Hush Little Baby (15 page)

Kit was paralyzed. Her tongue could not fold itself around any words whatsoever. It lay there and she stood there.

“Where’s the camera?” said Burt to Kit. He was not armed. There was no weapon. But he was dangerous. He was panicky, angry, tired, and, she realized now, stupid. Stupid like Dusty. Stupid people did stupid things. They were stupid to have come here, stupid to have followed her, stupid to have locked the door.

But she had something in common with Cinda and Burt now. Fear.

Kit had to get away from the topic of the camera, because she had no way to hand over that camera.

Or did she?

There was the stack of disposable cameras on the counter. Of course, they were still in boxes, never having been used. Could she get into the kitchen, unwrap a camera, take ten pictures of the floor, and bring the camera out as if those had been the ones Muffin took of the baby?

“The camera!” said Burt.

He was going to slap Kit now.

She fought her way to calm. Calm had always been something below her; something easily reached; something she sort of lay down on, like a nap. It was odd to have to leap and stretch for calm, as if it were way above, on a cliff edge, crumbling under her curled fingers. “You know, Burt, Muff and I went to your house. We know you and Cinda now, and we know where you live. So, I guess I don’t understand what difference pictures make. I mean, so what if there’s film? There are witnesses.”

“Where is my baby?” said Cinda, in a broken voice. “We always knew it was a risk, adopting privately like this, but Dusty was so much fun at first. She did her share. And we were going to have enough money to pay for the baby. It should have worked. Dusty and I did all the ATMs and —”

“Cinda!” said her husband.

Cinda kept pressing her lips together, and then separating them, and pressing them back down, as if they itched. “Well, we did! I’ve always wanted a baby, Kit, and Burt and I went through that fertility stuff at the clinic and neither one of us can have a baby, can you believe it, Kit, what are the odds of that? Two healthy people and neither one —”

“Cinda,” said Burt.

“— but it’s not okay, not having my son. I did buy clothes for him, whatever that little girl Muffin said! They’re packed in my Cherokee. I have a mobile to hang over his crib, it sings ‘Winnie-the-Pooh.’ ” She sang the four notes of that song: “
Winnie-the-Pooh, Winnie-the-Pooh
.”

Okay, great, thought Kit, Cinda just went over the edge. I cannot join her. I have to enter my Dullness Training. Reentry. That’s what I’m after here; one of us has got to stay sane. Or run like hell. “Now, the camera, Burt. It’s in the kitchen, actually.”

“Get it.”

Oh, good! This was going to be easy, then! She’d saunter off to the kitchen, race out the back door, vanish onto the golf course —

But Burt took her arm in his hand. It was a small hand, for a man. And strong. The fingers that had just slapped Cinda so hard now closed with equal force just above her elbow, and crunched. He did not seem to know he was holding her so tightly. His breath was coming in tight little spurts, and his fingers clenched and unclenched.

Kit achieved dullness. “What are you guys doing out there in the country, anyway?” she said cheerfully. “Raising marijuana? It’s a good location.” She nodded, so they would understand that she understood. “You’re probably growing it underground in tunnels or deep in the woods, aren’t you? Listen, I won’t tell.”

Burt began to cry. Except on television or in movies, Kit had never seen a man cry. Burt had no experience in crying. His cheeks, mouth, and eyes were distorted, unaccustomed to this kind of twitch.

They reached the family room, with its chilly huge furnishings, and the kitchen, with its pile of disposable cameras. There was no way to pretend that one of them had been used and somehow climbed back into its foil and its cardboard.

Kit said, “You’ll find another baby someday, Cinda.” She hoped not. She hoped a social worker would say, These nutcases? A baby? Never!

She had reentered dullness, and in the calm of her mind, words here and there began surfacing, like letters on a Scrabble board, and she began arranging them on her mental Scrabble rack.

Kit had a shivery sense of knowledge just out of reach: A little fact was frisking over to the side; if she sat still, and let her mind drift, she could rope the fact in. It was from television, she had heard it on
New Jersey News,
back when she was afraid that Dusty might have kidnapped Sam the Baby. What had the other news been? Stocks had been up. A power plant was having minor but meaningful failures. State police were closer to solving a rash of—

Letters spurted out her mouth.

