The stroller mafia is out in full force on this sunny afternoon. I push my carriage toward the rows of Bugaboos, Stokkes, and City Selects lining the children’s playground area. Before I come within shouting distance, I veer onto the lawn with my carriage. I can’t run into anyone from my moms’ group right now. I must talk to Jake.
He’s sitting beneath the cherry tree where we ate sandwiches last spring, months before I’d given birth to Vicky—perhaps before he’d started cheating. The summer sun has turned the tree’s leaves bright green. In a few months, they will morph to burnished orange, and come spring, pale-pink petals will again cover the bark as they did during our picnic. The flowers will break free when the wind whips off the water and drift down in a tinted snow of petals. Vicky will get a kick out of that. I’ll have to tell Jake to make sure he takes her out and snaps pictures so I can see. If he won’t talk to me, I’ll ask my mother to do it. She won’t cut off contact with me, her only daughter, just because I’m in prison.
Victoria coos at me as I take her from the bassinet and sit down with her beside Jake. The Hudson River sparkles aquamarine in the sunshine. It’s a beautiful day to say good-bye to my daughter.
Jake believes I will start talking. Explain myself. I can sense his expectation in his gaze. But what can I say? He has the flip-flops. Somehow, he knows that they’re hers. Undoubtedly, Colleen’s DNA and mine are embedded in their rubber soles. True, a clever defense attorney might be able to blame the presence of my genetic material on an unwitting transfer from Jake. But I don’t see how anyone could convince a jury that there’s an innocent explanation as to how the shoes came into my possession.
I lift Vicky up and down, making her eyes flutter and mouth open with excitement, hoping that Jake takes his time calling in reinforcements. He’s probably already dialed his police buddies. Undoubtedly, the officers that appear to be lazily patrolling the lawn to make the moms feel secure in their million-dollar apartments are actually here to arrest me.
Jake rubs a hand over his head. “I bought Colleen those flip-flops off a street vendor. She was always complaining that her toes hurt by the end of the night from the high heels she wore. When I saw you shove them in the stroller, I thought they looked familiar, but I also thought that maybe I was imagining things because of my shock that Colleen had been murdered. Still, I followed you to see where you were going that you needed two pairs of shoes. When you tried to hide them in the diaper before throwing them away, I knew.”
Tears tumble down my cheeks. I keep focused on Vicky, trying to commit every detail of her little face to memory. I imagine how the nondescript features before me will grow into a combination of Jake’s face and my own. Surely she’ll come to visit sometimes. My mom will bring her.
“I know why you did it.” Jake’s voice is as raw as a skinned knee. “You were suffering postpartum depression. You probably followed me, saw us make love in her apartment through the window, and then went to confront her. She mocked you, right? And with the depression and sleep deprivation and all the emotion from the betrayal, you just grabbed something and started hitting her.”
Sadness rips through my arms, making it too difficult to keep bouncing my baby while supporting her neck with my fingertips. I hold Vicky close to my breasts and brush my palm on her fuzzy bald head, smell the sour milk on her neck. I must memorize the feel of her in my arms. This is what will carry me through whatever is to come.
Jake wraps his arm around my shoulders. “It’s not your fault.” His voice is barely more than a whisper. “It’s mine. I knew you weren’t well, and I pushed you past the breaking point. I am so, so sorry, baby. I am so sorry.”
The apology is a sign-off. I stiffen, expecting men to haul me to my feet momentarily. This is the end. I’m almost relieved. “They must be coming for me now, then.”
“They?”
I kiss Victoria’s head and pass her to her father. “I need you to be better, Jake. For Vicky’s sake.”
He holds her between his thick hands and brings his nose near her face. “I will. I promise. You’ll see. I’ll—”
I look at the cop pacing nearby. He seems to be watching us for a signal. “Is it that one?”
“What?”
“Is that the cop coming to arrest me?”
Jake takes a choppy breath. “No one is coming to arrest you. But they will one day soon. This is a cop murder, honey. The NYPD won’t let this lie. The best thing for us to do is to talk to a lawyer and prepare an insanity defense. If you turn yourself in, that will count for something. I think I can pull some strings to get the DA’s office to accept a plea of not guilty by reason of mental defect.”
For a moment, I think I’m filling in Jake’s open mouth with words that I want to hear. He can’t really be letting me off for murdering his girlfriend. “You didn’t call the police?”
He places Victoria in the crook of his elbow and grabs my hand with his free one. His blue eyes remind me of the sky today, clear and bright. I think back to the first time I saw those eyes in the courtroom, the way they lit up when he saw me. “I want us to be a family, baby. You were seeing a shrink for postpartum depression, so we have the record. I think we can win on mental grounds. You’ll have to do some time in a hospital, but you’ll get out.” He smiles weakly. “We can put this whole thing behind us.”
Jake and me and baby makes three. Is that really what he wants now? Can I want that again? “I don’t know.” I’m overwhelmed with emotion, crying so hard that I can barely breathe. “You don’t really want me anymore. This is to get me to turn myself in.”
“They’re going to find evidence. You know it. This is the best way for us to be a family again.”
A moan gurgles from my throat. I cover my face with my hands, trying to control myself. In the darkness, I see what I did to Colleen. The picture will always be with me. “I can’t forgive myself.”
Jake hugs me to his side, still holding Vicky. “I forgive you.” Victoria yawns as she rests in her daddy’s arm. Jake smiles at her and sniffs. “We made a beautiful baby, didn’t we?”
I have no idea what she will look like grown up. Her blue eyes may not stay that way. Her round face will become more angular, square like Jake’s or maybe oval like mine. But she is beautiful. She is ours.
My husband stares at me. Tears stream from his big blue eyes, water slipping over the edge of a sparkling dam. “Come on, honey. Let’s go to talk to that lawyer.”
*
Jake hires Lauren Dayton, one of New York’s big-name criminal defense attorneys, to represent me. He’s faced her in court and swears that she’s the best. Within an hour she’s in our living room, arranging with the district attorney’s office for me to turn myself in.
Both Lauren and Jake escort me to the precinct while my mom stays with Victoria. Jake’s position secures my humane treatment. The police pretend that I’m a run-of-the-mill crazy murderer and not a cop killer. Though I am fingerprinted, made to change clothes, and checked, naked, for contraband, I am not roughed up or left to rot in a holding cell for hours with other criminally insane people.
When I am done being “processed,” I enter a musty-smelling room with gray carpet running up the sides and a table in the center. It’s cold in my thin orange jumpsuit. Lauren sits on one of two chairs beside a metal table. She smiles at me in an encouraging way, as though I’ve been through the worst of it.
I slump on the metal stool, feeling as though my life force oozed out of my body at some point during my transformation from wife to inmate. “Where’s Jake?” I sound desperate. I’ve never wanted to see my husband so badly. His determination to stand by me has reignited all the loving feelings that I ever had for him, burning through my apathy and hate. I love him. I need him. He and Victoria are my everything.
Lauren tilts her head and grins. “Jake is outside. I want to talk through my strategy with you first. You’re my client. Jake doesn’t need to hear everything we discuss.”