Текст книги "Where They Found Her"

Автор книги: Kimberly McCreight

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Molly Sanderson, Session 7, March 29, 2013

(Audio Transcription, Session Recorded with

Patient Knowledge and Consent)

Q:    Have you spoken to your father about what happened to the baby?

M.S.: You’re joking, right?

Q:    I wasn’t, no. That would be a joke, talking to your father?

M.S.: We barely know each other. And before you go off on a tangent, no, I don’t blame him for that. Okay, maybe I blame him. But I just—I don’t care anymore. Or I don’t care now. After we lost the baby, he sent me a sympathy card and made a donation to my work—or my old work—like we asked people to. But there’s only so much that a stranger can do in a situation like this.

Q:    And that’s okay with you? That your sole surviving parent is a stranger?

M.S.: What difference does it make whether I’m okay with it? It’s the way things are. I have enough problems right now without dredging up ancient history. I had a rough childhood and a cold, angry mother who died when I was eighteen. I can’t change any of that now.

Q:    But you could acknowledge that not having parents makes this harder for you.

M.S.: Because feeling sorry for myself is going to make me feel better?

Q:    It might. And what about Justin’s parents? What’s your relationship like with them?

M.S.: Justin’s mother came and stayed for two weeks right after. I don’t know what we would have done without her help.

Q:    But it doesn’t sound like you’re exceptionally close.

M.S.: Are we supposed to be? Justin’s parents are just– They’re intimidating, I guess. His mother told me once that I was different from Justin’s other girlfriends. More spirited, that’s what she said. I think she meant it as a compliment, that I kept him in better line than his other girlfriends or something. But it made me feel like a horse. That’s what they’re like: well-intentioned, but always off somehow.

Q:    Have you and Justin spoken about trying to have another baby?

M.S.: How could I have another baby? I can’t take care of the one I have.

Q:    I didn’t mean now. Eventually. Sometimes making plans like that for the future can be helpful.

M.S.: I can’t do that. Not yet.

Q:    Have you told the NAPW that you’re not coming back?

M.S.: Yes, I told them. They said I could have more time off, as much as I needed. But I don’t want more time. I want to know that it’s over. That I never have to go back there.

Q:    What will you do if you don’t go back to work?

M.S.: Try to survive. Right now that feels like more than a full-time job.

Molly

I headed straight from the police station to the Black Cat Café on the far side of the chilly green. Gray had overtaken the sky, turning it from the front edge of spring back into the tail end of winter. I pulled my coat tighter around me and lifted my bag on my shoulder.

I was glad I’d brought my laptop with me. There wasn’t much time before everyone would have the story, which meant I’d have to go for basic in my second post. I’d save my crime statistics and the background on Simon Barton. As it was, I would have barely anything to add in the print follow-up. I’d already called the ME’s office and, as expected, I had gotten a curt “No comment pending our official results.”

Despite my initial vertigo, I was no longer conflicted about staying on the story. I wanted to, needed to write about it, and with an intensity that even I had to acknowledge was somewhat disconcerting. I could only imagine what Justin would say if he knew what I was feeling, which was why I didn’t plan to tell him.

Can you have coffee? Justin texted before I’d gotten all the way across the green. He was checking up on me. Acting like he was sure I’d be fine, but wanting a peek with his own eyes to be sure.

Great. Black Cat? Thirty minutes?

By then I’d be done with the Web update.

Wouldn’t miss it.

It was warm inside the rough-hewn Black Cat, the air rich with the ten varieties of free-trade coffee beans on offer. It was my favorite café in town, the place I went when I didn’t want to write at home, which was most of the time these days. That was the thing about not being able to get out of bed for weeks on end. Once you finally could, you developed a real phobia of being at home.

