One More Day (3 page)

She picked Ben up and hugged him tightly, relishing the weight of his head against her shoulder, though her first instinct, she would recall later, was to strip him and put him in a bath. Where had he been, after all? Who had handled him? What had been left behind? She touched his bottom gently, checking the weight of his diaper. Not full. But not toilet trained either.

“Ben,” she said softly again. “My big Ben like the clock, ticktock.”

He made that exhalation he always made when he was so content, he had no words. To call it a sigh would be to diminish the miracle of it.

She stood with him in her arms and tamped down her instincts—bath, examination, interrogation. She stuffed the questions back down in her throat, the thoughts back into the recess of her brain. Hope that he had more language in place. Hope he could tell her what she needed to know. Later though. Not now. She reminded herself that she'd learned those things weren't important. Life was fleeting. If only she could have him back again, what would she do? How many times had she said it, pleading with the universe? Just one more hug. Just one more song.

She sat down in the rocking chair and rocked him. His body curved into hers, his feet dangling, his soft socks on either side of her hips. The height in John's family was thwarted by the lack of it in hers, resulting in a son who was not particularly tall. A boy she could still rock like a baby. Thirty-fifth percentile. Those numbers that seem to mean everything but that you try to strip of meaning when you don't like what they say. His damp forehead against her chin. She put her hand against his back and patted him rhythmically. The feel of the nubby, striped T-shirt beneath her palm familiar as the skin of a well-practiced drum. She breathed in the fold where his neck met his shoulder. Sweet and almost fruity, like she remembered, but with just a tinge of something earthy and damp.
Like the green end of a strawberry
, she thought, a mix that meant he was just a little bit dirty from playing. Someone had let him play! Had let him have fun! She smiled, thinking of how he liked being outside. She started to sing a song about grass and trees and honeybees, one they'd sung at preschool, and then, seeing his dark lashes flutter, she realized she was putting him to sleep. No, that wouldn't do.

She stood him on the carpet, lifted his shirt tentatively, fearing wounds. His round belly. The dinosaur curve of his spine. His skin soft, tended. She retrieved the baby brush on his dresser, silver with bristles so soft they did nothing, and brushed his bangs out of his eyes, marveled over the curls behind his ears, the whorls that started at his scalp. Nowhere else, just there.

She held the silver brush aloft. “Did they…hurt you?”

His eyes, blinking, confused. He didn't know that word. What would he know, from his life here, of someone hurting someone?

“Owie? Did you get any owies?”

He shook his head solemnly. She'd forgotten those juxtapositions, the silly words with the serious faces.

“Are you hungry?”

He nodded. She carried him downstairs into the kitchen. Everything was clean. So anxious for distraction, she and John took every chance to do anything that needed to be done. They stayed busy, eternally busy.

“Juice?” he asked.

She swallowed hard. There was no juice in the house. John had removed it all: the organic juice boxes, the squeezable applesauce that cost a fortune, the mini carrots packaged with ranch dip. He'd found her sobbing over them, the refrigerator door open, and taken them away the next day, as if that would help. It hadn't. She'd merely moved her tears to the grocery store. She could avoid the baby food aisle, but the toddler foods, the preferences, were hidden everywhere.

“Chocolate milk?” she offered brightly.

“Chock milk! Get me chock milk!”

She smiled and got out the chocolate John kept for his ice cream, swirled it in a glass of milk, and found a straw. She held it up to the light, bent it, marveling over it. How long had it been since anyone in her house had used a straw?
Fifteen months.
She put Ben in the big chair, his booster seat long gone. Where had it gone? She didn't remember its disappearance. John, the thief of her memories.

His chubby hands on the glass, the still tiny shells of his nails. Who had trimmed his nails? Who had taken such exquisite care of him?
A woman
, she thought suddenly. A mother. Someone who wanted a child.
Why had they been thinking all this time it had to have been a man?

“Daddy,” he said, looking up from his glass.

“Daddy,” she repeated. Of course. Of course! How selfish she was being! John needed to see this, needed to have his moment too!

She dug her cell phone out of her purse in the foyer, dialed John's number. He picked up right away, trained, ever alert.

“Can you come home right away?”

“What's wrong?”

“It's…hard to explain.”

“Well, can you try?”

“Ben is here.”

“What?”

“He was here when I got back.”

“Where? Here where?”

“In his crib.”

