Mommy Tracked (33 page)

Grace said something, but Chloe was so immersed in surfing through the Fiona Watson stories, she didn’t hear her.

“Sorry, what did you say?” she asked.

“I said, have you let James back in the house yet?”

“Oh…no. Not yet,” Chloe said.

“Is he still leaving you flowers?”

“No. He finally seemed to figure out how much it was annoying me.”

“You’re the only woman I know who would be irritated by flowers,” Grace said. “If Louis brought me flowers every day, I’d keel over in shock. Wait, can I say that? Or is it considered bad taste, considering I did keel over?”

“Ha-ha. And don’t even try to pretend that Louis is anything less than the perfect man.”

“Louis? Perfect? Are you serious?”

“Yes, I’m serious. He’s amazing,” Chloe said. Ever since she’d seen how he’d hovered over Grace while she was in the hospital, Chloe had become Louis’s biggest fan. Especially since she couldn’t help but compare his behavior with James’s pitiful performance at William’s birth.

“Okay, let me disabuse you of that idea right now. Louis is far from perfect. He’s a bear until he’s had his morning coffee. He un-tucks the sheets on the bed—which drives me crazy; I like them tucked in—and he leaves his wadded-up, used towels on the bathroom counter instead of hanging them up. I don’t think he’s ever actually put a single dirty sock in the laundry hamper. Oh! And when he has allergies, he does this disgusting, phlegmy, throat-clearing thing. It sounds like he has a mucus-covered hairball.” Grace imitated the sound.

“Okay, that is pretty gross,” Chloe conceded. “But not as bad as leaving your baby with a total stranger.”

“I thought you’d decided to hire your neighbor as a regular babysitter?”

“That’s besides the point. I only asked her to sit for Wills
after
I ran a background check on her,” Chloe retorted.

“So what are you going to do about James?”

“I don’t know,” Chloe said, feeling a twist of anxiety in her stomach. “I haven’t seen much of him lately. Although he has been doing stuff around the house.”

“Like what?”

“Yesterday he washed my car. The day before that, he planted a border of hibiscus trees by that big front window. And he finally fixed the section of our back fence that was damaged in the hurricane last summer before we even bought the place, which I’ve been asking him to do for months.”

“Ohhhhh,” Grace sighed. “That’s so romantic. As I always tell Louis when he’s sniffing around for sex, there’s nothing more attractive than a man who vacuums.”

Chloe snorted, but the truth was, she didn’t know what to think about James’s sudden spate of DIY projects. It wasn’t like him. And she was starting to wonder if her husband had really meant it when he’d promised to change.

The Fiona Watson story got bigger over the next few days. It came out that Fiona didn’t just dislike babies and breast-feeding mothers—she seemed to hate all children, possibly even her own. Stories came flooding in. There was the maître d’ at an upscale Manhattan eatery who claimed Fiona made him evict a young family because she didn’t want to have to look at children while she ate. A flight attendant came forward with a tale of how Fiona had screamed abusively at her on a Miami-to-L.A. flight because there was a baby twenty rows back in coach class who wouldn’t stop crying.

“If it won’t shut up, try throwing it off the plane,” Fiona had purportedly snapped.

And then there was the young woman who had once worked for Fiona as a nanny who was now a hot property on the talk-show circuit, enthralling viewers with a portrait of Fiona as an absentee mother who spent all of her time working or indulging in bizarre beauty treatments (including allegedly getting her bottom bleached, although Chloe wasn’t sure what that could possibly involve) and rarely saw her children. Fiona was threatening to sue the nanny for violating their confidentiality agreement.

After years of having to hunt down every story assignment she got, magazine editors were finally coming to Chloe with assignments. Practically overnight, she had more work than she could handle. First she was asked to write a follow-up article about the backlash against mothers who nurse in public for
Pop Art
. Then
Mothering
magazine called to ask her to do a piece on the pros and cons of early potty training. And then a maternity magazine hired her to write a story on the drastic steps some celebrities take to lose weight after having a baby.

Chloe hired Mavis to sit with William in the afternoons while she worked, and she often stayed up late into the night, tapping away at her laptop. And, slowly, her days took on a sort of routine that helped distract her from the almost unbearable sadness she felt over James’s absence.

