The Perfect Mother(38)

Allison waves her inside. She pretends to inspect the floor around the chair she’d occupied, and then beside Teb’s desk, guiding the folder back into its place.

She waves good-bye to Allison, pressing the button at the elevator. Two women scoot inside just before the doors close, coffees and lighters in their hands.

“They say he’s from Yemen. A Muslim,” one says to the other, in the raspy voice of a longtime smoker. “That can’t be good.”

The other woman shakes her head. “What I want to know is, where’s the mother? Why isn’t she giving any interviews? Only a woman with something to hide would refuse to speak to the press.”

The women both look at Colette. She smiles and pushes the button for the lobby, her heart thudding, her bag pressed against her chest, the flash drive still inside.





Chapter Nine



Night Four



I feel better here.

Shaded by the trees and shadows, the brim of a hat. Only two hours from the city, and yet I may as well be an entire world away. Thank god. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to leave, but I simply packed the car in the middle of the night and headed out before the sun rose, not a word to anyone, letting myself in before the neighbors were awake, using the key left in the flowerpot.

It was the right choice, to leave the city and come here. I feel stable, lucid. Euphoric, even. To be honest, I haven’t felt this good in months. It’s probably the good country air, and those pills the doctor gave me before I left the hospital, something to take the edge off.

Okay, I need to get down to business. I don’t know why I’m feeling coy about writing this, but . . .

Joshua and I. We’re back together.

It’s too good to be true, and god how I hate to jinx it, but there you have it. I did it. I went to see him. I thought he was going to be angry with me for showing up like I did, telling him I just needed to say my piece, once and for all. But he wasn’t angry. I held myself together and explained how hard it was being without him, and how hopeless and depressed I’ve been, reminding him how happy we were in the beginning, those long nights in the bath. Lying in bed on Sunday mornings, reading aloud. Shakespeare. Maya Angelou. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. And you know what? He let me talk. No, he wanted to hear these things.

“I’ll take care of things,” I said. “For you. For us.” He smiled. “If I do, will you come home with me?” I moved closer, pulling him toward me, lost in the feel of his skin, his smell, his body pressed against mine. “You need me as much as I need you. You know it.”

I can’t lie. I’m nervous. I’m having trouble trusting any of my decisions, and this one is no different. But then I keep thinking about that sign hanging in Dr. H’s waiting room.

Some want it to happen. Some wish it would happen. Some make it happen.



It makes me laugh now, remembering my first time meeting Dr. H, how I took that tacky plaque off the wall and carried it inside his office. The room smelled of carpet soap and a lingering trace of woodsy cologne left behind by his last patient. “You’re kidding,” I said, kicking off my flip-flops and tucking my legs under me, the plaque in my lap.

“What?” he asked, his hands clasped in his lap, benevolence in his eyes. (He’s from Milwaukee.) “What am I kidding about?”

“This plaque. What? Were all the cat posters saying Hang in There sold out?”

But that plaque was right. I couldn’t sit around for the rest of my life thinking about being with Joshua. I couldn’t just wish to be with him. I had to make it happen, whatever it took.

It’s not going to be easy. I think we both know that. We’ll stay here for as long as we can, until we figure out where to go next. I’m considering Indonesia, like in that book everyone loved. I’ll cut my hair. We’ll rent a house on a rice paddy, do yoga, find ourselves. I’ll learn to cook.

But the details can wait. Right now, I just want to be here, enjoying the fresh air and warm breeze, with Joshua. This evening I grilled steaks for dinner and opened the most expensive bottle of wine I could find in the cellar. We lay in bed afterward, and after he fell asleep, I couldn’t take my eyes off him. I know he’ll wake up and wonder where I am, but I’m so content, wrapped in this silk robe, listening to the crickets, gazing out at the starlit fields left behind by people who can’t afford to farm any longer.

I will say this: I need to stop reading the news. The media—all of them—they’re obsessed with the story. The former actress who had it all.

Money!

Beauty!

A gorgeous new baby!

Patricia Faith is even intent on making something of the date—the coincidence of a baby disappearing on the Fourth of July, his mother freed from the burden of motherhood, on Independence Day. The date, like his name, has taken on some sort of symbolic meeting. Midas. The great Greek king who turned everything to gold and then who, at least in Aristotle’s telling, starved to death for his “vain prayer.” (In other versions, of course, he was rescued at the last moment from certain death.)

But what did I expect? Of course they’re obsessed. Entire careers have been built around stories like this. It upsets Joshua that I’m reading about it, but I’m having a hard time pulling myself away. I need to know what people are saying. Where fingers are being pointed. Especially today, now that Bodhi Mogaro was found. People have taken to the comments sections like members of a fevered mob. A guy caught with $25,000 in cash? Someone just bought himself a seat in the electric chair.