Lullaby and Goodnight (13 page)

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Authors: Wendy Corsi Staub

BOOK: Lullaby and Goodnight
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“Is it locked?”
“The desk? No, but my office door is.”
“All the time?”
“Well, not during business hours.”
“And during business hours, you never, ever leave your desk unattended?”
“Of course I do. But people are always around,” she says defensively. “It’s a busy ad agency.”
“Exactly. People are always around. Maintenance guys. Messengers. Coworkers.”
“Believe me, nobody could go through my desk drawers in broad daylight without getting caught,” she informs him. “And after hours, my office is always locked.”
“Who has the spare key to that?”
Her heart sinks. Suddenly feeling foolish, she admits, “I don’t know. Probably the janitor. The secretary, maybe.”
He nods. “You need to change the locks here. Today.”
“But . . . it’s Sunday.”
“This is New York, Mrs. Somerset,” he says, as though she’s a naive bumpkin fresh off the Midwest Express. “We have round-the-clock locksmiths.”
“Of course we do.” She emphasizes the
we
. “And it’s actually
Ms.
Somerset.”
He doesn’t hear her. His radio is blasting with static and an unintelligible, apparently urgent announcement.
He speaks into it, saying something equally unintelligible and urgent.
Already intent on some other, more pressing crime, he thrusts the clipboard and a pen at Peyton and asks her to sign the report.
“You’re going to leave?” she asks frantically, making an effort to sound more peeved than plaintive. “Isn’t there something else you can do?”
“Like . . .”
“Like . . . I don’t know, solve the case?”
He looks at her as though she’s asked him to pretty please stay and hold her hand.
Clearly, the NYPD isn’t going to dispatch their best detectives on a break-in, or provide twenty-four-hour protection to a woman terrorized by a mere prowler.
Left alone in her apartment, Peyton barricades the door with her desk. The same desk somebody found reason to search.
Did she really interrupt a burglary?
Maybe not. She was out for hours. Whoever it was could have come and gone this morning, right after she left.
But if that’s the case, then the question remains: why didn’t the prowler steal anything?
Again, Peyton opens the top desk drawer, half expecting to realize that something, indeed, is missing.
No. It’s all there.
Her checkbook. Her Palm Pilot. The credit cards she doesn’t carry around with her unless she’s traveling.
Yes, everything that should be in the drawer is accounted for, she concludes, about to close it and move on to the next.
Then, tucked in beside the rubber-banded stack of unpaid bills, she spots something that shouldn’t be there at all.
Something that sends a chill slithering down her spine.
No, the intruder didn’t steal anything.
The intruder left something behind.
Month Four
May
CHAPTER SIX
Peyton awakens abruptly from a restless sleep and lifts her head to look at the bedside clock.
Dawn is still at least another hour away.
She rolls onto her side, trembling.
Which is worse? Returning to the nightmare she just escaped? Or lying awake in utter darkness, thinking frightening thoughts?
Neither option is appealing.
After a few minutes of the latter, she realizes slumber has evaded her more effectively than she was able to evade the demons in her dreams.
Turning on a lamp and the television do little to banish the wee-hour Sunday morning gloom. On-screen, the heroine of a black-and-white movie is clutching her jaws and screaming.
Terrific.
Peyton hurriedly points the remote and clicks until she reaches the Weather Channel, hoping the innocuous meteorological banter will help calm her nerves.
It doesn’t. Not even the local forecast—a hot, sunny day to begin another week of unseasonably mild weather—lifts the pall.
Propped on pillows, Peyton huddles in bed beneath her quilt, knees clasped against her chest. She can’t help but dart wary glances from one shadowy corner of the room to another, her heart pounding as she searches for a lurking figure amidst familiar possessions.
It’s been two weeks. This has to stop,
she tells herself, unsuccessfully battling a tremendous yawn.
You can’t wake up paralyzed in fear every night for the rest of your life. Somebody broke into your apartment. So what? It probably happens to everybody in New York sooner or later
.
But not everybody in New York is left a bizarre calling card.
Tossing the remote aside, Peyton gets out of bed and pads barefooted over to the desk drawer to retrieve it. She’s kept it there ever since she came across it, taking it out every so often to puzzle over its significance and who could possibly have broken into her apartment with the sole purpose of leaving it.
The only thing that’s entirely clear is that somebody knows her secret.
Somebody who doesn’t approve.
Somebody who chose to convey that message with a small, annotated red-leather-bound Bible.
 
