You should drop her.
Let this all be over.
I gasp, surprised by how the voice is coming after her now too. I tell myself it doesn’t matter, that I won’t listen. I whisper the refusal against Ester’s cool cheek. We can fight this together.
After I stop shaking, I gently lay her onto the pillows. Jack usually handles the bottles and left one ready in the refrigerator. After I warm it, she drinks greedily. She’s not much of a burper, but I bounce her a few times, getting her settled, calming us both.
I take Ester upstairs, and it’s twenty minutes of bouncing on the exercise ball before we’re both calm. I lay her in the bassinet asleep, but she won’t stay quiet for long. I stare at her perfect little face, my heart catching from the fear and love that blooms within me now. I hurry down the stairs. My breasts ache to be pumped. The sinuous pain brings guilt at my inability to nurse.
I decide to endure the needing-to-nurse pain and scramble to the hallway closet. I toss out umbrellas and old shoes and coats we don’t wear until I find the purse I had in the hospital. Jack got my wallet out, and it didn’t occur to me that there was anything else I’d need. My fingers find sunglasses, ChapStick, a half-eaten KIND bar, and loose receipts before I feel the hard spine of a narrow book.
My hands shake so much that I stop. I take long deep breaths and lean my back against the cool plaster wall. I focus on the blank space where our family photo should be.
You can’t even take a picture. No way in hell you can help this dead woman.
Clutching Belina’s planner to my chest, I remember the last time I saw her or would ever see her.
I woke early from light cramps, my mind already spinning about something being wrong. I was relieved to get a text from Belina to meet her at Swan Point Cemetery that afternoon. We’d walked there a lot in the six months we’d been friends. As I waited for her and Emmett, I stared at the forest along the great stone wall that creates a border down to the Providence River. The sloping hills covered in gigantic sycamores and dogwoods and maples and oaks. It’s not a normal burial ground, more of a sanctuary for nature and remembrance. The graves are art, some small and thin, dating back to the Revolutionary War. Others are monuments, obelisks, and great mausoleums. Former governors and the oldest Rhode Island families are buried with war generals and the writer H. P. Lovecraft.
I was reminding myself that my child and I were on this side of the grave when I saw her pushing Emmett. I waddled over, and we strolled down an outer road toward the river.
I told her about the cramps, and she nodded as if understanding. We stopped at one of the largest graves near the water. It’s all white granite with gigantic benches on either side of an enormous angel cast in dark bronze.
She tipped her head, reveling in that late-in-the-day sunshine. “There’s a new moon tonight,” she said. “Everything will be purged.”
I turned to her. “What do you mean?”
“All the curses hidden in the moon’s shadow come out,” she said with a smile. “Have you been cursed?”
“Yes,” I said, not feeling like being teased. “My grandfather. On his deathbed.”
“Oh, meu Deus,” she whispered in Portuguese. “Your own blood.”
I heard his curse, a garbled hiss under the erratic beep of the heart monitor installed in my mother’s house for him by hospice. “I don’t believe in curses,” I said.
Her gaze roamed my belly. “Go to the doctor.” She curled her arm around her own flat stomach. “As soon as you leave here. No one is safe tonight.”
I’m not a big believer in superstition or religion or whatever it was that made Belina so often speak of God and curses and blood. But I could hear the pain in her voice, regret even. She hardly moved as my hand slipped over hers. I squeezed her long fingers, her olive skin chilled against my slightly swollen, warm hands. I leaned my head back like hers, both of us searching for some sun.
In the quiet cemetery, a great canopy of trees above us, I felt what I thought was her loneliness. “Do you want to talk about it?” I asked.
She shook her head once, sharply, but then her face softened. “I’m tying up loose ends under the new moon.”
“What loose ends?”
“Ask me tomorrow.” She pulled away and stepped onto the bench; she climbed one step, using the giant angel statue’s wing for balance. She stared at the river, her head following the banks all the way to the edge of the cemetery and back up to where a lone mausoleum is built into the hill.