She could feel them coming, she tried to stop them, tried to fold her tongue up again, but the letters came out anyway. “ATM,” she said. “It’s you, isn’t it?” Understanding spread over her face like peanut butter on bread. “You’re the ones! The police are after you. That’s why you’re out of time.”

Burt let her go. In order to slap her? To run away from what she was saying? Or to cover his eyes and weep some more?

“And that’s what’s on the camera, isn’t it?” said Kit. “Your license plates. Neither one of them is New Jersey. With those plate numbers, the police will know what your real names are; in what town and state you really live. You won’t be able to vanish.”

Burt’s eyes glittered at Kit’s.

But with Cinda, it was not eyes that glittered.

She had entered Dad’s useless kitchen. She had found something. The decorator had forgotten no detail; he had prepared the room for cooking.

Cinda had a knife.

It was a rutted, rarely used lane, very narrow, gravel thrown into the worst potholes. Quite literally, Rowen could not back out now. It was way too long and curving a road for him to manage for such a great distance. There was no grass at the edge, the gravel went straight into trees; there was no room to turn around.

The car antenna whipped in the snares of branches.

“Turn off your headlights,” whispered Muffin.

Her whispering gave him the creeps.

“They’re not far now. The woods stop in a little bit. And the driveway has a big loop in it so you don’t have to turn.”

His baby sister knew he was afraid of backing up; or had observed his lousy backing. Who else knew?

He obeyed her instructions and soon there was black flatness, probably the yard, and a house that was just a dark splat against a dark sky. There were no lights.

He whispered back, “This can’t be it! If Ed came here, Muff, we’d —”

A car door slammed. It was definitely a car door; it had the metal
thwonk
that house doors did not. But he could see no car. Where was Ed? Why was it entirely dark? Had he turned off his interior lights so there would be no illumination when he opened his doors?

Then, the raw angry cry of a baby.

“If Sam can cry like that, he isn’t really hurt,” said Muffin, relaxing.

Or he’s very, very hurt, thought Rowen.

Rowen and Muffin sat motionless in the dark of their own car, peering blindly into the dark that was full of sound.

A minute passed.

Inside the house, lights went on in a large room with good-sized windows. These cast a little light into the yard, enough to see Ed’s car near the front door. Inside, Ed held the baby.

“Cinda and Burt aren’t here,” whispered Muffin. “The driveway is empty. Their two cars were here before. They have Grand Cherokees.”

“I don’t want to yank Sam out of Ed’s arms,” murmured Rowen. “Ed is nuts. He’s thinking of his money. If there’s no adoption, he doesn’t get the rest of his cash. He’s going to make this adoption work or else. I can turn around on the grass, and hope Ed doesn’t see us. Or back up into the meadow and hope there’s no ditch to get hung up on. Then we’ll go to that convenience store and use their phone to call the police. You were right, Muff. We should have done that in the first place.” Rowen put the car into reverse.

“I’m not leaving,” said Muffin. “I’m going to go in and help Ed with the baby. Look at Ed. He’s getting really mad at Sam for screaming.”

Ed was flailing his arms around as if directing a junior high band. He did not look like a baby-sitter. He looked like a baby hater.

If only I had a car phone! thought Rowen.

He could leave his car in the narrow track, blocking Ed’s exit, while he ran the mile back to make the phone call. But it was much more than a mile to the convenience store. That was not sensible. Besides, Ed wouldn’t be going anywhere. He was at the place he’d meant to go to. They didn’t have to worry that he’d drive off before the police got here.

Muffin touched her door handle.

“No!” said her brother. “You may not go in there! The guy is nuts!”

“What if he hurts the baby?”

“I don’t think he’ll hurt the baby,” said Rowen, who was sure that Ed would hurt the baby unless his luck changed very soon. “He wants his money. He’s waiting for Cinda and Burt to come back. I think he’ll just walk away from Sam and let him scream.”

“I have a plan,” said Muffin. “I’ll crouch down by those bushes over there. I saw them in the daylight. They’re plain old bushes and there’s a cute little wire bench next to it. It’s a good place. I’ll watch and make sure he doesn’t hurt the baby or leave. You drive away and get help.”

