I hand my coat to Alec and think of how my body does not feel like my own. My mind invaded by the voice and breasts full of milk my baby rejects and stomach scarred from the emergency surgery that saved us both. I hate myself for these thoughts. I want to be a woman who sees herself as strong because of what she’s endured. My body a tribute to the child wrapped against my chest.
At least you’re alive, you ungrateful bitch.
I heave at the double punch of guilt rising in my chest, threatening to burst through my eyes. Ester begins to cry, and I bounce quickly as Alec crosses the room. Misha ignores my efforts as she’s busy with her coffee. I watch them both for any reaction, and they spare me the judgmental looks.
They hear proof you were never meant to do this.
Finally, the crying stops, and I rush over. “I’m so sorry. She isn’t sleeping at night, and I’m just trying to—”
Alec blinks at me as if mystified. “We get it,” he says. “Emmett was a handful too.”
I relax a little and see Misha nodding. “It gets easier. Especially if you get help.”
“I don’t need help,” I say too loudly. “Sorry.”
Misha is smirking, that knowing look mothers who are on the other side of newborn life like to give the rest of us new-mom zombies.
“How are you doing?” I ask Alec calmly, approaching him where he’s slumped over the counter.
“We’re managing,” Misha answers. “That asshole detective keeps coming after Alec, but there’s not enough evidence.”
Not exactly a ringing endorsement, but I nod as if it’s a certainty.
Misha’s chin is in the air, her arms posed to the leanest lines. “Our new nanny is old and boring, which is who I should have hired in the first place. I’ll never let you make those kinds of decisions again,” she says to Alec. “Hot nannies are a plague with people like us,” she explains to me, though I don’t think I’m included in the “us.”
Likely she’s lumping herself in with Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner types.
Is Misha trying to imply Alec and Belina were sleeping together? I begin again. “Why do people think you killed Belina?”
“The East Side is full of assholes.” Misha punctuates the point by taking a loud sip of coffee. “We’re moving to Newport the second I can get this dump market ready and—”
“I’m the only suspect,” Alec says in a rush, frustration in his voice. “My lawyer says they don’t have enough to arrest me. Yet.”
“What do you think happened?” I ask Alec.
“She was probably meeting some boyfriend at the cemetery who killed her,” Misha answers. “Men kill women like that.”
“Kill women like what?” I snap.
“You’ve always been such a feminazi, Devon,” Misha says coolly, blinking her artificial lashes at me a few times as if she knows me. As if she was at Georgetown with us. As if she was more than Alec’s Newport townie girlfriend whose parents came into money in time for her to lock him down.
You’re an even bigger fraud.
A townie is a step up from white trash.
“Can you explain what you mean, Misha?” I say as nicely as I can, feeling guilty for my razor-wire thoughts.
“Belina was flirty,” she says. “Attractive for a Portuguese girl. I mean, it’s exotic to rich men with skinny blonde wives—”
“Stop it,” Alec murmurs. “You didn’t know her. Even if she was raising our child.”
“Like hell she was,” Misha says, spitting each word.
“She’s dead,” he says to the marble countertop. “Have some decency.”
Misha’s eyebrows rise despite the Botox shine of her forehead. “That’s perfect. You worry about the reputation of the dead nanny. I’ll worry how we’re going to make the mortgage without you working. It’s not like we can draw unemployment—”
“Stop it,” he says, louder this time.
“What’s going on with work?” I ask him. I pressured Jack’s uncle Cal to help Alec get a grant a few years ago. I hoped it worked out but didn’t really check.
You knew he’d fail.
“Nothing is going on,” Misha says. “That’s the problem. Another worthless idea like all the others.”
I glare at her. “Misha, that’s awful—”
“It’s fine, Devon,” Alec says. “I’ll be in jail soon enough. She can finally run back to her parents.”
“Maybe so,” Misha says softly, her gaze cast toward Alec, but he doesn’t notice.
