The Perfect Mother(73)
The pet names. The meeting places.
Lou swore it was only a fling, that she’d already ended things. That she was ready to do what he’d been after her about: start trying for a baby.
“Is my granddaughter ready for Grandma Day?”
Dorothy took Autumn on her first Grandma Day when she was just twenty-three days old. Lou had returned to work already. She’d been in the process of closing a major deal when her water broke two weeks before the C-section she’d scheduled, and she wasn’t happy about taking off before the account had wrapped up. She said she was going to the office for only a few hours that first day, but she didn’t come home until 9:30 p.m., and she’s been back to working sixty hours a week ever since. Or she said she was at work.
“You think you should cut back?” he asked Lou a few weeks ago, his voice tinged with fury, letting her know he wasn’t going to keep playing along with the charade. “You know, on all of this work?”
She bristled and walked out of the room. “And how am I supposed to do that?” she called from their bedroom. “If we didn’t have my income . . .”
“You sure you’re okay?” his mother asks him now, walking into the living room, Autumn in her arms. She is dressed in a crisp cotton dress with yellow daisies.
“I’m fine, Mom. Really.”
“Okay.” She straps Autumn into the stroller.
“Did you buy her that dress?”
“I can’t help myself.” Dorothy walks close to touch his cheek. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
“Sleep, I hope.”
“Yeah, probably.” He kisses her forehead. “Thanks, Mom.”
He closes the door and waits a few moments before walking into the bedroom, where he opens the drawer of the bedside table and pulls out the envelope. He peeks inside, making sure the papers are still there, and then slips on his sneakers at the window, confirming his mother is out of sight before leaving.
He knows exactly where he’s headed and he walks fast, before he can second-guess himself. Fuck Nell, he thinks. Fuck Francie, following him this morning, “hiding” behind that car, watching him drink his coffee at The Spot. Fuck all of them. When he arrives at Winnie’s building ten minutes later, he sees that the number of journalists waiting outside has dwindled, many of them no doubt headed upstate to report on the progress of the search.
He keeps his distance, standing across the street, his eyes hidden behind his sunglasses, noticing that dozens of new Sophie giraffes have been added since yesterday, reading the latest messages to Midas—Praying for Baby Midas. BRING MIDAS HOME—tacked to the silver linden tree in front of Winnie’s building. He glances up at Winnie’s windows, picturing what’s happening behind the thick silk curtains. He imagines Mark Hoyt in the kitchen, crouching on bended knees next to the island, inspecting a small spot that will turn out to be marinara sauce splashed onto the tile floor ten days earlier; the forensic experts running latex fingers across the windowpane in Midas’s room, roaming slowly through Winnie’s bedroom, checking, once again, the door to the terrace. He looks at the door, remembering the first time he entered that bedroom.
He turns away from the building and takes the folded envelope from his pocket. It appeared in his mailbox two days earlier. He still doesn’t know who sent it, or why, and he’d planned to ignore the papers inside, sure that whoever was behind this had only bad intentions.
He crosses the street and approaches Elliott Falk, who is leaning against the shaded hood of a maroon Subaru, smoking a cigarette.
“You want a story?”
Falk exhales a stream of smoke. “Probably. What’s it about?”
“The night Midas was taken. The woman in the photograph that Patricia Faith released. The drunk one, at the Jolly Llama.”
Falk’s eyes glimmer. “What about her?”
“Her name is Nell Mackey.”
“Nell Mackey?”
“Yeah. And you need to look into her.”
“Look into her? How come?”
He hands the envelope to Falk. “She’s not who she says she is.”
Falk flicks the cigarette into the street and pulls out the papers. He lets out a low whistle as he reads what’s inside. “Wow, man, thanks.”
He tries to respond, but the words are caught in his throat as he turns and walks away, toward the park, his eyes cast toward the ground, a hard pit of shame in his chest.
Chapter Seventeen
Day Ten
To: May Mothers
From: Your friends at The Village
Date: July 14
Subject: Today’s advice
Your baby: Day 61
Not to alarm you, but you should start to pay attention to the shape of your baby’s skull. While “back is best” is the preferred method of sleeping, too much time on her back can cause your little one to develop a soft spot, known as positional plagiocephaly. You can address this by making sure she’s getting the required amount of tummy time a day. If the flat spot seems pronounced, be sure to talk to your doctor.
“Ellen! Ellen! Give us a smile!”
“Ellen, do you know what happened to Midas?”
Sebastian blocks their cameras with his arm, pushing roughly through the crowd, shielding Nell.