The Perfect Mother(23)
“Everything okay?” she asks.
Aaron carries a stack of folders at his chest and places them, one by one, onto Teb’s desk. “Yeah, he’s meeting with Ghosh. This abduction thing. What a nightmare.” He glances at her. “I’m assuming you heard about it?”
She clears her throat. She should explain the situation—she should tell Aaron that Winnie is a friend of hers, that she was there that night—but something tells her to wait, to speak to Teb about it privately. She knows what it might mean for him if it gets out that someone close to him is linked to this. “Yeah.”
“How old is Patty now?”
“Poppy. Almost eight weeks.”
Aaron shakes his head. “The twins are seven. I can’t even imagine.”
“What’s the latest?” Colette asks.
“Oh, I don’t know. Ghosh is on the defensive. One of the officers—some young kid, a week out of police academy—really screwed things up. Didn’t use gloves, left his fingerprints all over the place. It’s a real mess.” Aaron sighs and then looks up at Colette. “Anyway, the mayor shouldn’t be long. Looking forward to discussing the stuff you sent yesterday. We’re getting down to the wire, huh?”
“We sure are.” She turns toward her screen as Aaron leaves. Meeting with Rohan Ghosh. Ghosh and the mayor were friends at SUNY Purchase, and when Teb tapped Ghosh from his post as Cleveland’s deputy commissioner, everyone claimed it was a classic case of nepotism. Ghosh was largely considered the least experienced person to serve in the top position at the NYPD.
Colette opens the manuscript again, doing her best to stay focused. Seeing the folders Aaron left on Teb’s desk, though, she wonders if they include his notes on the chapters she submitted yesterday. She stands and walks to the credenza for a Danish, glancing down at the stack. She stops, having to look twice to make sure she’s correctly read the name printed in wiry black handwriting on the tab of a manila folder on the top of the pile.
Ross, Midas.
Colette walks to the door and pushes it closed a few inches. Back at Teb’s desk, the Danish clutched in her hand, she opens the folder and peeks inside. There’s a photograph of a man. He’s tall and thin. He wears a hooded sweatshirt and is handing something to a store clerk. There’s another, taken from the same security camera, as he turns away from the counter, his face in profile. Then he’s walking toward the door and glancing up, straight into the camera. She fingers through the papers underneath: copies of handwritten notes; a photo of Midas’s crib, with mint-green sheets and a decal of thin, delicate birds taking flight on the wall above it. And then another of the man, this one crisp and in color. He’s of Middle Eastern descent, and he’s staring into the camera, sunglasses perched atop his head, balancing a baby on his forearm. The baby is partially covered with a blanket.
She lifts the photograph for a closer look, but then hears footsteps outside the door. She quickly returns it to the stack, closes the folder, and rushes back to the table. The steps pass by outside Teb’s office, and she looks down at her notes—Teb’s story about finally confronting his mother’s abusive boyfriend—but she can’t get the image out of her mind. The man’s smile. His hands. How they cupped that baby’s skull.
Who has my baby? How am I going to survive this?
Before she can consider what she’s doing, Colette takes her purse from the chair beside her, walks to Teb’s desk, and places the folder in her bag. She walks calmly into the hall and down the corridor to the copy room, where she shuts the door and turns the lock. The sweat of her palms smears the ink of the stamp on the top of each paper—Highly Confidential—as she pages through the stack, knowing how significantly she’s breaching her contract with Teb. According to the confidentiality agreement she’s signed, she can’t access any information he hasn’t specifically shared with her. She can’t speak to anyone about the things she’s learned during the course of her work. She can’t even admit to anyone—“no relative, friend, member of the public”—that she’s the person who writes his books.
There’s a knock on the door.
“Hello?” It’s Allison. The doorknob turns. “Is someone in there?”
Colette shoves the papers back into the folder and sets it under a box on a shelf above the copier. She grabs her bag from the floor and digs inside, unbuttoning the top four buttons of her shirt, revealing the upper edge of her nursing bra. She steadies her breathing before cracking open the door.
“Sorry.” She offers Allison an apologetic smile and holds up her manual breast pump. “The mayor’s still not there, and I need to pump. The bathroom’s a little gross. That makes it difficult.”
Allison’s forehead wrinkles in embarrassment. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry to disturb you. Of course. I’ll keep an eye out for you.”
“You’re the best.” Colette relocks the door, and waits a few moments before reaching for the folder again. Ten minutes later, she’s back in the hall, walking slowly toward Allison. “See what you have to look forward to?”
In Teb’s office, she returns the folder to the pile. She’s just sat down and opened the lid of her laptop when Teb walks in. He’s without his suit jacket, and his shirtsleeves are rolled to his elbows, the cotton stretching across the taut muscles of his back.