The Black Cat was a true university hangout—professors and students—complete with wobbly wood tables, faded concert posters, and bathrooms that didn’t lock properly. The moms in town all went to Norma’s around the corner, which had brightly hued art deco throw pillows on its long benches and lavender soap in the bathroom. It also had an organic juice bar, two kinds of vegan muffins, and wine from four o’clock. Meanwhile, the Black Cat didn’t serve decaf and refused to stock skim milk or artificial sweeteners. The first time Stella came in with me, she got lippy when they scoffed at her request for stevia. The argument between her and the barista got so heated, I thought for sure he was going to throw his skateboard at her.

But I liked the Black Cat. It reminded me of the unapologetic cafés around Columbia that Justin and I had frequented when we first started dating.

I ordered a full-fat latte and sat in the window. In fifteen minutes, I had a decent draft. It was short, under a hundred and fifty words. My interview with Steve had been exclusive because it was first. That didn’t mean he’d given me much new to say.

I read through the post one last time. Satisfied, I emailed it off to Erik with a note: Extended print story to come. But extended how, exactly? I was pondering how I’d flesh it out as I headed to get another latte. I ran smack into Nancy on her way out the door.

“Oh, hi, Molly,” she said, smiling, but with none of her usual ease.

Her face was drawn and her eyes were puffy. Her long dark blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail that looked slept on. She seemed very much like somebody in the midst of a family crisis.

“It’s terrible what’s happened with that baby,” she said, sadness and sympathy flicking across her face. “Erik told me that you’re covering it.”

I couldn’t tell whether Nancy was upset for herself or concerned for me. We’d never spoken about the baby I’d lost, but I could tell she was thinking about it. And after all she and Erik had been through—three miscarriages, followed by two rounds of unsuccessful IVF, one larcenous surrogate, and an already arduous and still unsuccessful adoption process—a dead baby must have triggered all sorts of strong emotions for her, too. I wanted to ask if she was okay. But everything I thought about saying felt presumptuous and awkward.

“I’m trying,” I said, feeling myself well up. It was that caring look in Nancy’s eyes. It did it to me every time. “It’s terrible. I feel terrible for—well, everyone involved.”

Nancy nodded, then mercifully looked away, toward the Ridgedale town green. But she lingered while I waited in line, as if she wanted to say something else. After a while, it started to feel uncomfortable with her standing there, not saying anything.

“I hope everything is okay with your family,” I said, compelled to fill the void.

Nancy turned sharply in my direction. “What do you mean?”

Dammit. Why had I said anything? There I’d gone, hooking myself on all that invisible barbed wire again. What if Erik was off somewhere on a bender or something that Nancy didn’t know about? Elizabeth told me once that she’d spotted Erik at Blondie’s, a dive bar downtown. But she added that she’d been very drunk herself—“totally wasted,” as if she were sixteen instead of twenty-six—so I hadn’t taken it seriously. But judging from the look on Nancy’s face, there was something complicated going on.

“I’m sorry, I thought Erik said he had to go out of town for something family-related. I may have misunderstood. This story has me pretty distracted.”

“No, no, you’re right,” Nancy said quickly. She smiled again, even less convincingly. “It’s Erik’s cousin. There was a fire at his house, bad wiring. No one was hurt, but the family lost everything. Thank you for asking.” She looked around as if searching for someone or something to grab on to, but she came up empty-handed. She checked her watch. When she looked back at me, her eyes had softened, filled with compassion, not pity. She squeezed my arm. “I should probably be going. You take care of yourself, Molly. And don’t work too hard.”

“I won’t,” I said, turning away so she didn’t see the tears that had rushed crazily to my eyes. “Thanks, it was nice to see you.”

I watched Nancy’s tired face disappear past the front windows and Justin appear in her place. I scrubbed my face with my hands, trying to rub away the incriminating weepiness as Justin stepped inside. He was wearing jeans, Vans, and an untucked, slightly wrinkled button-down—a young literature professor’s uniform.

“Hey there.” He wrapped an arm around my waist and leaned over to kiss me. “Everything okay?”

“Yes.” I tried to smile. “And no.”

He nodded sympathetically. And he didn’t know the half of it yet. “Why don’t you go sit? I’ll get your coffee for you,” he said. “A latte?”