“What? Was there a note, a message? How did they get in?”

“I don't think they… I mean… Well, I don't know.”

“Did you check the windows and doors?”

“No—”

“Did you call Detective Nolan?”

“John, aren't you going to ask how he is?”

A sharp intake of guilty breath. A pause. She heard people in the background. A restaurant, a store? Where was he? Out in the field, meeting a client? The world going on without their son in it, without her in it.

John swallowed hard, as if eating the question. He felt terribly guilty, hearing his wife state the obvious. Why weren't those the first words out of his mouth? In the restaurant lobby, his face turned red with shame, and he turned away from his clients, who were chatting merrily at the bar, nursing the beers he had just paid for, lest they see his face. They already knew his son was missing; everyone knew. But not everyone wanted to talk about every detail.

“Well, I assumed you would have said—”

“He's fine. It's just that—”

“Thank God. Well, you hang tight, and I'll call Nolan right away.”

“No.”

“No?”

“John, there's something…I can't quite explain.”

“I would say there's a lot we can't explain. How did they get in? Where did they keep him? Is he talking more? Has he told you anything? You have to remember every word, Carrie, every word he says. Write it down. Take careful notes.”

“John, don't call Nolan. You have to see him first.”

“What? No, no, God, what if they're watching you? What if they followed you, if you're in danger? We have to call him now. I need to get off the phone. We—”

“No!”

Ben looked up for a second. The word he hated. The word Carrie had thought back to a thousand times, wishing she could erase it and restring her memories with yeses. Give him anything he wanted if she just had the chance. There was no malice in his eyes, just slight recognition. Then he went back to slurping the last dregs of chocolate, running the straw around the bottom of the glass, searching for more.

“Listen to him, John,” she cried. “Can you hear him slurping?” She brought the phone closer to Ben. “Do you want a quick photo? Should we FaceTime? I—”

“Carrie, stop! I have to call Nolan!”

“John, no! You have to see him first,” she said. “Promise me you'll come home first.”

“Why, honey? Why?”

“Because he's exactly the same,” she whispered.

“Well, of course he is.”

“No, I mean, he's not any older.”

“What?”

“He's not three. He's still two.”

“Honey, that's just a trick of the imagination. You just don't remember how bi—”

“I remember! I remember everything!”

“Or…he's been…confined, maybe. Underfed.”

His voice didn't catch when he said those words.
How could that be?
she thought.
How could that possibly be?
The thought of it, the images—they tore at her. But she'd lifted Ben's shirt. She'd seen. He wasn't scrawny, ill-cared for. He was simply too small.

“No. He hasn't aged, John. It's like he's been…preserved.”

“
Preserved?
”

She heard so much in John's intonation, in his pause. His mind, his logical mind, the gears almost musically obvious when they were turning.

She took the phone into the living room.

“Yes, John,” she whispered. “Like he's not…really ali—”

“Carrie, listen to me. We should call Dr. Kenney right away, right now, then Nolan before—”

“No! No!” Half screaming, ramping up. She knew how to get his attention, how to make him listen. His fear of her breakdown was greater than his need to be right, to do right.

“How about Libby then? I'll call Libby and—”

“If you call anyone, I swear to you, John, I—”

“Okay, okay,” he said. “Lock the doors.”

John excused himself from his clients, saying he had an emergency at home. Oh, the looks on their faces. How many emergencies could one man have before they stopped feeling sorry for him and started wondering about him? No, these were good people. One of the women had patted his arm almost tenderly as he left.

As John raced home, he went through all the options: Whether his son was really in his house. Whether the crime was about to be solved. Whether his wife was losing her mind. And, yes, guiltily, whether the promotion to regional manager that he was up for would be affected by any of these possibilities. He was competitive, he'd cop to that, but he ordinarily wouldn't be so jaded and cold. It was only because the other top salesperson in the area, Lara, had told Justin at the convention in Atlantic City last month that John had gotten the “pity vote.” She'd said this half drunk at the hotel bar, and John, who only had an occasional drink, had filed the information away.

At home, Carrie's thought process was narrower. It wasn't until she got off the phone that it hit her: John knew Libby's number? How on earth did he even know her fellow volunteer's last name?

