Mother May I(7)

I glanced after Marshall, already disappearing into the stairwell on the other side. If I didn’t hurry, he’d clean up alone. More proof that I was a spoiled second wifey. Still, my middle child needed a moment.

“I think you’re cool,” I told her.

She snorted. “You’re my mom. The fact that you think I’m cool means I’m for sure a dork.”

“Well, cool is overrated. And sometimes it’s code for a little bit mean. But you? You’re smart. A good student. Super cute. Best of all, you have a kind heart.”

She shrugged it off, disappearing into her book again, but I could see her fighting a smile.

“Good talk,” I said to no one. But it had been.

Peyton went back to reading. Ten seconds later I could have set a bomb off beside her and she wouldn’t have heard it. I used to read like that when I was young. Before I was a mother. Now nothing took me that far from reality.

Except maybe watching my children perform. Ms. Taft had decided to run the Sandra Dee song one more time. It was time to clean up, but Marshall had told me I could stay. Anna-Claire came center and began, and the whole world fell away again. It was the same when I was at a robotics match and Peyton was at the controls. At ten weeks all Robert had to do was show his brand-new toothless smile to put me into a trance.

When she finished, I stood and gave her huge, silent thumbs-up, then patted Peyton’s oblivious knee. When I turned to go, I didn’t see Robert’s car seat.

But that wasn’t possible. It had been right there.

I hurried up the aisle, caught in a chilly disbelief. Maybe the seat was behind the chairs? But who had moved it? No one else had been up here. I tried to remember the last time I’d looked back to check on him. Not long. I didn’t think. But I’d been talking to Peyton, and then Anna-Claire had started singing—

This was scary, but at the same time part of me was sure there was an explanation. Maybe Greer had taken him back down to the greenroom. She was baby crazy.

I was at the row now, and he was gone. Just gone. So was his diaper bag. His empty bottle lay abandoned on the floor. Beside it was a single sheet of white paper, folded in half.

I picked it up, my hands visibly trembling. I opened it. A note. Handwritten in large block print.

If you ever want to see your baby again, GO HOME—



The black ink went blurry. The paper rattled in my hands. I couldn’t read. I couldn’t see or breathe. My spine was glass, and all my blood was water. I found myself sitting on the floor beside his empty bottle. My dazed mind noted there was a little milk in it, maybe half an ounce. I blinked hard, trying to clear my vision. But I didn’t need to read more of the note to know what had happened.

I had not dreamed a witch. I’d seen a real person, made of flesh and bone and a secret, dark agenda, peering in my window. I’d seen her again, hurrying through the parking lot toward the fire door that the kids kept propping open. She’d been stalking me.

No. She’d been stalking Robert. And now she had him.





3




As Marshall put the leftover snacks in the greenroom refrigerator, he caught himself hoping Bree would walk in and see him handling this small task for her. It was like a dead mouse he could drop on her doorstep. It made him tired of himself. She was happily married. With three kids. Not to mention her husband was both a nice guy and one of his damn bosses.

He was digging a surprising number of fruit-snack wrappers out of the sofa cushions when Cara found him.

“Need some help?” she asked him, smiling

Every other middle-school human must have vacated the building; he was getting eye contact and everything. He smiled back.

“Thanks,” he said, and then couldn’t resist adding, “Sugar Peep,” just to see her eyes dart around, making sure no lingering teen or tween had heard the silly nickname. God, he wouldn’t be thirteen again for a hundred thousand dollars. Not even for a day. He stopped teasing her and added, serious, “I watched rehearsal from the balcony. You were great. I can’t wait to see the whole show.”

She looked down, tried to wave it away. “I don’t do much in that scene.”

“Are you kidding me? You were all I could look at.” And to think he’d been so worried. At Cara’s old school, drama club had been tiny and underfunded, but it was huge at St. Alban’s. Less than a quarter of the kids who tried out made the casts. Cara’d worked so hard, practicing every afternoon in front of the hall mirror, her heart so clearly set. He’d been praying she’d make the ensemble. Instead she’d landed Marty, a Pink Lady, with a solo and a custom-made satin jacket that she got to keep. “I’m so proud of you. You have a presence that lights up the whole stage. Like your mom.”

That made her smile, though it was not exactly true. Cara was better. Onstage, charismatic Betsy had always turned stiff and awkward, things she almost never was in life. Bree had been the actor who could make the real world disappear.

He’d gone to see Sense and Sensibility his sophomore year of high school because his English teacher offered extra credit. He’d been in school with Bree since sixth grade, but in the play she’d truly turned into another person, one who was magic and beautiful and twice as alive as any girl he’d ever seen. He’d barely noticed Betsy as the mother.

Later, at the standing weekend keg party by the tracks, he’d caught sight of Bree and another girl near the fire pit, both holding red Solo cups of tepid beer. He drifted over, trying to be cool, desperate to know her better.