I smiled. “Sure.”

I went back and sat down, watching Justin’s quick back-and-forth with the girl behind the counter. She had a plain square face and an athlete’s sturdy frame. She laughed too loudly at whatever Justin said as he motioned to the baked goods. Preternaturally charming—men, women, old, young. Justin couldn’t help himself.

I’d known that since the day we met. I was at the Hungarian Pastry Shop, an old-school no-frills café near Columbia, studying constitutional criminal procedure, listening to Justin a couple tables away, chatting up the sixtysomething man sitting near him. Apparently they shared an intense interest in collecting. In the older man’s case, it was mechanical banks; for Justin, it was bottle caps.

“Do you collect anything?” Justin had asked me once the man was gone.

“No,” I said, trying not to notice just how good-looking he was.

“Me, neither,” Justin said.

“I just heard you telling that man—”

“See, I knew you were listening,” he said with a sly smile that made him even better-looking. “Anyway, no. No collecting. I was just making conversation.”

“So you were lying,” I said.

According to my law school friend Leslie, a cheerful guy’s-girl soccer player who never had a shortage of boyfriends, this was why men never called me for a second date: I was a hard-ass. Too serious, too exacting. Humorless. I needed to let some of their harmless male bullshit flow over me; men didn’t want to be called out for every little thing. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard this. My whole life, friends—men especially—had been telling me how much luckier in love I would be if I’d lighten up. Sometimes I wanted to defend myself, to ask how many of them had grown up like me. Because the truth was: I would choose alone any day over angry like my mother.

As it turned out, Justin fell in love with my sharpest edges. He genuinely valued my willingness to call him out on his particular brand of bullshit.

“I’d say I was just being friendly,” Justin had said that day in the café. “But I guess that depends on how you see the world.”

And as much as Justin valued the clarity of my black and white, I’d been intoxicated by his world of grays. By his fearlessness and his freedom and his very modest sense of entitlement. Justin had never believed that he needed to be right 100 percent of the time to be a decent person; he didn’t need to be perfect to be loved. As it turned out, I wanted to feel that way also, much more than I’d ever let myself believe.

No doubt it had been easier for Justin with Judith and Charles, his generous parents, celebrating every milestone big and small in his picture-perfect house in New Canaan, Connecticut. With his accomplished and loving sister, Melissa, at his side, Justin had played lacrosse and swum competitively. He spent summers on the Cape and winter holidays in Vail. He had a golden retriever named Honey. And thank God for the relentless optimism those things had given Justin. Without that, I never would have had the courage to forge ahead with him on a family of our own.

“Not everything about where you’re headed, Molly, has to be about where you’ve been,” he’d told me once when we’d been deep in the throes of debating getting pregnant the first time.

And I’d believed him, proof of just how much I’d loved him.

“It’s a baby,” I blurted out when Justin returned with our coffees. So much for playing it cool. He hadn’t even sat down.

“What?” Justin looked confused.

“The body they found,” I said. “It’s a baby.”

His face was stiff as he lowered himself into the chair across from me. “Well, that’s a completely upsetting turn of events.”

“Tell me about it.”

He turned his coffee cup in his hands. His face was tighter. He was trying hard not to overreact, but he was worried. It was obvious.

“Do they know whose it is?”

I shook my head and willed my tears back. “Somebody terrified, I’m sure.”

I knew that much from my years at NAPW. I’d never handled the criminal side of things; my focus had been on legislative change, drafting amicus briefs and working with lobbyists. But I had spoken to colleagues who had clients with pregnancies that had ended in tragedy. Almost always, the women had been abused themselves or worse. They were usually poor and alone, always terrified and overwhelmed. Assigning blame in these circumstances wasn’t nearly as simple as some people liked to believe.

Justin reached forward and put a hand over mine. “Are you okay?”