“Happy Mother’s Day, Mommy!”
Jarred out of a deep sleep, Anne Marie rolls over to see a row of cherubic faces beside the bed. Her babies.
“Happy Mother’s Day!” Caleb says again.
Realizing that sunlight is streaming into the room through the cracks in the shutters, Anne Marie glances automatically at the bedside clock. Nine-fifteen? How can that be? She’s usually up with the kids at the crack of dawn.
Wonder of wonders, Jarrett must have risen with them today so that she could sleep.
“We have really special surprises for you,” Justin tells her, struggling over the r’s as always. Really is “weely”; surprise is “sue-pwize.” There are times when Anne Marie patiently corrects him; times when she revels in the sweet baby talk.
He’ll grow up soon enough. They all will.
“We made breakfast in bed so you can eat it before you get ready for church!” Avery jumps up and down with excitement.
“We made the breakfast all by ourselves,” Caleb says proudly.
“All by ourselves, except Daddy helped,” amends the ever-ethical Justin.
“Daddy helped a little,” Avery explains, “but we mostly made it all by ourselves.”
Justin says, “Except Daddy helped a lot.”
Anne Marie laughs, gathering the chattering trio into her arms, embracing them against her heart.
“Good morning.” Jarrett appears in the doorway bearing a tray, looking uncommonly tousled for a man who tends to shave, shower, and dress before leaving the master suite every morning. “Happy Mother’s Day.”
She opens her mouth to thank him, touched by his efforts.
“The boys wanted to make you breakfast in bed,” he announces before she can speak, and sets the tray on a table.
“Just like the bear cubs did for Mama Bear in that video you got us from the library,” Avery pipes up.
“Daddy only helped a little,” Caleb puts in, as Anne Marie surveys the whole grain toast, bowl of strawberries, and mug of coffee.
“He helped a lot,” Justin says again.
There’s something perfunctory about the kiss Jarrett plants on top of her head before saying, “It was a team effort.”
“Well, thank you, team Egerton.” Anne Marie can’t help feeling a little wistful. If only Jarrett were the type of husband who came up with things like this on his own. If only he were a little more attentive, a little less preoccupied . . .
But there are worse marital offenses,
intones Grace DeMario, who certainly knew that firsthand. Anne Marie’s grandmother was abandoned by her own husband early in her marriage, left destitute to single-handedly raise five children. . . and, years later, Anne Marie herself, after Lisa, her teenaged mother, ran away.
Not that Lisa was ever a true mother to Anne Marie. She later discovered from one of her aunts that her grandmother had taken over that role from the time she was born . . . before she was born, actually. It was Grace who decided that she was to be named Anne, after the patron saint of expectant women. She had prayed to Saint Anne daily throughout Lisa’s pregnancy, worried that her wayward daughter might do something drastic to end it.
But Grace never admitted that. She was fiercely protective of both her daughter and her granddaughter.
She loved you enough to give you to me,
Grace would tell Anne Marie, when she grew old enough to ask about her mother.
“Are you okay, Mommy?” Caleb asks. “You’re not eating.”
“Yes, sweetie, I’m fine.”
Just listening to voices in my head again.
Yawning loudly, she says, “I guess I’m still not fully awake.”
“The boys thought you might like to sleep in,” Jarrett says.
“The boys were right. Thank you, boys. And Daddy.”
If only they let her sleep in every weekend morning, she thinks, stretching and sitting up. But if one day a year is all she gets, she’ll make the most of the indulgence.
One day. Mother’s Day.
A day to be endured before the triplets came along. Dreaded, and endured.
Now it’s cause for celebration.
Reaching for the creamer, she dumps some into the coffee.
If only she could be as lighthearted as Mama Bear on that cartoon video she watched with the boys.
But Mama Bear doesn’t carry the burden Anne Marie has borne all these years. Mama Bear didn’t wait, day in and day out, in growing desperation for news she both longed for and dreaded. Mama Bear and her cubs live in an insulated utopia, very much like—
“Mommy?”
She looks up to see the children and Jarrett watching her.
“How come you’re still stirring your coffee so much?” Caleb asks. “Aren’t you going to drink it?”
“And you have to eat the strawberries, too,” Justin says.
“But can I have a strawberry?” Avery asks. “Or four strawberries ?” Since the triplets’ birthday last week, four has replaced three as their favorite number.
“Of course you can have four strawberries, honey.”
“Avery! No! Those are for Mommy.”
“It’s okay, Caleb. I’ll share. Come on up here,” she says, scooting over to make room on the bed for the children, who clamber right in to nestle beside her.
“They’re going to spill the coffee,” Jarrett warns her, as if spilled coffee is the worst thing in the world.
“Then I’ll clean it up,” she informs him, darkly thinking that there are far more horrible things in the world. Things her husband, in his own insulated utopia, can’t possibly begin to imagine.
 
