The Light Through the Leaves(4)

Everything inside felt frozen. But it was more like she didn’t have a body. She couldn’t feel the steering wheel in her hands. She didn’t have a face or arms or legs.

Somehow, she’d turned the van around, and her foot must have been pressing the accelerator.

It’s okay. She’ll still be there, still sleeping. It’s okay. It’s okay.

She pressed harder on the pedal.

What she’d done was normal. She wasn’t used to putting a third child in the van. For more than four years, there had been only two. New parents did this. She’d heard stories about leaving the baby in the house. In the car. Just for a few minutes. Nothing dangerous. It would be okay.

The one and a half miles of winding road felt like ten.

What if she’d run her over as she pulled out? She might have killed her. What kind of mother did that?

She slowed at the sign for the forest preserve, turned into the trailhead parking lot. All was quiet, the raven flown from its branch. There were two cars in the lot, parked far from where the van had been. Ellis stared at the empty space her van had occupied.

No carrier. No baby.

She had a brief thought that she’d never had a third baby. Hadn’t it felt like that sometimes? As if this life, three kids, was all a dream? She shut her eyes, certain everything would return to whatever was normal, two kids or three, when she opened them.

“Mom?”

She opened her eyes.

“Where’s Viola?” Jasper asked.

The baby was gone. Someone had taken her daughter.





2


The jangle of curtain rings woke Ellis. She sat up in the bed, muzzy from a sleeping pill, unaware of the time of day until the shades started going up. She used her forearm to protect her eyes from the light slicing into her vision.

“What are you doing?”

“Oh!”

The woman hadn’t known anyone was there. Ellis squinted at the unfamiliar person, a silhouette surrounded by painful brightness.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” the young woman said. “I was told to clean this room.”

“Who told you?”

“Mrs. . . . uh . . . Bauhammer. Do you want me to leave?” Before Ellis responded, the woman added, “I was told to do everything in here. The bathroom. Strip the bed . . .”

The woman was afraid to bring The Hammer down on herself. Most people were. Ellis and Jonah used to joke about the nickname Ellis had given his mother. But it was no joke since his mother had moved in to “help” with their crisis.

Ellis wouldn’t give the cleaning woman more trouble when she’d already had to deal with Mary Carol. She dragged herself out of bed. Then the other hammer hit. The colossal one.

Her baby was gone. Two weeks. Almost no hope of finding her now. She might be dead. Abused. Because Ellis had left her in a parking lot, offered her like a lamb to the slaughter to some crazy person.

She fractured beneath the weight of it. Being hit with it over and over had changed her. She was broken pieces of the woman who used to be Ellis Abbey Bauhammer, wife of Jonah, mother of three children, leading a perfectly ordinary life in the suburbs.

She pulled on her robe. Her breasts still hurt, but the milk was mostly gone now.

The cleaning woman hadn’t moved. She stared at Ellis, her expression a mixture of curiosity and sympathy. No doubt she knew the whole story, as did most people who lived anywhere near that part of New York. Ellis couldn’t stand that look in people’s eyes, but she wouldn’t hold it against the woman.

“Go ahead,” Ellis told her. “I’ll use another bathroom.”

There was another cleaning woman in the boys’ bathroom. She would have to use the bathroom attached to Viola’s nursery.

No, she couldn’t go in there. She never did anymore.

She went downstairs, where two more cleaning women were dusting and vacuuming. She used the half bath, then entered the kitchen. Mary Carol was there, her shoulder-length, chestnut-dyed hair perfectly sleek, her jeans and button-down shirt close fitting to show off her figure. She was at the stove cooking breakfast—or was it lunch? The boys were seated at the table, absorbed in the new video gadgets their grandmother had given them.

Before either woman uttered one word, The Hammer, the human one, hit Ellis with a look of crushing blame.

“Finally up?” Mary Carol said.

“The cleaning woman woke me.”

“Did she?”

“I didn’t get to sleep until past six in the morning.”

“The sleeping pills don’t work?”

She could only know Ellis’s doctor had prescribed sleep medication if Jonah had told her. Mary Carol looked at Ellis smugly, as if to verify that her son was now more in her confidence than in his wife’s.

Ellis went to the boys and touched their soft, dark hair with both hands. “Hi, guys.”

“Hi, Mom,” Jasper said, glancing up from his game.

“Hi,” River said, keeping his eyes on his screen.

Her boys didn’t even want to look at her now—because of what she’d done.

She pushed away the thought, told herself they were preoccupied with their games.

She poured a cup of coffee and turned to face her mother-in-law. “I can clean my own house, you know,” she said in a quiet tone.