I shrugged, then nodded and again tried hard not to cry. Because as much as I wanted to pretend I was upset about what the poor mother of this baby might have been through—assuming she was responsible—I was thinking more about myself. I was thinking about what I had been through. What I was still going through, at least enough that I wasn’t ready to contemplate trying for another baby. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be ready for that. But I had to be careful. If I seemed like I was slipping under again, Justin wouldn’t let me out of his sight.

“Obviously, it would be better if it weren’t a baby,” I said, trying to smile. It didn’t feel convincing. “But I can handle it.”

Justin closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He was quiet for a long time, then turned to stare out the window. “Are you sure you should do this story, babe?” He had this expression on his face when he looked at me again: tragic, as though I were the tragedy. “I know it’s an opportunity, and that’s important. But maybe it’s not worth it.”

“I have to do it,” I said, probably too forcefully. I smiled weakly, trying to claw back some credibility. “It feels—I don’t know, connected somehow. To what happened to us.”

“But it’s not.” Justin eyed me seriously. If he was trying to hide his alarm, he was not succeeding. “You know that, right? This has nothing to do with what happened to us.”

“Of course I know that, Justin.” And I did. Didn’t I?

“I just, I don’t want you to . . .” He looked more than worried. He looked petrified. “Where’s Richard, anyway? Shouldn’t he be back soon?”

Justin loved me and wanted to help. But there was a difference between protecting me and making me feel irrevocably damaged.

“This is my story, Justin,” I said, wishing I hadn’t phrased it quite that way. “It’s my responsibility. And I have the expertise—both personally and professionally—to handle it. I’m not going to ‘give’ it back to Richard because it’s a little ‘uncomfortable’ for me. Life is uncomfortable. I can’t hide from it.”

My phone buzzed with a text, saving me from further interrogation. I braced for it to be from Erik, Nancy having told him that I’d seemed too unstable to be trusted with such an important story. But it was Stella. Can you meet me at Univ. Hospital? Please?

“Who’s that?” Justin asked, pointing his chin toward the phone.

“Stella,” I said, wondering how worried I should be.

“What is it this time?” he asked tightly.

“She’s at the hospital. Aidan, I’m assuming.”

“And let me guess,” Justin said. “It’s an emergency.”

From the start, Justin had pegged Stella as a drama queen, which she was. But he’d always tolerated her with good humor. Lately, though, she and her late-night calls seemed to be grating on him. Justin was probably wary of Stella dragging me back down in a blaze of unbridled nuttiness.

“She’s entertaining, I get that,” Justin had said when we got home from the first—and one of the few—dinners the three of us had eaten together. If it had been up to Stella, we would have done it much more often. She was utterly unfazed by being a third wheel. But Justin always demurred. “From ten miles off, Stella’s batshit crazy. You’ve got to see that.”

I’d laughed. “‘Batshit’? That’s a tad melodramatic, don’t you think?” We were standing side by side in our huge sparkling-white bathroom with its polished double sinks. Yet another benefit of Ridgedale living—clean, wide-open spaces.

“Be friends with her if you want, I don’t care,” Justin said through a mouthful of toothpaste. He spat into the sink. “But I’ve known a bunch of girls like Stella in my time, and—”

“Eww, please. Must we do a ‘who I’ve slept with’ walk down memory lane?” Justin had not been a monk before we met, and he’d never pretended otherwise.

“I’m just saying, women like Stella are fun to be around. Until they’re really, really not.”

But I didn’t care if Stella’s scalding sunshine came with a little extra drama on the side. That was a price I was willing to pay.

Please? came another text from Stella. Quick as you can?

“It’s okay,” Justin said, probably reading the tension on my face. “Go check on your crazy friend.” He reached forward to squeeze my hand. “As long as you can look me in the eye and promise me you’ll be okay on this story.”

“Come on, you know me.” I smiled playfully as I stood, then leaned over to kiss him. “When have I ever really been okay?”

