Mother of All Secrets(19)

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Allie Brennan: If you have a vista stroller with a yellow cup holder, and a roughly 4 y/o son with a Paw Patrol raincoat, please PM me. I want to talk to you about your nanny. I have some rather serious concerns and if I were you I’d want to know what I saw her doing.

107 replies

Anika Ayub: Planning my mom’s surprise 75th birthday! Does anyone know which restaurants in the neighborhood have private rooms?

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Finally, I put my phone down, exhausted. Clara was dozing noisily, no longer latched to my right boob, but using it as a pillow instead. Reading Upper West Side Moms almost always left me with a headache, and yet, I continued to do it regularly.

I had just managed to successfully transfer Clara to her bassinet—a rare feat for me—and was tiptoeing out of her room (actually, my room, though it certainly didn’t feel that way anymore) when loud knocking on my apartment door made me jump.

I hadn’t heard the buzzer downstairs and I had no idea who this could be. Even though it was Sunday, Tim had to be at work most of the day, since he had a big pitch coming up midweek. I was annoyed that he had to work on a weekend, but I believed him when he said it was unavoidable. And I knew he’d been trying to be home as much as possible; he’d managed to dial back his travel significantly, having taken only a couple of day trips to DC and Boston since Clara had been born. Maybe it was him knocking if he’d forgotten his key, but I wasn’t expecting him back until close to dinnertime. I hadn’t ordered food, either; I actually hadn’t eaten at all yet that day—just coffee—and I couldn’t remember any significant meals yesterday, either. A lot of string cheeses and peanut butter spoonfuls. Tim and I had ordered Thai for dinner last night, but it took so long to arrive that I was passed out on the couch by the time it did, and he hadn’t wanted to wake me. I’d shoved a spring roll down my throat following a 1:00 a.m. feed.

I hustled to the door to avoid more loud knocking, thinking, Whoever this is, if you wake my baby, you can get her back to sleep yourself.

My heart leaped into my throat: two police officers stood at my door. They weren’t wearing uniforms, but they were each holding their badges for me to see. They were a man and a woman: he in his late forties, she just a little older than me, maybe.

“Are you Jennifer Donnelly?” the male officer asked.

“Yes?” It squeaked out as a question.

“Hi. I’m Detective Sherer,” he said, “and this is Detective Blaylock.” She smiled faintly and nodded, looking past me and seeming to briefly take in the hurricane of baby gear that was my apartment. “Okay if we come in?” her partner went on. “We have a few questions for you about Isabel Harris. We’re investigating her disappearance.”

“Oh, um, sure. Of course. My baby is sleeping in the next room, so can we talk quietly?”

“Absolutely. Been there.” He smiled with pursed lips. “Mine are grown now, of course.”

I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I knew they were probably just covering their bases, checking in with all Isabel’s friends and acquaintances, but regardless, my face was burning, and I knew my neck and chest were suddenly blotchy. It was like being pulled over: even if I knew it was only for a minor speed infraction or a broken taillight, I suddenly and inexplicably felt as if I had drugs and guns in my car.

“Do you guys want something to drink?” I had no idea how I was supposed to act in this situation. I probably wasn’t supposed to call them “you guys,” though.

“No, that’s okay,” Sherer said. “Thank you.” They each perched gingerly on the breast milk–stained, well-worn sofa. I sat directly across from them in the glider that we had bought a few weeks after Clara was born, when we realized how necessary it was for soothing, even though we’d initially resisted it since it didn’t go with anything else in our living room.

Detective Blaylock, the woman, spoke up this time. “So we’ll start with the basics. When was the last time you saw Isabel before she disappeared?”

I tried to think. What day was it today? Sunday. How long had it been since she disappeared? Three days—two and a half? To my foggy, sleep-deprived brain, this felt like a very difficult question.

“Well, let me think,” I said, trying to sound competent. “I learned of her disappearance this past Friday afternoon. Our moms’ group met, and she wasn’t there. After the meeting we all got a text from Vanessa, that’s a woman in our group, saying she found out that Isabel was missing. So I guess the last time I saw her before that was at our meeting the previous Friday.” I took out my phone and pulled up the calendar. “Friday, September twenty-fifth, looks like.”

“Are you sure?” Blaylock’s response was immediate.

“Yes, I am. Pretty sure.”

“Hmm. That’s a little perplexing,” Sherer said. He was like a caricature of a cop—a little paunchy, with a Brooklyn accent. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d taken a doughnut out of his pocket. “The thing is that one of the reasons we’re here is that we thought—we hoped, actually—that you were one of the last people to see Isabel. That maybe you’d have more information for us.”

“No. Like I said, I haven’t seen her since two Fridays ago. Honestly, I’ve only met her a handful of times and really didn’t know her well.” I could hear that I sounded sketchy, like I was trying to distance myself from her and her disappearance, though I myself had no idea why. I had nothing to hide.