Of course, I didn’t know it then, but it’s where she would be murdered.
But you knew something was wrong.
Too fixated on yourself.
You never really cared about her.
If you did, she’d still be alive.
Belina jumped down and landed in front of me. “Call the doctor,” she said again.
Those were the last words she’d ever speak to me. I watched her check on Emmett, who was waking up from his afternoon nap in his stroller. She rubbed his cheek where the strap had given him a red spot.
I was consumed by her premonition. Maybe that’s why I didn’t think much about how she pulled Emmett out of his stroller, whispering in Portuguese, which she wasn’t supposed to do because Misha insisted on English only. She kissed the top of his head, lingering on the reddish-blond curls. He snuggled into her neck, still dozing. She could have easily slipped him back into the stroller, but she pulled him close, her gaze on the river. She slowly pushed the stroller with one hand, the other tight around Emmett, who clung to her.
I wanted to hug her goodbye, but silence remained between us.
Perhaps we both sensed the other was about to bleed.
I stared at where she’d been looking during our conversation, but then the first of what would be hours of cramps seized me.
After the first cramp passed, my shaking hand fell to the stone bench in relief and touched something. I looked down to see Belina’s yellow day planner.
I didn’t forget. I didn’t have a chance to remember.
I stare down at my hands, steady now, ready to find the truth. I flip open the rectangular cover and see she wrote her name. My fingers trace each loop and letter of Belina Cabrala and back again. She took it with her everywhere, scribbling a few words at a time. She said she made notes for Alec and Misha, but that never really made sense to me, knowing them as I do.
I turn to the first page. It’s from eighteen months ago and begins with AM for Alec Mathers and MM for Misha Mathers:
Nanny Day 1
Monday: AM sleeps until noon. Leaves to get coffee and watches TV. MM gave me a quick tour, shared E’s schedule, and was gone all day.
Tuesday: AM doesn’t get dressed until noon. Says he’s going out. MM is gone to spin class. I don’t see her or AM until 7:00 p.m. when I leave.
The journal continues like that for one month. Then something changes.
Monday: E finally eats peas with his lunch, add more butter and less cheese. AM responsive to my idea. Takes the meeting with CF. Need to meet CF at CCH to talk after.
It seems as if Belina set up that meeting between Alec and this new name, CF. I scan through more of the usual until the following month.
Monday: Alec takes us out on his boat. E is so happy. Alec offers me coffee with whiskey. He shaved and took my suggestion on new shoes. Said something about young boyfriends. I assure him I don’t have one. Showed E how to cast a fishing line. He’s never looked so handsome.
I notice there is no more AM but Alec. Something has changed. Maybe a lot, maybe a little.
I flip to the last entry, the day she was murdered. It’s a to-do list.
Friday: Transfer $. Library with E. Tell Alec. Find Devon. Meet with & CF at SP.
I freeze at —an A with a circle—being at the meeting at SP (Swan Point, I assume, where she was killed). Could be her new code for Alec? Is he lying that he has no idea what happened to her? That he was drunk at a bar when she was killed?
“Te
ll Alec” as well as could mean they are two separate people.
Perhaps this person and CF were there, and even if they didn’t do it, they are witnesses.
I have to find them.
The pain in my breasts shifts from uncomfortable to excruciating. I take the planner with me to the glider in the corner of the living room. I quickly unbutton my shirt, sliding out of it and into the sports bra–like pump that allows me to be hands free.
A good mother wouldn’t have to stop to pump but could just nurse.
A good baby, right with the Lord, would be able to nurse.
As I click the button for the pump to begin, I picture Belina’s body by the river. My breathing, hot and angry, speeds up with the sound and pressure of the pump, faster and faster.
She wrote Find Devon. She met me at the cemetery but didn’t tell me anything. She left me only her planner, filled with small clues about her life from the past eighteen months when she worked for Alec. She needed my help, even if she couldn’t ask, then or now.
What help could you be?
