ALEX RETURNED WITH THE NOTE, encased in clear plastic. With gloved hands, he carefully removed the plain white paper and shot several digital photos. Then he called his fellow academic. They exchanged pleasantries, after which Alex secured permission to e-mail a photo of the note for preliminary analysis.
“He’ll call us back in twenty to thirty minutes,” Alex explained to D.D., sliding the piece of paper back into its plastic cover. “Of course, for a more thorough analysis you’ll want to submit the note to the crime lab in order to fingerprint the paper and run tests on paper and ink type.”
“Thank you,” she said.
Jack was awake now. She sat with him on the sofa, where she had him sprawled on her lap. He peered up at her with wide blue eyes. When Alex came over to join them, Jack turned to his father and waved a pudgy fist.
“Look at that,” D.D. declared triumphantly. “He can already wave hello. Knew he’d be smart.”
“He gets that from me,” Alex said, settling onto the sofa, his right arm around her shoulders. “I’ve always had dynamite greeting skills. Wipe the globe, wipe the globe.” He used his left hand to demonstrate his best Miss America wave. Jack responded by kicking his feet.
“Soccer star,” D.D. said immediately. “Check out the muscle on him!”
“Soccer? Hmm, that must be from you. Given my own coordination skills, I make it a point never to walk and chew gum.”
“My parents were teachers,” D.D. said absently. “College profs before they retired.”
“Then Jack definitely better watch that whole walking and chewing gum thing.” Alex touched her cheek. “They still coming this weekend?”
She finally looked up at him. “It’s not too late to run away,” she said seriously. “Or I could just tell them I buried your body in the backyard. They’ll believe me.”
He grinned, but she could see the gentleness in his eyes. It bothered her that he seemed to think she needed such a look. It bothered her even more that he was probably right, that she had become a woman who required patient smiles and tender glances. Sleep deprivation, she tried to tell herself, but wondered if it wasn’t one of those children-change-you changes, meaning she was doomed to forever be a frazzled, domesticated, slightly more inept version of herself.
“I don’t hate them,” she heard herself say. “I know I don’t have the same relationship with my parents that you have with yours. But I don’t hate them.”
Alex fingered a curly lock of her short blond hair. “How do you feel about them?”
She shrugged, fidgeting with Jack’s tiny fingers in much the same way Alex played with her hair. “I respect them. They’re two intelligent, well-meaning adults leading their own busy lives. They do their thing. I do mine. We’re happy.”
“You didn’t want your mom in the delivery room,” he said quietly.
D.D. shook her head vehemently. “God no. That would’ve been terrible!”
“How come?”
“Because.” She shrugged again, looked down at her plump little baby who smiled back up at her with a big, toothless grin. He had her blue eyes, she thought, but would most likely end up with his father’s dark hair.
“I love him,” she said suddenly. “I love…everything about him. The way he smells, the way he feels, the way he smiles. He is the most perfect baby in the whole entire world. And I can tell you for a fact, my mother never felt that way about me.
“I was an afterthought. A late-in-life oops that happened to two very cerebral people who’d never planned on having kids. And after all that, I wasn’t even a quiet, well-behaved bookish kid. I was a total hellion who climbed trees and crashed bikes and once hit Mikey Davis so hard he lost a tooth.”