Lullaby and Goodnight (33 page)
Read Lullaby and Goodnight Online
Authors: Wendy Corsi Staub
I know I have no right, Father. I know Javier and I can’t give her everything she’ll ever want.
But we can give her everything she’ll ever need: a family, a roof over her head, our unconditional love. Things she might never have had if she hadn’t come to us.
Mary rocks back and forth, hugging her empty arms against her barren breast.
She can’t stand another minute of solitary silence. She needs to speak to someone,
anyone.
anyone.
But who is there to call? Javier has no family in this country; Mary had no one other than her mother. They have friends, of course, but contacting any of them would be inviting trouble. Questions would be asked, suspicions formed.
You can call the police,
she reminds herself.
File a missing-person’s report.
she reminds herself.
File a missing-person’s report.
No. That, at last, is out of the question. She won’t have her husband branded a kidnapper, his photo and Dawn’s plastered on Missing Children notices.
Wherever they are, Dawn is safe, and . . .
Javier was justified in taking her.
If he hadn’t, Mary would have gone to the police, and the baby would have been wrenched from their lives.
What on earth was she thinking?
She wasn’t thinking. She was merely feeling; feeling guilt, and remorse, and a selfish need to unburden herself at her daughter’s—and her husband’s—expense.
Well, Mary is no longer interested in exposing the deception that led to Dawn’s arrival. Nothing could be worse than this soul-numbing grief. Nothing. Not even a lifetime of carrying the shameful secret.
It’s time she called the one person who might be able to help her now.
Rose Calabrone.
The shrill ring of the cell phone in her pocket wakes Rita from a sound slumber. She opens her eyes to find that the living room has grown dark while she was sleeping; the occupants of the six o’clock news desk have been replaced by the ten o’clock weekend anchors.
“Rita. Did I wake you up?”
Doing her best to sound alert, she replies, “No, I was just . . .”
“Sleeping?” Peyton asks with a faint semblance of her usual wry wit.
“Yes,” she admits. “What’s wrong? Is everything okay at home?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m in the hospital. I had some cramping, so I called Dr. Lombardo’s office, and—”
“What?” Rita sits up straight in her chair, her heart sinking. “What is it?”
“Preterm labor.”
“Oh, Peyton, no.” Swept by emotion, Rita swallows hard, trying to find the right words. “You’ve been through so much, sugar pie. What did Bill say?”
Peyton pauses for a split second. Then, as though she just realized that Bill is Dr. Lombardo, she tells Rita, “He wasn’t at the hospital with me. He was busy with a delivery so the on-call doctor came in. He said the baby’s okay, but they want to keep me here until the morning, just to be sure. Then I have to go home and stay on bed rest until the baby is viable.”
After a quick calculation, Rita asks, “About six weeks?”
“About that. I’m still in shock. What am I going to do about work?”
“They’ll have to get along without you,” she says, peeved that it’s even an issue. “This is life and death, Peyton. You’ve got to take care of yourself and that baby.”
“I know. And I will.” She yawns deeply. “Listen, I need you to do something for me. They won’t release me tomorrow unless I have somebody here to bring me home.”
“I’ll do it,” Rita offers quickly.
“I knew you would. Thank you.”
Peyton describes what happened, then, and apologizes profusely for going back on her word to just go home.
“Where’s Gil now?”
“He stayed here with me until he was sure I was okay. Then he went to my apartment to meet the alarm installer.”
“The alarm installer?” Rita echoes.
“I can’t spend the next two months in that apartment without a security alarm. I can’t even spend a night there without one. So Gil called a place from the hospital, and they said they could do it tonight.”
“You gave him your keys?”
There’s a moment of silence. “Rita, it’s Gil. I’ve known him forever.”
Rita shakes her head in disbelief. “And that’s a reason to trust him? I thought you realized that you can’t trust anyone.”
“Not even Gil? I was thinking I might ask him to be my labor coach.”
“Not even
anyone.
You never know, Peyton. The person you think is your closest friend might be an enemy.”
anyone.
You never know, Peyton. The person you think is your closest friend might be an enemy.”
There’s a moment of silence.
Then Peyton asks, “Have you heard from Wanda again?”
“Not a word. I tried calling her when I got back home. No answer.”
“Did you leave a message?”
“No. If I’d have said what I felt like saying to her, I doubt we’d ever see her again.” Rita sighs. “Look, don’t worry about Wanda right now. Worry about you.”
“I can’t help it. First Allison disappeared, and now—”
“Wanda hasn’t disappeared. I spoke to her just yesterday, remember?”
“I know. But she wasn’t in the hospital where she claimed to be, and she wasn’t home. I just keep feeling like maybe she’s in trouble.”
Not about to disclose to Peyton her disturbing theories about Wanda Jones, Rita purses her lips, then says, “I’m sure she’s fine. Just take care of yourself now, Peyton, for the baby’s sake.”
“But what am I going to do alone in my apartment for weeks on end? How will I survive?”
“I’ll help you,” Rita says simply, knowing she’ll do whatever it takes to get Peyton through the rest of this pregnancy. There is nobody else the woman can turn to, nobody else she can dare trust with her baby’s life. “I won’t let anything happen to this baby, sugar pie. Everything is going to be just fine. I promise.”
“Thanks, Rita.” Peyton sniffles. Peyton, whom Rita has never seen cry. “Because the baby is all I care about now. Nothing else matters. Not work, not Tom, not anything else. You’re a mother. You understand.”
