I drive along the winding paths leading to Hidden Creek Lane, where our home sits just south of the eleventh fairway—across from Claudette Winters’s.
I park in the garage and have no choice but to carry Bella inside. I can’t leave her sleeping in the car. Nor can I wake her, unless I want to deal with an even crankier version of Miss Mind of Her Own. But when I lift her, I feel a subtle strain in my lower back, as well as in my abdomen. This is one of those times life would be easier if Micah had a normal job. If he were due home at six o’clock, I might not care about a challenging, overly tired three-year-old. I’d wake her up, let her have a fit or two, and let Micah take a turn dealing with it when he came home.
But as things stand, I carry her in, gently lower her to the sofa, unzip her coat, and remove her shoes. I watch her for a moment, time suspended, in absolute awe of her beauty.
Every parent thinks her child is exceptional, and from a certain point of view, it’s true. Every child is a miracle—of science, of faith, of whatever keeps us going in the still of the night. Claudette spends thousands of dollars on head shots for her daughter and son, insistent they’ll be the next Disney stars . . . and they’re not especially cute kids. Some moms go overboard believing their children are special, but Elizabella is. Especially considering the news from the lab today. No one can convince me she’s anything short of a miracle.
I snap a photo and text it to my husband, in order to document what he’s missing. Sometimes, he comes home earlier if he can arrange it, and especially given the news from the lab, I desperately need him to try.
I lower myself to a chair and prop my feet on the oversize ottoman. When I glance around this house, I realize, and not for the first time, that it has yet to feel like home.
But the Shadowlands is a good place for kids to grow up. And you can’t raise children in the city, Claudette has told me. As if she’d ever tried.
Still, I miss our condo in Old Town. The white-bearded man who sets up his folding chair and draws the charming buildings from the corner . . . the wrought iron scrolled gateway arching over the sidewalk to announce your arrival into the quaintest neighborhood in Chicago . . . the fresh produce market just around the corner.
I want to move back. When Micah calls, I’ll tell him. Let’s just pack up and go. Leave this snooty neighborhood and the eleventh fairway behind us. Chalk it up as a mistake. And I miss having friends like Natasha. Has enough time passed? If I were to reach out to her now, would she be open to meeting for lunch?
With the very thought of going back home and reconnecting with my college roommate, my one true friend besides my husband, my heart quickens, but I know it won’t happen. I remember why Natasha and I parted ways, and I know why we moved out to the ’burbs. More space for our growing family. Little did we know the only addition might come not in a bundle of joy in receiving blankets, but in the form of Nini.
Chapter 5
Somewhere between dreamland and wakefulness, a memory surfaces, as clear as if it happened only yesterday.
My mother sits on a stool at our kitchen table, which she’s recently painted blue.
She’s wearing the sweatpants smudged with every color of paint she’s opened the past few years, and a men’s tank-style undershirt, which she says used to belong to my father.
Every time she wears it, I find myself staring at the worn material, hoping to find a clue somewhere within the threads. Something that might tell me where my father is, what kind of man he used to be.
The pants practically hang off her hips. She’s so thin. Her nubs of breasts are like tiny topographical bumps on a map now, but I remember when she looked like an hourglass. I remember when she looked like a woman.
Her hair hasn’t been washed in over a week, and lately she’s been pulling at it, strand by strand. There’s a scabby bald patch at her right temple now.
But she’s still my mother.
I long to feel the warmth of her embrace, to hear the pretty sound of her voice—almost musical—when she speaks to me.
The radio is broken, so I wind the crank on my music box to play a tinkling version of some Broadway hit—something from Cats, maybe?—and Mama hums along with the melody.
She places a tiny red crystal into a pronged opening. Two more stones to go before the pair of earrings is complete. Quietly, I watch from a distance. Can’t disturb her; I learned my lesson last time.
A whisper in my ear. She’s watching you, waiting for the right time to strike.
I flinch when I realize it’s my mother at my side, her lips brushing against my ear as she speaks.
Be careful, little Veri. They don’t want you here.
And they’re looking at me now.
I feel it, that tingling sensation that settles into the back of my neck whenever I sense someone looking at me.
Someone’s in the house.
I can’t open my eyes.
Can’t move.
Wake up! Wake up!
“Mommy?”
I startle out of the deepest sleep I’ve had in more than a month.
Bella. She’s standing over me in her purple jacket in the dim, still room. Her hair is mussed, and she’s backlit by the setting sun filtering in through the patio doors. In this light, she looks like an angelic messenger.
“I told you, Nini,” she whispers to no one at her side. “She’s asleep.”
“Hi, baby,” I say through a yawn. I straighten in the chair and feel an instant ache in my back from the awkward position I slept in. An overwhelming sense of loss sucker-punches me square in the chest—the feeling that something horrible happened before I fell asleep.
It’s an oppressive feeling. Instantly, my mind travels back to April, when I awoke in a puddle of blood. Bleeding out my babies. Elizabella’s brothers. Our family. A sticky, scarlet mess on our white cotton sheets.
It’s the embryos, I remember. Sad news. Only one survived, and it doesn’t look good.
My daughter is staring at me, head cocked to one side, the same way she did when Micah and I told her the sad news about the miscarriage—as if she doesn’t understand why we couldn’t make it better, why we couldn’t fix it.
“Are you hungry, Bella?”
“Yes!” Her concerned, if not somber, expression dissipates, and she jumps into my lap and cuddles against me, all warm and sweet.
There’s a smudge of something on her cheek, and when I wipe it off, I catch the scent of chocolate.
“Nini and I ate chocolate pudding!”
I glance to the child-size table in the corner to see the evidence of two now-empty pudding cups and spoons littering the scattering of papers. How long has Bella been awake and entertaining herself? I forego reprimanding her for eating in the great room, which is against the rules. Claudette wouldn’t approve, but I’m picking my battles today.
“How about dinner?” I touch a button on my phone, which brightens the screen. It’s after five. And no call from Micah. “Come on, munchkin. Let’s get some real food in that tummy.”
Bella scrambles off my lap and into the kitchen. “Ronis!”
“Okay, macaroni and cheese it is.” Claudette wouldn’t approve of this meal, either—high in sodium, chock-full of preservatives—but children have been subsisting on this crap for years. I take out a pot and fill it with water. Once it’s on to boil, I try Micah again, hitting the “Speaker” button so Bella can talk, too.
“You have reached the mobile phone of Micah Cavanaugh . . .”
I hang up.
Screw him, if he won’t turn his phone on.
“Mommy, he won’t answer.”
“I can see that. We’ll try him again before bed.”
“He won’t at bedtime, either.”
I crouch to look my daughter in the eye. “Of course he will.”
She shakes her head, tears rimming her eyes. “Nini says you don’t listen. Daddy is gone. He went to God Land.”
My grip tightens on her arms. “Stop saying that!”
Fat tears now glisten on her thick lashes. “Nini says you don’t believe it, but it’s true. He won’t answer. He won’t come home.”
I give her a sharp shake. “Don’t say things like that!”