Chloe hadn’t even wanted the bracelet. It was a faux-bamboo bangle made out of clear brown Lucite, and not at all her taste. Yet she couldn’t help herself. She picked up the bracelet and slid it on. It felt cold and hard on her wrist. And Chloe felt that familiar rush of exhilaration, a tantalizing cocktail of intoxication and fear. Her pulse picked up; her heart drummed in her chest.

William let out a squawk from his stroller and kicked his feet impatiently. He liked to be in constant motion when they were out and about and resented the stop.

Chloe glanced around to see if anyone was watching her or had been alerted to her presence by William’s grousing. But Saks was deserted. There were a few women back behind the cosmetics counter, wearing white lab coats and chattering to one another, but Chloe doubted if they could see her from their vantage point across the floor. A zoned-out middle-aged woman clutching shopping bags and dressed in head-to-toe taupe passed by, looking absentmindedly at a rack of earrings. But she didn’t seem to notice Chloe, and a moment later she moved on.

Now
, Chloe thought.
Now!

She removed the bracelet from her wrist and pretended to set it back on the display case, but then she palmed it and slipped it into her diaper bag hanging off the back of William’s stroller. She felt the familiar rush of exhilaration and had to force herself to continue to browse calmly through the accessories. She feigned interest in a display of Isabella Fiore purses and then in a rack of metallic-hued belts before turning and resolutely pushing William toward the back entrance of the store.

She was just reaching out to open the door, feeling her victory swell up euphorically in her chest, when a hand clamped on to her arm. Chloe spun around to see who had grabbed her, trying unsuccessfully to pull her arm back as she did so.

It was the taupe woman—only now she didn’t look so glassy-eyed. The woman reached into one of the paper shopping bags and pulled out a small walkie-talkie.

“I’ve apprehended the subject,” the taupe woman said into the unit while Chloe stared at her uncomprehendingly. “I’ll bring her up now.” The woman dropped the walkie-talkie back in the bag and pulled on Chloe’s arm. “Come with me.”

“No, wait,” Chloe protested. She clutched the handle of William’s baby stroller. “Obviously there’s been a mistake.”

The woman reached forward into Chloe’s black nylon diaper bag and pulled out the ugly Lucite faux-bamboo bangle. Chloe went cold. Fear seized at her, and her throat closed.

“Please,” Chloe whispered. “Please. I’m with my baby.”

“You should have thought of that before you shoplifted,” the taupe woman said. And then, still holding on to Chloe’s arm, she propelled Chloe—and, by extension, William in his baby stroller—with her.

Chloe felt numb as she sat holding William in the back room of Saks. The baby was awake and looking around with interest. It wasn’t what Chloe had expected a detention room to look like—the sort of grim interrogation room you see on
Law & Order
, with bars on the window and a single steel folding table in the center of the room. This looked more like a small break room. There were several tables, a water cooler, and a cork message board with flyers and announcements tacked to it: an advertisement for a personal defense course, someone looking for a good home for a golden-retriever mix, a reminder for employees to put in their vacation requests six weeks in advance.

The taupe woman who’d apprehended Chloe was standing by the door, deep in conversation with a short, squarish woman wearing a white security uniform. Chloe couldn’t hear what they were saying other than occasional snippets, such as “file charges,” “official complaint,” and—worst of all—“call child-protective services.”

At this last one, Chloe felt like her heart had been dipped in ice.

Did they mean…are they going to take William away from me? Just for stealing a bracelet? Oh, please, no
, she thought desperately. Chloe had never been particularly religious, but she began to bargain with God.
Please don’t let them take William. Please. I promise I’ll never steal anything ever again, if you’d just please grant me that one request. And I’ll start going to church and volunteering at a homeless shelter and whatever else you want—just don’t let them take William.

“Ms. Truman.” In her panic, Chloe hadn’t noticed that the short, square woman in the uniform had crossed the room to speak to her, and she was startled by the security guard’s sudden appearance in front of her.

“Yes?” Chloe asked, her voice high and strained.

