The Perfect Mother(20)

“There’s a mom in your group named Token?”

“No. He’s a man. A dad.”

She can feel someone’s hands on her, pulling at her shirt, fingers digging into her shoulder. Hot breath at her neck.

Schwartz’s eyebrows rise again. “A dad? In your mommy group?”

“Yes. I think he’s gay.”

He nods, and Hoyt marks something in his notebook. “Token. What is that? An Indian name?”

“No. He’s white. It’s a nickname. I called him that at one of the first meetings because he was the only bloke—you know, the token male. It stuck. I don’t even remember his real name, to be honest. I’m not sure anyone does.”

Sebastian laughs nervously and reaches for Nell’s hand. “She’s notoriously bad with names.”

“Can you give me a minute? I have to use the loo.” Nell stands, her hand on Sebastian’s shoulder to steady herself, and walks down the hall to their bedroom and then into the bathroom, closing the door behind her, looking into the mirror. It was just a dream. It had to be.

She crouches on the floor in front of the toilet. It’s been a few years since she’s had one of those nightmares—the kind that once jarred her awake on a nearly nightly basis. Being followed. People waiting for her around the next corner. It has to be that. She would have remembered if someone had been with her in the bathroom, touching her.

She hears Beatrice crying, and then a knock at the door. It’s Sebastian. “Nell. You okay?” She sees her shirt from the night before, in a ball on the floor where she left it. Sebastian knocks harder. “Nell.”

“Be right out.” She picks up the shirt. It’s ripped along the seam of her right shoulder.

She apologizes to Hoyt when she returns to the living room.

“No problem. Just a few more, and then we can get out of your hair. What do you know about the father?”

“Winnie’s father?” Nell asks, glancing at the video camera. “Nothing.”

“No, ma’am. Midas’s father.”

“Oh. Nothing. I only recently found out she was single.” The heat is building around her. “I had Winnie’s phone for a while, but then I couldn’t find it. Her key was in the phone case.” She swallows. “Did someone find it? Is that how they got in?”

“That’s all part of what we’re trying to figure out,” Hoyt says.

“How much did you have to drink last night?”

She looks at Schwartz, who asked the question. “How much?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know. Two drinks, maybe? I hardly touched the second.”

“Were you drunk?”

She knows she should just tell them the truth. She knows the risk of lying to the police. “No,” she says, her stomach in knots. “Of course I wasn’t drunk.”

Sebastian appears in front of her, circling the coffee table, refilling everyone’s mug. She steals a look at him. At his cap of brown curls, his lean soccer boy’s body, imagining him the first time she saw him: sitting at the opposite end of a moody London bar, sipping a Guinness in the shifting light of late Sunday afternoon, sketching in a Moleskine notebook, the face of a man intent on his art. His eyes were kind when he approached her later, asking if the seat beside her was taken, if he might buy them another round.

Nell clenches her palms in her lap as she tries to concentrate on Hoyt’s next question, but her gaze is drawn back to Sebastian as he slowly paces the living room, their daughter cradled in the nook of his arm, seeing an entirely different face than the one she remembers from that day six years earlier. The face of a man, terrified and worried.

A man having the same panicked thought as she. Please. Not this. Not again.





Chapter Five



Day Two



To: May Mothers

From: Your friends at The Village

Date: July 6

Subject: Today’s advice

Your baby: Day 53

Thinking about co-sleeping? It’s not too late. While it may not be for everyone, the benefits are numerous. Co-sleeping babies tend to sleep more. It makes breastfeeding easier, helping to keep up mom’s milk supply. And most of all, co-sleeping creates a very special bond. Plus, who doesn’t love a good middle-of-the-night snuggle or two?





It’s sweltering on the subway platform, and crowded—people lean out over the tracks, trying to spot the lights of an arriving train. The man to Colette’s left chews a soft stick of beef jerky, the expensive kind making its way into the grocery stores in the neighborhood. The two women to her right are speaking too loudly, oversize designer bags hanging from their elbows, their cell phones clutched in their hands.

“I have a friend who swims with hers. Would you do that?”

“In the ocean?”

“Yes.”

“Never.” The girl gazes at the splayed fingers of her left hand and adjusts the large, brilliant diamond ring. “I don’t even like to shower with mine, to be honest.”

Colette wanders farther down the platform and stops at the newsstand, where a man in a turban stands, breathing in subway fumes all day, doling out bottled water and rattling containers of Tic Tacs. Winnie’s face looms from the cover of the New York Post: a photo from years ago. She’s wearing a long coat and sunglasses, her face cast toward the street. Colette should probably be surprised to see it, but she’s not. The story is on the brink of becoming national news since Winnie released the video yesterday pleading for Midas’s return.