It’d be easy to dismiss Misha as vapid or superficial, but I’ve always seen through her posturing. Because like Belina and me, she also set her sights on being someone else. Or at least, having the lifestyle to fit her attitude.
You’re jealous she’s succeeded: good mother, hot wife, perfect life.
You’ll never see one of those.
I watch Misha fiddle with her hair, pulling too hard at where her split ends used to be before she could afford regular cuts and colors and blowouts. She grew up poor, like me. When we first met, she told me stories after too many glasses of chardonnay. But when she was at Rhode Island College, her parents made a pile on some family property along the new interstate, and suddenly she was wealthy and looking to climb. It took a few years for her to make it into Alec’s circles, but soon she had the life she’d dreamed of: East Side address.
I can’t imagine how difficult it is, staring down being a single parent with nothing but an incarcerated husband and a mortgage. Your whole life disintegrating into something worse than what you had before. Worse than you ever thought possible.
I lived with that kind of change as a girl. Saw how truth altered the faces of my parents each time they saw me, a reminder of my accusations. I harnessed my fear of that life to get away from it. Away from that awful town full of people who looked the other way at the sight of me. Fear was the key to razing my life to make way for something new.
But what Misha and Alec have here is different. Misha is afraid of losing this life, which very much includes Alec, chairing galas, and VIP access to wine tastings on expansive Newport mansion lawns. It’s a life worth saving because it’s what she built. And there’s Emmett, who would know the regret and shame. Of the life they will lose if Alec goes away and Misha starts over.
As if you could help.
“How many times have you been questioned?” I say to Alec. “Did the police search the house?”
“Searched everything,” Alec says. “They found Belina’s blood in the trunk of the car.”
“Jesus, Alec,” I whisper. “How?”
“The stroller,” Misha says too quickly. “There was blood on the stroller and the floor of the trunk. I’m sure she mentioned cutting her arm when she put it in there.”
Her voice goes up, the way it does when conversation turns to college classes, and she’s overcompensating for her two-year degree.
“Hi, Devie!”
I shift toward the boy’s voice behind me. “Emmett,” I say as he springs into the room. I loved seeing him regularly for the past six months Belina and I were friends. He’s a little taller, his hair freshly cut, the curls still unruly, which I appreciate as a fellow curly-haired redhead. He’s in khakis and a red polo half-zip sweater, a preppy male version of Annie. “How are you, bud?”
“Good,” he says. He’s a smart three, direct and always observing. “We’re going to the library. For story hour. Do you want to go? You love story hour!”
I went several times with him and Belina, and I swallow thickly before I can answer. “Maybe next time.”
“Okay,” he says, shifting from foot to foot and back again. “Belina won’t go. She’s gone.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, my voice shaking.
“Oh yeah. She’s in heaven. She has a new family.” Emmett pulls at the thick collar of his sweater. “And there’s angels, right, Dada? They have big wings.”
I keep smiling, though I’m slightly horrified that even in her afterlife she’s looking after other pe
ople’s children. “That means she can watch over you,” I say finally.
“And Dada?”
“No,” Misha says sternly from across the room. “She’s busy with the angel babies.”
“She loves babies,” Emmett says to me. “Is that your baby?”
“Yes, her name is Ester. She’s sleeping.”
That dead woman would want you far from Emmett.
She always knew you’d make a terrible mother.
Now you’re proving how right she was to everyone.
Alec comes over and picks up his son, hugging him tight.
“Belina could have watched her,” Emmett says, wistful at the missed opportunity.
I nearly pull Ester out of her wrap so I can snuggle her close. Tears burn as I recognize their new nanny, Frances. She hurries into the room with a coat, backpack, and toy truck. She watched the Morris twins before they went to Jewish Community Day School in the fall. She would be at the same parks where Belina took Emmett. I often tagged along to observe children and parents, especially mothers, in action. Frances and I would exchange a look or two when Belina told us the latest Misha story. But there were good stories Belina shared about Alec as a father, which made me proud of him. Perhaps that was enough to persuade Frances to work for them.
