I realized quickly that there was a library there along the brown line of that train. It said so right on the map: Library. I was pretty sure it was an omen, a sign.
I climbed up the steps to the train platform one cold, rainy April day after we’d been in the city a week, maybe two. I had that baby tucked up inside my coat to keep her dry and warm. And we waited there, on that platform, beside men and women with too-big umbrellas and their briefcases and bags. They stared, they pointed fingers, they whispered. About the baby. About me. I looked away, pretended not to notice, letting my hair fall into my eyes so I couldn’t see the way they stared, the way they pointed.
The first train that came, it was too crowded. I didn’t like the crowds, being so close to strangers that I could smell their perfume, their shampoo; being so close that they could smell my stench, days upon days of body odor and sweat, of the sour smell of spoiled milk and seafood that drifted from the garbage by which we slept, enfolding the baby and me in a noxious stench.
And so I told the baby we’d wait, we’d wait for another one. And I stood there, watching as everyone else climbed on board, not a single one of them paying me the time of day.
But then I saw it: a woman hesitated a split second before boarding that train, the only person in the whole entire city of Chicago who’d ever hesitated for me. But then she, too, climbed on board that train and out the window she stared, at the baby and me, though I looked away, my eyes like stone, pretending that I couldn’t see.
That next brown line train that came by, I got on, being hurled through Chicago and toward the library, a great big redbrick building in the heart of the city, its green roof spotted with winged creatures that kept watch over me. But I wasn’t scared.
I didn’t think I’d ever see that woman again.
But then I did.
CHRIS
I’m utterly speechless, my mouth hanging open, my tongue unable to produce words. Heidi lays on her back on the living room sofa, completely topless, some black dress I’ve never seen before pushed down beneath her chest. Her hair is in shambles, some kind of updo that has since come undone. Makeup dribbles down her face: dark eyeliner I’ve never seen my wife wear, dark lipstick that’s smeared everywhere. The baby is screaming, out of control, and I have to remind myself that Heidi would never hurt that baby.
Heidi loves babies.
And yet I’m not so sure.
I glance around our home, taking in the emptiness, entirely aware that the door to my office—to Willow’s aka Claire’s—room is sealed shut. “Heidi,” I say then as I cautiously let myself into my own home and close the door, “where is Willow?”
I whisper in case Claire is there, hiding behind the closed door with a knife. I tell myself that Claire has done this, that Claire has rendered my wife topless, the baby frantic. And yet there are no restraints, no belts or cuffs binding Heidi to the couch.
My words come out unsteady, without rhythm. I don’t even know how they manage to emerge. My throat is dry, like sand; my tongue feels like it’s grown to two times its size. An image of Cassidy Knudsen half-naked haunts me, alternating places with an image of a man and a woman stabbed to death in their bed.
“Heidi,” I say again, and I see then, the way that she presses that baby to her chest. Heidi would never hurt that baby, I remind myself again, paralyzed by the scene before me, trying to figure out what the hell is going on. And then it comes to me, all of a sudden, what it is that Heidi’s trying to do. My God!
My heart stops beating altogether; I lose the ability to breathe.
Suddenly I’m bounding across the room, fully prepared to snatch that baby from Heidi’s hands.
Heidi rises to her feet all of a sudden, before I can catch her, clutching the baby like it’s hers. I think of that birthmark on the baby’s leg. The doctor said we really might want to have it removed, she’s said. She and me. Like it was our baby they were talking about. Our baby.
This was never about Willow, I realize then and there, that sudden, obsessive desire Heidi had to help some homeless girl she’d seen on the train.
This was about the baby.
And suddenly I’m not worried about Willow—Claire—hiding out on the other side of the office door; I’m worried Heidi has done something to hurt the girl.
“Where’s Willow?” I ask again, standing a foot, maybe two, shy of Heidi and the baby. And then again, when she doesn’t answer, “Where’s Willow, Heidi?”
Heidi’s voice is flat, nearly impossible to hear thanks to the baby. But I read her lips anyway, the simple proclamation: “She’s gone.”
Wake up, wake up, wake up! my mind screams, certain this is only the aftereffects of last night’s drinking binge. Certainly this can’t be real.
“She’s gone,” I repeat more to myself than Heidi, and then, “Where?” And a dozen possibilities float through my head, a dozen possibilities that scare the shit out of me, each one worse than the next.