Mother May I(14)

I felt myself nod. I only cared about my son.

She went on. “Taking your baby, that was my plan, my choice. All my girl has done is watch, so this is on me, and finding me won’t lead you to her. I won’t even see her again until you and I are finished. Maybe not even then, depending on how it goes.”

All these things sounded so personal. It made my skin crawl, and yet I leaned in.

“Tell me what you need.”





The call lasted a long time. We spoke softly to each other, intimate as whispers in the night. I wanted to keep talking with her, keep the line open to wherever in the world she had my child. She was gentle with me, perhaps sensing how near the edge I was, and I was gentle back. I did not think of her as a witch, or a stalker, or a kidnapper. I tried to speak to the part of her that was like me. Mother to mother.

But when she was finished talking, she hung up. It closed my only live connection to my son. It was like the breaking of a spell.

I cried out, “Wait!”

She hadn’t told me when or even how I would get Robert back. But she was already gone.

My legs stopped working. I fell down. I was no longer inside myself. I floated up until I pressed into the ceiling, watching my body writhe and beat at the floor. It spun and bucked, shoving and kicking its way into the den, where it rolled to scream and bite at the carpet.

When my body calmed enough to let me back inside it, I was in my bedroom. It was dim and quiet. I sprawled on the floor beside the bed, the cheap cell phone still clutched in my hand. Even in my fugue state, I had been obedient, keeping it close. It was my only link to my son.

I stood up, creaky and slow, and the Bree I saw in the full-length mirror was a monster. Eyes puffed nearly shut. A swollen face streaked with mucus and mascara. As I stared, and long seconds ticked past, I realized I’d stopped crying. My throat was raw, hoarse from screaming, but I was calmer. I was ready to do what I had to do.

“I’ve given you six Hypnodorm. It’s the same thing as Rohypnol. You know this drug?”

“Isn’t that roofies?” I paused, confused. “That’s a date-rape drug.”

She snorted, then said, “You think I want you to—” She sounded almost offended, as if in the hierarchy of evil, rape was a thousand times worse than snatching my child. My spine tensed, but her voice softened again on the next sentence. “Well. That is what it’s known for. I picked it because Hypnodorm steals memories. On this drug people do things they don’t remember. Things they’ll never remember.”





I washed my face, then spent a few minutes rolling an ice pack back and forth across my swollen eyes. I also texted Mom, needing to know the girls were safe inside her building for the night. She texted back a pic of them in her tidy kitchen, mixing up a batch of oatmeal scotchies. They were laughing, Peyton’s cheek dusted with flour.

It looked like a window to another world, distant, impossible for me to reach. It was on the other side of a two-or three-minute window of time when I had looked away.

I went into my dressing room to rifle through my cocktail dresses with numb hands. I didn’t want my usual colors or cuts. I needed something closer to a costume. Bree Cabbat had fallen entirely apart, so I could not be her. I had to be some other woman, smiling and calm. I’d begun to be her earlier, but that character had shattered when the old woman hung up. I could not shatter again. Not if I wanted Robert back.

Just the thought of him and I felt tears threatening again. I didn’t understand how I had any left; I was desiccated, so wrung out that no water could possibly be left inside me. And yet I felt them welling.

I dashed them away, looking for the dress I wanted. It was shoved toward the back, the tags still on. I’d meant to return it. I favored springtime colors, floral prints in breezy fabrics, and this Erdem was jet-black, sleeveless, with pointed shoulder pads and a high collar. I’d bought it in a spasm of odd hormones, a day before I realized I was pregnant with Robert.

Now I found myself nodding stupidly and pulling it on. The stiff, shiny fabric felt like armor. It was a little tight, but not in a bad way. I had a pair of high-heeled black booties, dressy enough to read “cocktail party” and hide the aging pedicure I’d meant to fix this weekend.

“Your husband’s firm has a party tonight. At the Botanical Garden. Yes?”

“Yes. But I never RSVP’d.” I’d had secret plans to claim “cranky baby” and skip it in favor of microwave popcorn and streaming a movie with the girls, Robert sleeping in his pack-n-play nearby.

“Well, I need you there.”

“I can just show up.” I was Trey’s wife. They’d let me in. But her request felt nonsensical. She took my baby to make me go to a party?





I sat down at the vanity, trying not to think of Robert. If I let myself feel his absence, I’d start screaming again. If I started, I didn’t see how I could ever stop.

I turned on the mirror lights, flinching at my pinched, pale face. But the ice had helped. I looked like a woman who’d once been pretty. Maybe even myself, if I were ten hard years older.

The whites of my sunken eyes were crimson from crying. I tilted my head back to put in some Visine. I couldn’t show up at the party looking like this. I’d been ordered not to draw attention or questions.

“Get there soon as you can. Smile and chat. Be like regular, you understand?”