One More Day (5 page)

The night of Ben's reappearance, Detective Nolan arrived at the house in minutes, as if he'd been hovering around the corner. Forrester came later, but not by much. John greeted each of them at the door, but Carrie sat in the kitchen with Ben. Her jaw was set firmly as she introduced Ben to each of them, watching these grown men crouch down and hold out one hand for a high five while guarding their holsters with the other. Now
they are here,
she thought. Now
they rush over?

The Lower Merion police had certainly not rushed the day Ben had been taken. It was summer, vacation time, and there were a lot of empty houses and a rash of break-ins. That was what they had told her when they had finally arrived.
Stretched too thin.
They were being stretched when Carrie had stood in the street by her car, screaming for help, enlisting strangers, people coming out of Starbucks to search for him in every direction,
a blond boy in a blue nubby shirt with one blue sneaker and two yellow socks
. The sentence she kept saying and others kept repeating, over and over, stumbling over the word
nubby
, transposing the
one
and the
two
, like a whisper down the lane. Someone else calling 911, because she couldn't believe that it was happening, that they wouldn't find him, that he hadn't climbed down on his own and was hiding in the back of the car or near the toy store, which he always wanted to visit. A prank—it had to be a prank! Then the terrible length of time they waited after the call, before the police came—
twenty fucking minutes
, someone had said with disgust. Strangers giving her tissues, asking her over and over,
Who else can we call for you?
The words, the numbers, not forming in her mouth. The cold fear of going back into her purse to retrieve her phone. Her oversize, prosaic black purse, mother's salvation, mother's curse. She'd thrown it out a week later, stuffed it into a blue Dumpster in the back of a restaurant, still full of wadded tissue and brown Starbucks napkins and pennies, but no quarters.

Detectives Nolan and Forrester, both in her kitchen, were people again, not just phone numbers entered into her favorites. Lingering there, not called anymore. At first, yes, when there was hope. When she'd remember a scrap of something, like that time they were at Target and a male clerk had stayed too long near her son. Back when they all thought Ben could be saved and the crime could be solved. As time went on, the detectives believed only in the solving, not the saving. And then, after a year, they moved on. They believed he was dead. And now that Ben had returned, Carrie was beginning to think they were right.

Nolan looked gruff, with his porcupine hair and perpetual five o'clock shadow, but he had kindness in him too. At least, he had been kind at the beginning. Patient, even. But he'd grown rough edges. Carrie answered his clipped questions, knowing he wouldn't ask the right ones. More technicians arrived to sweep for new fingerprints in and around their house—doors, windows, crib—hoping to match them to one of the old unidentified partials from the car.

“So no forced entry,” Nolan said.

“Doesn't look like it,” Forrester replied, then turned to Carrie. “Did you lock the doors when you left?”

Carrie glanced at John, and he lowered his eyes. Aha. John must have told them she wasn't a door locker. As if she'd been asking for it, tempting fate. A woman who crossed herself every night before bed but didn't lock the doors of her house or her car.

“I don't remember if I locked them,” she said defiantly.

“You don't remember?” Nolan's eyes widened.

“No.”

“Were all the windows closed?”

“Yes.”

“You're sure? Because—”

“Yes,” she said.

Ben climbed down from his chair and went into the living room. Carrie watched him walk from the kitchen doorway, watched as he cocked his head toward the men dusting the window ledges, curious about their toolboxes and gloves and tools. Carrie smiled. It reminded her of how he used to love hammers and shovels and backhoes. She used to stop the car whenever she passed a construction site so he could look at real tools, not just play with plastic ones.

“How can you be sure about the windows if you're not sure about the door?” Nolan said as he scratched his chin with the end of a pen.

Carrie closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Why weren't they asking John any questions? Couldn't it just as easily have been him who found Ben, if she'd stopped for groceries before coming home? Why did she have to be the one to
both lose him and find him
?