Ben had been kidnapped on July 12. Carrie had stayed inside her house for the rest of July and the entire month of August. She'd started seeing Dr. Kenney in early September, and later that month, with John's and Dr. Kenney's urgings, she'd started going out in public again. At first, John would take her places—they'd go out and pick up dinner, go to the dry cleaners. He said there would be strength in numbers. But it was really more belief in his own strength, in his own watchdog characteristics. The world might judge Carrie, but they wouldn't dare do it with him standing nearby.

One Saturday afternoon, John asked Carrie if she wanted to ride with him—he needed to buy socks. She said yes, knowing it would make him happy, that it would be evidence of her getting better. But when he drove past the running store in Bryn Mawr and kept going, driving farther away, headed for the sports store in Ardmore, she felt her throat starting to constrict. She hadn't been to that shopping district, so close to the Y, near that Starbucks, since Ben was taken.

John squeezed her hand as they drove down the main street, looking for a parking space. They passed the Starbucks, and Carrie closed her eyes.

“John,” she whispered.

“It's okay,” he said. “I'm with you.”

“But—”

“It can't happen again, Carrie.”

“I know, but—”

“Exposure,” he said. “In small bits and pieces. Dr. Kenney told me all about it. You can't get better without exposure therapy.”

“Grief is nothing but exposure.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don't you feel like you are missing your skin? Like every breeze, every drop of rain, is just like an assault—”

He didn't say what he thought out loud.
No.

He spotted a parallel parking space a few blocks away, across the street, and pulled in.

Carrie released the breath she'd been holding; the car was facing away from Starbucks, toward the east, almost at the farmers' market.

“You ready?”

“I'll wait here.”

“No,” he said. “God, no. No, come with me.”

“I can't.”

“Carrie, what if—”

“What if what? Just say it, John. Acknowledge that something bad could still happen.”

“That's not it! That's not it at all. It's just—”

“Just what?”

“Just…you might get sad or scared or—” He stopped, just in time. Just before he said something that would set her off again. “And what if you're alone?”

“I'm alone all day,” she said.

“Okay.” He sighed and opened his door. “I'll hurry,” he added. “No unnecessary sock browsing.”

“Yeah, no lingering over the argyles.”

She managed a small smile, but his smile behind the glass of the door was so wide it was almost magnified. Was that all it took? A little teasing to make him think she was herself again?

He jogged across the street, jaywalking with his long strides, never even coming close to a car or to anything in his way.

Carrie breathed in and thought not of John or of Ben but about dinner. She thought if she could think of ordinary things—brushing her teeth, eating Chinese food—that all the extraordinary things could be held at bay.

She didn't hear the footsteps approaching. She didn't pick up on the sighing, the click of the pen. When the navy-blue sleeve appeared in the corner of her window, she jumped, the way you do when a leaf lands on your head. A blue arm, a jacket, pants. In motion, heading up the street, away from her, not stopping, but fury rose in her nonetheless.

She got out of the car. Fifteen minutes still left on her meter, but the next person would not be so lucky. She watched the young parking attendant in the navy-blue uniform with the sensible black shoes walk to a car two spaces ahead and start to write a ticket.

“Wait!” Carrie called, and the woman turned. “I'll pay the meter.”

“This your car?”

“No, I—”

“Too late,” she said and sighed. “Already started writing.”

“You should cut them a break,” Carrie said.

The woman said nothing, kept her head down.

“Do you even have a heart under there? Do you ever think what you might be doing to someone?”

The woman put down her pen, raised her eyes to Carrie, cocked her head, then squinted. Slowly putting it together.

“I know who you are,” she said.

“So?”

“So I'm sorry about your baby, but—”

“But what?”

“Nothing.”

“But what? But you have a job to do? That's what you were going to say, right?”

“No.”

“What then?” Carrie cried, walking up to the woman. “What is your excuse?”

“Get away from me, now,” she said. She gripped her walkie-talkie like it was a lifeline.

Carrie turned, went back to her car. As she reached for the door handle, the parking attendant called out.

“You should have locked your door.”

“What did you say?” Carrie's eyes narrowed to slits.

John walked up, whistling, a bag in his hand. He looked at his wife, her hands clenched into fists. The parking attendant gripping her walkie-talkie.

“Does someone…need a quarter or something?”

“No,” the woman said flatly.

The parking attendant's words rang in Carrie's ears the whole way home, not in a single voice, but a cacophony, a Greek chorus. Saying what everyone else was thinking, including her.
It's your fault. Sooner or later everyone will know.