I haven’t been any help so far. But she sought me out the day of this meeting, likely knowing there was real danger. She left me evidence that could clear Alec and find the real killers.
You’ll never be able to do it.
Belina brought me into the center of this investigation. I will prove that one of her last choices was the right one.
Chapter 6
Ester’s cry freezes my confidence, and I hiss, “Damn it,” because I’m only halfway done pumping. I gently unscrew the milk bottles from the pump and twist the yellow lids on top with the steadiness of someone defusing a bomb.
You wasted time on Belina’s planner, and now your baby will starve.
I get out of the pumping bra and snap the buttons on my shirt. There’s still an ache in my left breast, but I can’t handle the crying, so sharp and loud despite being a floor away. I take the stairs two at a time. First, I move her black-and-white-patterned bouncer from the nursery to my office and then rush to my bedroom, where she’s wailing in the bassinet. I take a deep fortifying breath and begin bouncing her. Up and down the hallway, I hum “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” fourteen times before we’re both calm.
In my office, I strap her into the bouncer and spin the little mobile she likes to watch. I adjust the mirror that hangs over her sweet face so she can see what I see. Her father’s black hair. My green eyes. The nose that’s less prominent than mine and perfect.
You’re the only one who sees her that way.
She’s the worst thing that ever happened to your husband.
She’s a stain on his family name.
A name you don’t deserve.
I leave her to stare at the mobile and do a full turn in my office. I stop in front of the gigantic dry-erase board on the wall across from my desk. Half is dedicated to sleeping solutions, and the other half is labeled Anderson Indictment. My obsessiveness nicely complemented my most recent specialty as a lawyer: working with accountants to identify and prosecute fraud. Teaming up with CPAs, the tax people, I pored through data about the businesses my clients were suing. The Anderson case was my last one before I took time off in my first trimester because I’d started spotting. The doctor wasn’t worried, but Jack and I were.
You gave up that job because you were bored with the right side of the law.
It’s true I wanted to focus my time investigating motherhood. I began with books, reading nearly every one in our local library, then continued to online forums, mom blogs, and Pinterest pages. Thanks to Belina’s friendship, I received the most valuable resource: firsthand observation. I spent hours in the company of parents, grandparents, and nannies at tot lots, story times, library trips, and music classes.
Little good that did.
Such an investigation may sound obsessive, but that’s how I’m wired. When I was building fraud cases, I had to find the right information to fit the legal strategy. I needed CPAs as a sort of Rosetta Stone to translate the math into English. Then I’d put that into legal terms to support the case. My specialty was digging deep into the psychology of a business.
I had great success with a simple three-pronged approach called the Fraud Triangle. That’s how I managed the Anderson case. I took each possible suspect and dug up the answers to three key questions: was there pressure to commit a crime, motivation to do it, and rationalization of how to live with it?
To some people it must have seemed boring poring over numbers, bank accounts, and tax history. Maybe a credit card statement or two. But it wasn’t to me. I saw it as a language, and while I don’t consider myself Saint Jerome, turning the Bible Latin, there were a few times I almost brought the courtroom to Jesus.
You must be outside your mind, girlie, if you think you could do that again.
I crouch down, pressing on my temples, willing the voice to stop so I can focus. Helping Alec will require more than deciding between a soft wrap and a ring sling. It requires the Anderson-indictment me. A version I carefully constructed to have a challenging but manageable job with plenty of time to build the home I always wanted.
Recalling that version of myself, I picture her process, how well she operated. I swipe the eraser across the letters, my pulse pounding as I clean the board. I line up my markers and write each area of inquiry in a different color:
BODY
SUSPECT(S)
ALEC (alibi)
TIME LINE
I do a quick LexisNexis search, thankful my account is still active from the previous job. I search Belina’s name and run Swan Point as a cross-reference if some coverage didn’t include her. My first question: Why is Alec the only suspect?
I’m surprised to see the most coverage is from TheHaleReport.com, which has only one owner, operator, and reporter: Phillip Hale. His blog had been inactive as far as I knew. And my knowledge came from being the one who shut him down.
