baby. If she were older, she thought, the skills she needed would come naturally to her. She couldn’t master the disposable diapers Marian gave her. Cory hated being changed and screamed the entire time, making Eve so anxious that she’d get the tape tabs stuck to the baby’s knees and shoulders and hands. One terrible night, she was so tired when she heated Cory’s bottle that she must not have screwed the lid on tightly. She brought the baby into her bed to feed, and when she turned the bottle upside down, the formula spilled all over Cory’s face. Eve grabbed the baby and ran to Marian’s room, terrified that Cory would inhale the formula or be blinded by having it in her eyes.

  She woke Marian up in tears.

  “I can’t do anything right!” she said. “I’m afraid she’s going to die because I’m such a stupid mother!”

  She knew that the older woman was trying not to laugh as she helped her clean up the mess. Marian didn’t know how deep Eve’s fears went, though, how she lay awake at night, going over the steps Naomi had taught her for baby CPR and peering into the bassinet to listen for Cory’s breathing.

  The next day, Eve taped the lid on every bottle she fed the baby.

  “You know,” Marian said as she watched Eve feeding Cory with a bottle half-covered in masking tape, “why don’t you switch to the bottles with the disposable liners? I have some that I use for the baby I take care of sometimes.” She went to the kitchen, returning with a hollow plastic bottle and a nearly empty roll of liners. “It’s so easy to use, and better for the baby, because she won’t swallow as much air. You know how she gets those air bubble pains sometimes?”

  Eve nodded.

  Marian pulled the last liner from the roll, showing her how to open it and fit it into the bottle. Eve transferred the formula to the new bottle and screwed the lid ring on tightly. She tipped the bottle up and Cory latched on easily, even though the nipple was a very different design.

  “I swear,” Marian said, “that baby is the best eater I’ve ever seen.”

  “She’s wonderful,” Eve said. She looked at the empty roll of liners. “I’ll buy some of these today.”

  “I’ve got another whole box of them in the cupboard next to the fridge,” Marian said. “You’re welcome to them.”

  Marian was at the grocery store when Cory next needed to be fed. Eve found the box of liners, but couldn’t get the first one open. She tried to remember how Marian did it; it had seemed so simple. She tried a second liner, then a third, as Cory screamed from the bassinet in the living room. By the time Marian returned from the store, the counter was littered with dozens of unopened liners and Eve had tears pouring down her cheeks as she once again taped the lid to the glass bottle she’d brought with her.

  “What’s going on?” Marian set the grocery bags down on the counter.

  “I can’t even get these stupid liners to work!” Eve said. “And Cory’s starving to death.”

  Marian picked up one of the liners, frowning as she tried to open it. “There’s something wrong with this one,” she said. She picked up another. “These are…they’re fused together. This must be a defective roll.”

  Eve stared at her. “You mean it’s not just me?”

  Marian reached into one of the grocery bags and pulled out another box of liners. “Try these, honey,” she said.

  Eve opened the box, pulled out a liner, opened it and fit it into the bottle. She looked at the masterpiece she’d created. “I thought I was just screwing up again,” she said, wiping her cheeks with the back of her hand.

  Marian put an arm around her shoulders. “You’re doing a wonderful job with her, Eve,” she said softly.

  She felt the warmth of Marian’s body against hers and wished she could lay her head on the older woman’s shoulder, close her eyes and stay like that for the rest of the day.

  The next couple of weeks at Marian’s house were a whirlwind of activity and emotions. Marian swept her into helping with the children, and while she was playing with them, she felt moments of actual joy. She could forget Genevieve d
uring her busy days and stop thinking about how deeply she missed Tim. At night, though, she was consumed by them both. In the few hours of sleep she was able to get between feedings, she dreamed of Genevieve. The woman’s face, smeared with blood, stared up at her from the bed in the cabin. You stole my baby, she’d say. You killed me and then you stole my baby.

  When she’d try to fall back to sleep, she longed for Tim. She missed talking to him and being close to him. She hated that her memory of their last night together was tarnished by her stupid fake orgasm. Why had she done that? She worried, too, that he blamed her for what happened with Genevieve, which in turn had hurt his chance to get his sister off death row.

  She fantasized that Naomi would tell him where she was living now and he would come for her. Sometimes, when she was outside, she’d spot a white Ford van and her heart would race as she tried to see the driver. The likelihood that he would still be driving that van was slim, but she couldn’t stop herself from looking for it each time she stepped out the door of Marian’s house.

  She missed her quiet, easy, goal-centered life in Chapel Hill; her job at the coffee shop, where she’d see the same faces of the same students day in and day out; the little room she’d shared with Ronnie; the big box stuffed with her mother’s letters.

  Yet if she were still in Chapel Hill, if none of this had happened, she wouldn’t have Cory.

  The temperature warmed up considerably in the afternoons, and on sunny days she’d help Marian bundle the two-year-old boys into a double stroller, while she swaddled Cory in blankets and placed her in a carriage Marian provided. Then, along with the quiet and serious little four-year-old girl, they’d walk to a park where five mothers gathered with their young children, pushing them on swings and exchanging information about diapers and rashes and first words and sleep problems. Three of the mothers were the wives of graduate students; the remaining two were students themselves. They all seemed to know and like Marian, and while they were courteous to Eve, she had the feeling they talked about her behind her back. She was years younger than any of them, and she both looked and felt it. They probably wondered who Cory’s father was and why Eve hadn’t had an abortion and, of course, why she lived with Marian.