She had to fight a motherly instinct to gather the books from the carpet and stack them back on the shelves. Paul might not want that. But then, she saw it, tossed carelessly among the discards on the floor: The lone, tattered cover of the I Can Do It! board book, its binding and the rest of its pages long gone, the cartoonish fox smiling up at her beneath the title.
A flood of memories: Abby pulling the cover from the pocket of her coat, from the seat of her jeans, from the side of her cargo pants, from her soccer practice bag, from the little purses she liked to carry, and rubbing it like a lucky charm. Abby yelling, “I can beat you—I have I Can Do It! power!” as the kids were lining up to race down the sidewalk. Abby answering sweetly, “Don’t worry, I Can Do It! is coming with me,” when Clara asked if she was nervous about the first day of pre-K. And Kristin bemoaning how many well-meaning teachers had come upon the cover, fallen from Abby’s pocket or backpack, and thrown it away.
“Imagine them mistaking this for trash,” she’d told Clara drolly, standing in the parking lot of the school. “If I wipe this thing down with Clorox one more time, the picture’s going to come clean off.” She’d gone on to outline the great lengths she’d gone to in hopes of locating a replacement. This version was out of print; it had since been re-illustrated; the originals for sale online were as much as $50 each. “I can’t bring myself to pay that for a book I’m going to rip the cover off of!” she’d said, trying to force a laugh even as she looked about to cry. This wasn’t just any item Abby clung to: It was her very sense of self-confidence. Clara had felt for her. Neither of her kids had a strong attachment to a toy yet, and she’d been thankful, then, that their toys were basically losable, breakable, tearable, disposable. She knew it wouldn’t always be that way, that like everything about childhood, these days of easy-come-easy-go were limited.
And yet here was I Can Do It! alone on the bedroom floor.
There was no rationalizing with the tsunami of worry drowning out her thoughts. Kristin might have left in a rush. She might have left in a state of fear or panic or emotion. And parents were bound to forget things. Lord knows Clara did. She’d suffered through trips to the pediatrician with no diaper bag, trips to the grocery with no wallet, trips to the playground with no shoes on Maddie’s stroller-bound feet—and those were just the outings that didn’t require real packing.
Kristin, though, was the superwoman version of every other mom. She did not falter, not when it came to the important stuff. The idea that she would take her daughter to go and start a new life without her I Can Do It! seemed beyond unlikely. Clara lifted it reverently, in both hands, and swallowed the bile rising in her throat.
Down in the kitchen, she found the men watching the Reds game on the wall-mounted TV. They remained at the table, sipping their drinks and contentedly ignoring each other. Neither of them even noticed her, until she cleared her throat.
“Anything?” Paul asked.
Benny stared up at her, his face filled with questions he would not ask until they were safely home. She licked her lips and held out the book cover toward Paul.
“Just this.” She tried to hold her voice steady.
He took it from her hands, turned it over, and made a small noise, a grunt, really. “Looks like trash to me,” he said, looking up at her. “Did I miss something?”
Clara wasn’t surprised. Only everything, she thought.
17
No one ever likes to admit that they’re desperate. It feels too much like calling yourself pathetic. That’s not really a fair comparison, though. The word pathetic has only one real meaning—a sad one. But there are lots of types of desperation.
Test me sometime. I can list them all.
18
If you felt overwhelmed when you learned that you were carrying multiples, rest assured you are not alone. Your partner can be an invaluable sounding board at this time, as he likely shares much of the complicated mixture of emotions you may be feeling. Opening up to him will strengthen your bond emotionally as well as better prepare you for what lies ahead.
—“Twins, Triplets & Beyond” brochure from Dr. Kirkland’s waiting room
Detective Bryant had warned her against going, Benny had encouraged her to reconsider, and Thomas had trusted her, in the way that young children implicitly trust their mothers, to do what was best—but nothing had prepared Clara for the onslaught that awaited her at preschool Thursday morning. Though the public police statement had retracted Clara’s involvement in The Color-Blind Gazette and beseeched everyone to “respectfully disregard this child’s project and leave the families in peace,” it had done little to satisfy the news teams. They may have grudgingly complied with Detective Marks’s request that they not camp out at the curb, but two days later their vans were still circling Clara’s block. Her doorbell rang every few hours like clockwork; she had to leave the landline off the hook.
If they only knew, she thought. The memory of the I Can Do It! cover tormented her. She wanted—desperately—to tell the police what she’d found, but what good would it do? It was, at face value, an item that had simply not been packed. An oversight. And not, even if it was in itself suspicious, one that was likely to lead to some other clue. They could easily postulate that Kristin had just forgotten it, and they could easily be right. What’s more, if they did confront Paul with questions about the cover, then what? Then he knew that his neighbor—the very one who had just been associated with a gazette smearing his name all over the neighborhood—was actively reporting unfounded suspicions about him to the police.
When she’d come home that night, she’d shut the back door behind Benny in the darkness of their kitchen, leaned against it, and cried. Benny had held her while she talked herself, on the brink of hysteria, through all these scenarios and more. You have to calm down, he’d said. It’s been a long day, he’d said. In the morning, this won’t seem so dire. Seeing how weary he was, how unconvinced, she’d agreed to his gentle but firm affirmation that nothing good could come of saying anything—to anyone.
And he was right. She knew he was right. Yet she’d spent every hour since then convincing herself all over again. It wasn’t just the media she was dodging. She didn’t trust herself to hold back around Randi, Rhoda, Izzy, even Natalie. So she hunkered down at home to wait it all out—the news vans, the questions, the anxiety, the speculation, the answers.
This morning the family had finally enjoyed a quiet breakfast. At last, the guilt and the tension had eased its grip, and she’d left the house feeling cautiously optimistic that the worst was behind them.
She’d had the good sense, at least, to forgo the walk and drive Thomas to preschool today. She was idling outside the Circle of Learning, waiting with a scowl for an impossibly huge black Chevy Tahoe to back into a prime parking spot marked FUEL-EFFICIENT VEHICLES ONLY, when a rap came on the passenger-side window. She pushed the button to lower the glass, and Miss Sally, one of the classroom aides, poked her head through.
“Clara,” she said. “My God. You’d better park around back.” Miss Sally was a retired elementary school teacher who’d once told Clara she couldn’t imagine not spending her days surrounded by children at least part-time, and Clara had instantly taken to the woman, finding her a nice respite from the revolving door of younger aides from Antioch.
“I don’t think—”
Miss Sally cut her off with a firm headshake. “There are a few faculty spots back there, past the Dumpsters. AD Evelyn is on vacation—you can park in hers.” AD Evelyn had the initials of her assistant director title firmly implanted in front of her name to distinguish her from Baby Room Evelyn and Kindergarten Evelyn. None of the Evelyns were among the most well liked at the school, and Kristin had once muttered to her, upon seeing them all walking in together one morning, “You know how they say bad luck comes in threes?” Clara had gotten a case of the giggles and had to pretend she’d forgotten something in her car to collect herself.