a hurt cry.
Lucy was terribly afraid the door would be locked and she would have to break it down—wasn’t that the kind of thing that always happened in bad dreams?—but the knob twisted and she opened it. As she did, a new fear struck her: What if Abra was in the toilet? You read about that happening. Babies in toilets, babies in Dumpsters. What if she were drowning in one of those ugly steel bowls they had on public conveyances, up to her mouth and nose in disinfected blue water?
But Abra lay on the floor. She was naked. Her eyes, swimming with tears, stared at her mother. Written on her chest in what looked like blood was the number 11.
6
David Stone dreamed he was chasing his daughter’s cries up an endless escalator that was running—slowly but inexorably—in the wrong direction. Worse, the escalator was in a mall, and the mall was on fire. He should have been choking and out of breath long before he reached the top, but there was no smoke from the fire, only a hell of flames. Nor was there any sound other than Abra’s cries, although he saw people burning like kerosene-soaked torches. When he finally made it to the top, he saw Abby lying on the floor like someone’s cast-off garbage. Men and women ran all around her, unheeding, and in spite of the flames, no one tried to use the escalator even though it was going down. They simply sprinted aimlessly in all directions, like ants whose hill has been torn open by a farmer’s harrow. One woman in stilettos almost stepped on his daughter, a thing that would almost surely have killed her.
Abra was naked. Written on her chest was the number 175.
7
The Stones woke together, both initially convinced that the cries they heard were a remnant of the dreams they had been having. But no, the cries were in the room with them. Abby lay in her crib beneath her Shrek mobile, eyes wide, cheeks red, tiny fists pumping, howling her head off.
A change of diapers did not quiet her, nor did the breast, nor did what felt like miles of laps up and down the hall and at least a thousand verses of “The Wheels on the Bus.” At last, very frightened now—Abby was her first, and Lucy was at her wits’ end—she called Concetta in Boston. Although it was two in the morning, Momo answered on the second ring. She was eighty-five, and her sleep was as thin as her skin. She listened more closely to her wailing great-granddaughter than to Lucy’s confused recital of all the ordinary remedies they had tried, then asked the pertinent questions. “Is she running a fever? Pulling at one of her ears? Jerking her legs like she has to make merda?”
“No,” Lucy said, “none of that. She’s a little warm from crying, but I don’t think it’s a fever. Momo, what should I do?”
Chetta, now sitting at her desk, didn’t hesitate. “Give her another fifteen minutes. If she doesn’t quiet and begin feeding, take her to the hospital.”
“What? Brigham and Women’s?” Confused and upset, it was all Lucy could think of. It was where she had given birth. “That’s a hundred and fifty miles!”
“No, no. Bridgton. Across the border in Maine. That’s a little closer than CNH.”
“Are you sure?”
“Am I looking at my computer right now?”
Abra did not quiet. The crying was monotonous, maddening, terrifying. When they arrived at Bridgton Hospital, it was quarter of four, and Abra was still at full volume. Rides in the Acura were usually better than a sleeping pill, but not this morning. David thought about brain aneurysms and told himself he was out of his mind. Babies didn’t have strokes . . . did they?
“Davey?” Lucy asked in a small voice as they pulled up to the sign reading EMERGENCY DROP-OFF ONLY. “Babies don’t have strokes or heart attacks . . . do they?”
“No, I’m sure they don’t.”
But a new idea occurred to him then. Suppose the kiddo had somehow swallowed a safety pin, and it had popped open in her stomach? That’s stupid, we use Huggies, she’s never even been near a safety pin.
Something else, then. A bobby pin from Lucy’s hair. An errant tack that had fallen into the crib. Maybe even, God help them, a broken-off piece of plastic from Shrek, Donkey, or Princess Fiona.
“Davey? What are you thinking?”
“Nothing.”
The mobile was fine. He was sure of it.
Almost sure.
Abra continued to scream.
8