“Ester has arrived,” I say to her. “Early.”
“I told you it’d all be fine,” Frances says, leaning close. “Is she sleeping? Can I see her?”
She’ll start crying, and Frances will know you’re a fraud.
She’ll tell all the other nannies, who will tell all the other mothers.
You’re cooked, girlie.
She’s lightly running a finger on Ester’s soft hat, and I pull back with intense panic. “Next time,” I say. “She’s not a good sleeper. Her days and nights are confused, I think.”
Frances gives me a sympathetic tip of the head as she adjusts her grip on the backpack, shoving the toy car inside. “She’ll grow out of it. Takes time.”
“He’s going to be late,” Misha says from across the room. “Love you, Emmett.”
His round face turns to his mother. I see the longing. The wish of love given differently, more.
Ester will look at you the same way.
You’re never gonna be what she needs.
“I miss her too,” Frances says to me. She reaches into her coat pocket and hands me a tissue from a small pack. I’m embarrassed to be crying again and can only nod. She squeezes my hand before returning to Emmett. “Let’s get your coat on, boss.”
Alec helps his son into his blue plaid Patagonia puffer, then crouches down to zip it up and hug him again.
Emmett nuzzles into the embrace, then takes Frances’s hand. His grin is toothy and wide, the glow from time with his dad lingering. “See ya, Devie. Bye, Devie’s baby!”
He hops to the entryway. Frances laughs lightly as he drags her along for the ride.
The door slams, and I don’t hesitate, putting myself squarely in Alec’s face. “You cannot go to jail. It will destroy him.”
His lower jaw sticks out, then quivers. “I know,” he mumbles as Misha lets out an exasperated grunt.
This sad-sack man is my friend, but that doesn’t change the times he’s frustrated me too. I know why I love him as a friend. How he helped me more than survive college but really thrive. Find happiness and freedom that on some level I hadn’t thought I deserved. If I’m honest, I sometimes think he was my friend because I had no qualms about helping him with his homework, all his homework.
But maybe that’s not fair. There are complex reasons for the friends we choose and when we choose them or they choose us. Perhaps I meant as much to Alec as he meant to me.
He’s always been open with me. I’ve seen heartbroken Alec at least a dozen times. Inactive Alec more times than I can count. From missed dinner reservations to ignored girlfriends to his senior thesis, he was always bumbling through, making it all work somehow. Honestly, he drives Jack crazy. But I owe my present life to this crying man accused of murder. Somehow, knowing Alec as I do, his current situation doesn’t feel as shocking as it should.
Standing next to him, I squeeze his hand. “Have the detectives told you anything?”
“You know how they build cases,” he says.
He’s right. Detectives aren’t even forthcoming with witnesses, let alone suspects. Alec won’t know anything until he’s behind bars and learning it from his lawyer.
Misha narrows her eyes at him from across the counter. “His alibi is the problem,” she says. “He was getting drunk at Ivy Tavern, but no one remembers him there. He paid cash for once in his life. The cop cameras on Hope Street were malfunctioning. It’s Alec’s word against, well, no one’s.”
Alec licks at his bottom lip, the sweat on his forehead a sheen in the pendant light over the counter. It’s as if we’re taking the bar again, and he’s as unprepared as before. Knowing he’ll fail but not being able to stop himself from doing what’s expected, believing it will all be okay.
Ester begins to stir and make those small, prescream noises. “I need to feed her,” I say, taking a step back. “Can we talk later?”
He hears her.
He knows she’s waking up scared of her terrible mother.
“Let me get your coat,” Alec says and follows me to the door.
He helps me into it, and his hand lingers on my arm. We stand in the dark entryway. I bounce Ester, trying to get her to sleep a bit more.
He takes a deep breath. “Can you do anything? You worked some tough cases in DC, right?”
