Woman on the Edge(30)

Before

In between bathing and feeding Quinn, all Nicole had done for days was stare at the Polaroid of Amanda. She couldn’t look at it anymore without seeing Quinn’s face transposed in the picture. Without checking every closet and corner of her house for evidence Donna had been inside. She felt nothing except a staggering sense of doom. Now she finally put the photo in the back of the bathroom drawer, promising herself not to look at it again.

Quinn babbled in the bassinet. Nicole removed her pills from the medicine chest. From now on, she’d keep them on the main floor, where she spent the most time. She went to her bedroom, picked up Quinn, and slid her into the wrap, nuzzling her nose into her baby’s sweet-smelling neck. Next, she went downstairs, where she leaned her forehead on the stainless steel Sub-Zero, the cold door a balm to her hot, debilitated body.

Her eyes caught something purple sticking out from under the fridge. Lowering herself as slowly and carefully as possible, Nicole found a purple Post-it. “Staying late at the office,” read the old note in Greg’s messy handwriting. She had no clue when he’d written it.

Something about the Post-it gave her an idea. She went to the junk drawer and pulled out the pack of purple Post-its at the bottom. Sitting on the floor, Quinn cozy in the carrier, she stuck the papers to the natural stone tiles. With a Sharpie, she wrote each idea on a separate Post-it:

Letter. Name card. Redhead. Missing pills. Mobile. Door. Shattered chandelier. Photo.

She stuck them in a line, then a circle, trying to make sense of every frightening incident. The clues were in the words in front of her, and if she put all of them together the right way, she’d know exactly what Donna was planning to do to her. And how she could stop it.

But what if it wasn’t just Donna? Maybe Greg was right, and she was coming unhinged. He’d been so insistent that she needed help, and she’d ignored him. It was odd, though, that he hadn’t even called once since he’d left two weeks before. How long had he been unhappy with her? Did he just not want to be a father? Or was she even more off-kilter than she thought and he wanted to be as far from her as he could? Was it possible, as he had suggested, that she herself had bought the mobile? Had she unscrewed the light fixture and unlocked the door? Had she kept that photo of Amanda for all these years and forgotten? What if she was simply dealing with a very bad case of postpartum depression, like Tessa had suggested?

Stupid purple Post-its. It was all meaningless.

She put them back in the drawer. She looked down at Quinn, who rested peacefully on her chest. She’d fed and changed her earlier. Her baby was content but needed fresh air. And Nicole needed exercise. She could manage a short walk. They couldn’t stay in the house a minute longer.

She didn’t bother switching clothes or showering. She packed Quinn in her fancy red Bugaboo stroller, toting the gorgeous Tiffany-blue diaper bag Tessa had given her. “Let’s take a walk, sweetheart.”

Nicole closed the door behind her, set the alarm, and turned the dead bolt. Even though she heard it click shut, she pushed at the door five times to make sure it wouldn’t open. She snapped a photo of herself and Quinn, then texted it to Tessa.

I’m going out!



Tessa texted back: Proud of you! Call me when you’re home.

The air was dense with heavy storm clouds, but a little rain never hurt anyone. Quinn was quiet, completely awestruck by the colorful rings dangling from the stroller’s sun canopy. Nicole told herself she was just a mother off for a stroll with her daughter. As she eased the Bugaboo down the four wide steps, Mary, her eightysomething-year-old next-door neighbor, came running out of her house.

“Nicole, sweetheart. Do you have a second?”

She didn’t want to chat with Mary, who could keep her on the sidewalk for an hour talking about her grandchildren and her bad hip. But Mary didn’t give her a chance to refuse.

“I wanted to tell you something. I saw someone peering in your front window late last night. At first, I thought maybe it was a friend of yours, but whoever it was, they didn’t stay long. I thought I should mention it. I get those twinges, you know? When something is funny? I didn’t want to ring the bell in case you and the cherub were sleeping.”

Nicole’s blood ran cold and she moved the stroller closer to Mary. “A man or a woman? What did they look like? What time was it?” Spittle flew as she fired the questions.

Mary stepped back. “My eyes aren’t so good anymore, dear. I couldn’t see if it was a man or woman, but it was around ten. I was watching my soaps that my son taped on that DVR. So it wasn’t a friend of yours? Oh my. Should you call the police? If there’s a prowler around here, we have to be on alert.”

“No police!” Nicole said, too loudly.

“Pardon me?”

“Don’t call the police!” she screeched. If Mary called the police, everything could fall apart. She didn’t want anyone snooping about. She wanted to keep her past in the past. Also, what if the police thought she was an unfit mother? What if they took Quinn away? The thought terrified her. She breathed in through her nose and exhaled slowly. “Thank you for watching out for me,” she said in a perfectly measured tone. “It must have been my friend Tessa. I’ll give her a call.”

Mary peered at Nicole. “Are you sure you’re okay, love? You seem really rattled.”