I half grin at the image of him looking all “serious reporter” on the blog’s header. Something kicks in my gut, but I scroll instead of letting in the guilt. Not yet.
Phillip has a photo from Belina’s freshman year of college at Salve Regina in Newport. She’s pictured in tight jeans and a flowy top, talking to a professor. She’s smiling wide, obviously aware of the photo. One commenter (Oysterdigger77) wrote that she was “probably fucking the whole class.” Some sickos say worse than that, but I skim the rest.
The next article was posted the following morning in the Providence Daily, the main local paper, playing catch-up. It doesn’t report anything new other than the standard “looking into it” from the police communications officer. It runs the same freshman-year photo of Belina, with credit to TheHaleReport.com. There are many more comments on its coverage, mostly racist trolls blaming her murder on “them immigrants, blacks, or Mexicans.” I grew up around plenty of racists in Kansas. I thought in liberal New England, I’d see less of it, but the worst of people grow everywhere.
My disgust with the human race continues with comments about how hot she is and how that probably got her killed. I can’t ignore it now, noting the chatter.
Maybe she did ask for it.
Maybe you’re too stupid to see what your friend really was.
There are slams against the East Side because the police got here so quickly. In other neighborhoods, it would have taken them at least twice as long to get to the scene. A few people theorize that gay prostitutes who supposedly use those woods should be suspects. A dozen insist any woman alone at night is asking for it.
I return to the in-depth coverage from TheHaleReport.com about Belina. Ms. Cabrala was from Newport, Rhode Island, a graduate of Saint George’s Academy, an elite prep school. She attended Salve Regina University in Newport until her sophomore year. Cabrala held hostessing and office jobs.
Alec Mathers, her employer, is described as an entrepreneur in the fishing industry. His business employs recently incarcerated men to give them skills and a paycheck. Misha Mathers is a stay-at-ho
me mom and had employed Cabrala as the full-time nanny for their son, Emmett, three, for the past eighteen months.
I shake my head at the last line because it’s structured for judgment toward Misha. I didn’t take Phillip Hale for someone looking for the cheap shot. I’d know because I took a few at him. And he never gave them back.
Not yet.
In his next major article, Phillip publishes Belina’s private Instagram photos. She didn’t have many: five selfies and three of Emmett from a distance. Someone leaked them or hacked them, and I make a note.
The story explains how Alec had clicked the little red heart on all of them. There are no photos on his Instagram page. Most of the other accounts Alec follows are for local restaurants or boating.
But Phillip’s lead picture that day and for days to come was a selfie Belina had taken with Alec and Emmett on Alec’s boat. There’s sunlight and a corner of a sail behind the three of them, all smiling, especially Emmett. Her caption: With my boys #newport #goodlife #boafortuna #saudade.
I side-eye her use of “my boys,” since they’re not. But my gaze returns to her effervescent smile, and my heart wrenches. I don’t want to think about her smile now—embalmer’s choice—rotting in a dark casket beneath the earth.
I focus on my task and google her saudade hashtag. The word doesn’t have an English equivalent, but it’s about longing for a point in time. Not necessarily a time that’s happened or will ever occur. A quote from a Portuguese writer, Manuel de Melo, pops up. He says saudade is “a pleasure you suffer, an ailment you enjoy.”
Neither Alec nor Belina appear to be suffering in that moment, but perhaps she knew pain waited for them back on land.
The alt-weekly newspaper, the Cthulu, named after H. P. Lovecraft, takes all Phillip has written and adds nonattributed quotes from around the neighborhood.
The dead nanny basically raised that kid. I never saw the mom around.
The killer is inside that fancy East Side house.
The kid seemed to love her more than his own parents.
I’m not a Misha apologist, but as a mother, I cringe at the remarks. The coldness of people when a family is in crisis. But I do wonder if Misha was jealous of the closeness between Belina and Emmett. Or the relationship between Alec and Belina. Had she seen the Instagram pictures?
Little Voices Page 5