You got run outta that job.
I could have helped him. Once. But every edge of reality is fuzzy. The control over my emotions tenuous. “Having this baby . . . it’s been difficult,” I say. “I’m not sleeping . . . she cries a lot. We both do.”
“They’re going to arrest me,” he says. “That damn blood.”
“The blood could be circumstantial,” I hear myself say, old gears from my first job in DC, which dealt with criminal evidence, turning suddenly in my mind. “If they don’t have a good motive.” I pause, waiting for him to look me in the eyes. “You weren’t sleeping with Belina?”
He glances away, across the sunken living room at Misha. Her back to us in the kitchen. “I didn’t cheat . . . I cared about her, but it wasn’t like, you know, an affair kind of thing.” Alec finds my gaze again. “I’d never hurt her.”
Belina didn’t mention anything inappropriate about Alec. She hardly mentioned him at all, other than a few stories about what a great father he was. She asked me lots of questions about him, our friendship. But I thought she was only curious about her employer.
Were you even looking that hard?
So obsessed with your pregnancy you ignored the truth.
“It’s the loneliness that’s hardest,” he says. “People staring. I hate leaving the house. But I hate having to stay in.”
I take his hand, the understanding a groundswell in my chest. “I saw Belina,” I say finally, out loud for the first time. “The day she was killed. She wanted to meet up that afternoon. My contractions started right after. I walked around until evening, trying to work through it, until I collapsed. I almost died having Ester. Then Belina did.”
“Oh my God,” he says, his eyes wide. “The same day? I didn’t know you almost . . . that it was so serious.”
He knows it should have been you.
The wrong life was taken.
You never should have lived.
Alec lets out a puff of breath. “But you saw Belina that day? Did she say anything about me?” he asks with hope, not fear.
I shake my head because it was a strange conversation. The whole interaction was fractured and fuzzy after the trauma of what followed.
“You should talk to the police,” Alec says. “They didn’t seem to know much about what she did on that last day. Or any day, really.”
He’s right. I may be one of the last people to see her alive. And when we met
, I could sense something was wrong.
Alec is frowning at my silence. “Was she upset?”
“Yeah,” I whisper. “I think she knew something was going to happen.”
Alec squeezes his eyes shut, and his chin crinkles. “Why did this happen to us?”
I picture the bench where we sat, skin against skin. I see her glance at the river before she carried a clinging Emmett toward his afternoon story time. But there was something else. My fingers curl at the memory, not of touching her skin but of what was left behind on the bench we’d shared.
“What is it?” Alec whispers. “What did she say to you?”
It wasn’t words. Her day planner. She left it behind, and I didn’t notice until she was gone. The ER nurse bagged the yellow book with my purse. It should still be in there.
“I can help you,” I say with a certainty I don’t have but will need to resurrect.
“How?” he whispers.
“Trust me,” I say because I don’t have time to take his hand. Belina is reaching out for mine.
Chapter 5
What a terrible friend.
Forgetting that dead woman’s journal.
You’ll never be able to help Alec.
Never keep this baby alive.
I kick over empty flowerpots outside the sunporch, desperate to find the back door key. Ester is screaming, a wail made worse outside. I can almost feel the neighbors glaring out their windows, wondering why I can’t keep her happy. Their fingers itching to call Jack or maybe child services.
At last the key falls to the concrete with a tinny clink, and I shudder back tears. I gently squat to the ground, holding Ester tight against me. Key in hand, I hurry up the stairs. The glass door slams behind me as I move swiftly toward the living room.
Ignoring my tight nerves at the prospect of unwrapping her, I arrange several pillows into a nest on the floor. I untie the knot Jack made at my waist with one hand, pressing the other hand against Ester. The fabric slowly unwinds from my body as her wail reaches a new volume. I jump at the piercing sound, bobble her, but recover, clutching her tight in my trembling arms.
Little Voices Page 4