The Drifter(2)

“Remi has been very interested in sifting the flour,” said Elodie, peering cautiously at Elizabeth over her glasses. “You should ask her about it later.”

“Well, what can I say? She’s a natural-born sifter, from a long line of accomplished sifters,” Elizabeth said.

Elodie took Elizabeth’s arm and guided her out to the school entrance like a reluctant child. “Trust me, Elizabeth. She’s really thriving here.”

Elizabeth nodded and mumbled while fumbling through her bag for her black sunglasses that would obscure the tears welling in her eyes again. She hurried past the parents who were still peeling their toddlers off their pant legs, nodding at a few, but too paranoid about botching a name to say hello.

Outside on the sidewalk, away from the waxy smell of crayons and the astringent sting of hand sanitizer, she inhaled deeply. She wondered how she must look to passersby in her studied urban gear—the discus-sized sunglasses under her razor sharp bangs, platform wedge heels, a giant tote bag with hardware too heavy to be practical, and a shapeless sleeveless dress in an arty print that was cooler than it was flattering, which she’d smarten up with a blazer once she got to the office. If she ever got to the office. If she could ever lift herself up from the purgatory of the brownstone stoop.

IT’S NOW 9:43. Elizabeth checks her email and starts to reply to the forty-two unread messages that show up in her in-box, tapping quick replies with her thumbs. The clock is ticking on the biggest project of her career, an estate sale of more than 350 lots, including rare prints and lithographs from Picasso, Magritte, Kandinsky, Munch, and Mary Cassatt, that is less than two months away. She is dangerously behind schedule. Her assistant, Nina, sent her a message the night before at around midnight to remind her that the public relations department needed some answers about promoting the auction in The New York Times, and there were still contracts from the heirs that needed to be finalized and signed. The auction catalogue is due at the printer in a week, and she is going to have to work overtime to finish it. But she can’t manage to peel herself away. She clicks on an email from Jessica, her closest friend in New York, asking her to lunch next week. She starts to write back, and then stops. She’s been avoiding Jessica, too.

At 9:57 the phone rings. A picture of Remi as a wrinkly faced newborn, wearing a cap with tiny brown bear ears knitted onto the sides, pops up on her screen. She panics, considers letting the call go to voice mail, then decides it’s best to answer or he might call the office instead.

“Hey, Gav,” she says as breezily as possible. “What’s up?”

“Nothin’ much. Whatcha doing?” he asks. Gavin never rushes his speech, but a pace this slow is deliberate, and suspiciously casual. He is crunching something, loudly, in her ear.

“Not much, sweetie.” She eyes the ragged cuticle of her left thumb, and the deep navy polish that is starting to lose its sheen. “Just finished my coffee outside, getting a last blast of fresh air before work, you know. Sort of makes me miss smoking. I don’t get to linger on the sidewalk on a nice day anymore.”

“Oh, really. That’s weird . . .”

She listens as he takes another bite and munches in her ear.

“Because Elodie just called. She tells me that you’re camped in front of the school,” he says. “Again.”

Elizabeth’s eyes dart across the street to the window on the left of the front door. The blinds are raised and there is Elodie, peering over her hateful little glasses with pursed lips. Elizabeth offers a smile and a limp wave. Elodie does not wave back.

“Honey, what’s going on? You’re starting to freak everyone out. Remi’s fine, she’s safe. What is it?”

“I don’t know,” she says, even though it’s a lie. The tears reappear on cue and this time she uses the heel of her palm to swipe them away. She checks her hand for black streaks before she remembers that she stopped wearing mascara for this very reason. “It’s awful. God, Gavin, I’m so fucked-up. And I’m late for work again. Everyone probably thinks I’m a total nutjob.”

Gavin takes another bite in her ear. “Well, I mean, you are stalking the preschool.”

“What are you eating, anyway?” she asks. “It sounds like you’re chomping on gravel.”

“Oh just one of your extremely undelicious granola bars,” he says, with a lilt of sarcasm. To assuage her working-mom guilt, Elizabeth spent last weekend making corn-syrup-free snacks for her daughter.

“Oh God, sorry. They’re so gross. You might want to chase it down with some milk or something,” she says, grimly. Remi had taken one bite and spit out the chewed mush into Elizabeth’s palm, then asked for cheddar bunnies instead.

“Look, honey, Remi is safe. She really is. We wouldn’t have sent her there if we thought she wasn’t. And by the way, a little corn syrup isn’t going to hurt her either.”

They pause for a minute, letting the silence and the weight of all that they never need to say settle between them. He knows that her nightmares are back. “You were talking in your sleep,” Gavin had said to her when she awoke in a daze on Friday morning, and Elizabeth blew it off, pretended not to remember how she’d bolted up in the middle of the night, a spasm of dread in her chest. She could hide it from everyone else, but not Gavin.

For years, the fear has come like this, in waves that pound over her and then recede. Her mind was calm for most of the summer. She was fine, happy even. She left Remi with their nanny, Flavia (who had been background checked within an inch of her life), each day; at work she was focused and productive. Then, last month, an email out of the blue brought it all rushing back. She knew what would happen as soon as she saw the name in her in-box, Leslie Portner, an old acquaintance from her college sorority days. Elizabeth dithered over whether to open the message for a few minutes, peered out of her office window to see if anyone was approaching, and angled her monitor to be sure no one walking down the hall could see. She considered deleting it. Perhaps she could look at it later. But then, her heart hammering, she clicked, and the past opened up on her screen.