“Mrs. Morgan?” Detective Nolan asked, bringing her back.

They'd known each other so long, it was ridiculous to keep using last names. But they did. The formality was important, John said. To keep them working, to never turn it into friendship.

“Yes, Detective?”

“Where exactly were you this afternoon?”

“At church.”

“Doing what?”

She bit her lip to keep from saying:
Praying
for your sins of gluttony
. “Putting clothes in boxes for the ann—”

“Did you go straight there? Make any…stops?”

She sighed. He didn't really want to know what she was doing, did he? Just wanted her GPS coordinates.

“No.”

“You're sure? No gas, dry cleaning, milk?”

She winced at the way he said
milk
. As if accusing her of stopping and getting it for her son, of knowing. He saw her wince, took note.

“No,” she said more firmly, angrily. “Why don't you just embed a chip under my skin?”

“Honey!”

“So you already had the milk,” he said.

“We always have milk,” she said. She felt her teeth gritting, her jaw locking up.

Detective Forrester stepped closer to his partner. Forrester was younger, leaner, and over the months, they'd watched him grow into his job—becoming more confident, more forthcoming, less remote. He'd been almost silent in the beginning, a rookie, still learning what to say. Back then, they'd actually liked him less, trusted him less. Now they knew better. He was the good one. Nolan was the bad one. John had said on more than one occasion that under other circumstances—if they'd been neighbors or coached a team together—he and Forrester could have been friends.

“Anyone know you were going? Know your plans?” Forrester asked.

“Well, yes, sure. The other ladies I volunteer with. And John, of course.”

“I need their names and contact info.”

“I have it,” John said quickly, looking down at his phone.

“You don't know everyone there,” Carrie said.

“I meant the church. I have that number.”

Nolan breathed in sharply. Like a lot of portly men, it sounded like it hurt, like he needed more air and had to force it in.

“Also, we need to have Ben undergo a forensic examination. You'll need to bring him in.”

“What do you mean?”

“Babe,” John interjected, “I think you know what they mean.”

“No,” she whispered.

“I know it's upsetting, Mrs. Morgan,” Forrester said gently, “but if there's DNA, hair, any evidence, we need to collect it. And we have to do it before he takes a bath or goes to the, uh, bathroom.”

John nodded vigorously. He should have thought of that, of course. Of course. He thought of those precious moments while he let Carrie be alone with Ben, when he kept the secret. His face flushed with guilt. Had he knocked anything off his son's clothes by picking him up? And what about Carrie—had she wiped down his face, his hands, after she'd fed him that snack, sending evidence into the garbage? Why had he listened to her and not called right away? He looked at his wife. Her eyes met his, then darted away.

John didn't need to say anything to Carrie; she already chided herself for how badly she'd wanted to bathe Ben. She hadn't, but still, she'd come so close! Again, always, the wrong instinct. When had she become so careless, so unlike other people?

“Are you sure it can't wait till tomorrow? Can't we just have tonight and then—”

Nolan shook his head. “Don't you want to collect all the evidence? Don't you want to find this bastard?”

“Of course we do,” John said quickly.

“Then why would you wait?”

John's breath caught in his throat. This was the second time Carrie had wanted to wait! What would Nolan and Forrester think if they knew that?

“I just…um…” Carrie struggled for words, and John, who sometimes felt that he had spent the entire last year defending his wife to his family and their friends, suddenly lost his ability to do so.

“Unless you're trying to…hide something?”

“No!”

“Well, I can't think of a single other reason why you would wait till tomorrow.”

“Detective, no, no. She—” John stepped in but faltered, his argument unraveling inside his own mouth. She had acted the same way with him earlier—delaying, delaying. Why? Why did she need more time? For what?

“Well, Forrester will drive you down there since you're both obviously distraught.”

He spat out the word, as if it were against the law to be upset.

“I can drive,” John said. He walked the detectives to the door, took his keys from the peg.

“I'll follow you, John,” Detective Forrester said.