The security guard held out a portable phone to her. “It’s store policy to allow you a phone call. Is there someone you could call to come pick up your son?”

“Yes,” Chloe said gratefully, so relieved that they wouldn’t just take William from her and put him God-knew-where that she didn’t even care what they were planning to do with her afterward. “Thank you so much.”

The guard nodded brusquely and handed her the phone, then walked back to continue her argument with the taupe woman. Chloe sat, cradling William in one arm and holding the phone in her free hand, while she tried to figure out who to call. Juliet was the obvious choice—she was a lawyer—but Chloe didn’t want Juliet, or any of her friends for that matter, to find out that she was a thief. Her parents were too far away to help. The only other person she knew in town was Mavis, but Chloe had already learned that the older woman loved to gossip, and she didn’t relish the entire neighborhood hearing about this.

Which left only one person: James. Chloe didn’t have a choice, she
had
to call him. She shifted the phone awkwardly to her other hand and dialed his cell phone number. He answered after one ring.

“Hello,” he said. His voice sounded tinny and distant.

“Hi, it’s me,” Chloe said.

“Hey,” he said, his voice softening. “Where are you calling from? I didn’t recognize the number.”

“I’m in West Palm at the mall, and…well, I’m in trouble. I need you to come get William,” Chloe said. “Now. It’s an emergency.”

When James arrived, his boyishly handsome face was taut and pale. The female uniformed security guard led him in, and Chloe’s first thought was how out of place he looked in the dingy room, dressed for the office in a crisp white shirt, pale-purple silk tie, and navy-blue wool pants.

“Mrs. Truman, your husband is here,” the guard said unnecessarily.

“Chloe, Jesus, what’s going on?” James asked, crossing the room quickly. Chloe stood and wordlessly stepped into his arms, which he wrapped around her. “Where’s William?” he asked softly.

“Right here, in his stroller,” Chloe said, turning to look at William, who’d been lulled into a milk-sated sleep. “Will you take him home? I don’t know how long they’re going to keep me here or what they’re going to do to me….” Her voice, quavering with fear, trailed off.

“What happened?” James asked. “They said they were holding you for shoplifting a bracelet. I told them they must have made a mistake, that you must have gotten distracted by the baby and forgotten that you were holding it. Right?”

Chloe buried her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes, feeling her forehead press against the soft cotton of his shirt. She knew she could lie, say that it was a mistake, and that James would believe her. But she couldn’t. Not only was she a terrible liar—a liability for any thief—but she didn’t
want
to lie. Not now, not anymore. She shook her head slightly.

“No,” she whispered. “I took it.”

“But why?” James asked. He was being careful to speak quietly, so that the guard wouldn’t overhear him.

Chloe shrugged, shaking her head more vehemently. “I don’t know. I just…did,” she said faintly.

“Did you think we couldn’t afford it?”

“No, that’s not it. It wasn’t even that expensive. I just felt this…urge, I guess. It’s happened before,” she said.

“Oh, Chloe,” James said with a sigh, and Chloe felt an almost unbearable sadness wash over her. She’d disappointed him. It was an awful feeling.

“Don’t admit anything to them,” James said. “In fact, don’t say anything to anyone. I’ll call your friend, the lawyer, and ask her to come represent you.”

“No!” Chloe said, louder than she meant to. She took a step back and peered up anxiously at James. “Please don’t tell her. I don’t want anyone to know.
Please.
”

“Okay, shh, okay,” James said soothingly. He took her back into his arms, and Chloe relaxed against him. Having him there made her feel like everything might be okay after all.

“Mrs. Truman?”

Chloe turned. It was the short, squat security guard, frowning at her. The guard was homely, with coarse features and brushlike hair, and she had a name tag pinned to her white polyester uniform blouse that read
MONA STANWICK
. But despite the stern expression on Mona’s face, there was a kind light in her brown eyes. Chloe knew Mona was just doing her job, which, in this case, was catching thieves.

Well, she’s caught one
, Chloe thought. And feeling bolstered by James’s steady presence beside her, one arm wrapped around her shoulder, she decided it was time she took responsibility for her actions. The term
scared straight
was making a hell of a lot of sense to her right now.