Rita checks her watch as she and Nancy step out of the cab in front of the Amsterdam Avenue high-rise apartment building. “We’re late.”
“Just five minutes. No big deal. Hey, what are you doing?”
“Paying the driver.” Rita hands him a ten, says yes to a receipt, tells him to keep the change.
“But I was going to pay,” Nancy protests as he drives away. “I’m the big whiner who insisted on a cab instead of the subway. I’m sorry. I guess I just didn’t feel like taking two different trains, changing at Times Square to come uptown. . . .”
“That’s okay.” Rita pockets the receipt. “I’ll write it off as a business expense.”
“Which it is. You should write off that coffee, too,” she adds as Rita deposits her empty hot cup, along with her mostly unread newspaper, into a nearby trash can.
“That isn’t a business expense.”
“You drank it on the way to a business presentation.” Nancy tosses her own newspaper and coffee cup in after Rita’s. “Come on. What are the chances you’ll get audited, anyway?”
“That’s my Nancy. Always trying to bend the rules.”
“Who, me?”
Rita grins. “Yes,
you.
The same
you
who tried to get me to take an extra paper out of that machine by the taxi stand.”
“Well, I had already paid and the door was open, so—”
“You paid for one, Nancy, not two.”
“Who would know? They don’t keep track of that sort of thing.”
“I’m sure they do. And I already had my quarters in my hand.”
“That’s my Rita. Always a fine upstanding citizen, trying to set a good example. No wonder your kids turned out so well.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that.”
“Come on, Rita. John’s a surgeon, Paul’s a pediatrician. They definitely turned out well.”
“I’m not arguing about how they turned out. I’m just not sure how much of that is to my credit.”
“Oh, stop being modest. It’s all to your credit. Admit it, you’re an incredible mother.”
“So I suppose it would be all my fault if they were both jailbirds?”
“Absolutely,” Nancy says with a laugh.
The May sun is warm on Rita’s bare shoulders as they cross the sidewalk to the building. She initially had put on a light sweater this morning when she went to early mass back home in Queens, but changed into a sleeveless cotton T-shirt afterward.
According to the weather report she did manage to get from the newspaper amidst Nancy’s incessant backseat chatter, this is apparently going to be one of those years when winter seems to give way directly to summer. After weeks of steady, chilly rain, it’s been sunny and humid with temperatures in the eighties for the past few days.
“Oh, did you remember to bring that pamphlet on cepha-lopelvic disproportion?” Rita asks as they step into the dim lobby of the prewar building.
Nancy lifts her canvas bag. “Got it. Also that new one on postdatism.”
“Good thinking.”
“I figured I should make myself useful so you wouldn’t regret agreeing to let me come along.”
Hearing the familiar poor-little-me note creeping into her friend’s tone, Rita thinks,
Uh-oh, here we go again.
“It’s not that I didn’t want you here, Nancy. It’s just that I could have handled this fine on my own.”
“Yeah, well, it’s Mother’s Day. I needed something to do to get my mind off that.”
Oh. That’s right. Rita touches Nancy’s arm gently. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Really,” she insists, seeing Rita’s concerned expression.
“I’m just making sure. I know this is hard for you.”
“Thanks. I’m fine,” Nancy says tightly, and looks away.
In the marble-tiled lobby, they’re greeted by a uniformed doorman, whose name tag reads
Jamil.
“What can I do for you today, ladies?”
“We’re here to see Wanda Jones in 28J,” Rita says, and he grins.
“What is this, a Tupperware party? Ms. Jones is getting one lady visitor after another this afternoon.”
“Not a Tupperware party, exactly,” Nancy says with a friendly smile, looking like her old self again.
Until Jamil says, “Oh, I get it. It’s Mother’s Day. Must be some kind of special luncheon or something.”
Neither Rita nor Nancy bothers to correct him. Moments later, they’re in the mirrored, carpeted elevator on their way up to the twenty-eighth floor.
“What are you doing after this?” Nancy asks, checking her reflection and patting her ash-colored hair, which is meticulously styled and sprayed, even on a sweltering day like this.
“I’m meeting my sons for dinner on the East Side,” Rita tells her. “Why?”
“Never mind. I just thought maybe we could see a movie or something.”
“I’m sorry. I’d invite you to come along, but it’s supposed to be just the three of us—J.D. isn’t even coming along, and the boys are treating me, so . . .”

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