“Okay,” John said, glancing back at Carrie, who hadn't moved. She stood stick-straight between the kitchen doorway and the closet. Ben was on the couch, kicking his feet as he watched the men packing up their tools. Carrie was fixed on her son, but her eyes had a vacant look, as if she'd come into the room and suddenly, frighteningly, forgotten what she came there for.

“Honey?” John said softly.

“He needs a coat,” she said. “Or a blanket.”

“Give us a minute,” John said to Forrester.

Forrester nodded and followed Nolan out the door. Carrie stood near the hallway, watched them all, not moving toward closet or door.

John said, “Babe, it's not that cold yet—”

“Are they gone?”

“Yes, of course they've—” He stopped midsentence. What was wrong with her? “Do you need me to get a blanket?”

“No.” She opened the linen closet door, pulled out a quilted, zippered container on the floor. The containers that held extra towels and sheets. She unzipped the top, dug around, pulled out two diapers. John walked over to her and looked inside. Extra-large diapers, washcloths, towels with hoods. Baby shampoo.

John's brow furrowed. How had he missed them, all the times he'd swept through the house? Trying to take away all the things that made her cry. That made her crazy, absolutely wild, with grief. Hadn't he already looked in there? Had she been moving things around?

Carrie found her new purse in the kitchen, the smaller brown one she'd bought after the kidnapping, and shoved the diapers inside. They barely fit.

John glanced nervously out the window at the detectives. They stood talking at the end of the driveway, Forrester gesturing with his hands and Nolan looking down, scraping the sidewalk with one shoe, as if he'd stepped in something he wanted gone.

John looked back at his wife, the familiar set to her jaw that often preceded their fights as she verbally wrestled him to get her own way. He knew, as Carrie did, that something as simple as supplies in the closet could be construed as nothing or as something—like the milk. He was seized with a sudden regret. Should he have asked Libby to follow Carrie home? Was it not enough for Libby to check in with him to tell him when Carrie left—and his neighbor Ellen to tell him when she arrived home? It had worried him, in the beginning, that whoever took Ben had really been after Carrie, that Ben had been a pawn of some kind. His wife was beautiful, in her own simple, straightforward way. He'd seen the way men looked at her; ever since college, he'd worried that someone would follow her home, take her. And yes, maybe John tagging after her in the dark on her girls' nights out—to make sure she was safe—maybe that seemed possessive to some people. But the times Carrie had seen him, caught him? They'd had passionate, almost desperate sex immediately afterward, Carrie draping herself over him, insistent, forceful in a way that surprised them both. She liked being watched.

“Carrie, I—”

“What, John? Are you surprised to find something your search and seizure missions didn't unearth?”

“You know it's not that.”

“There is no crime in a mother holding on to mementos,” she said. “None.” The word
milk
burned in her mind, the way Detective Nolan had spat it out. Like milk was evidence, a weapon!

John swallowed what he wanted to say. These weren't mementos—they were groceries. It was like holding on to old wrapping paper because someone loved gifts!

Carrie went to the couch, leaned over, picked up Ben, and hoisted him onto her hip, where he still fit.

“We need to be together on this,” she said.

“Of course,” he said automatically. But he wasn't sure he ever could be. She had always been different from him in the way that women are different from men—or so he'd thought. She was full of contradictions. She needed to talk more than he did but shushed him when a great song came on the radio. She loved movies but could only watch them once. She cleaned her house but was lazy about her car. Her closets were organized by color, but she couldn't be bothered to lock her doors. But now, remembering how she looked, standing by the closet, her face like a painting of a person, he found himself feeling like an art patron staring at the colors, squinting at the expression, the blurred background, because he didn't fully understand its meaning.

As Carrie walked, Ben's legs bounced against her side, in the exact same place, just as she remembered. No longer, no heavier. They would measure and weigh him, surely, at the hospital.
Then
it would all become clear, not only to John, but also to the police.