Rita nods. “Exactly. I’m a mother. I understand. Now get some sleep, okay?”
“Absolutely. And thanks, Rita.” Speaking around an enormous yawn, Peyton says, “Nancy was right. She told me I’d be able to count on you.”
Rita frowns. “Nancy?”
“She answered the phone when I called the office, and she met me over at the hospital. She stayed after Gil left, to help me get settled in and keep me company. She even offered to go take care of the alarm, but Gil insisted on doing it. Nancy’s great, though, you know?”
“Yes, she is great,” Rita agrees, biting back a warning there’s really no reason to give.
For the next two months, Peyton will be cocooned in her apartment, protected from the rest of the world by alarms, locks . . .
And me,
Rita reminds herself with fierce resolve.
As long as I’m there at her bedside, standing guard, nobody’s going to get to her, no matter what.
Rita reminds herself with fierce resolve.
As long as I’m there at her bedside, standing guard, nobody’s going to get to her, no matter what.
Mary is about to press the last digit on the telephone dial when she hears a sound so faint she wonders if she imagined it.
A baby’s whimper.
Her heart stops.
Dawn?
Mary throws the telephone aside and hurries toward the sound, calling her daughter’s name.
By the time she reaches the front door, it’s already opening.
Javier stands there, the baby in his arms.
“Where were you?” Mary sobs.
He doesn’t reply.
She hurtles herself forward, reaching for the fussy infant, holding her close. “How could you put me through that?”
But the words aren’t accusatory, nor is her gaze when at last she lifts her head in his direction.
He says only, “I thought you needed to see more clearly.”
Unable to speak, she can only nod, hoping he can see in her eyes all that she needs him to know.
In those terrible hours, she lost the only things that will ever truly matter.
Now that she has them back, she’ll fight to keep them at any cost.
“You won’t tell?” Javier asks, his dark eyes boring into hers, and she shakes her head.
“Do you promise you’ll never bring it up again?”
She swallows hard, whispers, “I promise.”
Satisfied, he nods, and turns his attention to Dawn, now settled contentedly into Mary’s arms.
“She cried a lot,” Javier informs his wife. “I think she missed her mother.”
For a split second, Mary thinks of the teenaged girl. Then, with newfound resolve, she shoves her firmly from her mind.
Gazing down at the cherished baby in her arms, she croons, “
Es bien, mi tesoro
.
Su madre esta aqui.
”
Es bien, mi tesoro
.
Su madre esta aqui.
”
Yes.
Your mother is here.
Alone in the hotel room, Anne Marie stares down at the red Bible in her lap.
She showed it to the police when Heather disappeared, but nobody ever considered it evidence that she had met with foul play—even when Anne Marie pointed out that she had never seen the Bible until she found it hidden in her daughter’s room.
Convinced Heather was another pregnant teenaged runaway, the detectives were unfazed by the odd, highlighted passages in the Book of Wisdom.
. . . the numerous progeny of the wicked shall be of no avail; their spurious offshoots shall not strike deep root nor take firm hold . . .
. . . for children born of lawless unions give evidence of the wickedness of their parents . . .
“Your daughter must have been doing some soul-searching,” Anne Marie was told by an older cop with judgmental eyes.
Ryan, to whom Heather was closer than anybody else, repeatedly assured Anne Marie that wasn’t the case. Not that she had any doubts. In her last days, Heather seemed serenely accepting of the next phase in her life.
According to Ryan, Heather found the Bible in her backpack a few weeks before she vanished, and thought one of the kids at school had put it there as a joke. She never worried much about it, and neither did he. It wasn’t the first time one of their peers saw fit to condemn her condition, just a more anonymous and creative alternative to whispering behind her back.
Anne Marie knows now that it wasn’t a mean-spirited teenager who highlighted those Bible passages. It was somebody whose intention was far more malevolent.
Whoever left the Bible was responsible for her daughter’s disappearance and death.
But the baby survived.
Nobody could have guessed that. Heather’s remains had been dismembered and scattered, making it impossible for forensics to speculate that the fetus had been removed.
Who took the baby?
Who killed Heather?
She needs answers.
She needs closure, now more than ever.
That’s why she hired the private investigator to reexamine her daughter’s disappearance, unable to shake the vision she had glimpsed at the Bronx Zoo last summer. On several occasions this past spring, she snuck away to confer with Mason Hertz at his office in Upper Manhattan, telling Jarrett she was at the theater, or shopping, or meeting friends for lunch.
There were times when she knew he believed her grief had conjured the girl in the crowd at the zoo, times when she believed that herself. After all, it was preposterous to believe she had actually seen that hauntingly familiar face in a vast metropolitan area inhabited by tens of millions of faces . . . wasn’t it?
But then, she had spent a decade scanning every face in every crowd, everywhere she went, for her daughter, looking for her lost child in every little girl who passed.
In her heart, she knew Heather was long dead; she just needed proof in order to move on, to start living again.
But Mason Hertz didn’t just find proof of Heather’s demise.
He found Edgewood Elementary School, and he found Kelly Clements.
He also found a legal birth certificate that confirmed she had been born to the couple who are raising her.
“I don’t give a damn what that piece of paper says,” Anne Marie had told him that day in his office, flinging it back at him. “She’s Heather’s. And she’s mine.”
Ten years, wasted. Ten years when she might have been able to watch Heather’s baby grow, might have been able to raise her as she raised her own daughter and is raising her boys now. Just as Grace DeMario raised her.
There are no coincidences, Anne Marie.
No, there aren’t.
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