Stella had directed me to a room on the second floor of the hospital. When I arrived, she was sitting in a chair next to the far bed. Her arms were crossed, her elegant face bunched and gray. I looked past the empty bed closest to the door, bracing myself to see Aidan lying in the bed against the windows—face smashed, some terrible tube helping him breathe. But there was a dark-haired woman lying there, pretty and young—twenties, maybe. Or she would have been pretty if her face hadn’t been swollen and bruised about the eyes.

“Oh, Molly.” Stella jumped to her feet and rushed over. “Thank you so much for coming.” She wrapped me in her warm embrace and pressed her smooth, cool cheek against mine. Her perfume smelled of flowers and citrus.

The woman in the bed raised a hand in something like a wave. “Hi,” I said, smiling back politely. I had no idea who she was.

“Rose was in a car accident this morning, the poor thing,” Stella said, going over to put a protective hand on the woman’s arm.

“That’s terrible,” I said.

Stella was talking to me like I was supposed to know Rose. But Stella didn’t have any local relatives, and the girl looked too young to be a friend. I wouldn’t have put it past Stella to show up at the hospital room of a woman she didn’t know, but I gathered from the equally warm way the young woman reached out and put her IV’d hand over Stella’s that they did have some kind of genuine relationship.

“A truck driver texting,” Rose said. Her voice was hoarse, and it seemed to be taking great effort for her to talk. “But I’m fine. It’s only some stitches and a lot of ugly bruises.”

“What is that Zen saying of yours, Rose? ‘Let go or be dragged’? I think we should find that driver and drag him.”

“I love you for loving me, Stella.” Rose smiled. “But I’m pretty sure that’s not how the phrase was intended.”

“And now Rose would like to go home.” Stella rubbed the woman’s arm some more. “No one can give us a legitimate medical reason why she can’t, but for some insane, incompetent reason, they still will not discharge her. I thought maybe you could, you know, mention that you’re from the local paper. See if we could get them to snap to it. Nothing like fear of a little bad press to get someone’s attention.”

This was why Stella had wanted me there? To throw my very meager weight around? I felt simultaneously flattered and insulted. I smiled at Rose through gritted teeth. “Stella, can I talk to you in the hall for one second?”

“Oh, sure,” Stella said, turning back to Rose. “I’ll be right back, honey. Do you need anything else? You’re sure you don’t want a trashy magazine while we wait for these jerks to get it together?”

“No, no, I’m fine,” Rose said, squeezing Stella’s hand. “You’ve done way too much already.”

“Who is she?” I whispered when we were out in the hall, the door to the room easing shut.

“Rose,” Stella said at full volume, pulling her chic cranberry-hued cardigan closed. Her saying the woman’s name a second time did not make it more familiar. “I’m telling you, Molly. There’s definitely something weird going on here. First they said they needed to wait for more test results; now they’re saying there’s some problem with Rose’s insurance. And that’s definitely not true, because she’s still on her parents’ insurance. It’s the one thing they help her with. Anyway, Rose called and checked. Her insurance is fine. The hospital is making up one excuse after another.”

“But Stella, who is Rose to you?”

“Oh, Rose cleans my house.” Stella looked confused and maybe a tiny bit appalled. “You have met her, Molly. Don’t you remember?”

Now that Stella mentioned it, I did have a vague recollection of one occasion, right after Stella and I had met, when I’d been at her house and her cleaning woman had passed through the kitchen. Stella had told me about her afterward in hushed tones—a straight-A psychology student at Ridgedale University, planning to work with autistic children like her younger brother, until her parents cut her off financially and she had to drop out of school. Criminal, according to Stella. Absolutely criminal.

The story had not surprised me. Most people Stella knew came with some kind of hard-luck history—even me.

“I didn’t recognize her with the bruising,” I lied.

“I know,” Stella said, making a disgusted face. “Horrible, isn’t it? She’s in agony, too, the poor thing. And she won’t take any pain medicine because she’s one of those crazy all-natural types. You know, raw food, meditation. Especially now, with the nursing, she’s definitely not taking anything.”