“Don’t be a jerk,” said Rowen. “Do you know what Mom and Dad would do to me if I left my sister with a kidnapper in the woods? I’d be a paraplegic in the morning.”

Muffin opened her window the whole way. “I’m not using the door, so the car lights won’t go on.” She stuck her head and chest out the window, sat on the window, twisted up her knees, and dropped to the ground.

“Get back in this car!” hissed Rowen.

“I am not leaving Sam. You go get the police. You go right now, Rowen!”

In the house, Ed moved to another room, and the baby was not in his arms. Since there was no furniture, he must have set Sam on the floor. At least Sam couldn’t fall off anything. But he must be starving. And scared. Did a new baby know enough to be scared? Or was a new baby just feeling crummy and couldn’t do a thing about it except yell?

“
Muffin, you get in this car!
”

Their furious whispers probably wouldn’t carry across the field — but they might.

Ed came out the side door.

Rowen froze. His sister was out on the grass someplace, and Ed was —
getting into his car.

But he didn’t have the baby. The baby was still inside.

Rowen had never played a sport or taken an exam with so much he did not comprehend. He could not imagine what he was supposed to do. He got out of the car because he had to confront Ed in some way.

If he’d had an hour to think, or even a minute, Row would have realized that a confrontation with Ed could only end badly; that Ed had lost the ability to think clearly; that for Ed to leave the baby alone was actually a good thing, because Row and Muffin could take Sam back.

But Row didn’t have time to think. It seemed necessary to get out of his car, quickly, and prevent Ed from driving away. Row walked forward in the dark, and Ed put the heavy powerful Cadillac into gear and drove right into him.

The huge knife gleamed in Cinda’s hand.

Burt stepped far away from his wife.

Kit had nowhere to step.

The telephone rang.

It jolted them badly.

It’s Dad, thought Kit. He’s calling me back.

Burt and Cinda were trying to see where the phone was. There was at least one phone in every room. But the decorator found telephones and television screens unattractive and had hidden them.

“It’s my father,” said Kit in her friendliest voice. “He’s checking on me. If I don’t answer and the machine gets it, he’ll know there’s something wrong.”

The phone rang a second time.

“Your father’s in California,” said Cinda. “You think we don’t know everything about this house? Dusty talked about Gavin Innes and this place and that golf course and you all the time.”

A third ring and the answering machine picked up.

“Kits Bits,” said her father. He was using an old old nickname; age three was when he called her Kits Bits. “I’m sorry Dusty appeared again.”

Cinda took Kit’s wrist and held it in a contemplative fashion, deciding whether to slash it crosswise or vertically.

Dad said, “Dusty is not as simple as she appears, Kit. She’s a manipulative woman, extraordinarily selfish, and I want you to be very careful of being drawn into her net.
She
should not be at that house, and
you
should not be at that house. I called your mother and Malcolm, but they’re not home, and now you’re not at our house, so I’m calling the police to get right over to the house and see what’s going on.” He disconnected.

The word
police
jarred Cinda.

For a moment she was simply bewildered, as if lost in a large parking lot. She released her hold on Kit. The knife sagged in her fingers. It was a large steel knife, the kind television chefs used to chop up an onion faster than most people could even locate the chopping board.

Kit did not move. There was nowhere to go.

“The police,” whispered Cinda. “Oh, Burt, how did we get into this? I don’t want to go to jail. I’m not the kind of person who goes to jail. I’m a nice person. I don’t want this to be happening.”

“Well, it is happening,” said Burt. “And I remember every one of Dusty’s stories about this Gavin Innes. He will call the police and they will get here. You’re coming with us,” he said to Kit, and he took her arm once more, his fingers and thumb tightening like five bolts, fastening her to his side.

W
HEN ED WALKED OUTSIDE
of the house, all Muffin could think of was that Sam was indoors alone.

Muffin hated being alone in the house. She didn’t care what time of day it was, she couldn’t stand an empty house. She would visit neighbors she didn’t like; she would sit on the steps outside in the rain; she would go with her mother on the most annoying errand; but she would not stay alone in the house.

Sam, who was new, was alone in the house. It wasn’t even a real house. It was trash and paper thrown around, but no pillows and blankets and bottles of milk.