The nursing. There was a pull in the pit of my stomach. For some insane, incompetent reason, they will not discharge her. Surely the police had alerted the hospital to be on the lookout for mothers of missing babies.

“Rose has a baby?”

“Yeah, just had a baby three weeks ago,” Stella said. “She shouldn’t be back working. But I guess that’s what happens to people on the margins. Her parents are such assholes.”

Rose hadn’t been visibly pregnant when I’d seen her, but that had been nearly six months ago.

“Stella, where is Rose’s baby?”

“What do you mean, where is her—” I watched the lightbulb finally go on for her. “Oh my God. They think it’s her baby they found?”

“I’m assuming,” I said. “It would explain why they’re not letting her go.”

“That’s insane.” Stella crossed her arms, but she didn’t sound that sure. “I mean, I’m sure Rose’s baby is at her apartment.”

With whom? A nanny? How many “people on the margins” could afford that? It didn’t sound like Rose had family helping her out, and it wasn’t like Ridgedale was overflowing with affordable day care options. Most people in Ridgedale didn’t need affordable.

Before I could press Stella on this substantial hole in her theory, a doctor came up, pausing to grab the chart outside Rose’s door. He had a full head of thick gray hair and large glasses that obscured his eyes. He was trying hard not to make eye contact with us, as though by not seeing us, he could make it so we weren’t seeing him.

“Oh, hi,” Stella said, stepping into his path. “Did you just come on shift?”

“Yes,” he said, but not very pleasantly. His eyes stayed locked on Rose’s chart.

“We’re friends of Rose’s. Well, technically, she works for me,” Stella said. “And Molly is a reporter with the Ridgedale Reader.”

And there went Stella, doing whatever she wanted. Not that I thought this doctor would be bothered by an implied threat about my cutting investigative journalism. Except, from the way his eyes shot up from Rose’s file, it appeared he did care.

“A reporter, huh?” he said unpleasantly. “You’ll need to talk to the communications office if you’re looking for a comment.”

A comment? There was some kind of story, then. Because he’d seemed awfully prepared with that retort. As though he’d already been briefed about reporters turning up. Even in Ridgedale, that didn’t happen for routine traffic accidents.

“It’s quite simple,” Stella began, calm but firm. “Rose wants to leave right now. And there’s no earthly reason why she shouldn’t be allowed to. Discharge her immediately, or Molly here will be stuck hanging around the hospital, and who knows what kind of stories will catch her eye. Didn’t you just have another case of MRSA after that boy lost his hand last year?”

I turned and glared at Stella. This was so her—unsure of Rose’s innocence and yet willing to throw herself (and me) headlong into the fray. The doctor was glaring at me through his big glasses. I smiled as he pushed open the door to Rose’s room.

“A MRSA story, huh?” he asked. “And your paper approves of this sort of thing? Extortion?”

I just stared at him and kept on smiling. There wasn’t much else I could do. That was exactly what Stella had been suggesting. I just had to hope that he wouldn’t report back to Erik. If Erik had questioned the ethics of my allowing Steve to dictate our reporting, I could only imagine how he’d feel about extortion. Finally, the doctor shook his head in disgust and stepped inside Rose’s room, letting the door slam shut behind him.

As soon as he was gone, I turned wide-eyed to Stella, waiting for her to apologize. She was staring at Rose’s door, oblivious. “Maybe the father of Rose’s baby had something to do with what happened. I mean, if something happened to her baby, which I’m not conceding.”

“What are you talking about, Stella?”

“Rose told me how she got pregnant. Not the specifics. And she didn’t use the word ‘rape,’ but it sounded to me like that’s what it was.”

“Who’s the father?”

“I don’t know. A university student, I assume. An entitled asshole, no doubt. And you know how universities like Ridgedale can be. Cover up first, ask questions never.” Stella shook her head. “Rose was so excited for the baby, though, despite how she’d gotten pregnant.” When Stella looked at me, her eyes were wide and shiny. “I’m telling you, none of this makes any sense, Molly. No sense at all.”